Category: government

Our government in action, for good, and mostly for worse

Regulator Plans to Bar Big Severance

swanksalot0 comment

In my best Nelson Muntz voice: ha ha.

Benjamins

The regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac said Sunday that it won’t allow the companies to make “golden parachute” severance payments to the mortgage companies’ ousted chief executive officers.

In a statement, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said such payments wouldn’t be made to Daniel Mudd and Richard Syron, despite provisions in their contracts. Mr. Mudd served as chief executive of Fannie and Mr. Syron was chairman and CEO of Freddie until last weekend, when the regulator seized control of the companies, saying they were in danger of running out of capital.

News reports that the two executives stood to receive millions of dollars in severance payments under their contracts triggered public protests from numerous politicians and inspired political cartoons in newspapers.

The FHFA cited “applicable statute and regulation” for its decision. The regulator has taken management control of the two companies under a legal process known as “conservatorship,” which could last for years while Fannie and Freddie are restored to financial health. The U.S. Treasury has pledged to provide as much capital as the companies need to continue in their role as the main suppliers of funding for home mortgages.

[From Regulator Plans to Bar Big Severance – WSJ.com]

Really though, I have little sympathy for overly-paid executives who run companies into the ground, and then get massive payouts.

Don't Outlive Your Money

Canadian Bureacratic nonsense

Seth Anderson2 Comments

I want a copy of my “long form” Canadian birth certificate (I was born in Toronto, Ontario), but in order to receive this document, I have to jump through several bureaucratic hoops. Including this one:

If you are applying for a birth certificate for an individual nine years of age or older, guarantor information is required.

A guarantor is someone who has known you (the applicant) personally for at least 2 years during your life, is a Canadian citizen, and is currently serving in or a practicing member in good standing of one of the professions listed below.

The role of the guarantor is to certify that information provided on a birth certificate application is as complete and accurate as possible. If required, a qualified guarantor must also be available to verify the information with the Office of the Registrar General.

[From Do I have a valid guarantor for my birth certificate?-School & Work – Gateway for Individuals – Government of Ontario (Canada)]

Parliament Buildings in Victoria

From my perspective, this list is very socio-economic class bigoted. While the list of “acceptable” occupations is broad, I don’t understand why only professional class individuals are allowed to “vouch” for me. If you are a carpenter, or a graphic designer, your word is worth shite to the Ontario government. I assume these additional stipulations were added as part of the United States government’s export of Terrorism Theatre, coming to a town hall near you!

These are the professions who are deemed acceptable to the Canadian (Ontario) government:

  • Chief of a band recognized under the Indian Act (Canada)
  • Chiropractor
  • Dentist
  • First Nations police officer
  • Judge
  • Justice of the Peace
  • Lawyer
  • Mayor
  • Member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario (MPP)
  • Midwife
  • Minister of religion authorized under provincial law to perform marriages
  • Municipal clerk or treasurer (a member of the Association of Municipal Managers, Clerks and Treasurers of Ontario)
  • Notary public
  • Nurse
  • Optometrist
  • Pharmacist
  • Physician
  • Police officer (Municipal, Provincial, RCMP)
  • Principal or Vice-Principal (primary or secondary school)
  • Professional accountant
  • Professional engineer
  • Psychologist
  • Senior administrator (community college or in a CEGEP)
  • Senior administrator or professor in a university
  • Signing officer of a bank, caisse d’économie, caisse populaire, credit union or trust company.
  • Social worker or social service worker
  • Surgeon
  • Teacher in a primary or secondary school
  • Veterinarian

So what if I don’t know a doctor, lawyer or Indian chief?

More importantly, are any of you members of these preferred occupations?

Terrorism Theater Database Boondoggle

Seth Anderson0 comment

I feel so much safer knowing that such incompetents are in charge of national security. I bet an open-source MySQL database or similar would run rings around the current implementation, costing a fraction of budget. Of course, results don’t necessarily matter to defense contractors, only long term contracts.

The government’s main terrorist-watch-list system is hobbled by technology challenges, and the $500 million program designed to upgrade it is on the verge of collapse, according to a preliminary congressional investigation.

The database, which includes an estimated 400,000 people and as many as 1 million names, has been criticized for flagging ordinary Americans. Now, the congressional report finds that the system has problems identifying true potential terrorists, as well.

Among the flaws in the database, which was quickly built by Lockheed Martin Corp. in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is its inability to do key-word searches. Instead, an analyst needs to rely on an indexing system to query the database

…

When tested, the new system failed to find matches for terrorist-suspect names that were spelled slightly different from the name entered into the system, a common challenge when translating names from Arabic to English. It also could not perform basic searches of multiple words connected with terms such as “and” and “or.”

