Category: Uncategorized

By Rep. John Carter (R-TX)
Congressional Record
June 12, 2007 (H6271)

I am concerned, and I wish to express the concern that in the appropriations process this year there is a lot that is going to be done in the dark. In this particular bill, it is a very small item as compared to what is coming down the road at us, but there is $16 million for bridges which we won’t know exactly how that is going to be spent for this House to examine it, but it will be “air dropped” in in the conference committee. That is an indicator of what we are looking at as we deal with Member-initiated spending with the nickname of “earmarks” in the future.

At present, the plan is to set aside the money but not tell us how to spend it, and, oh, by the way vote for it. But I think in the last election the American people told us that they wanted sunlight on this process. They wanted to be able to see how we spend our money, including they wanted our names put on the things that were individually requested. In fact, the Republican House passed such a rule, to put the names on every earmark.

Yet we see in a very small part in this bill, and much expanded in the bills to follow, that there is going to be no sunshine on this process. In fact, it is going to be inside closed doors in the conference committee where there is really not a whole lot this House can do about it.

With increased nonemergency spending of $81.4 billion, these are issues that American people want to know about it. They want their elected Representatives to take a look at it and be able to figure out how the money is being spent. We debated this process the last session of Congress. We made it important to us as individual Members. We talked about it and discussed it and voted on it.

Now, all of a sudden, we have a process that has gone behind closed doors in secrecy, and as we vote these things out, as Members of Congress we are voting a bill which has a fund set-aside which we are not told how that fund is going to be spent. We are told it could be published over the break. This is inexcusable.

Whether your issue is corporate takeover, prisoners’ rights, refugees’ rights, or children’s
rights, we must speak out against this private, for-profit institution! As Iraqis, Somalians,
Palestinians, Central and South Americans and so many more war-torn countries deliver their
traumatized masses to our shores, are we to torment them further by imprisoning them? Join us
in this audible demonstration to prisoners that we stand in solidarity with them.
Your presence makes a difference.

Saturday, July 21

Return to Hutto Taylor, TX

Free the Children

11 a.m. to 4 p.m. 1001 Welch Dr.

Join us in demanding, “No Child Left Behind Bars!

What: Hutto Round 2 with the Texas Indigenous Council, CAFHTA and more!

When: Saturday, June 23, all day, with speakers from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Where: Hutto Detention Facility, 1001 Welch Rd, Taylor, TX, 76574

(From Dallas: South on I-35 and East on Highway 79; about 30 minutes NE of Austin)

DON’T FORGET: Water, Signs, Hats, Snacks, Sunscreen, Umbrellas, did I mention WATER!

Visit groups.yahoo.com/group/CAFHTA/ or email createhope4free@gmail.com

Note: the following item was originally posted as a message at the Texas Civil Rights Review.

Houston Activists Converge on Austin Protest

July 20 at the Austin offices of Corrections Corporation of America:
see report from Houston Sin Fronteras

By Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA)
Congressional Record
June 12, 2007 (H6272)

[The DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008] appropriates a record amount of spending, $36.3 billion. What we tried to do in the committee, and I want to commend Mr. Rogers and Mr. Price, was starting out asking what are the risk issues that we really need to face in the Nation. This whole emphasis has been essentially an antiterrorism effort, when, in reality, in creating this huge, huge bureaucracy and moving the Department of Agriculture and everybody else into it, what we have found from a lot of experts is that you really have to deal with issues such as the first responders would be the same for a terrorist activity as they would be for a natural disaster, and that we really have to base our decisions on risk-based management.

It was no more clear than in a place that we are just sort of throwing money at, which is the >border between Mexico and the United States. In testimony, we found that there are more terrorist incidents–in fact, there have been none on the Mexican-U.S. border, but there have been several on the U.S.-Canadian border where we have very little security whatsoever. So if you were acting just on risk management, you would put more assets on the Canadian border than on the Mexican border. But the emphasis here isn’t about homeland security; it is more about immigration.