At the End of the Day - February 4, 2007

[Hey all - Blue Girl here, standing in for the inimitable Apollo 13 who is under the weather with the gawd-awful bug I had a couple of weeks ago. Besides that, everyone was great about keeping the lights on while I was off-line due to the second major hardware catastrophe in six months...so covering the End of the Day is the least I could do. Send Apollo good thoughts and I'll turn the reins back over as soon as the master is on the mend.]

CREW is calling for the Attorney General to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate the millions of missing emails that the White House failed to archive, in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

Why did Israel bomb Syria last September? Seymour Hersch probes that puzzler as only he can in the latest issue of the New Yorker. One of the conclusions he makes early on? The M$M proved to be useful idiots in promoting an improbably, if not impossible, meme.

Lo, and Behold! Another Bush administration in need of a criminal defense attorney! According to the Washington Post, HUD secretary Alfonso Jackson (he of the partisan litmus test for awarding contracts) tried to strongarm the housing authority of Philadelphia into giving a piece of publicly owned property to a crony.

Bush submitted his final budget today, and true top form, he is planning to spend $3.1 Trillion dollars, while steadfastly adhering to his theory of economics that, apparently, hinges on the premise that as taxes rates approach zero, receipts will approach infinity. In the Bush budget, military spending will be higher than at any point since World War II, while effectively freezing or eliminating 151 domestic programs. Democrats reacted angrily, and even some Republicans were unable to suspend disbelief and get on board. “They’ve obviously played an inordinate number of games to try to make it look better,” said Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. The picture becomes even more surreal when we stop to think about the deficit spending that is financing aWol's excellent Iraqi misadventure.

Palestinian suicide bombers struck in Dimona, Israel today, killing one woman at an open-air mall. It was the first suicide attack in Israel in over a year. The attackers came from Gaza, and served to point up that Palestinian Authority President Mahmood Abbas, on whom the Bush administration is relying heavily to lead the Palestinian peace process, has little if any control over the Gaza Strip, which remains under Hamas control.

The United States military is blaming faulty communications between U.S. forces and Iraqi militia allies for a helicopter strike in which at least nine Iraqi civilians were killed.

Tomorrow the Senate is set to take up FISA and telecom immunity while they think we are distracted by Super Tuesday. Make your calls in the morning and remind your senators that you are watching and paying attention, and passing the buck to the taxpayers for damages won't cut it, either. No immunity. No how, no way. And if our Senators don't stand up for the Fourth Amendment, right now, when they come asking for our support for their reelection campaigns, they shall be met with the mantra "not one dime and not one moment of our time."

Wikileaks has posted a real mind-blower. Here is the link to the 2005 Rules of Engagement for Iraq. Paul Keil said it best: "At the very least, if the Bush Administration expires and we are still at war only in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can count ourselves lucky." (Cross border incursions, including into Iraq and Syria? Laos, anyone?)

But hey, you've still got Turkey throwing the chessboard in the air and attacking Kurdish terrorists in Iraq, with brutality and extreme prejudice. As a good friend said, this is exactly what we don't need right now. Says a whole helluva lot about Iraqi sovereignty, doesn't it?

Attention California Voters: If you are a "Decline to State" voter, you have to take a unique and unusual step in order for your vote to count! It is not enough to ask for and cast a Democratic ballot! There is a place on the ballot that you must mark "Democratic" in order for your vote to count. And the scan machines do not return your ballot for correction!

At the risk of starting a firestorm (I have not officially endorsed any primary candidate, although I have made up my mind who I will cast my secret ballot for tomorrow) I found an interesting post by Stanley Fish at the New York Times Blogs in which he peeks behind the curtain into the dark, dark psyches of the hard-core Hillary Haters - the ones who make Sully look silly and trifling by comparison.

[That's a wrap, folks - there's nothing below the fold.]

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Obey calls out Bush on budget

House Appropriations Chairman David Obey has basically decided to tell Bush and Congressional GOP to “stick it” on a new budget. Tired of bad-faith negotiations from the White House, he’s going to craft a new budget that meets the WH overall bottom line, while stripping out every earmark necessary to meet that bottom line, as well as a bunch of Bush priorities.

“When the White House refuses to compromise, when the White House continues to stick it in our eye, I say to hell with it.”

And, he’s prepared to wait Bush out:

“If anybody thinks we can get out of here this week, they're smoking something illegal,” he said.

Especially given that, barring some surprise change, whatever budget the House passes is going to add massive Iraq funding in House-Senate conference anyway, I’m in favor of the budget getting stuck for several months, not just a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, at least a few House Republicans ARE sweating:

“There are a lot of people who were very disappointed last year when nobody got any earmarks. If they do it again for the second year in a row, it will be a very bitter pill to swallow,” said Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), an appropriator who complained that he could lose $400,000 he needs for the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial celebration, slated to begin Feb. 12.

LaHood is not the only Republican appropriator who is angry at the White House and at GOP leaders who have refused to negotiate with Democrats on domestic spending levels. In recent days, Rep. David L. Hobson (Ohio), ranking Republican on the Appropriations subcommittee in charge of energy and water projects, had a heated discussion with House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), arguing that Boehner should come off his hard line.

