NY Times:KERRY ATTACKS DEAN FOR BUSH PACT

It seems there is confusion about dates but here the Times says a deal was struck in 1998 between Bush and Dean.

KERRY ATTACKS DEAN FOR BUSH PACT Senator John Kerry attacked the record of Howard Dean, a former governor of Vermont and fellow candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, saying he had struck a deal with George W. Bush in 1998, when Mr. Bush was governor of Texas, to ship Vermont's nuclear waste to a poor, mostly Hispanic community. In a campaign swing through Texas, Mr. Kerry criticized the 1998 compact, in which Vermont and Maine agreed to pay $25 million each to ship low-level nuclear waste to Sierra Blanca, Tex. Dr. Dean's campaign countered that the arrangement had been negotiated in the open and later approved by President Bill Clinton. Ultimately the plan was not carried through because Texas environmental officials said it was unsafe. David M. Halbfinger (NYT)

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/02/national/02BRFS8.html

The compact with Maine and Texas was only about sending waste to Texas, not specifically to Sierra Blanca:
http://www.leg.state.vt.us/statutes/fullchapter.cfm?Title=10&Chapter=162

From the Dean spokesperson:

"It said any site would have to meet very strict environmental and safety standards," Ms. Enright said. "It didn't meet them, so it was rejected. It's a moot point."

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dallas/politics/local/stories/100203dnmetkerry.6d4f3.html

This is bullshit. Period. I don't care who's doing it to whom, it's bullshit. The enemy is George W. Bush, not Howard Dean. All Kerry's accomplishing by this is pissing people off - OUR people. The Bushies are laughing their asses off at us.

All the stuff about "what I want to know is where were the Democrats in Congress when" a,b,and c happened. And, "I'm from the Democratic wing of the Democratic party". He criticized the very people who have kept this country from turning into a feudal society despite not having a majority in the House or Senate.

Your criticism holds no water and sounds to me like sour grapes. Dean has been on the wrong side of Medicare, Taxes and the Environment and that is serious stuff, expecially for a guy who is supposed to be the liberals dream candidate.

were. Dean wasn't the only one who noticed some of the dems were letting bush walk all over them.

And now kerry is coming out with lies.

for the most part, have been weak and ineffectual. They have demonstrated that they have neither the spine nor will to stand up to Bush and his cronies. In their efforts to "make deals" which is essentially what they do in congress they have made themselves into enablers of the Bush administration.

WE HAVE NOT HAD A REAL OPPOSITION PARTY IN CONGRESS SINCE BEFORE 2000.

Howard Dean was the first candidate to vigorously speak out against this administration with the exception of Kucinich and Graham. Granted, the campaign season has brought with it a few more voices but Dean's energy and fire got the most attention.

Because of this, some supporters of other candidates viciously attack Dean and his supporters.

Is it jealousy or just plain hate? Whatever it is it's not productive and all it does is cause hard feelings. Why do you do it?

ALL YOU DEAN HATERS: What are you going to do if Dean wins the nomination? You won't be able to bash Dean anymore on DU. Are you going to replace your hate for Dean to hate for BUSH? Are you going to put your personal feelings aside and support whomever is the Democratic candidate?

If you don't your days at DU are numbered.

The Democratic is the only party I have ever belonged to and I will continue to be a Democrat and I have seen days when the Democratic party made me proud to be a citizen. Not so the past couple of years. The Democratic party has turned into a bunch of wimps and Dean has shown that he's a fighter. I like his energy and his dedication.

Got a problem with that? Too bad.

Dean ripped on every other Congressional Dem for months. Stop your bellyaching.

This is a race for the nomination, also known as a contest. All the candidates are adversaries, of course Bush is also the enemy, call him the super villian if you will, haven't you noticed all the candidates slamming Bush every chance they get?