Because the format of the data in the current database is “complex, undocumented, and brittle,” some significant data will be lost when the system is replaced by Railhead, according to the congressional report. For example, scraps of information such as phone and credit-card numbers found when law-enforcement and intelligence officials empty a suspect’s pocket, often called “pocket litter,” will not be moved to the new system.

Railhead was supposed to be completed by year’s end but has been delayed. Nearly half of the 72 so-called “action items” for the program were delayed as of June, congressional investigators found.

[From Flaws Found In Watch List For Terrorists – WSJ.com]

More info here (Miller letter to Inspector General Maquire Regarding Technical Flaws in Terrorist Watch List), here (11 page PDF from the Subcommittee Staff, Investigations and Oversight Committee on Science and Technology), Railhead System Concept Definition (28 page PDF) and 79 page PDF

TSA grounds airplanes at O’Hare

Seth Anderson1 Comment

A Transportation Security Administration inspector grounded a plane the old-fashioned way: by damaging the plane itself. Yikes. Luckily airline mechanics noticed, avoiding a possible crash.

A bumbling inspector with the Transportation Safety Administration apparently has some explaining to do, after nine American Eagle regional jets were grounded at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Tuesday.

Citing sources within the aviation industry, ABC News reports an overzealous TSA employee attempted to gain access to the parked aircraft by climbing up the fuselage… reportedly using the Total Air Temperature (TAT) probes mounted to the planes’ noses as handholds.

“The brilliant employees used an instrument located just below the cockpit window that is critical to the operation of the onboard computers,” one pilot wrote on an American Eagle internet forum. “They decided this instrument, the TAT probe, would be adequate to use as a ladder.” Officials with American Eagle confirmed to ANN the problem was discovered by maintenance personnel, who inspected the planes Tuesday morning… and questioned why the TAT probes all gave similar error indications.

One Eagle pilot says had the pilots not been so attentive, the damaged probes could have caused problems inflight. TSA agents “are now doing things to our aircraft that may put our lives, and the lives of our passengers at risk,” the pilot wrote on the forum.

Grounding the planes to replace the TAT probes affected about 40 flights, according to American Airlines spokeswoman Mary Frances. “We think it’s an unfortunate situation,” she told ABCNews.com.

[From .:: Aero-News Network: The Aviation and Aerospace World’s Daily/Real-Time News and Information Service ::.]

Yes, unfortunate. Even more so that these morons even have jobs. Not only did this TSA employee destroy one plane’s gear looking to see if “terrorists could get into the cockpit”, but he did it eight more times!

Flight 1053

Airline industry folks are understandably outraged:

This was an extraordinarily dangerous incident, folks. The TSA has neither the mandate nor the knowledge to inspect any aircraft for any reason. The stupidity of this matter is nearly unbelievable… until you hear that the TSA is involved… then it becomes understandable, though still tragic. And I can not tell you how frustrating it is, to see them continue to hurt an indsutry that they were created to protect. The TSA has NO BUSINESS putting untrained personnel in a position to damage aircraft. Their bizarre games, in the name of security, do NOTHING to enhance security and do much to inhibit safety. Aviation personnel — pilots, A&P’s, ground personnel — are all either licensed or supervised by licensed personnel and this kind of tampering, had it been accomplished by anyone else, would have subjected that person to criminal charges.

Bush officials sneak-attack on Endangered Species Act

Seth Anderson0 comment

Assholes, all. As someone commented somewhere1 “What did the planet do to Cheney that he hates it so much?”

In the excitement of the Olympics, the run-up to the presidential conventions and the flurry of late summer vacations, it was easy to miss the Bush administration’s stealth attack on the Endangered Species Act last week. A proposed regulation would simply eliminate independent scientific reviews that have been required for over 30 years.

“I have been working on the Endangered Species Act for 15 years and have never seen such a sneaky attack,” declared John Kostyack, executive director of wildlife conservation and global warming at the National Wildlife Federation.

In a proposal, first reported by the Associated Press, biologists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service would no longer have input into the actions of many other federal agencies in evaluating projects that could impact endangered species.

Essentially it would be up to officials at agencies like the Forest Service, the Minerals Management Service and the Department of Transportation to decide for themselves if a new timber allotment, mining project or road would harm endangered animals and plants, without consulting third-party biologists from Fish and Wildlife.

