The Bush administration’s holiday gift to the nation, besides more Americans dying for his lies is a disastrous environmental record and most Americans aren’t joyous about it, Americans Chide Bush’s Environmental Record
Adults in the United States are dissatisfied with the way their president has dealt with environmental issues, according to a poll by Rasmussen Reports. 67 per cent of respondents rate George W. Bush’s handling of this topic as fair or poor.
From the way back machine December 19, 2003, Holiday Tradition of Stealth Environmental Announcements
This holiday season, the Administration is adhering to its tradition of waiting until odd hours — when the press and public are preoccupied with other things — to announce controversial environmental decisions.
The year’s holiday announcements kicked off last month, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service chose the day after Thanksgiving to announce its “incidental take rule” allowing for the killing of polar bears and Pacific walrus by oil companies drilling on the North Slope of Alaska.
[ ]…The 2002 announcements included the release — on New Year’s Eve — of a controversial rule allowing tuna caught by fishermen encircling dolphins to qualify for the “dolphin-safe” label. Revisions to the Clean Air Act to allow power plants and refineries to expand without having to install anti-pollution equipment were also announced on New Year’s Eve. On Thanksgiving eve came the announcement that logging would be allowed in national forests with less environmental oversight.
In 2001, the Army Corps of Engineers released its Everglades restoration plan — criticized by Everglades advocates as inadequate — on the Friday after Christmas.
It is something of a surprise that the nation even learned about these dead of night decisions considering how hard the Bushies try to control and manipulate what the public knows, White House Seeks to Control What Public Learns About Health, Environmental Emergencies
How and what Americans are told about public health emergencies would be controlled by the White House, not by the agencies with the medical or scientific expertise to handle these crises, under a new plan proposed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
The proposal would strip authority from federal health, safety and environmental agencies and give the White House final say over how the public is told about such emergencies as nuclear power plant accidents, outbreaks of mad cow disease or drugs that are found to be harmful.
The Busheviks are certainly not the first to try and control the press, suppress dissent, and shape the national narrative to one that showed dear leader as a benevolent figure despite all evidence to the contrary, Merrily, we control along...
The Soviet government after 1917 began dictating all content of the popular media, telling the people, in effect, what they should be curious about and what they needed to know. Adds Brooks, “The Soviet press would report a flood in Japan, but not in Russia.”
To an extent, says Brooks, in the first years of the Communist government the press was a means for the elite to talk amongst themselves, with limited dialogue on how the state should advance the socialist revolution. And it made some effort to convince the public. But under Stalin’s dictates, any semblance of dialogue disappeared as the press and all other forms of popular culture became instruments for celebrating the state’s accomplishments and transmitting orders from the government. Newspapers became filled with articles congratulating the state or the Communist Party for its wisdom and success, accounts of a robust economy (whether it was actually robust or not), stigmatizing portraits of the state’s enemies, and unending praise of Stalin.
Nonprofit Connects Murtha, Lobbyists
“Everyone’s trying to make this a political thing, and it makes me very mad,” Scialabba said last week in a brief interview, defending the collaborations. “Would you rather have tax dollars spent on some [disabled] guy sitting at home? We’re not looking for handouts, damn it.”
But to some watchdogs, including Taxpayers for Common Sense, Democracy 21 and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, PAID looks a lot like the cozy nexus between lawmakers, lobbyists and business interests that Democrats railed against in the midterm campaigns.
Even if there is no hard core wrong doing by Murtha there are appearances and in politics appearances matter. This sounds like the sort of wink and nod arrangements that has been going on since reconstruction and doesn’t seem to encompass the kind of quid prop quo that we had with Republican wheeler dealer Jack Abrams and Rep. Randall “Duke” Cunningham(R-CA). Democrats need to step up to the plate and change the status quo. Every little revelation like this blows into a drift that piles up over time.
“It sounds like DeLay Inc.,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the Democratic-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, referring to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), who set up his own charities that became the focus of attention by businesses and lobbyists seeking to curry favor with him.
But Murtha has his defenders. “Jack Murtha is supportive of everything you can think of around here, from roads and sewers to defense contractors,” said Bill Kuchera, chief executive of Kuchera Industries of Windber, Pa., and a PAID director. “But without Jack Murtha, there’d still be a Kuchera. We don’t lean on Jack Murtha at all.”
Murtha doesn’t yield anything like the iron fisted power that Tom Delay did; who coincidentally is being reincarnated as a possible lobbyist, Conservatives may resign from board if DeLay hired as lobbyist.
Republican want to privatize everything. Privatization and its brother Mr. Outsourcing are supposed to be the magic bullet that saves American taxpayers. Like all magic bullets this one is a fairy tale too, Running Government Like A Business
In one instance, Interior officials bought armor to reinforce Army vehicles from a software maker. In another, Interior bought furniture for Defense from a company that apparently had not previously been in the furniture business. One contract worth $100 million, to lease office space for a top-secret intelligence unit in Northern Virginia, was awarded without competition. Defense auditors said that deal cost taxpayers millions more than necessary, and they have referred the matter for possible criminal investigation.
Some people ain’t no damn good
You can’t trust ’em
You can’t love em
No good deed goes unpunished
from Crumblin‘ Down, lyrics by John Mellencamp
The Long Goodbye 