Who's profiting from the Iraq war?
Military contractors that set up utilities, prepare food or make bulletproof vests are getting a big boost from the conflict. Here's who's getting the most money.

In a few weeks, Gen. David Petraeus and the Bush administration will report to Congress on the progress of the U.S. military's troop surge in Iraq.

But some of the war's winners are already clear: military contractors who supply everything from bodyguards to bombs, clean socks to ready-to-eat meals. "For the companies involved, this has been a real gravy train," says William Hartung, who tracks defense spending for the New America Foundation.

The White House has proposed military spending of $647 billion in 2008. Adjusted for inflation, that would be the highest level since World War II -- topping even expenditures during Vietnam and the Reagan years, calculates Hartung. The current request for Iraq-related spending for 2008 is $116 billion, which would raise total Iraq war spending to $567 billion.

Who's getting all that money? Sometimes it can be difficult to tell. "There isn't good visibility on where the money goes," says Steven Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. But you can get a snapshot of who's been getting a good chunk of the Iraq-related spending in two ways.

The first step is to scour a vast database of more than $400 billion in annual government contracts, more than 70% of which are from the Department of Defense. It's called the Federal Procurement Data System. I turned to a private contractor of my own, Eagle Eye, for some (free) expert assistance in navigating the database.

Eagle Eye mined the database for all Iraq-related contracts from 2003 through 2006 (the most recent year for which numbers are available). That catches everything from spending on base maintenance and bulletproof vests to ammo and combat boots. We tallied the numbers to find the top 10 companies out of thousands of contractors.

The second step is to look at the Pentagon's own budget to see which companies are building the major weapons systems that support the war in Iraq.

The Top 10
It's no surprise that KBR Inc. (KBR, news, msgs), a division of Halliburton (HAL, news, msgs) during the years we examined, tops the first list, compiled by Eagle Eye, with $17.2 billion in Iraq-related war revenue for 2003-2006. KBR is one of the largest construction and energy field-service companies in the world. It has a long history of collaborating with the U.S. government on war-related construction.

Videos: Recent news on Halliburton
In Iraq, KBR has been working on base construction and maintenance, oil-field repairs, infrastructure projects and logistics support. KBR got about a fifth of its revenue from the Iraq war in 2006, according to our calculations.

"We are proud to serve the troops," says a KBR spokeswoman. "We are providing the troops with essential services and the comforts of home that allow them to stay focused on the dangerous and important missions they face daily."



But why does a private-equity shop called Veritas Capital Fund take the No. 2 slot? That's easy. It specializes in investing in defense and aerospace companies. So Veritas owns a portfolio of companies -- and has a stake in others -- that pull down big Iraq-related contracts.

DynCorp International (DCP, news, msgs), which Veritas bought in 2005 and spun out last year, offers security services and police training, as well as logistical services. Veritas' McNeil Technologies provides interpreter and translation services to the military and U.S. government agencies in Iraq. Another of its companies, Wornick, supplies military rations.

It's also no big surprise that U.S.-based companies like Washington Group International (WNG, news, msgs), Fluor (FLR, news, msgs), Perini (PCR, news, msgs) and Parsons are on our top 10 list. They've landed many of the contracts to restore, repair and maintain oil fields, power plants, schools, public water systems and military bases. But the award of contracts to build the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting left many analysts scratching their heads.

Environmental Chemical does munitions disposal, while International American Products sets up systems that deliver electricity to military camps. L3 Communications (LLL, news, msgs) offers security screening services, linguists, training and law-enforcement services, and some equipment replacement.

10 companies making the most in Iraq* (millions of dollars) Rank Company Amount

2003
2004
2005
2006
Total

1.KBR Inc. (KBR, news, msgs) and Halliburton (HAL, news, msgs)

2.Veritas Capital Fund

3.Washington Group International (WNG, news, msgs)

4.Environmental Chemical

5.International American Products

6.Fluor (FLR, news, msgs)

7.Perini (PCR, news, msgs)

8.Parsons

9.First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting

10.L-3 Communications (LLL, news, msgs)

*Goods and services contracted specifically for Iraq. Source: Eagle Eye

Two companies that have seen their revenue shoot up the most in the ongoing military buildup -- largely because of Iraq-related spending -- are Armor Holdings and Renco, according to Hartung's calculations. They don't make our list because their overall defense-related revenue is too small. But they have done phenomenally well.

Armor Holdings, which sells vehicle and personnel armor, saw defense-related revenue shoot up 2,747% between 2001 and 2006, to $634.9 million. Armor is now a division of BAE Systems (BAESY, news, msgs).

Renco, which makes the extra-wide all-terrain vehicle known as the Humvee, saw Defense Department revenue rise 1,260% over the same period, to $1.9 billion.

Misspent funds
Not all of the Iraq-war money is well spent. "Because of the urgency of the war, a lot of these contracts have been subject to less scrutiny," says Hartung. Another problem is that the war has been funded outside of the regular defense budget process. Instead, it gets funded through "emergency" spending bills called supplementals, which offer much less detail and get less scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

Hartung believes we've only seen the tip of the iceberg in allegations of fraud and corruption related to Iraq war spending. "Congress is starting to look into it, but it has not yet gotten down to specific questions," says Hartung.

Details of wrongdoing are being uncovered by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, and you can also find summaries of misconduct here.

Hidden winners
Of course, there's a vast collection of military hardware and technology from fighter jets and naval vessels to spy satellites that are used in the Iraq war effort. But they're paid for by the broader Pentagon budget, so they won't show up in a scan of the federal procurement database for Iraq-related spending.

To see who has benefited from the underlying buildup in defense spending under the Bush administration for the Iraq war and other anti-terror and defense efforts, I calculated who got the most in Department of Defense contracts from 2002 through 2006. You can see the top seven in my second chart.

U.S. Department of Defense contracts* (billions of dollars) 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 Total
1Lockheed Martin (LMT, news, msgs)

2Boeing (BA, news, msgs)

3Northrop Grumman (NOC, news, msgs)

4General Dynamics (GD, news, msgs)

5Raytheon (RTN, news, msgs)

6KBR Inc. (KBR, news, msgs)

7United Technologies (UTX, news, msgs)

Total defense contracts
171
209
230.7
269
295
1,174.70


While all of these companies have benefited from the Bush administration's defense spending ramp-up since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, not all are equally exposed to the Iraq war effort, says defense sector analyst Paul Nisbet of JSA Research.

