Thread: Ambushed By Bush

Okay I already know that I am going to receive hell for the following message. However, next time I promise I will put up an interesting article about Kerry as well. This was sent by an acquaintance and asked me to pass it on (however I am not saying that all facts are false or true because I seriously don’t know). It does not include how I feel or see Bush- AGAIN I am just putting it up because someone elese asked me to pass it on. I already have explained that I am not sure about who should be our next president. So be nice and no name calling because the following does not represent how I feel or what I believe in.
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AMBUSHED BY BUSH

Ordinary people have not been taken into consideration by the media most of the time, not particularly since big corporations have played a big and main influence in American elections. It is a well known fact that Governments world wide and nowadays, no longer work for most people, they work for big corporations because they need to fulfill the needs of their big campaign donors. In the United States, it works less and less for middle class citizens. What most of the time does not make our evening news is how people not only are losing their pensions, health insurance, jobs. Hence also their life savings when unemployment knocks on their door. But most importantly they are getting sick, being hurt and even dying. It is a harsh statement, however a true one. People’s interests come in second place, right after the needs and objectives of big corporations.

What is interesting is how we see and hear from Texans how they feel about their former Governor and now President of the Nation. He left them tax breaks for the rich that make it impossible for government to provide a decent education or basic services for working people, bills written by energy lobbyists working the cash and carry model of government perfected in Texas and the elimination of the most basic workplace protections. Those who knew the president when he was governor of low tax, low service, and no regulation state are seriously not amazed by what he’s done in Washington. The worst public policy created in Texas has gone nation wide. Bush in 1999 said in his State of the State address; that is when he was still governor of Texas: “We can show Washington how to handle a budget surplus”. Now I am not an economist or an expert on these types of issues. All we hear since Bush took office is how we are struggling with a national deficit, and is probably not going away anytime soon.

Here are some of the reasons why George W. Bush should not be reelected, according to a Pulitzer Prize nominated journalist. He explains and looks at how Bush’s policies have affected the lives of ordinary Americans- here are some of the disturbing examples of the Bush administration’s public policy colliding with the public.-

•Ed Swartz: He is suing his government for a coal-bed methane, locally called CBM. Since 1999, water has been flowing through Swartz ranch. The rancher calls that water “Killer Water”. It’s so high in saline content that when it interacts with soils, it kills plant life. He went to court a couple of years earlier to defend his water and property rights, he prevailed. However that was just a temporary victory. The truth is that lately Corporations are not only controlling the decisions installed nation wide but obviously they also control local governments. Local governments are being controlled by industries which affect our livelihoods and the environment of entire regions. We ask: Nation wide who sanctions these types of violations to property rights but most importantly, environment hazards produced or provoked by big corporations? The answer obviously varies; we have dozen of administrative offices who deal with all these sort of situations. During Bill Clinton’s presidency, even though they (Clinton and Gore) were not exactly environmentalists “extremists”, conservationists and environmentalists were involved and played an important role at the EPA and Department of Interior. However, the scenario changed after Bush-Cheney cabinet came to the White House. Swartz had to plead his case to a man who had worked as a lobbyist for the very company Swartz claims is destroying grazing along Wildcat creek.- Have any of then heard the term of “ Conflict of interests”?

To top that off, at the Bush-Cheney Interior Department, most members have a history of having worked for the interests of big corporations that have little respect for environment conservation and protection regulations. When Dick Cheney was still CEO of Halliburton, its oil service division was already tapping into new revenue stream in Wyoming’s methane beds. Finally, after the Senate in 2002 blocked Bush and Cheney’s plan to drill in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve in the first ANWR showdown, people representing corporations’ objectives, pushed the Department of Interior into every energy reserve in the West.


•Be aware of what you eat: During Clinton’s second term, a slow process began to write rules to require USDA testing in all plants that process ready to eat deli meats. Clinton had actually turned the USDA and its Food Safety Inspection office into a real public health agency. Particularly over one dangerous bacteria called “Listeria” which at worst terms can kill people. Listeria regulations were ready to be printed in the Federal Registry, when George W. Bush moved to the White House in January 2001. Listeria regulations were immediately put on hold by Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew Card. Clinton’s USDA rules were written to catch the very food-borne bacterium that led people such as Dr. Frank Niemtzow to death. Unfortunately, there were other six cases that had the same fate and other forty six that were sickened; even miscarriages can be provoked by such bacteria. Officially it has been reported that three women had suffered miscarriages due to that same bacteria. It did not have to happen. Idealistically, governments are supposed to look out for the well being of their citizens and they should start by mentioning the risks that we may face under any circumstance. One statement of fact is that Republicans win their elections in “red states”, which are located in the heartland of the country. - That is where cattle and chicken are produced. Republicans use the USDA to pay off their contributors from the red states; therefore the current Government can not affect their donors (in other words the owners of the producing companies) by implementing food safety policy and regulations. Neither Bush, his chief of staff nor the Secretary of Agriculture can plead ignorance.

