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8:00-8:01 Billboard:
The Hammer: How Tom Delay is Taking Secret Corporate Donations
to Ensure Republican Control
Who Let the Dogs In? An Hour with Political Columnist and
Author Molly Ivins
8:01-8:08 Headlines
8:08-8:09 One Minute Music Break
8:07-8:58
The Hammer: How Tom Delay is Taking Secret Corporate
Donations to Ensure Republican Control
INTRO: Leading Republican Congressman Tom Delay sought donations
to his political action committee from Enron and other corporations
to help bankroll the redistricting of Texas to ensure that
Republicans gain more state House seats. We speak with Lou
Dubose, author of a new political biography on Tom Delay that
will come out in September called The Hammer: Tom Delay, God,
Money and the United States Congress.
In a major 3,000 word article yesterday, the Washington Post
revealed that leading Republican Congressman Tom Delay sought
$100,000 in donations to his political action committee from
Enron's top lobbyists in May 2001 so he could help bankroll
the redistricting of Texas to ensure the Republicans gain
more House seats in Texas. That is in addition to the $250,000
the company had already pledged to the Republican Party that
year. An investigation reportedly is under way into the legality
of corporate political donations to the Republican Party in
Texas by Enron officials.
With help from Delay, Republicans in Texas took control
of the Texas House for the first time in 130 years and then
redrew the state's congressional map. The redistricting will
likely force five Democrats to lose their House seats to Republicans
in November. According to the Post, Delay solicited hundreds
of thousands of dollars from several corporations including
Enron. They money would be sent to either Delay's Political
Action Committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, or directly
to the Republican Party. The money would then be sent to individual
Republicans running for a seat in the Texas House legislature
under the guise of non-corporate money. There are now accusations
that Delay may have broken a Texas law that bars corporate
financing of state legislature campaigns.
- Lou Dubose, author of a new political biography on Tom
Delay that will come out in September called The Hammer:
Tom Delay, God, Money and the United States Congress. He
is also co-author, with Molly Ivins, of two books about
George W. Bush.
Who Let the Dogs In? An Hour with Political Columnist
and Author Molly Ivins
INTRO: We spend the hour with Molly Ivins, nationally-syndicated
political columnist and author of five best-selling books
including Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America. Her
latest book is Who Let the Dogs In? Incredible Political Animals
I have Known.
In the wake of the Senate Intelligence Committee's scathing
report that found the pretext for the U.S. invasion on Iraq
was based on bad intelligence and fabricated information,
President Bush yesterday vigorously defended his reasons for
war:
(Tape - President Bush, Oak Ridge National Laboratory,
July 7, 2004)
"Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of
mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq. We removed
a declared enemy of America, who had the capability of producing
weapons of mass murder, and could have passed that capability
to terrorists bent on acquiring them. In the world after
September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford
to take."
Well, over a year ago, one month before the U.S. invaded
Iraq, this one political columnist had to say:
"I think one can easily make a case for taking out Saddam
Hussein. In fact, one could probably be made on humanitarian
grounds alone. But just as there's a downside risk to doing
nothing about this man, there is a very serious downside risk
to invading the country. I think the problem is not so much
getting him out of there. Frankly -- and if this is hubris,
God forgive me -- I don't think we'll have much trouble taking
him out. But it's what we do after we win that's the problem.
This rosy scenario where the Iraqis greet us by dancing in
the streets and democracy follows one after the other in the
domino theory of Southeast Asia just strikes me as ludicrously
optimistic. And the funny thing is, I've always been an optimist
- it's practically a congenital disorder with me. But I think
you're looking at a country that"s 20 percent Kurd and
20 percent Sunni and 60 percent Shiite, and that's pretty
much a recipe for a horrible war...If you really wanted to
settle down the Middle East, if what you wanted was change
in the Middle East, it is perfectly obvious that the first
step is resolving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict."
Those are the words of best-selling author and syndicated
columnist Molly Ivins in
an interview with online magazine Salon.com in February
2003 one month before the invasion of Iraq.
Molly Ivins began her career in journalism as the complaint
department of the Houston Chronicle. In 1970, she became co-editor
of The Texas Observer, which afforded her frequent fits of
hysterical laughter while covering the Texas Legislature.
In 1976, Ivins joined The New York Times as a political reporter.
The next year she was named Rocky Mountain bureau chief, chiefly
because there was no one else in the bureau.
In 1982, she returned once more to Texas, which may indicate
a masochistic streak, and has had plenty to write about ever
since. Her column is syndicated in more than 300 newspapers,
and her freelance work has appeared in Esquire, The Atlantic
Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Harper's,
and other publications. Her first book, Molly Ivins Can't
Say That Can She?, spent more than a year on the New York
Times bestseller list. Her books with Lou Dubose on George
W. Bush, Shrub and Bushwhacked, were national bestsellers.
A three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, she counts as her two
greatest honors that the Minneapolis police force named its
mascot pig after her and she was once banned from the campus
of Texas A&M.
- Molly Ivins, nationally-syndicated political columnist
and author of five best-selling books including Bushwhacked:
Life in George W. Bush's America. Her latest book is Who
Let the Dogs In? Incredible Political Animals I have Known.
8:58-8:59 Outro and Credits
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu
(RAY MA MU), Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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