In addition to ships and Gulfstream planes, General Dynamics (GD, news, msgs) makes ground vehicles and ammunition, so it generates a fair amount of revenue directly from Iraq war spending. But Lockheed Martin (LMT, news, msgs), which is working on next-generation military aircraft and also makes military electronics and satellites, has little direct exposure to the war, says Nisbet. Neither does Northrop Grumman (NOC, news, msgs), which makes ships designed to last three decades or more.

Of all the companies on my second list, KBR saw some of the biggest revenue gains from the Iraq war. It was No. 37 on the Defense Department's top-100 list of military contractors in 2002. By 2006, KBR had climbed to No. 6.

Talk back: What's your view on companies that profit from the Iraq war?

Why politicians are worth buying
Are you investing in terrorism?
Invest in the new mercenary army
Invest in uranium? Not yet
Does military service still pay?

Paste link to see photo
http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/08/29/338161.aspx

by Les Kretman, NBC News producer, White House

The four door silver sports sedan is parked on West Executive Drive between the White House and the Executive Office Building. This where it usually is, but why is it attracting so much attention today? White House staffers have been going up to it -- scratching their heads, laughing and some have even taken pictures of it with their cell phones.

The Jaguar belongs to Karl Rove, and somehow some staffers or someone else decided to preserve the car by enveloping it in Saran Wrap and topping off the Saran Wrap with two faux bald eagles sitting on the trunk (video).

Rove, who finishes as the president’s senior advisor this Friday, has been traveling with Mr. Bush today through New Orleans and Mississippi. He returns to the White House later today.

Perhaps there’s some symbolism in the prank -- after all on Friday it will be a wrap.

UPDATE: Rove returned, saw his car, and the secret service staged a mock arrest with one of the perpetrators -- Al Hubbard, director of the president’s economic council. The car has been cleaned up; it’s no longer “under wraps.”

Hmm... link didn't work. Just go to msnbc and read the article you might be able to see the clip.

Here's the new clip of the story! Click and paste link below.

http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=bdad24d9-c45e-4203-9dea-9a116102611f&p=Source_Abrams_Report&t=m5&rf=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/&fg=

Dude he admitted it in court and received probation for it, he's in the closet for sure. It just time for all these hipocrits to come clean and get off the the so-call morality taboo that homosexuality is some sort of vice. Consevatives politicans only pander religious right for votes not nessarily because they actually believe in those morals. Remember in 2004 there was Republican congressman caught in an affair with a page staff member. Even members of religious figures are hipocrits. Remember the preacher who said he was against homosexuals but had addicition to drugs and a homosexual lover. It turn off voters in the last election.
They should just admitt their faults, worry about how their actions affected their families and redeem themselves instead of lying and preaching morals that they don't uphold.

Ha, conservate caught in lewd homosexual offer in a bathroom!
Why can't be true to themselves?!?

Idaho senator pleads guilty after airport arrest
Craig was held in Minneapolis on charges of lewd conduct in men's room
Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, was fined $1,000, plus $575 in fees, and put on unsupervised probation for a year, a court docket shows.
Updated: 7:15 p.m. ET Aug 27, 2007
MINNEAPOLIS - Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho pleaded guilty this month to misdemeanor disorderly conduct after being arrested at the Minneapolis airport.

A Hennepin County court docket showed Craig pleading guilty to the disorderly conduct charge Aug. 8, with the court dismissing a charge of gross misdemeanor interference to privacy.

The court docket said the Republican senator was fined $1,000, plus $575 in fees. He was put on unsupervised probation for a year. A sentence of 10 days in the county workhouse was stayed.

Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, which first reported the case, said on its Web site Monday that Craig was arrested June 11 by a plainclothes officer investigating complaints of lewd conduct in a men’s restroom at the airport.

Craig said in a statement issued by his office that he was not involved in any inappropriate conduct.

“At the time of this incident, I complained to the police that they were misconstruing my actions,” he said. “I should have had the advice of counsel in resolving this matter. In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty. I was trying to handle this matter myself quickly and expeditiously.”

Craig, 62, is married and in his third term in the Senate. He is up for re-election next year. He was a member of the House for 10 years before winning election to the Senate in 1990.

Sidney Smith, a Craig aide in Boise, said Monday afternoon that the senator was “in the (Boise) area” but was declining to give interviews.

Minneapolis airport police declined to provide a copy of the arrest report after business hours Monday.

Foot signal for lewd conduct?
Roll Call, citing the report, said Sgt. Dave Karsnia made the arrest after an encounter in which he was seated in a stall next to a stall occupied by Craig. Karsnia described Craig tapping his foot, which Karsnia said he “recognized as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct.”

Roll Call quoted the Aug. 8 police report as saying that Craig had handed the arresting officer a business card that identified him as a member of the Senate.

“What do you think about that?” Craig is alleged to have said, according to the report.

Last fall, Craig called allegations from a gay-rights activist that he’s had homosexual relationships “completely ridiculous.”

Mike Rogers, who bills himself as a gay activist blogger, published the allegations on his Web site, http://www.blogactive.com/, in October 2006.

Vote!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20430153/

Iraq corruption whistleblowers face penalties
Cases show fraud exposers have been vilified, fired, or detained for weeks

One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.

Or worse.

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.

He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers — all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.

The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.

“It was a Wal-Mart for guns,” he says. “It was all illegal and everyone knew it.”

So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn’t know whom to trust in Iraq.

For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.

Also held was colleague Nathan Ertel, who helped Vance gather evidence documenting the sales, according to a federal lawsuit both have filed in Chicago, alleging they were illegally imprisoned and subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics “reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants.”

No noble outcomes
Corruption has long plagued Iraq reconstruction. Hundreds of projects may never be finished, including repairs to the country’s oil pipelines and electricity system. Congress gave more than $30 billion to rebuild Iraq, and at least $8.8 billion of it has disappeared, according to a government reconstruction audit.

Despite this staggering mess, there are no noble outcomes for those who have blown the whistle, according to a review of such cases by The Associated Press.

“If you do it, you will be destroyed,” said William Weaver, professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso and senior advisor to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.

“Reconstruction is so rife with corruption. Sometimes people ask me, ‘Should I do this?’ And my answer is no. If they’re married, they’ll lose their family. They will lose their jobs. They will lose everything,” Weaver said.

