Mr. Peabody's Welfare Train

Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher has been insisting all summer on a special legislative session to give huge incentives for a proposed Peabody Energy coal gassification plant. As Kentuckians for the Commonwealth point out, this is a massive corporate welfare scheme designed to benefit the world's largest coal company--a company which posted $600 million in profits last year. Among the possible windfalls: an 80% corporate tax rebate that will ultimately cost the state $800,000 for every job the plant might actually create. Unfortunately, state Democratic leaders seem to be willing to go along (not suprising when the centerpiece of gubernatorial candidate Steve Beshear's energy plan is the oxymoronic "clean coal").

KFTC is calling for concerned citizens to e-mail House Speaker Jody Richards to voice their opposition to this corporate give-away, and to call for a state energy policy that shifts our priorities to renewable resources.

Where's the Media?

I shined my shoes and gave a speech about the ridiculous cost of the war today, and a lot of cool people showed up. Our MoveOn press conference went off without a hitch: we did our prep work, had our report, made our speech, held our giant check, and waited. The trouble is that our three TV network stations and one newspaper did not bother to show up.

WNOX, and WIVK sent reporters and did an interview. Ann Lloyd of WUOT rang me up a couple of hours later and did a phone interview. We even got on the AP daybook. But where were print and TV? The newsrooms got plenty of calls, and they all got a release.

Everybody should send them an email and ask why they didn't cover this important story.

WBIR TV 10 News
email: news@wbir.com

WATE TV 6 News
newsroom@wate.com

WVLT TV 8 News
steven.crabtree@wvlt-tv.com

Knoxville News Sentinel
news@knews.com

Getting Active

I've finally gotten active with Operation Democracy, and we are doing a press conference on Thursday where we will be releasing a report on the cost of the war to East Tennesseans.

Shock and Awe for Tennessee Taxpayers: Knoxville Project Democracy Members Release Cost of War Report

MEDIA RELEASE: Date: 11:30 A.M. Thursday August 16, 2007, location: Whittle Springs Middle School, 2700 White Oak Lane, Knoxville, TN 37917. Contact: Todd Duren 865-660-1980, tdurenATbellsouthDOTnet

Local members of Operation Democracy, an activist arm of MoveOn.org, will release a report on Thursday that details the costs of the war in Iraq to East Tennesseans. They will gather in front of Whittle Springs Middle School to talk about the potential benefits to education, healthcare, energy, and the Federal budget from ending the war.

Each and every day, it is becoming more evident that the Bush Administration is wasting billions of taxpayers' dollars on an endless, religious civil war that cannot be won. On average, $275 million is spent every day on the war in Iraq—that is an average of $4,100 for every household in the United States over the course of the war. And those costs are continuing to rise with no end in sight.

Last month, Congress voted for an additional $100 billion in spending. That makes the total funding appropriated for the war in Iraq so far $456 billion. The cost to Tennessee taxpayers alone is $7.03 billion. And Tennessee taxpayers in the 2nd congressional district are paying $778 million for the Iraq war.


Setting New Priorities

If we had that money back we could do a tremendous amount to benefit East Tennessee.That same amount of money—$778 million— could pay for 3800 new elementary school teachers, 54,000 children with health care, provide 144,000 homes with renewable electricity*, restore TDOT's $12 million bridge replacement funding cuts, and still have enough left over to pay off $182 million on the the $8.9 trillion national debt—a debt that has been entirely created by the Bush administration.

The money being spent in Iraq could be used to improve the lives of Americans instead of putting them at risk. Congress must act quickly to rein in this reckless president and bring an end to this war.

Operation Democracy: Because Democracy is not a Spectator Sport

*tradeoffs are calculated by the National Priorities Project.

So Long Turd Blossom

I called for his firing on this blog 18 months ago, and finally he's gone. This morning White House political adviser Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove announced his resignation August 31, one step ahead of a Congressional subpoena and Valerie Plame's book.

Rove began his political career at age 19 by stealing his opponent's letterhead and typing "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing." Later he trained GOP campaign volunteers to through the opponent's trash.

But the biggest of all the Rove smears was the Plame affair, a controversy that outlasted the attention span of most Americans, but luckily not that of Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. It began after Valerie Plame's husband Joe Wilson wrote an article accusing the Bush administration of faking intelligence in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, an article that has turned to be entirely true. What does Turd Blossom do? He decides to smear Wilson's wife. Both Rove and his assistant Scooter Libby told Robert Novak that Plame was a CIA agent, and that she got Wilson sent to Niger to look for the non-existant uranium the Bush administration later claimed was a justification for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Since it is a Federal crime to reveal the identity of a CIA agent, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald investigated. Finally the mystery was solved on February 12, 2007, when Robert Novak testified under oath that he got confirmation on his article from Karl Rove that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. Earlier this month Rove dodged a Congressional subpoena, sending his assistant instead.

This resignation marks the end of W. His spell over America is broken. The problem is that we have to wait 17 months before we're rid of him.

Kentucky Summer

Since our senior Kentucky senator, Mitch McConnell, became Senate Majority Leader, the whole world has discovered what we knew here in the Bluegrass for two decades--he's the ultimate Republican rubber stamp. Despite his massive campaign war chest, Mitch has become the target of outraged activists who are ready to expose his blatant disregard for will of the people, and is now drawing a challenge from Attorney General Greg Stumbo, who is organizing an exploratory committee (not that Stumbo is baggage-free, but he's got the name-rec to command some big money). As part of the Americans Against Escalation in Iraq's "Iraq Summer" campaign, folks were camped out at Mitch's house in Louisville over the weekend, as documented over at DitchMitch.com. It's all working up at a national "Take a Stand Day," scheduled for August 28. Learn more here.

New film for anti-war organizing

The Media Education Foundation's new documentary, War Made Easy, premiers in a couple of weeks. Based on Norman Solomon's 2005 book by the same name, War Made Easy provides a video history of the ways in which presidents and pundits have sold America on war throughout recent history, and how the media has happily tagged along. The producers are hoping that activists will use the film to organizing screenings as a launching pad for new anti-war activities. I ordered my copy just now.

Purplenecks

Todd and I started this blog two years ago this month as a way to vent our fury over the Iraq War, and to give voice to a seemingly long-forgotten segment of the American electorate--Southern progressives. Bob Moser over at the Nation shows how under the leadership of Howard Dean, the Democratic National Committee's "50-State Strategy" is meant to rebuild not just the "solid South" but to create a meaningful capacity for progressives to win elections even in notoriously red states, and so far it's working--that is, if the Democratic party insiders don't eviscerate the strategy. Whole thing here.