Bad Deeds for 8-29-2011

 

Republican Requests Funds From Program He Voted to Kill – Metrolink spokesperson Sherita Coffelt said the railroad crossing at Spring Road near High Street will be upgraded to enhance safety for rail, vehicles, pedestrians and commercial property patrons.

The improvements will include relocating a warning signal, installing a new one, and installing two vehicle exit gates, she said.”There will also be advanced reactions, which means that when a train is approaching, the warning lights will be coordinated with the traffic lights so that the traffic lights will never accidentally cause a car to get trapped on the tracks,” she said.

Requested by Rep. Elton Gallegly, the funding comes from the 2010 transportation/HUD appropriations bill as part of the Federal Railroad Administration’s High Speed Rail Corridor Improvements program, said Tom Pfeifer, spokesman for Gallegly’s Washington office.

Yeah. That would be the same high speed rail spending program Gallegly voted to kill, alongside his fellow Republicans in the House.

 

Keystone XL Pipeline is a Danger to the Whole Planet – The Keystone XL pipeline is planned to carry diluted bitumen — an acidic crude oil — from Canada’s Alberta tar sands to the Texas Gulf Coast. We have two main concerns: the risk of oil spills along the pipeline, which would traverse highly sensitive terrain, and the fact that the extraction of petroleum from the tar sands creates far more greenhouse emissions than conventional production does.

A new report from Canada’s environmental ministry shows how great the impact of the tar sands will be in the coming years.

It projects that Canada will double its current tar sands production over the next decade to more than 1.8 million barrels a day. That rate will mean cutting down some 740,000 acres of boreal forest — a natural carbon reservoir.

Extracting oil from tar sands is also much more complicated than pumping conventional crude oil out of the ground. It requires steam-heating the sands to produce a petroleum slurry, then further dilution. One result of this process, the ministry says, is that greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector as a whole will rise by nearly one-third from 2005 to 2020.

Without the pipeline, the tar sands don’t get exploited, and the tar sands pose a danger to the whole planet. After all, it’s the earth’s second-largest pool of carbon, and hence the second-largest potential source of global warming gases. As NASA climatologist James Hansen has made all too clear, if we do so it’s “essentially game over for the climate.”

The president, and the president alone, has the power either to sign the permit. Barack Obama has the power to stop it, and no one in Congress or elsewhere can prevent him from doing so.

Please sign this petition to President Obama. And this one, too. And this one, also.

Then call the White House and urge Pres. Obama to reject the pipeline. It’s best to call during regular business hours (M – F, 9 am – 5 pm EST).

 

Rick Perry’s Presidential Campaign Costing Texas Taxpayers – Since Rick Perry joined the presidential race this month, his campaign entourage has included not just the standard array of political advisers and aides, but a squad of Texas law enforcement agents.

The security forces scout and secure locations days in advance. Well before the governor’s visit to Tommy’s Country Ham House in Greenville, S.C., the weekend of Aug. 20, more than a half-dozen suited and armed agents were giving orders to the crowd of more than 400. How much is this ever-present phalanx of state policemen costing the taxpayers of Texas? They won’t know at least until after next year’s presidential election, thanks to a provision, tucked into a school finance bill in July, that will keep the governor’s travel records sealed for 18 months.

 

Democratic Economic Policies Were Working Well, Then the Obstructionist Republicans Stopped Progress – In 2009, Democrats had the super-majority in the Senate. During that time, President Obama and the Democrats were able to write their economic policies into law and we went from a -7% GDP to a +6.4% GDP, and from losing 800,000 jobs a month to an average of 150,000 new private sector jobs a month. Then, the Republicans won the legal power to block bills in the Senate. They blocked every job bill the Dems passed in the House in 2010. Result? The hugh progress made by the Dems in 2009 has been stopped, and we’ll remain in a horrible kind of status quo until the American people decide to give Congress back to the Democrats.

 

Boeing Overcharged U.S. Army 131.5 Percent for Helicopter Spare Parts – Boeing overcharged the United States Army by 131.5 percent, according to an unredacted Department of Defense Office of Inspector General audit released by Project on Government Oversight (POGO). According to the 142-page document, the Army should have only paid $10 million instead of the nearly $23 million it paid for spare parts for Boeing AH-64 Apache and Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopters.

 

Colorado Congressman Refers to President Obama as a Tar Baby – Between the birth certificate “scandal” and the Kenya jokes, some arms of the Republican party have had no qualms about making thinly veiled racist comments regarding President Barack Obama.

Now we can add another.

Colorado Representative Doug Lamborn went onto a talk radio last week, where he referred to the president as a “tar baby,” claiming getting too near him will get you “stuck.”

Regards,

Jim