•Marie Flickinger: I have not had the misfortune to live near a toxic sludge. However that is not the case for some Americans, there have and still exist. Now a lot of people may argue that we just can’t make toxic waste disappear with magic. What should on the other hand be brought to our attention much more than it has been by the media, what should concern us, is that some may be near our schools, hospitals, etc. That was precisely Marie’s case. She had studied the cleanup plan and was desperately worried about the threat that it represented to the elementary school, the hospital and the junior college campus nearby. Marie also researched the birth defects, the miscarriages and the spontaneous abortions that seemed like an epidemic in the residential subdivision near Brio. The EPA was ready to incinerate 245,000 tons of toxic sludge by some corporate citizens in the soil of a 58-acre site (20 miles south of downtown Houston). The agency bluntly did not perform a proper site characterization. Marie Flickinger is just not some crazy housewife with nothing else to do than to find problems that an agency may embark on. As a matter of fact she is a publisher of a community weekly newspaper. Through her research she found out that the EPA did not know what was in the soil and sludge they were preparing to burn. They have never tested it for metals; most importantly they had never looked carefully at the birth defects and miscarriages in the neighborhoods near the abandoned refinery. According to the EPA, the site was used for “by product recycling, copper catalyst regeneration and petrochemical recovery”. In other words, anything that was recyclable, reusable was extracted. Moreover what should shock us all is that five thousand families lived very close to the site they left behind. EPA did everything but to find the right solution. Their plan of digging up a hole and burning it, was going to become a bigger problem and hazard than leaving all in the ground. In simple terms-“The EPA was getting ready to burn toxic material in a residential neighborhood but didn’t even know what they were burning,” Marie stated.

When no one else cared or even listened, one man did. Bob Martin was the National Ombudsman of the EPA. The office of the National Ombudsman was established and empowered by Congress to be an independent “watchdog” over the EPA. He was hired at the end of the presidency of George H.W. Bush. He managed to stop the incineration of toxic waste, actually just 10 days before it was supposed to occur. They were about to do it in the middle of a community of 70,000 people. Martin issued his report and thanks to him, it was prevented. Now the Brio is sealed with a fifty-foot deep concrete wall and all other necessary precautions. But this is not the happy ending.

When George W. Bush came into power and right after his office began to take shape, Christine Todd Whitman was appointed by our president to be our EPA administrator. After just eleven months, she ordered the ombudsman’s office to transfer into the agency, where it was obviously going to be under the control of the inspector general. Martin took her to court and for a while prevented the closing of the independent ombudsman’s office. However the court’s decision was overturned by April 2002, under the pretext that Martin had to exhaust all the administrative remedies before going to a Federal Court. Whitman took the opportunity of seizing 140 file boxes from Martin’s office containing information about cases he was working on. She did so while our National Ombudsman was out of town. In addition to taking those case files, agents from the federal inspector general’s office removed all computers and telephones; the locks on the office door were also changed by the agents.

EPA under the new administrator later ordered Martin to report to work in the inspector general’s office. He could have kept his salary of 118,000 but chose to resign. Obviously he resigned for the right reasons; the office could not work and keep on defending the rights of citizens if it lost independence from government to operate. If he had decided to work at the inspector general’s office, he would have been working for the very agency he was supposed to watch. - Again whatever happened to “Conflict of Interests”?

Additionally, what also does not make it on our religious evening news is that destroying the EPA’s Ombudsman was only one step that the Bush’s administration took- don’t want to say “Republicans” because it would not be fair to generalize. We had once a 3.8 billion trust, built since 1980 with a special tax on chemical companies. By 2003 needless to say under which administration, it was bottomed to 28 million. That is not even enough to clean up one of the hundreds of abandoned sites in the country. Superfund cleanups are now ironically being paid by general revenue. In other words, it is paid by regular citizens that have nothing to do with the production of toxic waste. We don't create the mess, the chemical and oil companies do. The Government once again took the burden from the shoulders of their corporate friends and donors, while consenting to leave average Americans deal with more taxes and environment hazards.

I read this article and think it is worth sharing. It is only meant to make us think a little bit more about who should become our next President. Last but not least, I think that in the couple of months we have left before our decisive day- November 2nd, we should study and find out as much as we can from all the choices we have. If anyone has anything to say in favor of the Bush’s administration, please do so and share it. What we need precisely right now is to be informed as much as we can.