Many of the agencies, which would now be making decisions affecting the fate of species themselves, don’t even have biologists on staff to make such determinations. The proposal presents a conflict of interest, which could effectively gut the Endangered Species Act, by asking the very agencies the act regulates to also enforce it. A 2008 Fish and Wildlife Service memorandum obtained by environmentalists states that when agencies regulated themselves in the past, they consistently violated the Endangered Species Act.

If the new regulation is approved by the Department of the Interior in the next couple of months, it would undercut the authority of the Endangered Species Act. “With this change, the Bush administration threatens to undo more than 30 years of progress,” said Kostyack. “This move is consistent with other efforts by the administration to cement industry-friendly policies before leaving office in January.”

[From Bush officials sneak-attack nation’s wildlife | Salon ]

I hope they aren’t allowed to get away with this brazen act of ignoring the wishes of the public.

Green Zone

Announcing the proposal last week, the Department of the Interior asserted that greenhouse gas emissions are exempt from regulation under the Endangered Species Act. It stated the “proposed rule is consistent with the FWS [Fish and Wildlife Service] current understanding it is not possible to draw a direct causal link” between the fate of a species, like the polar bear, and greenhouse gas emissions.

Environmentalists say the Bush administration’s motive is to preempt environmental groups from suing the government in the name of protecting the polar bears when the feds do things that would increase greenhouse gas emissions, like approving new coal-fired power plants.

To add insult to injury, the Bush administration said it will accept public comment on the proposed changes for a mere 30 days, and itwill not accept such comments via e-mail, which is the common way that many environmental groups activate their memberships to fight egregious policies. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is now accepting public comment about the proposed changes through Sept. 15 on the Regulations.gov Web site.

Rep. Nick J. Rahall II, D-W.V., chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, called the proposed changes to the enforcement of the Endangered Species Act “deeply troubling.” Sen. Barbara Boxer, who chairs the Environment and Public Works committee, said that they’re “illegal.” The senator from California has legal precedent for that charge. In 2003, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved hundreds of pesticides for use without consulting either the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Services about their implications for endangered wildlife and sea critters. When environmental groups sued, a federal judge ruled against the EPA.

“It takes great hubris to resurrect an issue the court has already definitely struck down,” stated Patti Goldman, an attorney for Earthjustice. “This is like a zombie movie … their proposal to toss the Endangered Species Act over the cliff died, but now has somehow come back to life.”

Footnotes:
  1. I don’t remember where I read it, or I would cite the reference [↩]

Methadone Is a Painkiller With Risks

Seth Anderson2 Comments

The first thought I had upon reading this article about methadone use is that insurance companies probably love methadone because it doesn’t have an active patent, and thus is cheap to proscribe.

Methadone, once used mainly in addiction treatment centers to replace heroin, is today being given out by family doctors, osteopaths and nurse practitioners for throbbing backs, joint injuries and a host of other severe pains.

A synthetic form of opium, it is cheap and long lasting, a powerful pain reliever that has helped millions. But because it is also abused by thrill seekers and badly prescribed by doctors unfamiliar with its risks, methadone is now the fastest growing cause of narcotic deaths. It is implicated in more than twice as many deaths as heroin, and is rivaling or surpassing the tolls of painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin.

“This is a wonderful medicine used appropriately, but an unforgiving medicine used inappropriately,” said Dr. Howard A. Heit, a pain specialist at Georgetown University. “Many legitimate patients, following the direction of the doctor, have run into trouble with methadone, including death.”

…

OxyContin is still widely prescribed, but a survey of Medicare plans in 2008, by the research firm Avalere Health LLC, found that many did not even include OxyContin on the list of reimbursable drugs. Critics like Dr. June Dahl, professor of pharmacology at the University of Wisconsin, fault the insurance companies for favoring methadone simply because of its monetary cost. “I don’t think a drug that requires such a level of sophistication to use is what I’d call cheap, because of the risks,” Dr. Dahl added.

Federal regulators acknowledge that they were slow to recognize the dangers of newly widespread methadone prescribing and to confront physician ignorance about the drug. They blame “imperfect” systems for monitoring such problems.

[From Methadone Rises as a Painkiller With Risks – NYTimes.com]

and apparently, I was right:

The rise of methadone is in part because of a major change in medical attitudes in the 1990s, as doctors accepted that debilitating pain was often undertreated. Insurance plans embraced methadone as a generic, cheaper alternative to other long-lasting painkillers like OxyContin, and many doctors switched to prescribing it because it seemed less controversial and perhaps less prone to abuse than OxyContin.