They have been fired or demoted, shunned by colleagues, and denied government support in whistleblower lawsuits filed against contracting firms.

“The only way we can find out what is going on is for someone to come forward and let us know,” said Beth Daley of the Project on Government Oversight, an independent, nonprofit group that investigates corruption. “But when they do, the weight of the government comes down on them. The message is, ’Don’t blow the whistle or we’ll make your life hell.’

“It’s heartbreaking,” Daley said. “There is an even greater need for whistleblowers now. But they are made into public martyrs. It’s a disgrace. Their lives get ruined.”

One whistleblower demoted
Bunnatine “Bunny” Greenhouse knows this only too well. As the highest-ranking civilian contracting officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, she testified before a congressional committee in 2005 that she found widespread fraud in multibillion-dollar rebuilding contracts awarded to former Halliburton subsidiary KBR.

Soon after, Greenhouse was demoted. She now sits in a tiny cubicle in a different department with very little to do and no decision-making authority, at the end of an otherwise exemplary 20-year career.

People she has known for years no longer speak to her.

“It’s just amazing how we say we want to remove fraud from our government, then we gag people who are just trying to stand up and do the right thing,” she says.

In her demotion, her supervisors said she was performing poorly. “They just wanted to get rid of me,” she says softly. The Army Corps of Engineers denies her claims.

“You just don’t have happy endings,” said Weaver. “She was a wonderful example of a federal employee. They just completely creamed her. In the end, no one followed up, no one cared.”

No regrets
But Greenhouse regrets nothing. “I have the courage to say what needs to be said. I paid the price,” she says.

Then there is Robert Isakson, who filed a whistleblower suit against contractor Custer Battles in 2004, alleging the company — with which he was briefly associated — bilked the U.S. government out of tens of millions of dollars by filing fake invoices and padding other bills for reconstruction work.

He and his co-plaintiff, William Baldwin, a former employee fired by the firm, doggedly pursued the suit for two years, gathering evidence on their own and flying overseas to obtain more information from witnesses. Eventually, a federal jury agreed with them and awarded a $10 million judgment against the now-defunct firm, which had denied all wrongdoing.

It was the first civil verdict for Iraq reconstruction fraud.

But in 2006, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III overturned the jury award. He said Isakson and Baldwin failed to prove that the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-backed occupier of Iraq for 14 months, was part of the U.S. government.

Not a single Iraq whistleblower suit has gone to trial since.

“It’s a sad, heartbreaking comment on the system,” said Isakson, a former FBI agent who owns an international contracting company based in Alabama. “I tried to help the government, and the government didn’t seem to care.”

U.S. shows little support?
One way to blow the whistle is to file a “qui tam” lawsuit (taken from the Latin phrase “he who sues for the king, as well as for himself”) under the federal False Claims Act.

Signed by Abraham Lincoln in response to military contractors selling defective products to the Union Army, the act allows private citizens to sue on the government’s behalf.

The government has the option to sign on, with all plaintiffs receiving a percentage of monetary damages, which are tripled in these suits.

It can be a straightforward and effective way to recoup federal funds lost to fraud. In the past, the Justice Department has joined several such cases and won. They included instances of Medicare and Medicaid overbilling, and padded invoices from domestic contractors.

But the government has not joined a single quit tam suit alleging Iraq reconstruction abuse, estimated in the tens of millions. At least a dozen have been filed since 2004.

“It taints these cases,” said attorney Alan Grayson, who filed the Custer Battles suit and several others like it. “If the government won’t sign on, then it can’t be a very good case — that’s the effect it has on judges.”

The Justice Department declined comment.

Placed under guard, kept in seclusion
Most of the lawsuits are brought by former employees of giant firms. Some plaintiffs have testified before members of Congress, providing examples of fraud they say they witnessed and the retaliation they experienced after speaking up.

Julie McBride testified last year that as a “morale, welfare and recreation coordinator” at Camp Fallujah, she saw KBR exaggerate costs by double- and triple-counting the number of soldiers who used recreational facilities.

She also said the company took supplies destined for a Super Bowl party for U.S. troops and instead used them to stage a celebration for themselves.

“After I voiced my concerns about what I believed to be accounting fraud, Halliburton placed me under guard and kept me in seclusion,” she told the committee. “My property was searched, and I was specifically told that I was not allowed to speak to any member of the U.S. military. I remained under guard until I was flown out of the country.”

Halliburton and KBR denied her testimony.

She also has filed a whistleblower suit. The Justice Department has said it would not join the action. But last month, a federal judge refused a motion by KBR to dismiss the lawsuit.

'I thought I was among friends'
Donald Vance, the contractor and Navy veteran detained in Iraq after he blew the whistle on his company’s weapons sales, says he has stopped talking to the federal government.

Navy Capt. John Fleming, a spokesman for U.S. detention operations in Iraq, confirmed the detentions but said he could provide no further details because of the lawsuit.

According to their suit, Vance and Ertel gathered photographs and documents, which Vance fed to Chicago FBI agent Travis Carlisle for six months beginning in October 2005. Carlisle, reached by phone at Chicago’s FBI field office, declined comment. An agency spokesman also would not comment.

The Iraqi company has since disbanded, according the suit.

Vance said things went terribly wrong in April 2006, when he and Ertel were stripped of their security passes and confined to the company compound.

Panicking, Vance said, he called the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, where hostage experts got on the phone and told him “you’re about to be kidnapped. Lock yourself in a room with all the weapons you can get your hands on.”’

The military sent a Special Forces team to rescue them, Vance said, and the two men showed the soldiers where the weapons caches were stored. At the embassy, the men were debriefed and allowed to sleep for a few hours. “I thought I was among friends,” Vance said.

An unspoken Baghdad rule
The men said they were cuffed and hooded and driven to Camp Cropper, where Vance was held for nearly three months and his colleague for a little more than a month. Eventually, their jailers said they were being held as security internees because their employer was suspected of selling weapons to terrorists and insurgents, the lawsuit said.

The prisoners said they repeatedly told interrogators to contact Carlisle in Chicago. “One set of interrogators told us that Travis Carlisle doesn’t exist. Then some others would say, ’He says he doesn’t know who you are,”’ Vance said.

Released first was Ertel, who has returned to work in Iraq for a different company. Vance said he has never learned why he was held longer. His own interrogations, he said, seemed focused on why he reported his information to someone outside Iraq.

And then one day, without explanation, he was released.

