Ask your Senator

Why she gave the oil companies a pass. She helped them to continue to screw this country. They say raising taxes I say removing subsidies. Your own state is being screwed out of the money due to it by the oil companies. Now your Senator has enabled the oil companies their victory against the rest of the country.
Even before Katrina I had great respect for Mary Landrieu. The many times I watched as she stood on the floor of the Senate and called on the conscience of the nation to do right by Louisiana were inspiring.
As the ONLY Democrat to vote with the repugs to stall an energy bill for the NATION, she has lost my respect. She did not offer an amendment, she did not speak on the floor. I called her office and it sounded to me like an employee of one of the big oil corporations was answering the phones. She doesn't want to hurt the ONLY OIL COAST OF AMERICA. The Dems of CA and a repug from AK voted for cloture!
Your Senator needs to stand up to big oil and force them to be GOOD citizens. If LA wants to continue to let the oil companies to pollute your coast and screw you out of revenue that's your choice. You Senator just offered up the rest of us as sacrificial lambs and took our choice away.
This bill was about the countries future. Your Senator has doomed us for another 5 years of American Oil Cartel rape and pillaging.

Merry Christmas from HUD
This Holiday Season, It's Bulldozers for the Poor, Huge Tax Credits for Wealthy Developers

By Bill Quigley



On the 12th day before Christmas, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is planning to unleash teams of bulldozers to demolish thousands of low-income apartments in New Orleans. Despite Katrina causing the worst affordable housing crisis since the Civil War, HUD is spending $762 million in taxpayer funds to tear down more than 4,600 publicly subsidized apartments and replace them with 744 similarly subsidized units " an 82 percent reduction.

HUD is in charge here, and a one-person HUD team makes all the local housing authority decisions. HUD took over the local housing authority years ago " all decisions are made in Washington, D.C. The agency plans to build an additional 1,000 'market rate" and tax credit units, which will still result in a net loss of 2,700 apartments to New Orleans. The remaining new apartments will cost an average of more than $400,000 each.

Affordable housing is at a critical point along the Gulf Coast in the wake of the 2005 hurricanes. More than 50,000 families still living in tiny FEMA trailers are being systematically forced out. More than 90,000 homeowners in Louisiana are still waiting to receive federal recovery funds from the Road Home program. In New Orleans, hundreds of the estimated 12,000 homeless have taken up residence in small tents across the street from City Hall and under Interstate 10.

In Mississippi, poor and working people are being displaced along the coast to allow casinos to expand and develop shipping and other commercial activities. Two dozen ministers criticized the exclusion of renters and low-income homeowners from post-Katrina assistance: 'Sadly we must now bear witness to the reality that our recovery effort has failed to include a place at the table ... for our poor and vulnerable."

The bulldozers have not torn down any buildings yet, and New Orleans public housing residents vow to resist. 'If you try to bulldoze our homes, we're going to fight," promised resident Sharon Jasper. 'There's going to be a war in New Orleans."

(snip)

Read more here please.