We hear Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was sighted at the Texas Capitol [yesterday] morning. Folks under the pink dome saw the AG and his family pull up in a motorcade of black Suburbans and a white Hummer (because, of course, justice rides a white Hummer). A Department of Justice spokesperson told us that Gonzales isn’t here on DOJ matters: “There’s no official event going on. If he’s there, he’s there on personal business.”Personal business, eh? Perhaps he’s reminiscing about the good old days or as so many do, just returning to the scene of the crime. Since Texas is scheduled to execute its 400th prisoner tonight, maybe Gonzales is here to commemorate his contributions to inflating that number. Maybe he’s looking for a job. (He’s loyal, unscrupulous, willing to lie at the drop of a fired attorney, and bend rules for his employer. Sounds like a perfect House parliamentarian.) Or maybe he’s on an errand for his boss, feeling out possible replacements. Seems like Justice Nathan Hecht has the necessary virtues to lead Bush’s Justice Dept.
“We will protest at the 200-year-old oak tree where black people were illegally lynched many, many years ago. Today lynching in Texas is legal and it is done by the government in Huntsville. But Texas does not have the moral authority to execute anyone. The death penalty is used only against the poor and is a racist attack on the African American and Latino communities.”
Black helicopters, the Illuminati, Gov. Rick Perry and the Trans-Texas Corridor are all now part of the vernacular of the global domination conspiracy theorists.
Perry's push for the Trans-Texas Corridor super highway is part of a secret plan, the conspiracy theorists say, to create the North American Union — a single nation consisting of Canada, Mexico and the United States with a currency called the Amero.
Government denials of the North American Union and descriptions of it as a myth seem to add fuel to the fire. A Google search for "North American Union" and "Rick Perry" returns about 13,400 Web page results.
Perry enhanced the conspiracy buzz earlier this summer by traveling to Turkey to attend the secretive Bilderberg conference, which conspiracy theorists believe is a cabal of international monied interests and power brokers pressing for globalization.And the conspiracy rhetoric is likely to ratchet up this week as President Bush meets with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Quebec in their third summit to discuss North American relations under the Security and Prosperity Partnership.
"There is absolutely a connection with all of it," said Texas Eagle Forum President Cathie Adams. The Trans-Texas Corridor "is something not being driven by the people of Texas."
Keep reading:
Fast-forward to March 2005 to Crawford, when President Bush, Harper and then-Mexican President Vicente Fox agreed to pursue the Security and Prosperity Partnership, SPP. The idea was to promote cooperation among the countries on economic and security issues.
But conservative author Jerome Corsi — in his new book: The Late Great U.S.A.: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada — argues the SPP is a "stealth" attempt to wipe out the nations' borders and form a single economy like the European Union.
With an entire chapter dedicated to Perry's Trans-Texas Corridor plan, Corsi says the first step to integrating the economies is to integrate the transportation infrastructure.
"His (Perry's) actions have been to fight hard to build this toll road and not listen to the objections expressed by the people of Texas," Corsi said.
Corsi became nationally known in 2004 as the co-author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. Corsi said extensive research shows the SPP has created working groups on the North American Union that answer to presidential Cabinet secretaries.
"This is more of a shadow bureaucracy, a shadow government already in effect," Corsi said. "Unless it is stopped, it will turn into a North American Union with an Amero."
The official federal Web site for the SPP has a section dedicated to busting the North American Union as myth."The SPP does not attempt to modify our sovereignty or currency or change the American system of government designed by our Founding Fathers," the site says.
But that has not stopped a growing opposition to the North American Union by groups such as the Eagle Forum, The Conservative Caucus and the John Birch Society.
Pow. Money shot.
Now see, ya gotta hope that the Swifties together with the Birchers can derail the TTC -- pun intended -- once and for all. Because if the Lone Star conservatives have one last spasm of outrage left after they finally realize they've lost the battle over immigration, that no one is going to be rounded up, then maybe they'll realize they can still triumph here.