Look, I think I've been very reasonable in my criticisms of Dean. I've never attacked him personally, and I defended him after the debate, saying Gephardt's Gingrich comparison was pretty baseless (which, by the way, I still think it was). But that kind of attack, saying Kerry wants Bush to win, is absolutely ludicrous. Dean has risen to prominence in the race in large part by attacking other Democrats (with the absurd "Bushlite" line being the most common example). For you now to be offended that Kerry would criticize Dean is the barest hypocrisy imaginable, and makes all Dean supporters (most of whom I think are very reasonable people whom I happen to disagree with) look bad. If you'd like to criticize Kerry on the issues, feel free; the policy debates that starts are what the primary season is about. But please, please don't throw around chickenshit accusations like "Kerry wants Bush to win," and PLEASE don't act appalled that Kerry would dare to criticze another Democrat.

in 2002, in which Kerry gave Bush the ability to use the military to go bomb the fuck out of any ME country that Bush wants.

Oh, but let's not let historical fact cloud our arguments! In addition, the IWR limits action to Iraq. So, you're wrong on both counts.

How does it feel to be so completely wrong? :)

to defend Kerry's vote on that one? Do you know that at least seven Senators likened voting for the IWR to giving the bush a blank check?
And btw can you explain to me why Kerry voted against GWI and for GWII? I like and respect the man, but that vote is a mark of shame.

Here's a quick timeline for those that care to know what really happened.

October: IRW passes. Bush goes to UN and gets an unanimous vote for inspections. Saddam agrees to let, inspectors return.

November- December: inspectors begin arriving in Iraq

January: with the military build-up continuing, Bush asks for a second resolution to authorize force. The problem is the inspectors have found no smoking gun and the Iraqis appear to be mostly coopoerating.

January 23rd: Kerry speaks and Georgetown University, "I say to the President, show respect for the process of international diplomacy because it is not only right, it can make America stronger - and show the world some appropriate patience in building a genuine coalition. Mr. President, do not rush to war."

Kerry also made this far-sighted comment that day, "The Bush Administration has a plan for waging war but no plan for winning the peace. It has invested mightily in the tools of destruction but meagerly in the tools of peaceful construction. It offers the peoples in the greater Middle East retribution and war but little hope for liberty and prosperity."
http://www.johnkerry.com/news/speeches/spc_2003_0123.html

BushCo may have had that ability but Kerry certainly didn't voice any opposition to him using it--in fact he endorsed it. Only the ones with GUTS (like Kucinich) opposed him. Unfortunately we can't know "how Dean would have voted" on the war resolution (because it is hypothetical) but his opposition to the whole thing was early and has been *consistent.*

edit: typo

You can't win on the issue at hand so you divert to the handy dandy IWR. That's all anybody ever comes up with against Kerry. It's becoming some sort of twisted obsession that makes no rational sense. Every candidate has quite a few gaffes that people willingly overlook. But when it comes to Kerry, it's one vote and there's nothing else to look it. Bizarre.

--Kerry seems not to have anything to say other than negative attacks on Dean. Doesn't he have any original ideas at all? What exactly is he contributing to the campaign other than RW talking points? He's a fool if he thinks that type of talk is going to win him supporters.

And, yes, I was disappointed that Dean made some negative comments about Clark, but at least Dean goes far beyond reacting to the other candidates.

You simply choose to ignore them. They have been repeatedly highlighted here on DU and if you are seirously curious (which I seirously doubt you are) you can go to JohnKerry.com and read actual speeches and policies Kerry has laid out in recent months. He has spoken about the environment, manufacturing jobs, rural communities, winning the peace in Iraq, etc. You simply don't care enough to pay attention when he is saying these things and that's because you care about supporting Dean more than politics itself. Sad.:(

I post pro-Kerry posts just about every day, almost always about policy.

First, let me state for the record that saying Kerry has no positive ideas is about is ridiculous as saying Dean has no fire. Dean is a fiery, powerful speaker, and Kerry has put together a list of concrete policy plans for many problems facing America today. Just to save folks from doing the work of navigating his site to find all of them, here is a list of links to Kerry's policy proposals.

Winning the Peace in Iraq

Fight for America's Economic Future

National Service (link is to a synoposis of the plan; you can download the full PDF version from that page)

Health Care (full PDF version)

Environmental Justice

Restoring Jobs

Reviving the Manufacturing Sector

New Compact with Veterans


And that's just the full, concrete plans. Visit his site for his stances on issues that he doesn't yet have a comprehensive plan for (not that there are many of them).