“They drove me to Baghdad International Airport and dumped me,” he said.

When he got home, he decided to never call the FBI again. He called a lawyer, instead.

“There’s an unspoken rule in Baghdad,” he said. “Don’t snitch on people and don’t burn bridges.”

For doing both, Vance said, he paid with 97 days of his life.

In a sign that the troop build up was a failure, high ranking offical say a pull back of troop is needed to show Iraqi government US committment is not "open-ended."

NEW YORK - Sen. John Warner said Thursday President Bush should start bringing home some troops by Christmas to show the Baghdad government that the U.S. commitment in Iraq is not open-ended.

The move puts the prominent Republican at odds with the president, who says conditions on the ground should dictate deployments.

Warner, R-Va., said the troop withdrawals are needed because Iraqi leaders have failed to make substantial political progress, despite an influx of U.S. troops initiated by Bush earlier this year.

The departure of even a small number of U.S. service members — perhaps 5,000 out of the 160,000 troops in Iraq — would send a powerful message throughout the region that time was running out, he said.

“We simply cannot as a nation stand and continue to put our troops at continuous risk of loss of life and limb without beginning to take some decisive action,” he told reporters after a White House meeting with Bush’s top aides.

Warner’s new position is a sharp challenge to a wartime president that will undoubtedly color the upcoming Iraq debate on Capitol Hill. Next month, Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker are expected to brief members on the war’s progress.

A White House spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, declined to say whether Bush might consider Warner’s suggestion.

Asked whether Bush would leave the door open to setting a timetable, Johndroe said: “I don’t think the president feels any differently about setting a specific timetable for withdrawal. I just think it’s important that we wait right now to hear from our commanders on the ground about the way ahead.”

Report warns against pullout
Warner’s statement came hours after the nation’s top spy analysts concluded in an intelligence report that Iraq’s neighbors will continue to try to expand their leverage in anticipation that the United States will soon leave.

The National Intelligence Estimate found the Iraqi government, led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, is strained by rampant violence, deep sectarian differences among its political parties and stymied leadership.

It predicted that the Iraqi government “will become more precarious over the next six to 12 months” because of criticism from various Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions. “To date, Iraqi political leaders remain unable to govern effectively,” it said.

Warner said he has serious concerns about the effectiveness of the current leadership, confirmed by the intelligence report. The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq predicted it would be 12 months before the U.S. could expect a reconciliation.

“When I see an NIE which corroborates my own judgment — that political reconciliation has not taken place — the al-Maliki government has let down the U.S. forces and, to an extent, his own Iraqi forces,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the report confirms what most Americans already know: “Our troops are mired in an Iraqi civil war and the president’s escalation strategy has failed to produce the political results he promised to our troops and the American people.”

“Every day that we continue to stick to the president’s flawed strategy is a day that America is not as secure as it could be,” said Reid, a Nevada Democrat.

Report warns against scaling back
The new National Intelligence Estimate was an update of another high-level assessment prepared six months ago by the top analysts scattered across all 16 U.S. spy agencies. The CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency were the key contributors to Thursday’s report, which found some security progress but elusive hopes for reconciliation among Iraq’s feuding groups.

The 2006 bipartisan Iraq Study Group report recommended reducing the number of troops and putting them in a support and training role for Iraqi forces, along with a small U.S. counterterrorist force to target al-Qaida in Iraq.

That recommendation by the independent panel was once flatly rejected by the White House, but lately has gained more currency as advisers search for a way out of the U.S. combat presence in Iraq by the end of Bush’s presidency.

The intelligence report warns against scaling back the mission of U.S. forces. Analysts found that changing the U.S. military’s mission from its current focus — countering insurgents and stabilizing the country — in favor of supporting Iraqi forces and stopping terrorists would hurt the security gains of the last six months.

Republicans, including Warner, have so far stuck with Bush and rejected Democratic proposals demanding troops leave Iraq by a certain date. But an increasing number of GOP members have said they are uneasy about the war and want to see Bush embrace a new strategy if substantial progress is not made by September.

Warner, known for his party loyalty, said he still opposes setting a fixed timetable on the war or forcing the president’s hand.

“Let the president establish the timetable for withdrawal, not the Congress,” he said.

Stature may sway others
Nevertheless, his suggestion of troop withdrawals is likely to embolden Democrats and rile some of his GOP colleagues, who insist lawmakers must wait until Petraeus testifies.

His stature on military issues also could sway some Republicans who have been reluctant to challenge a wartime president. Warner is a former Navy secretary and one-time chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee; he is now the committee’s second-ranking Republican.

Warner said he came to his conclusion after visiting Iraq this month with Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, committee chairman. Earlier this week, Levin said al-Maliki should be replaced. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., followed suit, saying al-Maliki has been “a failure.”

Here's an interesting article that sheds light on why congress stalls on bills and why Democrats push for investigations inorder to change policy.

WASHINGTON - Congressional Democrats are using subpoenas and other investigatory powers to expose Bush administration missteps and push for policy changes even as they struggle at times to enact legislation.

Backed by hundreds of hearings that compel the administration's attention but often draw scant publicity, House and Senate Democrats are leaving their stamp on a range of governmental matters, without passing a bill.

Congressional inquiries have prompted the Federal Emergency Management Agency to test trailers used by displaced hurricane victims for formaldehyde poisoning. They triggered a Justice Department investigation into Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' role in firing federal prosecutors.

Other probes spurred the Army to recover millions of dollars in overpayments to private security contractors in Iraq. And the mere threat of Democratic-run hearings prompted President Bush, after months of resisting, to submit a controversial warrantless wiretap program to a special court's review.

'More important than legislation'
Congress' oversight and investigative powers are especially vital to Democrats because a potent GOP minority in the Senate has kept them from passing legislation on issues such as immigration and an Iraq withdrawal plan.

"Maybe it's even more important than legislation," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., a key player who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Democrats' ability to conduct such hearings "has been the most important change since the 2006 election in terms of relations between the Congress and the administration," said Thomas E. Mann, a Brookings Institution scholar and co-author of a book on Congress, "The Broken Branch." MSNBC video

"I have no doubt the hearings have altered the course the administration has taken on a range of areas, including Iraq," Mann said.

The White House has complained bitterly about the sharp increase in congressional inquiries since Democrats took over the House and Senate in January.