Rep. James T. Walsh (N.Y.), another senior Republican appropriator, took to the House floor to argue: “If the proposal is to split the difference, to reduce the amount of spending above the president's request by $11 billion, I would advise the president to take yes for an answer.”

Right now, there’s not enough movement to create a veto-proof majority, but the longer Congressmen have to withdraw from pork addiction, the more antsy they will get.

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Homeland Security and KY Train Wrecks

The Department of Homeland Security, formed in response to the 9-11 attacks, has concentrated almost exclusively on the sexier aspects of its mandate -- terrorism and border protection -- while giving short shrift to the more mundane aspects of general disaster preparation. The two train derailments in Kentucky in the last two days show the cost of such short-sightedness.

Yesterday's wreck involved butyl acetate, which is a potent solvent. Today's wreck, 20 miles south of Louisville has thus far resulted in the following actions:

• A free-burning rail tanker car containing approx 30,000 gallons of propane, and 12-15 additional rail cars -- all burning -- containing a wide assortment of hazardous materials
• A mile-wide "no fly" zone established by the FAA (which is a very unusual response to a localized haz-mat incident)
• A one-mile evacuation of homes and businesses
• The decision by authorities to allow the fire to burn itself out (instead of mounting an aggressive suppression attack to extinguish it)
• Implementation of a state-wide emergency response plan on the part of state, county, and local governmental agencies and NGO's
• Several dozen civilians and responders hospitalized with respiratory complaints
• Release of hundreds of thousands of gallons of assorted hazardous materials into the atmosphere and/or groundwater
• The admission that the combination of materials may result in unanticipated short- and long-term complications
• Potentially significant financial losses (destroyed rail cars, fire damage to homes and infrastructure, business interruption, response and mitigation costs, etc.)

During an update on the news, various emergency response officials have said there was currently no idea how long the train cars would burn, nor how the hazardous materials involved would interact and the impact those interactions would have on subsequent mitigation efforts.

Safety and security professionals have been screaming for years about the sorry state of preparedness in the transportation sector. Yes, it is quite possible that al Qaeda might try to smuggle a "dirty bomb" into the United States in a shipping container, but -- once again -- we have seen that accidents are much more likely to happen and may create an equally large response need.

Yet the administration and DHS refuse to put sufficient time, effort, and resources into planning for the inevitable; rather, all effort is being directed to the relatively small chance of another major terror attack.

For example, the FY '07 budget for Rail and Transit Security grants has increased to $175 million, compared to the $770 million (up from $725 million in FY '04) for the High-Threat, High-Density Urban Area grant program (which is primarily terror-related). Preparedness funding was reduced by $14 million.

Other significant funding changes, with the first figure FY '04 and the second, FY '07:

• Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention: 500 M, 375 M
• Buffer Zone Protection: 91 M ('05, did not exist in '04), 50 M
• Trucking Security: 22 M, 12 M
• Metropolitan Medical Response System: 50 M, 33 M
• Technical Assistance: 30 M, 18 M
• Citizen Corps: 40 M, 15 M
• Assistance to Firefighters: 750 M, 662 M

Overall, funding for preparedness programs in general were reduced from $4.44 billion to $3.39 billion.

Although the administration attempted to further reduce funding for both Emergency Management Performance Grants and Firefighter Assistance Grants, both were quickly defended by Congress, in large part because of the "all-hazards" nature of the programs.

The FY '07 budget leaves FEMA within DHS. DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said, "The bill wisely reinforces DHS' ability to operate as a comprehensive all hazards agency.... DHS can thereby enhance FEMA's ability to coordinate response and recovery efforts." Unfortunately, we've seen with Katrina just how effectively DHS -- with their emphasis on planning for the last attack -- was in enhancing response and recovery.

Yes, preparing for, and responding to, terrorism are important aspects of an overall homeland security program, but when will the administration realize that terrorism is not the only threat to the homeland?

It should be obvious that one of the priorities of the 110th Congress should be to take efficient, cost-effective steps to safeguard the American population, based on generally-accepted risk-assessment procedures.

After all, what if the Zoneton derailment had occurred twenty miles further north... in the middle of Lousiville?

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Blunt on the Cost of War

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt says he supports a balanced budget. And he wants to keep taxes low.

But with expensive new programs being proposed every day, this protection against tax hikes has never been more important.

Do you suppose Blunt was referring to Bush's "new" strategy to send 21,500 additional U.S. troops to Iraq at a cost of $5.6 BILLION this fiscal year? Or was he referring to Bush's expected call for an additional $100 billion for the war?

Probably not, because the Bush Administration has been funding the Iraq war through emergency supplemental bills, instead of including the costs in the Administration's yearly formal budget request for running the government. That means war costs are not included in the Administration's deficit calculations, and are not subject to overall spending caps. The Iraq war has so far cost the nation $350 billion.

Your children will have to eventually pay that bill.

Cross-posted at doclarry.blogspot.com

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