Report Is Bleak for Whistle-Blowers (washingtonpost.com)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47997-2004Mar10.html?referrer=email
The No Fear Institute, a Washington-based organization that was formed to monitor treatment of workers after President Bush signed the No Fear Act of 2002, said the law has had little effect on the federal workplace because the administration has not enforced it.
Jobless Recovery: Still Jobless
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/031104E.shtml
Imagine if I told you that all the job growth in the country was explained by a rise in the number of people on government payrolls—and that there had been no net increase in employment in the private sector.
You might assume that those socialist Democrats were back in power and at it again, emptying the public till and expanding their patronage mills.
But that would be wrong. The above is a description of the employment figures released last week after 38 months of a Republican administration insisting that large tax cuts for the wealthy would make the private sector hum and put everybody back to work.
It hasn’t happened. Last month, according the Bureau of Labor Statistics, payrolls expanded by only 21,000—far less than most of the experts expected. If it hadn’t been for public employment, there would have been no net job creation at all.
Washington didn’t add those jobs. Federal employment was down by 3,000, according to BLS. Most of the government job growth came from state government, said Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. The states alone added 20,000 jobs, largely in education.
‘Special’ Pentagon Unit Skirted CIA on Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/031104B.shtml
The disclosure suggests that the controversial Pentagon office played a greater role than previously understood in shaping the administration’s views on Iraq’s alleged ties to the terrorist network behind the Sept. 11 attacks, and bypassed usual channels to make a case that conflicted with the conclusions of CIA analysts.
Bush Puts Giant Sequoias on the Chopping Block
http://www.bushgreenwatch.org/mt_archives/000064.php
Under the guise of forest fire prevention, the Bush Administration’s Forest Service has proposed logging in California’s Sequoia National Monument, home to some of the world’s tallest and oldest trees, reaching ages of 3,200 years or more. Also at risk are the Pacific fisher, the California spotted owl, and many other threatened species dependent on ancient forest habitat.
Bush Swaps Science For Politics on Bioethics Panel
http://www.bushgreenwatch.org/mt_archives/000065.php
Bush last week added fuel to the argument that he is willing to devalue science in favor of politics by dumping two highly respected members of a presidential bioethics advisory council and replacing them with political appointees whose opinions are clearly aligned with those of his Administration.
Bush Strips More Protections From Mountain Top Mining Rules
http://www.bushgreenwatch.org/mt_archives/000066.php
A proposed reversal in federal rules that protect mountain streams can soon lead to the streams’ destruction. The proposal is the latest in a series of actions by the Bush Administration to weaken protections against the devastation caused by mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia.
The rule change follows the administration’s gutting of an environmental impact statement (EIS) on mountaintop mining; the repeal of a 25-year-old prohibition against dumping waste in streams; and a proposal by the Office of Surface Mining to weaken oversight of state mining programs.
Bush Administration Clearing Path for Clearcuts
http://www.bushgreenwatch.org/mt_archives/000067.php
The Administration released a report early this year recommending the end of the “Survey and Manage” program, an important check on logging in fragile ancient forests.
Bush Sleepovers List
“Unknown Soldier” Speaks Out To Bring Troops Home
This is an interview with a soldier back from Iraq that is well worth reading. Here’s just one exerpt:
What did you think about President Bush�s Thanksgiving visit to Iraq?
I was there when President Bush came to the [Baghdad] airport. The day before, you had to fill out a questionnaire and answer questions, that would determine whether they would allow you in the room with the President.
What was on the questionnaire?
�Do you support the president?�
Really!
Yes.
Members of the military were asked whether they support the president politically?
Yes. And if the answer was not a gung-ho, A-1, 100 percent yes, then you were not allowed into the cafeteria. You were not allowed to eat the Thanksgiving meal that day. You had an MRE.
What�s an MRE?
Meals ready to eat. We also call them �meals refused by Ethiopians.�
About this questionnaire, it raises a serious question about whether military personnel, or civil servants for that matter, should ever be asked questions by their supervisors about their political beliefs. It also raises the whole question of freedom of speech. In particular, the circumstances under which members of the military have freedom of speech.
There is none.
Is a soldier free, for example, to speak to the media if it is in support of the president and his policies, but not free to do so if in opposition or if raising uncomfortable questions?
If you are spouting good things about the president, you are allowed to speak. If you are saying anything negative, you are not allowed to speak.
Is it your sense that official visitors, such as Administration figures, members of Congress, and the like, are shown what�s really happening in Iraq? Or are they shown a sanitized version of what�s happening?
It�s cleaned up before they get there. It�s really cleaned up before they get there. We are not going to take them on local runs in the local village.
Because?
Because they may end up dead. And you know how that would look back in the States, to have a member of Congress or a Senator killed in Iraq.
THE ART OF THE WELL-PLACED ELLIPSIS
http://www.tnr.com/blog/campaignjournal?pid=1429
From a Bush campaign press release:
“In My First Hundred Days In The White House, I Will Roll Back George Bush’s Tax Cut...” (Sen. John Kerry, Remarks In Manchester, N.H., 12/27/03)
From Kerry’s actual remarks:
In my first hundred days in the White House, I will roll back George Bush’s tax cut for the wealthiest so that we can invest in education and health care.
Why Bush Supports Outsourcing
http://www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/Read.asp?fn=df03102004.html
On the eve of his trip to Ohio to “focus on jobs,” President Bush claimed yesterday that “we’re creating jobs - good, high-paying jobs for the American citizen.” His comments come despite the country having lost more than 2 million manufacturing jobs since he was elected. In Ohio, which lost 270,000 manufacturing jobs alone, the economic crisis has raised questions about why the president last month strongly endorsed the outsourcing of U.S. jobs to cheap overseas labor markets. A look at the president’s donors offers an answer.
CELL PHONE TOWER AT OLD FAITHFUL IS AN EYESORE
http://www.peer.org/press/437.html
In violation of the law and without required public notice, the National Park Service has allowed the construction of an 80-foot cell phone tower looming over Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park
Salon.com | The new Pentagon papers
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/03/10/osp/
I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.
While this commandeering of a narrow segment of both intelligence production and American foreign policy matched closely with the well-published desires of the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, many of us in the Pentagon, conservatives and liberals alike, felt that this agenda, whatever its flaws or merits, had never been openly presented to the American people. Instead, the public story line was a fear-peddling and confusing set of messages, designed to take Congress and the country into a war of executive choice, a war based on false pretenses…
Bush Exploits Photo of Dead Bodies
http://www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/read.asp?fn=df03052004.html
As the nation headed for war last year, President Bush “clamped down” on the media, extending and expanding a controversial policy that banned reporters from photographing flag-draped caskets of soldiers killed in combat. The White House said the policy was enforced to “spare the feelings of military families.” Yet, in the very first television advertisement of his 2004 campaign, the president has blanketed the nation’s airwaves with an image of “firefighters carrying a flag-draped body” from the 9/11 wreckage at Ground Zero.
Report Finds Reverse Environmental Justice By Bush EPA
http://www.bushgreenwatch.org/mt_archives/000070.php
...the report discloses that the Bush Administration reinterpreted the order two years ago—without authority to do so—to shift emphasis away from the very populations the order was written to protect. The administration then defended its action by stating that it would provide environmental justice to “everyone.”
The IG’s report dismissed this defense as misleading.