"I would hope Congress would become more prone to deliver pieces of legislation that matter as opposed to being the investigative body," Bush said at an Aug. 9 news conference. "I mean, there have been over 600 different hearings, and yet they're struggling with getting appropriations bills to my desk."

Democrats call the inquiries long overdue after years of GOP-controlled congresses treating the administration with a light touch. "I don't think Congress is overdoing the oversight," Waxman said in an interview.

Litany of probes
New or expanded congressional inquiries seem to pop up almost daily. On July 17, Waxman called on a former White House political aide to testify about trips made by top federal drug policy officials to help GOP congressional candidates in the 2006 campaign's closing weeks.

The aide, Sara Taylor, had appeared only a week earlier before a Senate panel that subpoenaed her testimony about the prosecutor firings.

-Waxman's panel is conducting a multi-agency search for missing e-mail records to and from numerous White House officials who had electronic message accounts with the Republican National Committee.

-The House Judiciary Committee has approved contempt citations against White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former counsel Harriet Miers because they refused to testify about the fired U.S. attorneys.

-The House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming is looking into allegations that the Smithsonian Institution toned down a climate change exhibit to avoid angering lawmakers and the Bush administration.

-Waxman says he will introduce legislation to protect the surgeon general from political interference, following a hearing in which a former surgeon general said the administration muzzled him on sensitive public health matters.

-Waxman's committee is conducting an inquiry into the administration's handling of the friendly fire death of former NFL player Pat Tillman in Afghanistan, which has proved embarrassing to the White House and Pentagon.

Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, the top Republican on the House oversight committee, has joined Waxman in criticizing FEMA's formaldehyde policies and in pursuing the Tillman case. But on other topics, he says the chairman sometimes goes overboard.

"When you have one-party government, you tend to under-investigate," Davis said in an interview. "And when you have divided government, you tend to over-investigate."

Abortion is only one part in the issue of family planning. There's still the sex ed, birth control, maternal/child healthcare, and fertility treatment care that most, if not all, the Republican canidates rather not discuss because then you divide the ecomonic conservates (wallstreet, corporation professionals), which have no problem with those issues from the social conservatives (religious right) who are against them.

With the exception of the former NYC mayor all the Republican Presidental canidates are againsts abortion.
But where do they stand on family planning, birth control and sex ed.
If you look at Rommeny he won the Govenor's office saying he's pro-choice but now he's saying he's pro-life. Another thing about him he invested in company that does embyonic stem cell research but he said he didn't know they did that. He veto a bill that would allow pharmaists to give information on -and grant access to- emergency contraceptives for rape victims.

John McCain voted against family planning programs that provide birth control for low-income women.

And even though he's not offically in the race Fred Thomson lobbied for a pro-choice group. Another thing he cut $75 million from grants for maternal and child- health so he could put up an abstinance only program.

When you get into you the particulars noone looks good.

The Bush team will try anything to keep facts from the public!

Early clash over Iraq report

Updated: 8:40 a.m. ET Aug 16, 2007
Senior congressional aides said yesterday that the White House has proposed limiting the much-anticipated appearance on Capitol Hill next month of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to a private congressional briefing, suggesting instead that the Bush administration's progress report on the Iraq war should be delivered to Congress by the secretaries of state and defense.

White House officials did not deny making the proposal in informal talks with Congress, but they said yesterday that they will not shield the commanding general in Iraq and the senior U.S. diplomat there from public congressional testimony required by the war-funding legislation President Bush signed in May. "The administration plans to follow the requirements of the legislation," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in response to questions yesterday.

The skirmishing is an indication of the rising anxiety on all sides in the remaining few weeks before the presentation of what is widely considered a make-or-break assessment of Bush's war strategy, and one that will come amid rising calls for a drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq.

With the report due by Sept. 15, officials at the White House, in Congress and in Baghdad said that no decisions have been made on where, when or how Petraeus and Crocker will appear before Congress. Lawmakers from both parties are growing worried that the report -- far from clarifying the United States' future in Iraq -- will only harden the political battle lines around the war.

White House officials suggested to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week that Petraeus and Crocker would brief lawmakers in a closed session before the release of the report, congressional aides said. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates would provide the only public testimony.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) told the White House that Bush's presentation plan was unacceptable. An aide to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said that "we are in talks with the administration and . . . Senator Levin wants an open hearing" with Petraeus.

Hardening positions
Those positions only hardened yesterday with reports that the document would not be written by the Army general but instead would come from the White House, with input from Petraeus, Crocker and other administration officials.

"Americans deserve an even-handed assessment of conditions in Iraq. Sadly, we will only receive a snapshot from the same people who told us the mission was accomplished and the insurgency was in its last throes," warned House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.).

"That's all the more reason why they would need to testify," a senior Foreign Relations Committee aide said of Petraeus and Crocker. "We would want them to say whether they stand by all the information in the report." He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not cleared to speak to reporters.

The legislation says that Petraeus and Crocker "will be made available to testify in open and closed sessions before the relevant committees of the Congress" before the delivery of the report. It also clearly states that the president "will prepare the report and submit the report to Congress" after consultation with the secretaries of state and defense and with the top U.S. military commander in Iraq and the U.S. ambassador.

But both the White House and Congress have widely described the assessment as coming from Petraeus. Bush has repeatedly referred to the general as the one who will be delivering the report in September and has implored the public and Republicans in Congress to withhold judgment until then. In an interim assessment last month, the White House said that significant progress has been shown in fewer than half of the 18 political and security benchmarks outlined in the legislation.

Several Republicans have hinted that their support will depend on a credible presentation by Petraeus, not only of tangible military progress but of evidence that the Iraqi government is taking real steps toward ethnic and religious reconciliation. One of them, Sen. John W. Warner (Va.), left for Iraq last night with Levin for his own assessment.

Petraeus and Crocker have said repeatedly that they plan to testify after delivering private assessments to Bush. U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Baghdad appeared puzzled yesterday when told that the White House had indicated that the two may not be appearing in public. They said they will continue to prepare for the testimony in the absence of instructions from Washington. "If anything, we just don't know the dates/times/or the committees that the assessment will be presented to," a senior military official in Baghdad said in an e-mail yesterday.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee aide said that, ideally, both Crocker and Petraeus would testify before that panel. The Senate committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee have also requested that Rice appear at a separate hearing but have received no response. A spokeswoman for Levin said that the senator expects at least Petraeus to testify before the Armed Services Committee but would be happy to have Crocker as well.

