Policy FUBAR

EPA Invokes Executive Privilege In Denying Emissions Waiver In California

2008-01-19T11:44:00.000-08:00

Un-freeking-believable.

An AP newswire article, via SFGate.com, reports that:

Invoking executive privilege, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency refused to provide lawmakers Friday with a full explanation of why it rejected California's greenhouse gas regulations.

The EPA informed Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., that many of the documents she had requested contained internal deliberations or attorney-client communications that would not be shared with Congress.

"EPA is concerned about the chilling effect that would occur if agency employees believed their frank and honest opinions and analysis expressed as part of assessing California's waiver request were to be disclosed in a broad setting," EPA Associate Administrator Christopher Bliley wrote.

More than a week after a deadline set by Boxer, the agency gave the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which she chairs, a box of papers with large portions of the relevant documents deleted, Boxer said. The documents omitted key details, including a presentation that, according to Senate aides, predicted EPA would lose a lawsuit if it was taken to court for denying California's waiver.

The refusal to provide a full explanation is the latest twist in a congressional investigation into why the EPA denied California permission to impose what would have been the country's toughest greenhouse gas standards on cars, trucks and sport utility vehicles.

More here.

France Best, U.S. Worst in Preventable Death Ranking

2008-01-07T22:05:00.000-08:00

Will Dunham writes for Reuters AlertNet:

France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations, researchers said on Tuesday.

If the U.S. health care system performed as well as those of those top three countries, there would be 101,000 fewer deaths in the United States per year, according to researchers writing in the journal Health Affairs.

Researchers Ellen Nolte and Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine tracked deaths that they deemed could have been prevented by access to timely and effective health care, and ranked nations on how they did.

They called such deaths an important way to gauge the performance of a country's health care system.

More here.

How to Erode and Destroy Democracy

2008-01-02T13:20:00.000-08:00

Via Truthout.org, commentary by Rob Kall.

Tips to fascists, dictators, corporatists, militarists, imperialists, neocons, right-wingers, theocrats, theofascists and terrorists.

1. Kill the strongest opposition candidate and then pretend that elections should go on as normal, without allowing the opposition party to reorganize. Examples:

Benazir Bhutto: strategy - hamstring security abilities to the extent that the candidate actually writes a letter accusing the government leadership of intentional sabotage of security.

Paul Wellstone: rush through a replacement candidate and politicize the funeral. Get the mainstream media "partners" to portray the funeral as despicably political to eliminate sympathy for the new candidate. (Expect something like this with the candidate who replaces Bhutto.

2. Steal elections using e-voting with nonpublic software code, no paper ballot records, purges from lists of eligible voters, phone-bank jamming and fraudulent registration drives, where you throw away the registrations of opposition party registrants. Multiple examples in US - Florida and Ohio, particularly. Essential: this only works with weak, cowardly candidates who fail to aggressively work to prevent these actions and then fail to challenge questionable outcomes. This has been relatively easy, since even when candidates do get tough in response to rigged elections, there are plenty of weak, compromised legislators who will enable the election theft. Clint Curtis's campaign is a good example. The Dems in Congress allowed the theft.

3. Erode constitutional rights. Violate laws and treaties. Make excuses that there are imminent threats to national security, or that the treaties will hurt the nation's economy. Take the most horrific of these and get the media to boost hysteria and fear, then get the most fascist members of the legislature to push through laws retroactively making violations of the law legal. The majority of sold-out legislators will work with your lobbyists, avoid your media mockery and pass the legislation or approve appointees who allow or refuse to not condemn the assaults upon the Constitution and international law. Example - Mukasey approval, FISA approval, continuation of Iraq war (started on lies).

4. Gradually destroy the economy. Engage in "Shock Doctrine" disaster capitalism, so the nation's citizens are more worried about survival than maintaining democracy. Naomi Klein has documented how fascist neocon Milton Friedman economists have used this tried and true approach to destruction of democracy in dozen of nations - usually with the help of the USA's CIA. See Naomi Klein's book, "Shock Doctrine," for detailed examples.