Not one response. (I hope Kerry people wrote the Sierra Club.)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=108&topic_id=52262

Dr. Funk posted Kerry's Iraq Recovery Plan. Last I checked, not one response.

People don't even want to deal with Kerry on the issues because they KNOW he is so far ahead of every other candidate that there's no debate. Kucinich aside, he's pretty far ahead too.

I think it's stretching a bit. Besides, as governor of Vermont, Dean's responsibility is to the citizens of Vermont, not Texas. That was Bush's decision to try dumping the waste on poor Latino communities. I see the Democratic primary has moved from the occasional sniper pot shots at each other to a good old-fashioned knife fight. I just wish the criticisms were honest and accurate. After all, nothing quite cuts like the Ginzu sharpness of the truth.

Howard Dean KNOWINGLY made a deal with Bush to dump waste on poor communities. Just like Howard Dean KNOWINGLY supported dumping Vermont waste at Yucca Mountain. Then, when he decides to run for President, his glib response is that he only cared about Vermont, not the impact on other human beings. And you think he's going to care about the environment of third world countries??? He didn't even care about the environmental impact on his fellow American citizens. This criticism is more than fair. I want the best President we can get in 2005. Looking closely at the record of every candidate is the only way we're going to get that President. And it is NOT Howard Dean.

Maine dropped out of the compact last year, in 2002 while3 Dean was still governor, clinging to it.

If John Kerry can attack Dean, I am going to attack John Kerry.

Kerry has declared war on me personally.

What good does it do for DU to try to make our discussions civil when slimy John Kerry is doing his own flaming?

You know what, I respect Dean for trying to protect his own people. When he is President of the United States, we will all be under his protection. He will do his darndest to make sure that he does right by US.

If you want someone to fight for you, Howard Dean is the man.

But he won't get my vote unless he becomes the nominee.

"Kerry has declared war on me personally" What a statement.

Environmental justice and dumping in minority areas is a legitimate policy issue. What's your policy problem with Kerry?

But, as I understand that in a few months we'll all be on the same team, I'll try very hard to do so.

OK. You state that you respect Dean. So do I. As you've all picked up by now, he's not my first choice of candidate, but I have a good deal of respect for him and MOST of his supporters, and I think he'd be a pretty good President. However, I and other Kerry supporters (and Kerry himself) have some issues with Dean. These issues are ALMOST ALL OF THE POLICY VARIETY. In other words, Kerry and many of his supporters, myself included, have some fundamental disagreements with Dean on substantive policy issues. I imagine many Dean supporters have some of the same differences with Kerry, and there's nothing wrong with that; in fact, I welcome debate and argument over policy-related topics. "John Kerry is beyond slime" is not a policy topic. It is a baseless and disgusting personal attack on a man that has done more for this country and progressive causes in his 20 years on the Senate than most of us will do in our lifetimes.

As for your complaints about Kerry's recent "attacks" on Dean (and, for the sake of argument here, I'll grant that they are, in fact, attacks, although I personally still think they're more policy disagreements than attacks), I still can't get over the hypocrisy of Dean supporters being shocked and appalled at Kerry's criticizing of another Democrat. Dean has gone around the country calling other candidates "Bushlite," many of his supporters have brought Busch Lite beer to Kerry rallies, and he has in many ways built his campaign on comparing the other candidates to Republicans. This was a strategic decision made by his campaign, and, judging from the polling and fundraising figures, it was a good one. But it's blatantly disingenuous for his supporters to blame Kerry for responding in kind ("declared war on you personally?" Please).

Seriously, people. Come on. Both John Kerry and Howard Dean would do a better job of fighting for us and all the people of the United States than Bush has. One of them will likely get the chance to convince the nation of this, and it does neither of them any good to have these kinds of personal attacks made from the other camp. The primary difference on this thread, is that it seems like Kerry supporters are trying to have a policy debate about this environmental issue (and I'll admit that I don't know enough about the situation to comment on the rightness or wrongness of Dean's actions), while Dean supporters want to call Kerry a liar and make absured, baseless, despicable comments like "John Kerry is beyond slime." This is just unbecoming of any Democrat.