Like a throbbing artery, the Trans-Texas Corridor has become the crucial connection between these theories in recent years. But anxieties about foreign infiltration and loss of national sovereignty have periodically flared in American culture for centuries. Current talk of a looming "North American Union" began in 1992- 92, when first a Republican and then a Democratic administration implemented the North American Free Trade Agreement. The tragedy of our Iraq adventure and the overheated campaign rhetoric about immigration — plus completely rational concerns about shrinking manufacturing here and lower wages for U.S. workers — are setting the NAU fears on boil.Yet the Trans-Corridor Conspiracy crowd in Texas is looking too far abroad. There's no reason to try to smoke out secret international cabals in this deal. Spanish company CINTRA has already proudly prevailed in the 50-year, multibillion-dollar deal. Though foreign investment brings Texas needed economic juice, 50 years is too long a time to cede control and revenue from the very heart of the state.
Nor are Mexico and Canada the first beneficiaries of Perry's plan. Those would be the contractors — including three of Perry's top campaign donors.
Poorly thought-out trade deals at the federal level certainly can hurt us. But there's little chance that easing the drive from Laredo to Kansas will by itself spawn one-continent government.
All too real, on the other hand, are the effects the corridor itself will have on Texas. Bisected communities, carved-up farmland and devastated wildlife habitats are some of the provable results the corridor will leave in its wake. These threats are considerably more real than the possibility of continental government, and it doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to worry about them.
How clean is clean?
That's the question facing Houston as officials consider easing strict standards for cleaning up contaminated groundwater. The plan, up for council vote Wednesday, is intended to help spur redevelopment of so-called "brownfields," former industrial properties with low levels of pollution.
A Superfund site in Westchase could be one of the first properties to redevelop if the city adopts the program. The now-defunct Crystal Chemical Company once manufactured herbicides on the 25-acre tract, just east of the Royal Oaks Country Club.
The current owner, Union Pacific Railroad, has treated much of the soil and groundwater for arsenic contamination. But the groundwater still has too much arsenic to qualify as drinking water, according to state and federal environmental regulators
Drinking-water quality — the cleanup standard under state law — can take years to attain. A city official estimated it would take hundreds of years of treatment for the water underneath the Crystal site to be potable, or clean enough to drink.
"Because of the expense, many developers back away from these brownfield-type properties," said Mike Frew, a technical water specialist with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
To promote redevelopment of these idle sites, the Texas Legislature created an alternative in 2003. Owners can apply for a "municipal setting designation," or MSD, from the state, with city approval. The MSD allows redevelopment as long as the contaminated groundwater never will be used for drinking.
In cities like Houston and Dallas, most properties use city-supplied drinking water instead of wells. It just does not make sense to require property owners to reach the potable standard, the city's environmental attorney, Ceil Price, said.
"This is groundwater that no one is using," Price said. "In some cases, the groundwater has been treated for 20 years and they just aren't able to get to drinking water standards. And there just isn't technology to get them to the standard."
If Houston joins the MSD program, hundreds of properties potentially could qualify for redevelopment, Price said. But the properties would have to pass a number of environmental hurdles, and owners would remain liable for cleaning up other pollution, such as contaminated soil or surface water.
Price emphasized that contaminated groundwater that possibly could hurt people in ways besides drinking, such as leaking to the surface or releasing hazardous vapors, still would have to be treated under the MSD program.
Local environmentalists do not oppose the MSD program outright, but view it with caution."Sometimes (contaminated groundwater) travels and gets into our streams and reduces the quality," said Brandt Mannchen of the Sierra Club's Houston Regional Group.
Nice to know that those environmental whackos aren't up in arms over this.
One concern is the presence of nearby drinking water wells. Seventy percent of the city's water supply comes from Lakes Livingston, Conroe and Houston, but the rest comes from wells. There are three public drinking water wells within a one-mile radius of the Crystal Chemical property.
Regulators say that those wells are protected from the arsenic-contaminated groundwater by a containment wall, a pump system and monitoring equipment. If the site wins MSD status, a deed restriction would prohibit drinking water wells from being dug on the actual site in the future.