‘Surge has to come to an end’
Although the reports from Petraeus and Crocker are the most eagerly awaited, several other assessments are also required by the May legislation. The Government Accountability Office is due to report on Iraqi political reconciliation and reconstruction by Sept. 1. An independent committee, headed by retired Marine Gen. James Jones, has been studying the training and capabilities of the Iraqi security forces and will report to Congress early next month. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, said that the chiefs are making their own assessment of the situation in Iraq and will present it to Bush in the next few weeks.

Speaking to reporters traveling with him in Iraq yesterday, Petraeus said he is preparing recommendations on troop levels while getting ready to go to Washington next month. He declined to give specifics.

"We know that the surge has to come to an end," Petraeus said, according to the Associated Press. "I think everyone understands that, by about a year or so from now, we've got to be a good bit smaller than we are right now. The question is how do you do that . . . so that you can retain the gains we have fought so hard to achieve and so you can keep going."

Karl Rove played a key role in the selling of the Iraq War, which may help explain why he’s still bullish on the ultimate outcome, no matter how grim the news.
Web-Exclusive Commentary

By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
Updated: 3:35 p.m. ET Aug 13, 2007
Aug. 13, 2007 - In the summer of 2003, Karl Rove flew off to Bohemian Grove—the famed male-only retreat for the wealthy and powerful—where he had a revealing exchange in the Northern California woods about the state of affairs in Iraq. Spotting AOL founder James Kimsey, a big financial backer of President Bush who had just gotten back from Baghdad, Rove shouted out: “Hey Kimsey, it must have been wonderful to see the happy faces on all those liberated Iraqis!”

Kimsey was appalled. “Are you nuts?” he replied. He tried to tell the president’s political guru that the Iraqis he saw were sullen and resentful and that “if we don’t do something soon, all hell is going to break loose.”

But Rove wanted to hear nothing of it. “Nice talking to you,” Rove responded and walked away.

That exchange (recounted in the new afterword to the paperback edition of "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War," the book I co-wrote with David Corn, tells much about the brook-no-dissent ethos that Rove brought to the Bush White House. It also puts in some context Rove’s cheery comments this weekend to friendly journalist Paul Gigot, the editorial page director of the Wall Street Journal, as he announced his surprise resignation from the White House (and his plans to write a book on the Bush presidency). “Iraq will be in a better place,” as the surge continues, he said. As for President Bush’s political standing, “he will move back up in the polls.”

Maybe so. But from the day he went to work in the White House, Karl Rove has been Bush’s enabler as much as his master strategist–a key adviser who saw no subtleties or nuance, brushed aside internal qualms and ferociously went after critics who raised any questions about the president’s policies.

This was especially true of Iraq—the defining initiative of the Bush presidency—in which Rove’s behind-the-scenes role in the selling and spinning of the war was far more significant than is commonly known.

It is now barely remembered, but when the Bush White House first floated the idea of invading Iraq in 2002, public opinion polls showed most Americans had profound doubts. Even after the trauma of September 11, the public (including many Republicans) didn’t quite understand the rationale for launching a preemptive war to get rid of Saddam Hussein, who while a ruthless dictator had no plausible connection to the terror attacks. As House Majority Leader **** Armey bluntly put it that summer: “We Americans don’t make unprovoked attacks.”

At one point that year, Rove presented Bush with poll numbers showing the public misgivings about an Iraq invasion. “The public isn’t buying it,” he told the president in an Oval Office meeting. Bush exploded. “Don’t tell me about f—— polls,” Bush replied, according to a then-White House official who asked not to be identified talking about internal deliberations. “I don’t care what the polls say.” It was Rove’s job to move those numbers, the president made clear. “If there is a way to make the case more clearly, you tell me what it is,” Bush told Rove.

In fact, Rove had already begun to shape the political environment to help make the war possible. That January, he had given an important speech to the Republican National Committee where he signaled that the White House planned to politicize the terrorism issue in the upcoming fall election campaign. “We can go to the country on this issue,” Rove said, because the American people “trust the Republican Party to do a better job of … protecting Americans.’’ In June, Rove prepared a PowerPoint slide for GOP donors on his strategy for the 2002 races. “Focus on war,” it read in part.

But it was still necessary to link Iraq to the public’s legitimate security fears–and there again Rove played a key part, just as the president wanted. That summer, the former White House chief of staff Andrew Card created the White House Iraq Group – a collection of senior advisers, including Rove, who met regularly in the Situation Room to craft a public relations strategy that would play up pieces of intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and supposed connections to international terrorism.

It was this group that seized on reports that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program – reports that were highly disputed and the subject of significant internal debate–and then approved the memorable phrase crafted by chief speechwriter Michael Gerson: “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun— that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

The imagery of the nuclear mushroom cloud become a centerpiece of the White House’s sales campaign, first leaked anonymously to The New York Times, repeated on Sunday talk shows and finally enshrined in a major speech by Bush that October.

But perhaps even more significantly, Rove helped craft an ingenious political strategy that enabled the White House to win a resounding war resolution from a divided Congress that fall.

At first, the White House had spread the word that it might launch an invasion without even consulting Congress–a stance that infuriated Democrats (who at the time controlled the U.S. Senate by one vote). But Rove instinctively understood there was another way to achieve the desired result. Soon after Labor Day, Bush called in congressional leaders and essentially offered them a political deal: he would seek a congressional resolution authorizing him to go to war after all. But the White House would insist that the Congress had to vote before it adjourned that fall for the 2002 election campaign.

The rush to vote on a critical issue of war and peace troubled then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. Why the rush? He pressed Bush at a Sept. 4, 2002, meeting. Daschle saw the hand of Rove—an attempt to box in Democrats and dare them to vote against a highly popular president on a big national-security issue. Vote against the resolution and Democrats would be hammered mercilessly by the White House during the election campaign for being “soft on terrorism,” just as Rove had suggested in his January speech.

“Daschle was right,” one former top White House official later told Corn and me in an interview for “Hubris.” The campaign calendar indeed drove the timing of the Iraq War vote. “The election was the anvil and the president was the hammer,” said the official, who declined to be identified publicly talking about internal matters.

And Rove was the architect—perhaps his most important contribution to the run-up to the war. In mid-October, Bush’s war resolution passed overwhelmingly with every Democrat who envisioned running for president (including John Edwards, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Hillary Clinton) voting to give the president the authority to launch an attack on Iraq.

