GVConsulting

The Anti-Biomass Incineration – Forest Protection Campaign is telling Congress and the Administration that the Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) being promoted by industry groups and some members of Congress is “dirty energy” legislation because it promotes toxic incinerators that make people sick, pollute air and water, destroy forests, and dry up rivers.

“These dirty incinerators emit toxic air pollution that causes cancer, asthma and heart disease,” said Attorney Margaret Sheehan, of the Biomass Accountability Project, “and they don’t reduce global warming, they increase it.”

The Campaign delivered a letter to Congress signed by public health, social justice, and environmental organizations opposing any legislation that further subsidizes dirty incinerators, including the RES, and proposed energy and farm bill amendments.

Groundbreaking scientific reports issued in June 2010 by the Manomet Center for Conservation Science and the Environmental Working Group conclusively show that biomass incineration using forests as fuel will undermine efforts to curb carbon emissions.

Read more here: Anti-Biomass Press Release.

Access the letter to Congress here: Letter.

Chaffee County Tuesday afternoon issued a notice to Nestle that it could proceed with its plan to pump millions of gallons of water from springs next to the Arkansas River and cart it to Denver for bottling under the Arrowhead Springs label.

Nestle spent years negotiating with the Chaffee Board of Commissioners where water lives, buying land around the water, negotiating with the Aurora City Council for its lease to the water, fighting off protesters and finally constructing pipelines and a pumping station in Johnson Village near Buena Vista.

As of 07.27.10,  Nestle can turn the spigot and begin filling its fleet of twenty-five 8,000 gallon trucks each day.

Read more here: Nestle given the OK.

During the next several weeks prior to the November, 2010, election cycle, we would like to endorse, fund-raise, and generate grassroots support around aggressive, progressive campaigns and candidates.

We are willing to do this for issues as well as actual candidates.

There are a few guidelines:

1. Support will be cast after a candidate or campaign submits responses to a very brief survey.
(If you have items you want on this survey, please let me know.)

2. Candidates may fall under any political designation – priority, however, lies with 3rd parties and independents.

3. The deadline for endorsement requests is August 31, 2010.

Contact us: gregory @ gregoryvickrey.com

Please pass this along to any candidates, campaigns, and allies as you see fit.

The following piece was written by Matt Gonzalez, and discusses in detail how Fred Bekele won a parking garage contract in San Francisco, only to have it taken away.

In the summer of 2007, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) hired consultant Barbara Chance to address multiple issues concerning the city’s management and award of public contracts for city-owned parking facilities. The MTA was concerned that, among other things, the city was not maximizing the revenues it could derive from parking facilities, and that locally owned businesses were being denied entry into the competitive world of public parking contracts.

Also, concerns that parking garage contracts were being awarded amid charges of influence peddling were prevalent.

On June 19, 2007, Ms. Chance, a nationally recognized expert in parking, transportation and access management, presented her recommendations, which included a plan for revising the process for contract bidding to enable a more open and competitive process.

Read more here: Why Bother Bidding?

For the Want of Three Votes

The vote in the House of Representatives last Thursday (July 1, 2010) approved $33 billion more for Barack Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Most accounts of the vote in the progressive media viewed the vote positively, focusing on the various anti-war amendments that failed, but got sizable votes. The one with broadest support (162 “Yes” votes) would have required Obama to produce an exit plan. Its sponsors included Democrats David Obey (WI) and Jim McGovern (MA). Another would have funded the exit of the troops. It was sponsored by Democrat Barbara Lee (CA) and got 100 “Yes” votes. An even stronger anti-war amendment, however, got only 25 “Yes” votes.

But these progressive media accounts looking primarily at the breadth of support for the exit plan amendment have overlooked a couple of key numbers that reveal an entirely new view of the votes on the bill and its amendments.

The first key number is the vote on the main bill itself. Because all of the GOP voted against it in order to reject the domestic spending sweetners added by Nancy Pelosi, this vote was much closer. It passed by 215 to 210. If only 3 more “Yes” voters would have voted “No”, the funding bill would have failed (by 212 “Yes” vs. 213 “No”). Failure of the bill to pass would have been an earthquake in US politics.

The other key number overlooked by most progressive media accounts of the vote was this: enough leading anti-war Democrats voted for the actual funding bill that they could have defeated it had they voted “No”. Among leading anti-war Democrats, which ones voted for the war funding?

First, Barbara Lee voted for the war funds. She represents Berkeley, California, and part of Oakland. Being from this heavily anti-war district, many anti-war activists assume she votes against all war funding bills. She has been a heroine-of-sorts of the anti-war movement for years.

Next, we have the Out of Afghanistan Caucus, started in May 2010 by John Conyers. In the morning on the day of the vote, the caucus held a press conference to urge a NO vote on the war funding. Five of the eight Democrats conducting this press conference actually voted for the war funding that evening, after participating in the press conference about voting “No”! Conyers, Bob Filner (CA), and Alan Grayson (FL) voted “No”; voting “Yes” were Sheila Jackson Lee (TX), Maxine Waters (CA), Mike Honda (CA), Judy Chu (CA), and Barbara Lee.

Next, we can look at the Democratic sponsors of the various anti-war amendments to the bill.

We would expect these Democrats to not only sponsor their anti-war amendments, but to also vote against the final war funding bill itself. But all three of the Democrat anti-war amendment co-sponsors mentioned above voted for the final war funding bill: David Obey (WI), Jim McGovern (MA), and Barbara Lee (CA).

Finally, we should mention Pete Stark, another San Francisco Bay Area Democrat. While he tends to keep a low profile, he often actually casts more progressive votes than Barbara Lee.

(For example, he was one of the few “No” votes in the House vote on heavier sanctions against Iran, which passed by 408-8 on June 24. Barbara Lee voted for those sanctions.) Even Pete Stark voted FOR the Afghan war funding last week.

If just three of these leading anti-war Democrats had switched their vote to “No” on the Afghan war funding bill, it would have failed. This would have given the anti-war movement a huge boost, even if war-funder-in-chief Nancy Pelosi had organized another vote and courted Republican support to guarantee its passage. Such a scenario would have exposed the Democratic leadership as co-equal pillars of the war (which they are), along with the GOP and the Democrat in the White House. Instead, when they had a golden opportunity to defeat the war funding bill, our leading “anti-war” Democrats betrayed us.

Notes:

1. The roll call vote on the war funding bill which passed by 215-210 is here; check to see how your representative voted: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2010/roll428.xml .