GREETINGS FELLOW DEMOCRATS!





TDW Meeting

October 20
CJ’s BBQ
At the bend in Bryan
11:30 a.m.

Marcia Mainord, President Texas TDW
Fall organizational meeting: election of officers for 2008-09
To make reservations for lunch email tdw@verizon.net
Cost is for the buffet

Everyone welcome-women, men, girls and boys





EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: OCTOBER 1, 2007--Noriega raises $570K

We have petitions in the office for Noriega (U.S. Senate) and Judge Susan Criss (Tx. Supreme Court). If they get 5000 signatures they will not have to pay a filing fee.





Note the #s at the bottom:

- the average per-day pay of personnel Blackwater hired was $600.
- Blackwater charged Regency $1,075 a day for senior managers, $945 a day for middle managers and $815 a day for operators.
- Regency charged ESS an average of $1,100 a day for the same people.

An unmarried sergeant given Iraq pay and relief from U.S. taxes makes about $83 to $85 a day,
A married sergeant with children makes about double that, $170 a day.
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, makes about $493 a day. .

Obviously, there are several kinds of killing going on in Iraq. Wonder what the military folks feel and think about these contractors?





U.S. Pays Steep Price for Private Security in Iraq

By Walter Pincus
Monday, October 1, 2007; Page A17

It costs the U.S. government a lot more to hire contract employees as security guards in Iraq than to use American troops.

It comes down to the simple business equation of every transaction requiring a profit.

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The contract that Blackwater Security Consulting signed in March 2004 with Regency Hotel and Hospital of Kuwait for a 34-person security team offers a view into the private-security business world. The contract was made public last week by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee majority staff as part of its report on Blackwater's actions related to an incident in Fallujah on March 31, 2004, when four members of the company's security team were killed in an ambush.

Understanding the contract's details requires some background: Regency was a subcontractor to another company, ESS Support Services Worldwide, of Cyprus, that was providing food and catering supplies to U.S. armed forces in Fallujah and other cities in Iraq. And ESS was a subcontractor to KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, which had the prime contract with the Defense Department.

So, Blackwater was a subcontractor to Regency, which was a subcontractor to ESS, which was a subcontractor to Halliburton's KBR subsidiary, the prime contractor for the Pentagon -- and each company along the way was in business to make a profit.


Under the contract, Regency was to pay Blackwater $11,082,326 for one year, with a second year option, to put together a 34-person team that would provide security services for the "movement of ESS's staff, management and workforce throughout Kuwait and Iraq and across country borders including the borders of Iraq, Kuwait, Turkey and Jordan."

Blackwater's personnel were to do more than just convoy security. They were also to run command centers in Kuwait and Iraq 24 hours a day, seven days a week, that were to control all ESS security operations; prepare risk assessments; develop security procedures; train ESS personnel in security; and even vet other Iraqi security forces hired by Regency.

But their main role was to provide "tactically sound and fully mission capable protective security details, the minimum team size [being] six operators with a minimum of two vehicles to support ESS movements."

Blackwater's pricing was to be on "a per person support basis, not including costs for housing, subsistence, vehicles and large equipment items," according to the contract. The team would be made up of two senior managers, 12 middle managers and 20 operators.

Regency was to provide Blackwater personnel with housing and necessities, including meals, as well as office space and administrative support. In addition, Regency would provide basic equipment, including vehicles and heavy weapons, while Blackwater was responsible for purchasing individual weapons and ammunition.

According to data provided to the House panel, the average per-day pay to personnel Blackwater hired was $600. According to the schedule of rates, supplies and services attached to the contract, Blackwater charged Regency $1,075 a day for senior managers, $945 a day for middle managers and $815 a day for operators.

According to data provided to the House panel, Regency charged ESS an average of $1,100 a day for the same people. How the Blackwater and Regency security charges were passed on by ESS to Halliburton's KBR cannot easily be determined since the catering company was paid on a per-meal basis, with security being a percentage of that charge.

Halliburton's KBR blended its security costs into the blanket costs passed on to the Defense Department.

How much more these costs are compared with the pay of U.S. troops is easier to determine.

An unmarried sergeant given Iraq pay and relief from U.S. taxes makes about $83 to $85 a day, given time in service. A married sergeant with children makes about double that, $170 a day.

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Baghdad overseeing more than 160,000 U.S. troops, makes roughly $180,000 a year, or about $493 a day. That comes out to less than half the fee charged by Blackwater for its senior manager of a 34-man security team.

National security and intelligence reporter Walter Pincus pores over the speeches, reports, transcripts and other documents that flood Washington and every week uncovers the fine print that rarely makes headlines -- but should. If you have any items that fit the bill, please send them tofineprint@washpost.com.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/30/AR2007093001352.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter





Try this 11 question survey...

