GREETINGS FELLOW DEMOCRATS!





Democratic Primary Schedule for April, May and June

April 22	Pennsylvania
May 3	Guam
May 6	Indiana, North Carolina
May 20	Kentucky, Oregon
June 1	Puerto Rico
June 3	Montana, South Dakota

We have many letter sized used hanging folders...

...they come with a frame for your file cabinet. First come, first served. You must come pick them up. They are in different colors.





Researchers Fear Southern Fence Will Endanger Species Further

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 20, 2008; A03

TUCSON -- The debate over the fence the United States is building along its southern border has focused largely on the project's costs, feasibility and how well it will curb illegal immigration. But one of its most lasting impacts may well be on the animals and vegetation that make this politically fraught landscape their home.

Some wildlife researchers have grown so concerned about the consequences of bisecting hundreds of miles of rugged habitat that they have talked of engaging in civil disobedience to block the fence's construction.

"This wall is so asinine, and so wrong, I am one of a dozen scientists ready to lay our bodies down in front of tractors," Healy Hamilton, who directs the Center for Biodiversity Research and Information at the California Academy of Sciences, told colleagues at a recent scientific retreat here. "This is one thing we might be able to stop."

"Make it 13!" said Allison Jones, a conservation biologist at the Wild Utah Project, an advocacy group.

Hamilton and Jones have yet to throw themselves before bulldozers, but their call to arms reflects the researchers' growing fears that the wall will imperil species that, in Hamilton's words, "walk, fly or crawl across that border."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/19/AR2008041900942_pf.html





Haven't you heard? War is good for us - really

John Young
WACO TRIBUNE-HERALD

On the rare occasion that President Bush is caught on camera committing truth, we should stop the tape and acknowledge it.

Such was the case recently when NBC's Ann Curry asked him about something Barack Obama said on the campaign trail, that the war in Iraq was dragging down the U.S. economy.

To the contrary, said Bush.

"I think actually the spending in the war might help with jobs - because we're buying equipment, and people are working."

No "I think," there, Mr. President. That's fact. Say it loud.

Almost nothing is better for an economy than war if all you are interested in is goods being bought and services being served, including services for burying the dead. Economically, war is a winner. It's doubly so when we don't pay for it and instead just borrow.

War means low unemployment. War means a demand for what America still makes and what the world still buys from us - arms.

And this time war is about employing contractors like Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater Security. They are making a mint if you aren't.

All those Milton Friedman/Grover Norquist acolytes who rail against big government bite their tongues when it comes to this spend-spend economic stimulus: war - the ultimate manifestation of big government.

So why is it, then, that America's economy is headed into the tank? Really, if a six-year, $2 trillion enterprise - war - that's verging on 100 percent American goods and services (does anybody remember the Coalition of the Willing?) can't keep an economy purring, something must be seriously wrong.

That's exactly what economists were saying last week. In March, unemployment climbed to 5.1 percent. Employers jettisoned 80,000 full-time employees as jobs lost approached a quarter-million in one quarter, the worst in five years.

The technical term for a recession is two quarters of zero growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). By that standard the Bush administration says we aren't there yet.

But as Jared Bernstein, economist of the Economic Policy Institute, told The Associated Press, "There's not much solace in positive GDP growth if you're out of work."

That says it all about the economy under Bush. It's geared toward figures that translate to the kind of prosperity felt on Wall Street, but not on Main Street.

The "prosperity" Bush and his party have touted is jimmy-rigged. It's about wealth concentrated in the hands of few, wealth fleeing our country, wealth built around the job-making machinery of war. Now the duct tape is starting to give.

I'm reminded of a book that came out in 1967 during the protracted military ordeal of Vietnam. "Report from Iron Mountain," purported to be the fruit of a secret think tank, had this message: War is so important to us, particularly our economy, that without it our system would collapse. Current-day accounts classify the "report" as a hoax. But, my goodness, the theme never has been more true.

Not only is war the most politically profitable thing a president can do, it can really goose an economy.

Under these terms, John McCain, who says he's not an economics guy, can continue to do his duty as economist in chief simply by keeping his commitment to employ uniformed young men and women on two theaters for a long, long time. One hunded years of war-goosed prosperity. It's good for the GDP.

With war providing all that fuel, we must really be running out of kindling of other varieties to now be facing a recession.

Someday after we've burned the furniture, we might step back and decide to confront our own limitations. We'll decide that the nation- building which appeals most is rebuilding our own.

jyoung@wacotrib.com





Brazos County Democratic Party
P.O. Box 4568
Bryan Texas 77805
979-779-5600 Fax 979-779-5601

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.
Harry S. Truman, Democrat, President of the United States of America