After the March 2003 invasion, Rove continued to shape the White House spinning of news about Iraq—a role that was ultimately pivotal in the events that led to a criminal investigation of the White House. When Iraq War critic and former ambassador Joe Wilson went public with his claims that the White House had “twisted” prewar intelligence about Iraq, Rove was incensed, and he plotted ways to discredit and marginalize Wilson.

In a recent, little-noticed deposition, Susan Ralston, Rove’s former executive assistant, testified that Rove talked often that summer with the vice president’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, about Wilson and the role his wife may have played in sending him on a CIA mission to Africa to investigate allegations, later discredited, that Saddam’s regime was trying to procure uranium yellowcake for its nuclear weapons program.

When columnist Robert Novak called Rove about an upcoming column he was planning to write disclosing Valerie Wilson’s identity as a CIA officer, Rove confirmed this piece of classified intelligence to his old friend. “I heard that too,” he reportedly said. More importantly, he volunteered the same information about Wilson’s wife and her work for the CIA a few days later to Matt Cooper, then a reporter for Time magazine whom he barely knew.

Rove’s initial denial to the grand jury that he had talked to Cooper made him a prime target of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into who leaked Valerie Wilson’s identity to the news media. (Fitzgerald later concluded that, contrary to claims of White House defenders, Valerie Wilson was in fact a “covert” officer of the CIA at the time, and thereby covered by a law that made it a federal crime to disclose her identity. There was, however, no evidence that Rove and other White House aides who talked about her to the press knew this.)

In the course of five grand jury appearances, Rove corrected his earlier incorrect testimony and escaped an indictment from Fitzgerald. (Libby was not so lucky – he was convicted of perjury and obstruction charges and sentenced to 30 months in prison. Bush later commuted the prison sentence.) But Rove’s basic mind-set during the Wilson affair was revealingly displayed in a phone call he made to MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews right after the same July 2003 Bohemian Grove retreat where he had encountered Kimsey. (Matthews had also attended the retreat.)

As Matthews later described the conversation to colleagues, Rove was “revved up” over the Wilson controversy. He considered it part of a political war and as far as he was concerned, Valerie Wilson was a full-fledged combatant on the other side. The Wilsons “were trying to screw the White House so the White House was going to screw them back,” he told Matthews. After Matthews finished talking to Rove, he called Joe Wilson and, according to Wilson, said: “I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says, and I quote, ‘Wilson’s wife is fair game’.” (In a statement today after Rove’s resignation, Joe Wilson said: “This sordid tale of compromising national security to cover up and distract from the false rationale for the invasion of Iraq will forever remain in history a black mark on the Bush presidency.”)

While the probe continued, Rove largely remained in the background on the Iraq War until June 2006, when he finally got the word that Fitzgerald was not going to indict him. Once freed of the fear of criminal prosecution, he immediately returned to the fray with a polarizing, defining speech before a GOP audience in New Hampshire. At the time, news out of Iraq was unrelentingly bleak: U.S. casualties and sectarian violence was up and even U.S. military commanders were expressing private doubts that the mission could succeed.

But Rove would brook no doubts. He returned to the same political playbook he had honed so successfully four years earlier. He tore into Democratic critics of the war such as John Kerry and John Murtha as “cut-and-run” men. “They are ready to give the green light to go to war,” Rove said of Kerry and Murtha, “but when it gets tough, and when it gets difficult, they fall back on that party’s old pattern of cutting and running. They may be with you at the first shots, but they are not going to be with you for the last, tough battles.

Then Rove capped his remarks with a rousing defense of the war he had worked so hard to sell. “We were absolutely right to remove [Saddam] from power and we have no excuses to make for it,” he said.

As Rove now prepares to head back to Texas and write his memoirs of the Bush presidency, it is fairly certain that the one thing he won’t offer readers are excuses—or regrets. No matter what the news out of Iraq.

More Info on the Election Fix!

A Red Play for The Golden State

Jonathan Alter
Is California GOP Trying to Steal the 2008 Election?
There's some malicious mischief at play in efforts to reform our electoral system.

Alter: The Politics of Talking to Dictators
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
Aug. 13, 2007 issue - Our way of electing presidents has always been fer-tile ground for mischief. But there's sensible mischief—toying with existing laws and the Constitution to reflect popular will—and then there's the other kind, which tries to rig admission to the Electoral College for strictly partisan purposes. Mischief-makers in California (Republicans) and North Carolina (Democrats) are at work on changes that would subvert the system for momentary advantage and—in ways the political world is only beginning to understand—dramatically increase the odds that a Republican will be elected president in 2008.


Right now, every state except Nebraska and Maine awards all of its electoral votes to the popular-vote winner in that state. So in mammoth California, John Kerry beat George W. Bush and won all 55 electoral votes, more than one fifth of the 270 necessary for election.

Instead of laboring in vain to turn California Red, a clever lawyer for the state Republican Party thought of a gimmicky shortcut. Thomas Hiltachk, who specializes in ballot referenda that try to fool people in the titles and fine print, is sponsoring a ballot initiative for the June 3, 2008, California primary (which now falls four months after the state's presidential primary). The Presidential Election Reform Act would award the state's electoral votes based on who wins each congressional district. Had this idea been in effect in 2004, Bush would have won 22 electoral votes from California, about the same number awarded the winners of states like Illinois or Pennsylvania. In practical terms, adopting the initiative would mean that the Democratic candidate would likely have to win both Ohio and Florida in 2008 (instead of one or the other) to be elected.

Hiltachk, who is lying low for now, is a former campaign lawyer for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The governor's office says Schwarzenegger has no position on the initiative and "had absolutely nothing to do with its development." But whichever way Schwarzenegger goes, several GOP presidential candidates and their financial backers have already offered to help boost the plan. Just interested in good government? They've shown a curious lack of interest in backing the same idea in Red States.

Presumably, the argument to voters in TV ads would be to "make your vote count" and bring the presidential candidates back to California, which has been so reliably Democratic in recent elections that it receives few postprimary visits from candidates in either party. The Democrats would likely counter by saying that Republicans are trying a backhanded way to corrupt the election. With the presidential nominations settled by the time the initiative would be put up to vote, expect big money to be spent on both sides trying to win over the wild cards of California politics—the millions of independents.