...to see which candidate is best representative of your views: You may be surprised.

http://www.wqad.com/Global/link.asp?L=259460





You will want one of these shirts!!!

http://www.snopes.com/business/hidden/tombihn.asp





Hersh: Bush administration shifting Iran attack plans

by Mark Silva

Seymour Hersh, the prize-winning journalist who has written of the Bush administration’s inside planning for an assault against Iran, returns with a new look in The New Yorker magazine at what he calls a shifting strategy -- a changing of the "target.'

While the Bush administration insists that it wants to resolve its differences with Iran diplomatically – yet holds out the caveat that “all options are on the table'' – Hersh says the strategy toward Iran has shifted from one that justifies a strategic assault against the country’s suspected developing nuclear weaponry program to one of attacking the forces and chain of weapon-supplies that Iran is providing for insurgents inside Iraq.

“The strategy is, it's a targeting change,’’ Hersh said on CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer today. “We're threatening Iran. We've been doing it constantly. But instead of saying to the American people, instead of saying internally it's going to be about nuclear weapons, it's now going to be about getting the guys that are killing our boys.

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2007/09/hersh_bush_administration_shif.html





Military Spending Bill

An amendment written by Jon Kyl of Arizona and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to a military spending bill was passed today in the Senate in a 76-22 vote. Interestingly, this bill split the Democratic presidential field, with Biden and Dodd voting against the bill, Clinton voting against it, and Obama not present, allegedly because Reid said there wouldn’t be a vote today.

This amendment is consequential because it brings up the subject of Iran and it was controversial enough to be mentioned in tonight’s Democratic presidential debate at Dartmouth College. The text of the bill’s Sense of Senate section, which is the substantive part of the bill as well as Obama’s stance on it can be found after the jump

(b) Sense of Senate.–It is the sense of the Senate–
      (1) that the manner in which the United States transitions and structures its military presence in Iraq will have critical long-term consequences for the future of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, in particular with regard to the capability of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to pose a threat to the security of the region, the prospects for democracy for the people of the region, and the health of the global economy;
      (2) that it is a vital national interest of the United States to prevent the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran from turning Shi’a militia extremists in Iraq into a Hezbollah-like force that could serve its interests inside Iraq, including by overwhelming, subverting, or co-opting institutions of the legitimate Government of Iraq;
      (3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;
      (4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies;
      (5) that the United States should designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and place the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists, as established under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and initiated under Executive Order 13224; and
      (6) that the Department of the Treasury should act with all possible expediency to complete the listing of those entities targeted under United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1737 and 1747 adopted unanimously on December 23, 2006 and March 24, 2007, respectively.
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, as I said, the chairman of the committee is correct, the intention was to simply lay this amendment down tonight on behalf of Senators LIEBERMAN, COLEMAN, and myself. We will debate it after we have concluded further business.





Assembly approves universal health care
Passage of bill seen as election-year test for Schwarzenegger

Lynda Gledhill, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
Tuesday, August 29, 2006

(08-29) 04:00 PDT Sacramento -- The Democratic-controlled Legislature is on the verge of sending Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a bill that would create a state-run universal health care system, testing him on an issue that voters rate as one of their top concerns in this election year.

On a largely party-line 43-30 vote, the Assembly approved a bill by state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, that would eliminate private medical insurance plans and establish a statewide health insurance system that would provide coverage to all Californians. The state Senate has already approved the plan once and is expected this week to approve changes that the Assembly made to the bill.

Schwarzenegger has said he opposes a single-payer plan like the one Kuehl's bill would create, but the governor has not offered his own alternatives for fixing the state's health care system. As many as 7 million people are uninsured in the state, and spiraling costs have put pressure on business and consumers.

"We know the health care in place today is teetering on collapse," said Assembly Speaker Fabian Núńez, D-Los Angeles. "We need to do something to improve it, to reform it, and this is what we are bringing to the table."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/08/29/MNGBSKR3RA1.DTL&type=printable





Capitol whispers have college funds restored this week

AUSTIN - There is no official word from Austin, but the buzz at the Texas Capitol is that in a few days, perhaps as early as this week, the $154 million Gov. Rick Perry cut from the community colleges' budget in June will be restored.

All parties involved in the negotiations, mainly Perry's staff and senior officials in Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst's and House Speaker Tom Craddick's offices, have been meeting or talking on the phone and a formal announcement is expected when they reach an agreement.

"It's taken a little longer than we thought, but we'd rather wait to make sure that it's done right," Dewhurst's communications director, Mike Wintemute said Friday.

Earlier in the week, Dewhurst and Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, also told the editorial board of the Laredo Morning Times they expected a solution soon. The office of Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, one of the key players in the negotiations, was just as confident.

http://www.lubbockonline.com/cgi-bin/printit2000.pl





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