The subtext is that the FDA only was concerned with methadone for narcotic abuse1:

In what critics call a stunning oversight, the F.D.A-approved package insert for methadone for decades recommended starting doses for pain at up to 80 mg per day. “This could unequivocally cause death in patients who have not recently been using narcotics,” said Dr. Robert G. Newman, former president of Beth Israel Medical Center in New York and an expert in addiction.

The F.D.A. says that in the absence of reports of problems by doctors or surveillance systems, “we would have no reason to suspect that the dosing regimen” might need to be adjusted.

In November 2006, after reports of overdoses and deaths among pain patients multiplied and The Charleston Gazette reported on the dangerous package instructions, the F.D.A. cut the recommended starting limit to no more than 30 mg per day. “As soon as we became aware of deaths due to misprescribing for pain patients, we began the process of instituting label changes,” Dr. Rappaport said.

Footnotes:
  1. in other words, there was not expensive advertising campaign touting the benefits of methadone, thus the FDA didn’t really care what the materials describing proper use actually said. Junkies don’t care what the current advertising says, and the FDA officials can’t get future jobs [↩]

FTC Rule Barring Oil Manipulation

Seth Anderson2 Comments

I’m sure the final rule will have a lot less oomph, and plenty of loopholes.

Under pressure from federal lawmakers concerned about high energy prices, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission proposed a rule prohibiting petroleum-market manipulation, giving the agency authority to levy fines of up to $1 million per violation a day.

The proposed rule — which would cover both spot and futures markets — is designed to increase oversight of the crude-oil, natural-gas, gasoline and other product markets as directed by Congress late last year.

As oil prices surged to nearly $150 a barrel in July, many lawmakers increased pressure on the FTC to promulgate the antimanipulation rule, feeling existing oversight was too weak and laxly regulated. Lawmakers are concerned that excessive speculation — and possible manipulation — in the oil markets helped drive prices to record levels, and are seeking ways to enforce tougher market oversight. Congress is considering legislation designed to rein in speculative trading deemed to be distorting the market.

[From FTC Proposes Rule Barring Oil Manipulation – WSJ.com]

Brass Rust

Potential fines are discussed:

If the agency enacts the rule as it is currently written, it could subject violators with penalties of up to $1 million per violation per day. The FTC said it aimed to conclude the rule-making process by the end of the year. It drew immediate praise from some lawmakers who have been pushing for more stringent oversight of the markets.

This is some serious cheese for violators. As an example, Exxon Mobil’s profit in 20071 was in the vicinity of $4,633,200 per hour, or $111,196,800 per day. A million dollar fine would reduce Exxon Mobil’s daily profit to a paltry $110,196,800 a day! Won’t somebody think of the children! Of course, I’m not sure Exxon Mobil would be covered by these rules anyway, I’m sure nobody at Exxon Mobil is involved in speculation of oil futures, right? but sounds like there will be a lot more discussion before anything gets enacted in any case.

Given that the proposed rule covers the futures market — also the domain of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — it is likely to upgrade a regulatory turf battle between agencies and spur activity by the CFTC.

Lots of discussion and posturing, and lots of profits to be snatched in the meantime. By the end of the year, Obama will be elected, and the glory years of oil companies might start to sputter.2

Footnotes:
  1. so far 2008 is much higher, so adjust all these numbers by numbers that your calculator can’t even handle [↩]
  2. let us fervently pray so, anyway, though there is no guarantee that Obama will have the intestinal fortitude to tell the oil industry and Wall Street to reign their greed in [↩]

Chertoff Misleads on Laptop Searches

Seth Anderson0 comment

Surprising nobody, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff mouthed statements that could be considered misleading in polite company, or out and out lies here in the Big Potato. Senator Russ Feingold calls Chertoff on Chertoff’s bs.

Pip and his MBA

[Pip investigates a laptop]

Secretary Chertoff’s description of the newly published DHS policy on laptop searches was not just misleading – it was flat-out wrong. In an interview with Wired.com, the Secretary stated that “[w]e only do [laptop searches] when we put you into secondary [screening] and we only put you into secondary [screening] … when there is a reason to suspect something.”

But the actual policy that DHS published says the exact opposite. It does not even mention secondary screening, let alone limit laptop searches to those cases, and it expressly states that Americans’ laptops may be searched “absent individualized suspicion.”

Secretary Chertoff’s blatant mischaracterization of the DHS policy contradicts his claim to be engaging in greater “openness and transparency” on this important issue. His statements make it clearer than ever that as we work to protect our national security, Congress must also act to protect law-abiding Americans against highly intrusive searches.

