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�Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead�
-Lucille Ball
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
--Theodore Roosevelt, 1918
REGISTER TO VOTE
"The time is always right to do what is right"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The "seven social sins": Knowledge without character,
Science without humanity,
Wealth without work,
Commerce without morality,
Politics without principles,
Pleasure without conscience,
Worship without self-sacrifice."
--Gandhi
"We have not inherited the world from our forfathers -
We have borrowed it from our children."
--Kashmiri, proverb
Despite President Bush's pledge that homosexuals "ought to have the same rights" (1) as all other people, his Administration this week ruled that homosexuals can now be fired from the federal workforce because of their sexual orientation.
According to the Federal Times, the president's appointee at the Office of Special Counsel ruled that federal employees will now "have no recourse if they are fired or demoted simply for being gay." (2) While the Bush Administration says it is legally prohibited from firing a person for their conduct, they have the legal right to fire or demote someone based on their sexual orientation. To carry out the directive, the White House has begun removing information from government websites about sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace. (3)
Not only does the new directive contradict the president's own promise to treat homosexuals as equals under the law, but it also contradicts what the Administration told Congress. As noted in a bipartisan letter from four Senators to the Administration, "During the confirmation process [of the president's appointee], you assured us that you were committed to protecting federal employees against unlawful discrimination related to their sexual orientation." (4)
Sources:
1. Debates, 10/11/2000.
2. OSC to study whether bias law covers gays", Federal Times, 03/15/2004,
3. "Gay Rights Information Taken Off Site", Washington Post, 02/18/2004,
4. "Special Counsel Under Scrutiny", Washington Post, 02/23/2004,
Visit Misleader.org for more about Bush Administration distortion
~~~
Bush Administration Favoring Air Polluters Over National Parks
The Bush Administration is systematically disregarding the findings of National Park Service (NPS) scientists, imperiling the air quality of the nation's national parks. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) has documented a pattern of favoritism for energy interests by Bush Administration appointees, circumventing 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments meant to protect the national parks.
PEER reports three examples of Bush Administration appointees overturning NPS staff recommendations meant to preserve clean air in parks and wilderness areas:
� In December 2002, NPS scientists advised the State of Montana that emissions from a proposed coal-burning plant to be built in Roundup, 112 miles from Yellowstone National Park, would adversely affect the park's air quality and visibility. In January 2003, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Craig Manson withdrew the scientists' findings from the state, in effect allowing the plant to go forward. Manson and his deputy, Paul Hoffman, announced that the NPS scientists had erred in their findings. Neither Manson nor Hoffman have any scientific training.
� In February 2003, NPS scientists reported to the State of Kentucky that the proposed Thoroughbred coal-fired generating station would harm Mammoth Cave National Park, 50 miles away. Manson and Hoffman overruled the scientists' findings, and withdrew this determination last fall.
� Last month EPA announced it would allow the state of North Dakota to establish a different baseline for the air quality around Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The new, lower baseline will mean that emissions from two proposed coal-fired power plants are permissible under the Clean Air Act amendments. NPS scientists have long since determined that the park's air quality was already at the Clean Air Act's threshold for allowable pollution.
Further jeopardizing air quality protections for America's national parks, under the administration's proposed "Clear Skies" initiative, NPS scientists would be allowed to review new facilities only if they are within 35 miles of a park. Under this rule, neither the Montana nor Kentucky plant proposals would have been evaluated for possible harm to park air quality.[1]
"Roosevelt National Park is the thing that links these three seemingly isolated incidents," Chas Offutt of PEER told BushGreenwatch. "Bush Administration appointees to the National Park Service are consistently favoring politics over the recommendations of career employees. And employees now have a greater fear of retaliation from these appointees."
SOURCES:
[1] PEER Press Release, Mar. 16, 2004.
~~~
EPA Misleading Americans on Drinking Water Safety
Earlier this month, the EPA's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) accused officials in the agency of consistently misleading Americans about improvements in the quality of America's tap water. The charges are spelled out in a tellingly titled report: "EPA Claims to Meet Drinking Water Goals Despite Persistent Data Quality Shortcomings."
"It's just one more example of Bush officials using cooked-up numbers to try to prove what a great job they're doing," said Erik Olson, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "But the reality is we've got serious problems in our drinking water quality nationwide, and the EPA's negligence could be putting millions of Americans at risk."
Lead, arsenic, bacteria, pesticides, fecal matter, radioactive contaminants -- all are among the 90 pollutants that states are required to filter from drinking water to meet national standards (standards which, in the case of arsenic, the Bush Administration tried to weaken, before public outcry forced it to retreat).
The OIG report -- delivered by Kwai Chan, the EPA's assistant inspector general -- documented a pattern of false statements about drinking-water quality released by EPA to the media. Between 1999 and 2002, EPA publicly boasted that it met its goal of supplying safe tap water to 91 percent of U.S. residents -- up from 79 percent in 1993.[1]
Then, in a June, 2003 press release, the agency bumped up the purity estimate a notch higher: "In 2002, 94 percent of Americans were served by drinking water systems that meet our health-based standards -- an increase of 15 percent in the last decade."
So convincing were these claims that The New York Times published an editorial on the day the press release was issued: "Fully 94 percent of Americans are served by drinking water systems that meet federal health standards," it said.[2]
But the OIG report asserts that "due to missing data on violations of drinking water standards, the agency did not in fact meet its drinking water performance goals." The EPA's conclusions were based on "flawed and incomplete" information, said the OIG.
According to the agency's own data, 35 percent of known health standard violations nationwide have never even been entered into the EPA's compliance database. Of even greater concern, the agency's regional inspections of drinking water quality have plunged by more than half during the Bush Administration's three years in office -- from 488 in 2000 to 228 in 2003.
"All these numbers we're looking at are EPA's own," said NRDC's Olson. "It's not like they're debatable, or environmentalists are making them up."
"There's been a severe breakdown in the regulatory process," said Olson. "The gears have been stripped because EPA is not insisting that the states do their job of accurately monitoring and reporting their water quality."
Olson added that though the OIG report does not quantify precisely how exaggerated the EPA's estimates have been, water scientists within the agency have told him that in 2002, only about 81 percent of the jurisdictions monitored had safe drinking water -- 13 percent lower than what the agency reported.
TAKE ACTION
Tell Congress to protect your drinking water.
SOURCES:
[1] "EPA Claims to Meet Drinking Water Goals Despite Persistent Data Quality Shortcomings," OIG Report, Mar.5, 2004.
[2] "An Environmental Report Card," New York Times, Jun. 26, 2003.
~~~
Word of the Day for Wednesday March 24, 2004 perorate PUR-uh-rayt, intransitive verb: 1. To conclude or sum up a long discourse. 2. To speak or expound at length; to declaim.
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