5. Corporatize the nation. Maximize laws that give corporations human rights as persons. Allow corporations to pollute the election process, so their money is the primary factor in deterring the ability of candidates to reach voters, as is the law and policy in the US. Have legislators you own create bogus, chimera laws that look like and call themselves election reform, that are really so full of loopholes that they actually improve the power of corporations while taking away the power of citizens. See US policy for excellent examples.

6. Deregulate the media so a handful of corporate owners control most of the message. Then filter the news so viewers/readers/listeners are turned off to paying attention. Do this by using the same footage over and over again, and numb the viewers' minds with focus on coverage of morally impaired and stupid celebrities, tabloid news such as weird surgeries, kidnappings, horrific mass murders, strange diseases, detachment of Siamese twins.... And when you do cover real news, mock the most serious defenders of democracy. Attempt to embarrass them, to get viewers and readers to think of them as fools and kooks. Especially, use this mockery approach to sabotage and attack any candidates not "with the program" who are surging in polls.

7. Infiltrate alternative media. Hijack comment threads with negative, cynical remarks, or distract commenters from staying on focus. Provoke incivility among regular readers of pro-democracy media.

8. Widen class differences. Keep as many people as possible hungry, without health care, worried about where they will get the money to pay for housing, clothing, education, food and medicine.

9. Take advantage of natural disasters to weaken democratic factors. Allow floods, hurricanes and fires to "cleanse" unwanted voters in selected regions. Replace them with high-end real estate and corporate assets. Use the disasters as opportunities to spend taxpayer money to reward political allies.

10. Pretend that everything you do is the patriotic support of Democracy, even if it is directly opposed to democracy. Attack the pro-democracy party and organizations as being communist, socialist, fringe, kook, even dangerous to democracy. Depend upon anti-democracy mainstream media allies to help pound this message so the fools produced by the dumbed-down, "most children left behind" educational system buy these messages. Use talk radio to nail this down. See US education laws and policies for examples. This is already working quite effectively in the US as low international scores indicate.

11. Allow candidates to run repeatedly, without term limits. Eventually, candidates who do not toe the anti-democracy line in all parties will burn out or run out of funding. That will leave, even in the supposed liberal parties, reliable legislators who will keep the anti-democracy program going. Eventually, they will get themselves into key leadership positions, either at the top of the party or just below the top. Consider Chuck Schumer, Stenny Hoyer and Rahm Emanuel as excellent examples.

12. Build fear into the culture. Say you are fighting terrorism, but engage in international policies that foment and encourage terrorism, helping terrorists to massively expand recruitment and even training of operatives. See Iraq for Islamic terrorists. See the US for anti-abortion Christian terrorists.

More here.

Open Your Eyes, America. All of this is happening right here, right now. Wise up.

See also: Fascism anyone?

- ferg

Technorati Foolishness

2008-01-01T21:55:00.001-08:00

Technorati Profile

Obstruction of Justice: Stonewalled by the CIA

2008-01-01T21:51:00.000-08:00

Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton served as chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the 9/11 commission.

In a New York Times Editorial:

More than five years ago, Congress and President Bush created the 9/11 commission. The goal was to provide the American people with the fullest possible account of the “facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001” — and to offer recommendations to prevent future attacks. Soon after its creation, the president’s chief of staff directed all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the commission.

The commission’s mandate was sweeping and it explicitly included the intelligence agencies. But the recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.

More here.

First of Firsts...

2007-08-15T20:28:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about doing this for a while, so I guess now I take the plunge.

While I normally follow the tech sector and security issues, the issue of POLICY is really getting under my skin -- therefore, the creation of this blog.

POLICY always screws you, the user.

Now, stupidity and short-sightedness will be called out as the bullshit that it is.

I'll need your help, of course.

So please leave comments, e-mail, etc.

Let's hope this journey will be a fruitful one, in the face of fruitlessness.

Cheers,

- ferg