First the lie was that Bush was governor of Texas when the deal was made in 1993. Now the lie is that the deal was made in 1998. Flip-flopping between different simple lies, pretty pathetic...

Until 1998.

Not even opossible to start the program until all of the parties involved agreed and the fedeal governoment approved. That was in 1998.

Dean started the process, continued it, stuck to it and was the ONLY constant participant in the process. The compact was signed, but not official until between the two states until 1996, after Bush was in Office.

Notice the date on this one as well:

Letter To Congress

Sierra Blanca Compact

July 28, 1998

Dear Representative:

On behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), I urge you to vote No on the Conference Committee Report forThe Texas Maine Vermont Radioactive Waste Compact. LULAC is the oldest and largest Hispanic civil rights organization in the nation. Since 1929, we have been providing a voice to our community throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico. A major concern of ours is the proposed site of a nuclear waste dump near Sierra Blanca in Texas.

As you know,The Compact proposes the construction of shallow, unlined soil trenches for the burial of "low-level" radioactive waste. LULAC strongly opposes this Compact. Serious issues of environmental justice and blatant discrimination arise when one considers this bill. One should not only vote against this proposal because of serious environmental and health matters, but also because of the racial discrimination practiced against the predominantly Mexican-American population of the area.

Just this month, two Texas administrative law judges recommended the Sierra Blanca compact dump license be denied because of severe geological problems and unanswered questions about environmental racism. If Congress ignores these problems and approves the compact, thus funding the dump, tremendous pressure will be placed on the political appointees at the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission to approve the license despite the judges' recommendation to deny it.

The selection of a poor Mexican-American community (which is already the site of one of the largest sewage sludge projects in the country) brings to mind serious considerations of environmental justice. Although the bill does not expressly designate Hudspeth County as the location for the site, the Faskin Ranch near Sierra Blanca has clearly been earmarked and a draft license has been approved. The decision Congress now faces on this matter cannot be made in a vacuum, ignoring serious environmental justice questions that have been raised about the site selection process. These unjust procedures are in apparent contradiction of the 1994 Executive Order that firmly upheld environmental justice.

http://www.lulac.org/Issues/letters/SBlanca.html


The Texas-Maine-Vermont compact was defeated (the first compact ever defeated) in September 1995 by the U.S. House of Representatives. Half of the Texas delegation led the rest of the U.S. Congress in voting down the bill, stating their opposition to siting the dump in an earthquake zone, near an international border and recognizing that the bill would, in fact, open Texas to nuclear waste from all over the nation.
More than 700 people from Sierra Blanca and Hudspeth County have signed a petition against the proposed dump.


http://www.marfalights.com/sbdump.html

Notice the date aagin for the original defeat of the compact:

SEPTEMBER 1995, after Anne Richards was OUT OF OFFICE.

Notice again, that this compact was NOT passed or finalized until after Bush was governor, and brought before the U.S. congress:

U.S. Senate Approves Nuclear Waste Compact
Action Shifts to Clinton Administration and to Texas State Officials
The U.S. Senate approved the conference committee report on HR 629 this week by a 78 to 15 vote, giving final congressional approval to the interstate compact among Texas, Maine, and Vermont that makes Texas the dumping ground for low-level radioactive waste generated in all three states. The action by the Senate makes it more likely that the radioactive waste dump proposed for Sierra Blanca in Hudspeth County in West Texas will be built. If the compact bill is signed into law, then Maine and Vermont will pay a total of $25 million within 60 days to the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority to finance construction.


http://texas.sierraclub.org/newsletters/SCR/Sept3-98/SierraBlanca.html

Notice again, the site had been selected in 1992, before Dean signed the conmpact:

THE APPLICATION. The TLLRWDA applied for a low level nuclear waste dump
site near the
town of Sierra Blanca in Hudspeth County in 1992. The application was
voluminous and was
revised numerous times between 1992 and 1996. The site is to be 18 miles
north of the Rio
Grande.3 The minimum design capacity is 1,200,000 cubic ft. The facility
can accommodate up to
60,000 cubic ft. per year, and its operating life is to be 30 years.4 After
closure of the site, there will
be a 5 year observational phase followed by some monitoring for 100 years
or longer.5=20

The cost of the project is enormous. Since the filing of the application in
1992, the state has spent
$18.6 million on the Sierra Blanca site project.

http://lists.isb.sdnpk.org/pipermail/eco-list-old/1998-September/001274.html

Notice:

Texans Make Plea: Don't Send Waste

By TRACY SCHMALER
Rutland Herald, August 20, 1998


BRATTLEBORO _ Vermonters and Texans made an impassioned plea to state officials Wednesday to take responsibility for the radioactive waste generated by the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp.

Residents from both states called on the Vermont State Nuclear Advisory Panel to reject a three-state compact which would allow Vermont and Maine to ship its low-level nuclear waste to a site in western Texas.

“Not only do we not make it, not only do we not use it, we were not given the opportunity to say no," said Susan Carry of Alpine, Texas. Curry lives 100 miles downstream on the Rio Grande from Sierra Blanca, a small community in Texas chosen as the disposal site for Vermont Yankee's low-level waste.

http://www.angelfire.com/vt/vermontwalk/texans.html

Notice again, the site locatin was selected before the compact was SIGNED:

ere's a quick recap of that process. After eight years of being run out, legislated out, and litigated out of site after site, the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority (TLLRWDA) found itself in 1991 many millions of dollars down and still at square one. To its rescue that spring rode the Texas Legislature with HR 2665, which decreed that "notwithstanding any other law," the site must be located within Hudspeth County and in an area "circumscribed on the north by 31 degrees north latitude, 15' and 00"; on the south by 31 degrees north latitude, 00' and 00"; on the east by 105 degrees longitude, 00' and 00"; and on the west by 105 degrees longitude, 22' and 30"." This law, which drew a 370 square mile "box" around the town of Sierra Blanca, on the eastern side of the county, was the response of nuclear utility district legislators to the January decision in a state court throwing the Authority out of its previous site, on the western side of Hudspeth county, on the grounds that it had violated its own siting criteria by disregarding or misrepresenting geology and hydrology, among other things. The state officials cut a back room deal with El Paso County, the plaintiff — move the site farther east, and we won't sue again.

By 1992 the Authority had selected the Faskin Ranch within the "box" and was taking steps to acquire it. Gayle Schroder, whose company owned the land, later told the San Antonio Express-News that the move surprised him, since at that time no state scientists had asked permission to set foot on the ranch, nor had they tested the land for fissures or faults, nor had they drilled test wells to check the groundwater. But they bought the 16,000 acre ranch (for a 440 acre dump — room for growth) anyway, and, a month after they announced their intent, another dumper, MERCO Joint Venture, appeared from nowhere to buy another Sierra Blanca ranch in order to meet their July deadline for providing a site for "beneficial use" land application of New York City's urban industrial sewage sludge. NYC was under a court order to cease poisoning the ocean with the stuff, and New York law forbade such "beneficial use" application of the heavy metal-laden toxic on that state's agricultural land, so it had hired haulers like MERCO to find places where protections were nonexistent or more pliant. The result: the largest sewage dump in the world, on 150 square miles of high Chihuahua desert, with a second such ranch currently filing for a similar registration. More polluters fouling the air and water make it tougher to determine specific blame, so dumps beget dumps.

http://www.social-ecology.org/learn/library/tokar/nuclear_2.html


Notice agan, it was MAINE AND VERMONT, who were going to BUILD the site:

In 1994, the states of Texas, Maine, and Vermont entered a compact allowing the disposal of low-level nuclear waste at a proposed Texas site. This creates the tenth such compact in the United States since 1980, when a Federal law was passed requiring states take responsibility for their low-level nuclear waste, urging cooperation. This compact demands both Maine and Vermont to pay Texas $25 million to build a disposal facility. Prior to becoming law, the compact first needed to gain Congressional approval. Following its approval on September 20, 1998, the compact then required the state of Texas to license the project before moving forward. October 22, 1998, Texas officials voted to deny the compact's proposed site located just outside of Sierra Blanca.


