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Condi’s Whole Life, in Three Volumes, Worth Slightly More than David Plouffe’s Two-Year Campaign

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As Lisa is reporting, Condi just signed herself a $2.5 million deal for three books on her life and her tenure as Bush’s foreign policy flunky. She will write one book on her time in the Bush Administration, a memoir of her life, and a kids version of the memoir.

That’s great news for Condi, as others in the Bush Administration are having less success getting book deals. Consider Alberto Gonzales, who doesn’t yet have a publisher for his book, which purportedly sets the record straight on his role in the crimes of the Bush Administration. Laura Bush got a book deal–at a quarter of the price that Hillary got for her First Lady story. Karl Rove, who smartly got an early start on the bidding, had to settle for $1.5 million for his book deal; experts had thought he’d get $3 million. And Bush himself has been advised to wait, as the market for anything he has to say looks like the rest of the economy: non-existent and getting worse.

But the market for books is not all bad. Just by way of perspective, consider David Plouffe’s book deal for the story of managing Obama’s historic campaign. Plouffe got $1.5 to $2 million for his advance.

So in case you were wondering, the market now values Plouffe’s role in Obama’s two-year campaign to have the same value as Karl Rove’s entire life work, Laura Bush’s tenure as First Lady, (for the moment at least) George Bush’s two term Administration, and two out of Condi’s three-volume life.

I think the market’s invisible hand just slapped the Bush Administration upside their head.

Is Bush Getting the Military to Pay Laura for Her Native Plants?

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ft-hood-map.jpgThere’s plenty that’s stinky about this program where Texas A&M funnels money from the Pentagon to Bush’s Crawford neighbors to restore wildland to make up for the habitat the military is trashing in training programs.

The Pentagon has been funding Texas A&M University to pay landowners near a Texas military post to protect endangered bird species on their land under a secretive program designed to free the military to conduct training activities that would damage the birds’ habitats inside the post’s boundaries, documents show.

[snip]

Under the program, the Army accumulates "credits" that correspond roughly to the acreage that landowners agree to conserve for between 10 and 25 years. After banking sufficient credits, the military can use them to offset the habitat loss or harm that would stem from its activities. It must set aside 10 percent of the credits to foster the recovery of a target species. 

There’s the problem that you’re creating habitat for as little as 10 years (after which the habitat will be long gone at Ft. Hood). And there’s the problem that the habitat is not continuous contiguous with the land at Ft. Hood.picture-82.thumbnail.png

A biological evaluation issued by the Fish and Wildlife Service on Aug. 2, 2007, agreed with the Army that the project’s impact would not necessarily boost the bird’s numbers because the contracts with landowners were "not in perpetuity. . . . Thus, golden-cheeked warblers would receive short term benefits from the proposed action with no guarantee of future protection." 

[snip]

"You don’t go out 10 miles away and start planting trees. You’ve got to do it on adjacent territory," he said. "It needs to be guided by the science that pertains to the biology of the bird." 

But the most troubling part of this–which the WaPo barely alludes to–is that this really was a plan dreamt up by George Bush and his political ally Susan Combs, administered in secret through the Bush family pet university, Texas A&M, giving money secretly to people who are literally W’s neighbors in Crawford.

At Fort Hood, the program — which does not disclose the landowners’ identities, the amounts they receive or precisely where their properties are located — aims to provide ranchers with expertise and financial incentives to expand habitat for the endangered golden-cheeked warbler.

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