Hestia
Hestia's JournalTexas Farmer Wins Entry of Default in Keystone Lawsuit
[I did an extensive search for this article and didn't find one; if I missed it, mea culpa]
A Texas farmer has won an entry of default against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which failed to respond to a federal lawsuit claiming it illegally granted environmental permits to TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL pipeline.
Michael Bishop, a farmer in Douglass, about 150 miles northeast of Houston, said he will ask U.S. Magistrate Judge Keith Giblin, in Lufkin, Texas, to invalidate the pipeline’s permits and order the Army Corps to conduct public hearings that it skipped before issuing water-crossing permits to Keystone, which will transport Canadian tar-sands crude to refineries on the Texas Gulf coast.
[snippage]
Bishop is one of the last Texas landowners still battling Calgary-based TransCanada, Keystone’s parent, in court over the company’s use of eminent domain laws to install the pipeline against the property owners’ wishes. The company has said construction on the southern leg of the pipeline is largely complete in Texas and Oklahoma.
“Public hearings should’ve been held in accordance with the law,” Bishop said in his original petition, filed in April. He claims the agency “yielded to political pressure and expedited the permit” in violation of federal environmental regulations.
more at link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-07/texas-farmer-wins-default-in-keystone-pipeline-fight-correct-.html
Paul Ryan’s Worst Nightmare Comes True as Bernie Sanders Is On The Budget Committee
Source: Politics USA
Paul Ryan’s Worst Nightmare Comes True as Bernie Sanders Is On The Budget Committee
By: Jason Easley
Friday, October 18th, 2013, 3:28 pm
Majority Leader Harry Reid has shattered Paul Ryan’s dreams of killing Social Security and Medicare by putting Sen. Bernie Sanders on the budget conference committee.
Sen. Sanders reacted to the official news of being appointed to the budget conference committee by saying, “I am excited about being a member of the budget conference committee and I look forward to working with my Democratic and Republican colleagues to end the absurdity of sequestration and to develop a budget which works for all Americans. In my view, it is imperative that this new budget helps us create the millions of jobs we desperately need and does not balance the budget on the backs of working people, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor.”
In other words, Bernie Sanders opposes everything that Paul Ryan wants. Sen. Sanders has long been an outspoken critic of the Ryan budgets, and the Wisconsin Republican’s borderline obsession with privatizing Social Security and voucherizing Medicare.
In response to Ryan’s recent Wall Street Journal editorial where he once again put entitlements in the crosshairs, Sanders said, “In a sense, what Paul Ryan is saying is yeah, I lost the election. It doesn’t matter. I want you to implement all of the ideas that I campaigned on and lost. You know what? The American don’t want to see cuts in Social Security, or privatization of Social Security, They don’t want to see cuts in Medicare. They don’t want to see cuts in Medicaid. They don’t want to see the EPA abolished, the Department of Education abolished. They don’t want to see the VA privatized. They don’t want to see the minimum wage, the concept of the minimum wage, done away with so that the people of America could work for four bucks an hour.”
More at link:
Read more: http://www.politicususa.com/2013/10/18/paul-ryans-worst-nightmare-true-bernie-sanders-budget-committee.html
Woot woot! Harry seems to be hardening that spine that's started growing
Outsourced Cities, Brought to You by CH2M Hill
Published on Wednesday, October 16, 2013 by PR Watch
Outsourced Cities, Brought to You by CH2M Hill
by Brendan Fischer and Seep Paliwal
When the town of Sandy Springs, Georgia, spun-off from Fulton County and established a brand new government, it didn't sign a Declaration of Independence; it signed a contract.
Sandy Springs, GA
The 100,000-person town entered into a five-year contract with the for-profit management company CH2M Hill to operate almost all of the town's services: running trash collection, and street cleaning, and wastewater management, and even security and administration for the courthouse. A for-profit company, rather than public officials and public employees, would be in charge of providing all "public" services except for fire and police departments. CH2M HILL employees, wearing Sandy Spring uniforms and driving trucks with Sandy Spring logos, even enforced municipal ordinances like grass-cutting and parking regulations.
Sandy Springs, an affluent suburb of Atlanta -- home to Herman Cain, professional sports players, and the woman who voiced Iphone's Siri -- had been fighting for years to spin-off from Fulton County, with many residents resentful that they were subsidizing services for poorer parts of the county. In 2005, after Republicans gained new majorities in both chambers of the Georgia legislature, Sandy Spring got its wish. The new town -- conceived by retired engineer Oliver Porter, a devotee of Austrian free-market economist Frederich Hayek -- had just a few months to set up a fully-functioning city government, and CH2M Hill stepped in, offering itself up as a one-stop-outsourcing-shop.
In the next two years, the newly-created communities of Johns Creek, Milton, and Chattahoochee Hills -- which, like Sandy Springs, were wealthy suburbs cutting themselves loose from less-affluent counties -- followed suit, signing contracts with CH2M Hill to establish fully outsourced cities.
more at link: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/16-0
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Straight out of "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein. She stated in the book that this would become the new norm - 2 America's, one for the rich and the rest, well let's just say, let them eat cake. 
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