Congressional districts, whose lines are drawn by backroom deals, are a weak structure for picking a president. With only three or four of California's districts up for grabs (as a result of gerrymandering, which keeps them noncompetitive), the state would be visited by the candidates only slightly more often under the Hiltachk plan than under the status quo. And if the idea was somehow adopted nationally, it would mean competing for votes in only about 60 far-flung congressional districts—roughly 7 percent of the country. Everyone else's vote would not "count," if you want to look at it that way.

The monkey business underway this month in North Carolina is just as egregious—though with only three or four electoral votes at stake, probably less consequential. Democrats, who usually lose the state in presidential contests but control the legislature and the governor's mansion, make no secret of their desire to win partisan advantage by going to the congressional-district formula.

At least in North Carolina it's clearly constitutional. Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution stipulates that the selection of electors is up to state legislatures "in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct." When power is delegated to the electorate in referenda, the legal authority gets fuzzy; the Constitution, of course, supersedes state law. In any event, the Hiltachk referendum will face a challenge in court.

Is there a better way to make every vote count? Yes, and it doesn't require a constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College. All it would take is some good mischief in state legislatures. In February, a bipartisan coalition of former senators led by Birch Bayh, Jake Garn and Dave Durenberger unveiled a campaign for a national popular vote. Under the plan, state legislatures would pass bills that pledged to award their state's electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. It's not clear which party this would help, but if adopted by as few as 11 states, it would guarantee that the candidate with the most votes actually won the election. Anybody got a problem with that?

I don't know all the details but wouldn't switching to ethanol fuel would end the subsidities for farmers to not grow anything. Plus it could end our oil need from countries like Iran, Venezula, Iraq, and other volital areas and foreign oil co. The money that not's sent to those hostile countries won't be use to fund terrorist who want to harm us. Additionaly the money not sent over would be put into American agriculture and provide jobs here.

WASHINGTON - The House approved incentives for renewable energy and conservation Saturday, and edged closer to passing nearly $16 billion in taxes on oil companies.

Republican opponents said the legislation ignores the need to produce more domestic oil, natural gas and coal. One GOP lawmaker bemoaned "the pure venom ... against the oil and gas industry."

The House approved the energy measures, including a requirement for electric utilities to use more renewable energy to generate power, by a vote of 241-172. Lawmakers later were to consider a companion tax package, totaling nearly $16 billion, that targets the major oil companies.

"We are turning to the future," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

On one of the most contentious and heavily lobbied issues, the House voted to require investor-owned electric utilities nationwide to generate at least 15 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind or biofuels.

The utilities and business interests had argued aggressively against the federal renewables mandate, saying it would raise electricity prices in regions of the country that do not have abundant wind energy. But environmentalists argued the requirement will spur investments in renewable fuels and help address global warming as utilities use less coal.

"This will save consumers money," said Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., the provision's co-sponsor, maintaining utilities will have to use less high-priced natural gas. He noted that half the states already have a renewable energy mandate for utilities, and if utilities can't find enough renewable they can meet part of the requirement through power conservation measures.

The bill also calls for more stringent energy efficiency standards for appliances and lighting and incentives for building more energy-efficient "green" buildings. It would authorize special bonds for cities and counties to reduce energy demand.

Pelosi, D-Calif., said it was essential to commit to renewable energy while reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Doing so, she said, will help address global warming and make the country more energy-independent.

"It's about our children, about our future, the world in which they live," Pelosi said.

She had pledged to have the House pass energy legislation before lawmakers depart this weekend for a monthlong vacation.

Debate on cars, ethanol postponed
Democrats avoided a nasty fight by ignoring — at least for the time being — calls for automakers to make vehicles more fuel-efficient. Cars, sport utility vehicles and small trucks use most of the country's oil and produce almost one-third of the carbon dioxide emissions linked to global warming.

That issue, as well as whether to require huge increases in the use of corn-based ethanol as a substitute for gasoline, were left to be thrashed out when the House bill is merged with energy legislation the Senate passed in June.

Republicans said the House bill did nothing to increase domestic oil and natural gas production or take further advantage of coal, the country's most abundant domestic energy resource.

"There's a war going on against energy from fossil fuels," said Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas. "I can't understand the pure venom felt against the oil and gas industry."

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said the bill was "a political exercise" to promote "pet projects, ... pet ideas." He predicted it "isn't going anywhere" because President Bush will veto it if it gets to his desk.

The White House said the legislation makes "no serious attempts to increase our energy security or address high energy costs" and would harm domestic oil and gas production. The administration's statement criticized the singling out of oil companies for tax increases.

Oil company tax breaks could end
A separate tax measure, expected to be voted on later in the evening, would end two sizable tax breaks for major oil companies. One was aimed at promoting domestic manufacturing; the other pertained to income from foreign oil production.

The tax measure also would provide an array of loan guarantees, federal grants and tax breaks for alternative energy programs. They include building biomass factories, research into making ethanol from wood chips and prairie grasses and producing better batteries for hybrid gas-electric automobiles.

The legislation would end a tax break for buying large SUVs, known as the "Hummer tax loophole" because it allows people who buy some of the most expensive SUVs to write off much of the cost.

The proposal also provides tax incentives for companies to produce flex-fuel vehicles that can run on 85 percent ethanol and for gas station operators to install E-85 pumps.


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I doubt Bush would sign the bill into law. The self declared "former oil man" (note the sarcaism here) is too deep into the pocket of big oil. Also he entrench the US in a bog down war in Iraq for oil although he claims it's the forefront of the war on terror.

Going back to my tip of investing in infrastructure companies here an article on the aging infrastructure in the US and how the politicans are mulling over spending on roads.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20095291/

BayAreaGal thanx for the tips.
Yeah the way stocks are going this summer I think I's wait for earnings of companies to be announced before investing in them.

I been thinking of investing in stocks, I know some think it's like gambling but it sure beats the lotto.
I right know I've been noticing that alot of infrastructure in US is old and collaping in some areas. The nation will of course need to replace these aging systems in order to continue being competitive in the world economy.

I'd pick companies that are in the infrastructure business like building material; cement, bricks, steel, aspaht; construction companies, civil enginering firms, arcitects firms.

But first I wait for the politicans to realize the need first and that might take some time through all the buracaucy.

Oh, by the way I'm not by any means an exprience investor, just a novice who rather not waste money on the lotto. Like maybe $40 here and there a paycheck.

If you have any investment tips/ ideas post them here so long as your not advertising or selling business.