The TCEQ has given MSD status to 34 properties statewide, accounting for roughly 577 acres. Most of the sites are in Dallas and Fort Worth.
Gotta keep up with the Metroplex, ya know. Bidness is bidness.
In Fort Worth, the MSD program allowed developers to build a Target, Marshall's and other stores on the downtown site of an old Montgomery Ward warehouse, Frew said. The water underground there still has traces of trichloroethene, a toxic cleaning solvent.
If Houston adopts the program, it should examine each applicant carefully, said James Kelly, president of the Bayou Preservation Association. The city also should be clear with the public that the relaxed standard will provide relief only for a narrowly defined group of eligible brownfields. The city should also create its own name for the MSD program, Kelly said, since "municipal setting designation" does not mean anything to most people.
How about "greenfield enhancement zone"? Or just "Green Zone"?
"Let's just make sure that in relaxing this requirement we don't undermine the incentives of landowners who are keeping their property clean and who are cleaning up pollution when it occurs," Kelly said.
Earlier this year, the Texas Democratic Party sued then-Secretary of State Roger Williams in his capacity as the state's chief election officer, alleging that the eSlate touch-screen voting machines manufactured by Hart InterCivic and certified by the Secretary of State were defective and inaccurately tallied voters' intentions, depriving them of their voting rights as protected by the U.S. Constitution. Specifically, the suit alleged that the machines mis-counted so-called "emphasis votes."
Yesterday, federal district judge Sam Sparks granted summary judgment and dismissed the lawsuit. Chad Dunn, the TDP's General Counsel and the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, had this to say:“We’re disappointed in the judge’s opinion. We’re taking the time to analyze it thoroughly and we’re considering our options on how to proceed. The Texas Democratic Party continues to believe that the eSlate machine fails to record the intent of voters in a significant number of instances.”The bottom line is this: the eSlate STILL inaccurately counts certain straight-ticket votes, but neither the courts nor the Secretary of State will, for now, do anything about it.
In this posting I mentioned a meeting local e-voting activists were having with Houston and Harris County officials over concerns about e-Slates. That meeting was similarly a total washout.
It turns out that Bill White no more gives a damn about the myriad of security issues surrounding electronic voting than any of the county's Republicans. He came off not just disinterested but passive/aggressively hostile to the idea of asking a local expert in the field -- Rice University professor Dan Wallach -- to head a nonpartisan committee to oversee testing and make any security recommendations. He considered this request an attempt to "sell him a vendor".
Disappointing, but not unexpected by this first-hand observer. Perhaps the mayor was fatigued at the end of a long day which included Hurricane Dean preparedness meetings, but I'm not capable of giving him the benefit of the doubt based on things I heard about his lack of interest in advance of our conference.
Since neither the courts nor elected Democrats care to address these concerns, the emphasis on voting integrity by necessity now shifts to other areas of GOP voter suppression tactics.
Much more to write about this topic in the months to come.The trouble began Monday (Aug. 13) when school district officials informed Aldine American Federation of Teachers staff that they could not hand out membership information on school property at Aldine High School, where the district held its new teacher orientation.
The next day, the Aldine superintendent circled the high school with police officers. Aldine AFT staff and member volunteers patiently waited for teachers to finish the event, and when they emerged, one teacher directly asked for some literature. When an Aldine AFT staff member stepped onto school property to hand her a brochure, district officers swarmed around her and threatened her with a citation. Mayorga drove up to the scene on public property and asked an officer what was happening. The officer asked for her identification, and when she questioned why he needed it, he manhandled her, cuffed her and arrested her.
Surely the Aldine school district’s police force has better things to do. The superintendent is using [the local police department] to intimidate and coerce employees and their representatives and impede their exercise of constitutional rights of free speech and freedom of association. What is [Aldine School] Superintendent Wanda Bamberg so afraid of that she feels the need to handcuff and rough up a 115-pound mother of three just for coming near a school?
This sounds like something out of the old union-busting days in the 1920s, or even worse, past attempts to stifle free speech on public school campuses.
