Harry Reid: “Mr. Billboard”
As most readers know, I am disgusted with Harry Reid (D-AT&T) for so many reasons: he respects the holds of right-wing Republicans like Lindsey Graham and Tom Coburn, but does not respect the holds of senior Senators from his own party. He deliberately tried to push through legislation that would have expanded the adminsitration’s powers to spy on Americans, and given the phone companies that illegally abetted the spying retroactive immunity, ensuring that ordinary citizens would NEVER be able to sue. He’s given blank check after blank check for the war in Iraq (handing out another $70 billion, no strings attached, today). He’s a failure up and down.
And now it turns out that Harry Reid has been trying for the past three years to destroy the Highway Beautification Act, the legacy of Lady Bird Johnson. Do you enjoy the wildflowers on the median and shoulders of the highway? Thank Lady Bird.
Daily Kos denizens may not know that Harry Reid considers himself “Mr. Billboard.” He is the strongest advocate for the interests of the billboard lobby in the Congress. This is an industry, incidentally, dominated by three giant and hugely powerful companies: Clear Channel, CBS, and Lamar Advertising. Three times in the past year and a half he has tried to sneak language into war and emergency supplemental appropriations that would have undermined a key provision of the Highway Beautification Act (”Lady Bird’s Law”) dealing with the destruction of nonconforming billboards knocked over in storms. Three times he has been stopped, mostly due to the efforts of Scenic America and national public outcry.
Sweet guy, eh? I’d figure growing up in a lifeless desert like Searchlight Nevada would make you appreciate flowers more not less, but not our Harry Pussy. No, this is more his style:
The owner of Grologo apparently is a fellow named Richard A. Hall of Tustin, California. His political giving history is interesting and indicates he is most likely a conservative Republican from Orange County. But, not surprisingly, federal reports show that starting in December 2006, he started giving heavily to Harry Reid. Since that time, Mr. Hall has maxed out his contributions to Sen. Reid’s expected 2010 campaign and added $1,000 for Reid’s Searchlight Leadership Fund PAC, for a grand total of $5,600. Grologo finally found its champion.
We have information that Sen. Reid has reportedly snuck an amendment into the long-delayed technical corrections bill for SAFETEA-LU, the massive federal highway bill that passed over two years ago, that will give Grologo what it has spent a half-million dollars to get: access to the federal right-of-way for its “vegetative” billboards. All those laws saying they can’t do it? Irrelevant.
As far as we know, there is no significant support for this from either the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee or the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which have theoretical jurisdiction over this issue. No member of the public was informed, nor were stakeholders notified. No hearings were held, nor legislative language circulated. This is Harry Reid, “Mr. Billboard,” doing what he wants to do.
Although the language remains secret, our understanding is that a five-state pilot project will be authorized to, for the first time in U.S. highway history, turn over the public right-of-way to advertisers. In order to do this, several decades-old federal statutes and regulations will have to be waived. No one has been consulted, other than the company. No input has been sought from the public or state departments of transportation. It will just happen. Poof!
That’s Harry Pussy: friend of fascists and corporations, enemy of democracy and wildflowers.
I will give donations to anyone who primaries this worthless fucking piece of shit.
December 19th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Harry Pussy…a new Yankees hotel name?
January 7th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
[...] GOP’s bidding on FISA in return for campaign donations from Verizon and AT&T, working on behalf of the billboard industry to undermine Lady Bird Johnson’s Highway Beautification Ac…, we can add running defense for convicted felons, suspicious discussions with a [...]