Category: Politics

How much more incompetent can this administration get. Every time I think we’ve hit bottom with the Bush administration’s lack of respect for the American people, they manage to find another bottom.

More than 66,000 of the victims still live in FEMA’s trailers, unable to return home. In a sickening twist to their woeful tale of neglect, it appears that their trailers have been poisoning them. FEMA, which knew of the problem for more than a year, ignored warnings from its own staff and avoided addressing it because it was worried about being sued.

A Congressional investigation has discovered that in March 2006, FEMA was made aware that trailers housing hurricane evacuees contained levels of formaldehyde that were up to 75 times the recommended safety threshold. Exposure to formaldehyde, a preservative used in plywood or particleboard, has been linked to vision and respiratory problems, allergies in children and cancer.

full article: FEMA Runs for Cover – New York Times

The belief in his convictions, and the lack of an executive office successor is allowing George Bush to really show his true stripes as his administration collapses around his ankles. Because the S-Chip bill expands government coverage for children instead of forcing poor families into un-affordable private health care (those with children already sick would be denied for pre-existing conditions anyway), he is going to veto it. This will force families on the low end of the earning ladder to drop health care for their children or make some really tough choices. Those families with children who are already sick will be forced way below the poverty line to afford the expensive medicines and procedures keeping their children alive. Or their children will just die so that George Bush can hand more profit to the insurance companies.

President Bush is threatening to veto any substantial increase in spending for a highly successful children’s health program on the bizarre theory that expanding it would be the “beginning salvo” in establishing a government-run health care system. His shortsighted ideological opposition would leave millions of children without health insurance at a time when medical costs are soaring.

The president’s ire was provoked by a bipartisan bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee last week that would expand the so-called State Children’s Health Insurance Program, a joint federal-state effort that, over the last decade, has substantially reduced the number of uninsured children in the country. The program, known as S-chip, seeks to cover children whose family income is too high to qualify for Medicaid but too low to afford costly private coverage. It is due to expire on Sept. 30 unless Congress reauthorizes it.

full article: Vetoing Children’s Health – New York Times

Much of US favors Bush impeachment: poll – Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Nearly half of the US public wants President George W. Bush to face impeachment, and even more favor that fate for Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a poll out Friday.

The survey by the American Research Group found that 45 percent support the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against Bush, with 46 percent opposed, and a 54-40 split in favor when it comes to Cheney.

This isn’t a new idea, but I started thinking about it after I heard a commentator on some political show mention that people wouldn’t know what was in some legislation until after it got passed. What about the idea that congress should post the text of a bill BEFORE it comes up to a vote. Once a bill has been typeset, it is pretty much simplicity itself for the congressional printing office to also put up a copy on-line for the American people to review it. I love this idea. It would give the chance for a million eyes to find the loopholes and pork. It is impossible for a small congressional staff to read one of these 7,000 page bills and really get all the nuances in the short time between when they get the bill on paper and when the congressperson has to vote. It would also help eliminate some of the stupid crap that gets passed into law because it would give the American people to call BS beforehand.

Downsize DC has even posted the draft test of the “Read the Bills Act” and is collecting signatures.

The firing of the US District attorneys has focused more attention on hiring practices across the justice department, and everything comes back to Monica Goodling, the 31 year old graduate of a law school founded by a televangelist that considers their main textbook to be the bible. She became the person in charge of hiring and firing in the justice deparment and she took it on to herself to make sure that only good republicans worked for the government. It didn’t matter if the position were political appointments or normal civil servant jobs. Intollerant of those who didn’t hold her views, she also took it upon herself to remove people she suspected were democrats. I’m delighted that she didn’t take the deal. I think she should serve jail time, along with Rove, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush.

Colleagues Cite Partisan Focus by Justice Official (nytimes)

Ms. Goodling would soon be quizzing applicants for civil service jobs at Justice Department headquarters with questions that several United States attorneys said were inappropriate, like who was their favorite president and Supreme Court justice. One department official said an applicant was even asked, “Have you ever cheated on your wife?”

Ms. Goodling also moved to block the hiring of prosecutors with résumés that suggested they might be Democrats, even though they were seeking posts that were supposed to be nonpartisan, two department officials said.

And she helped maintain lists of all the United States attorneys that graded their loyalty to the Bush administration, including work on past political campaigns, and noted if they were members of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.

I mean, c’mon when are going to do a real investigation here. Over and over, this administration shows that it has no regard for the public, only for it’s cronies.

On Spellings’ watch, the $6 billion federal initiative to improve literacy rates in disadvantaged schools appears to have served instead as a profit center for textbook authors and education consultants with ties to the Bush administration. Department officials and their consultants favored certain literacy texts and assessments over others for reasons other than pedagogical. One textbook author on leave from the University of Oregon while overseeing the federal National Center for Special Education Research testified before Congress that he earned $150,000 in annual royalties from an early-reading program. His co-author made a similar amount.

Seattle Times: Spelling’s Errors

The story is that the student loan administration had a loophole in their code that several lenders were taking advantage of, leading to payments of hundreds of millions of dollars by the government. A researcher in the department found this out and suggested that the director send a simple letter clarifying the rules. The Bush appointees shut him down and told him to work on other things. Eventually congress found out about it and put pressure, but still the “loyal Bushies” pushed back. Eventually, that simple letter was written and the government stopped throwing millions of dollars away.

Whistle-Blower on Student Aid Is Vindicated – New York Times

A 2004 report by the Government Accountability Office urged the department to rewrite its regulations to save billions of dollars in future loan subsidy payments. But Ms. Stroup, who had once worked for one of the lending companies that is now under investigation for the subsidies, argued in response that it would be simpler for Congress to clamp down with new legislation.

Nelnet was the nation’s most generous corporate donor to the National Republican Congressional Committee in 2006, and its top three executives were the largest individual donors to the committee as well, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics.

Nelnet was also well connected at the department. Don Bouc, Nelnet’s president through 2004 and president emeritus thereafter, sat on the department’s Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance from 2001 through Feb. 1 of this year, even while the department was auditing the company’s subsidies and negotiating the settlement. Mr. Bouc resigned from the committee 11 days after the department announced that it would not seek to recover the $278 million.