Sierra Blanca, a small West Texas town over two-thirds Hispanic, already hosts Merco Joint Venture. This company is the town's largest employer shipping over 400,000 tons of New York City sludge daily to a nearby ranch. Furthermore, Sierra Blanca is located only sixteen miles from the Mexico border, on top of an aquifer, and in an active Earthquake area. Residents, environmentalists, and community groups have made numerous cries of "environmental racism", even filing a suit under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The groups have faced an uphill battle defending the town from becoming a nuclear disposal site. However, while the fight was won in Sierra Blanca, the compact is law and these states will seek an alternative site.


http://www.umich.edu/~snre492/blanca.html

Dean was involved from the beginning, he was aware of the details he dealt with the governor of Texas involved with the furtherance of the project, he approved of all aspects of it, was aware of its placement before the compact was signed.

The act does not have to have ONE indication of where the waste was going to be placed. Acts of this nature rarely specify location. Thse are administrative details and never part of such acts.

All the above indicate that Dean entered into this compact with full knowledge of the location of the site.

He supported the compact after it had been defeated in Texas in 1995.

"Dean, when he was the Vermont governor, signed a compact in 1993 with Maine and Texas to send nuclear waste to Sierra Blanca"

"There was NO Deal Until 1998.

Thank you.

What site was chosen. who was going to be effected, and he BLEW off all the concerns of environmentalists in his own state. The final approval of the agreement he initiated had to be approved by the various legislatures, as well as the federal; government, and at ANY time, Dean could have again, chosen alternative methods and gotten out of the agreement based on objection to the adverse environmental effects as well as the possible damage to the health of the residents of the area.

What did Dean DO?

That is most important: he was aware, and not only that, once Sierra Blanca and the Texas boards responsible for making a final determination, what did Dean do. He decided he was still going to trust BUSH to select another site:

Associated Press, 10/25/98 13:32


Dean: No radioactive waste site in Vermont
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - Efforts will continue to find a site in Texas to ship Vermont's low-level radioactive waste, despite the rejection of one location by a state panel there, Gov. Howard Dean says.
Dean rejected calls by some anti-nuclear activists that Vermont should take care of its own waste, storing it above-ground at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernont.

"We have much too much moisture in the ground and too much rain," Dean said. "This is not a big issue. Texas has the responsibility to site this (nuclear waste dump) and they will."

Vermont's low-level radioactive waste comes mainly from Vermont Yankee, and consists of materials other than the more highly radioactive spent fuel rods the plant generates. A small part of the state's waste comes from medical facilities.

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/4745/LLRW/Texas/vermont.html

Above ground storage is the internationally accepted as the safest storage method, and of al of the industrialized nations, the U.S. refuses to require above ground storage as the only legal method.

Dean has always had a problem chosing the RIGHT THING TO DO, over the cheapest thing to do.

It stopped being the Vermont Maine Texas Compact in 2002, while Dena was still governor.

The People in Maine decided to do the right thing. Howard the Coward didnt.

State pushes ahead with nuke waste fund
By DAVID GRAM
Associated Press Writer

MONTPELIER -- Despite continuing uncertainty about whether a radioactive waste dump planned in Texas will ever be built, Vermont officials are planning to pay $12.5 million toward the project next month.
Under legislation passed 10 years ago, Vermont joined with Maine and Texas in an agreement under which the two New England states would pay $27.5 million each to send low-level radioactive waste to Texas, which was to find a site for disposing of it. Maine dropped out of the compact last year.

http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:PNph-rUOQtoJ:www.benningtonbanner.com/Stories/0,1413,104~8678~1619901,00.html+%22Sierra+Blanca%22+%22compact%22+%22Vermont%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

over this issue? Bush selected the site, not Dean or the Maine officials.

Go bury yourselfe in the archives, DJcairo.

I'm not too knowledgeable on this issue but that's the truth.