[From Chertoff Misleads on Laptop Searches, Feingold Charges | Threat Level from Wired.com]

I’m glad Senator Feingold didn’t run for President – he wouldn’t have won, and instead he can concentrate on doing good in the Senate.

bonus, and totally unrelated, except in a vague sort of totalitarian way:

How to properly pronounce the Chinese capital, Beijing.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GE4dkpOdPw

Nuclear Power Costs

Seth Anderson0 comment

Still don’t think giving tax breaks to the Exelons1 of the world to build nuclear plants is the answer to our energy woes.

Satanic Gift

Even if no new reactors are built, getting rid of the country’s nuclear waste will cost $96.2 billion and require a major expansion of the planned Nevada waste dump beyond limits imposed by Congress, the Energy Department said. The government now says the Yucca Mountain project, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, will cost $38.7 billion more than was anticipated in 2001, when the department estimated the life cycle cost of the program at $57.5 billion.

[From High Cost Seen on Nuclear Dump ]

Oh, what’s a few billion between lobbyist friends. Or $38,700,000,000 in this case.

The estimates cover waste only from existing reactors and from the military.

And if we don’t figure out how to dispose of the waste safely, we’ll regret it eventually. Dumping the entire region’s toxic waste under a mountain isn’t really a solution, just a cover-up.

Footnotes:
  1. our local power company, and a large operator of nuclear plants [↩]

Financial Pity

Seth Anderson0 comment

From Clive Crook of The Financial Times:

It is worth remembering where the blame for this neutering of fiscal policy lies: squarely with the Bush administration. At the start of this decade, the budget stood in surplus to the tune of 2.4 per cent of GDP. On unchanged policy, this was expected to grow to a surplus of 4.5 per cent of GDP by 2008. This year’s actual deficit of 3 per cent of GDP therefore represents a worsening of more than 7 per cent of GDP, or roughly $1,000bn. Almost all of this deterioration is due to policy: to tax cuts, spending increases, and their associated debt-service costs.

That projected surplus was a priceless gift to the White House. It offered the Bush administration ample scope for outlays on homeland security and other unforeseen priorities, and moderate tax cuts as well, all within a budget balanced over the course of the business cycle. Instead, the administration knowingly opted for outrageous fiscal excess – adding insult to injury with its phony tax-cut sunset provisions, designed for no other purpose than to disguise the long-term fiscal implications. Eight years on, this startling record of fiscal irresponsibility has all but taken fiscal policy off the table as an available response to the slowdown.

The US economy had better have luck on its side. Luck is about all it has left.

[From Media Matters – Follow that dream … ]

Depressing, indeed. And yet, somehow, the Republican Party still sells itself as the party of fiscal rectitude and financial propriety. George Bush even had the benefit of a compliant Congress for most of his disastrous term, and still managed to destroy the economy. Let us hope we can recover in our lifetime.

Bioterrorism’s and BioWatch

swanksalot0 comment

Our tax dollars at work, well, possibly at work, if we could figure out what exactly is being done. Some backstory on the 2001 anthrax scare/hoax can be found here

The federal government has spent nearly $50 billion on programs to fight bioterrorism since 2001. Still, experience in New York City and elsewhere underscores the enduring difficulty of contending with this type of terror attack. Experts in the field say that the nation’s ability to detect biological weapons is still inadequate in most locales, as is its ability to distribute drugs to the population once the lethal agent is identified. Hospitals warn that the volume of casualties from an effective attack could simply overwhelm facilities.

“We’ve made very little progress in [any] of those very big areas,” says Dr. Tara O’Toole, director of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

[snip]

With easier access to fatal pathogens, it may be impossible to uncover preparations for an attack, leading government officials to focus more on lessening the impact of an attack than preventing one.

New York is using the next generation of sensors that the federal BioWatch program hopes to distribute nationwide by 2010. The city has been asking the federal government for more sensors. Most of the devices require up to 34 hours to detect a lethal bug, but about a half dozen new machines can detect an agent more quickly.

Yet New York remains at the leading edge. In most other cities, there was little federal guidance about which systems to buy, which led to a patchwork of often ineffective programs. The BioWatch system is active in more than 30 cities.

In New York, if a lethal agent is detected, the city plans to immediately distribute drugs to counter the bug. The federal government has worked to develop a national stockpile of drugs to deploy anywhere in the country, and biosecurity experts give the program high marks, saying that it can get the drugs to an affected region quickly. The problem, they say, is getting the medication out of the airport, where the federal government leaves it, and into communities.

If a biological attack were to happen tomorrow, said Lawrence O. Gostin, a bioterrorism expert at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities, the best advice the government could give would be for people to stay where they are. He adds: “I have no idea how they would get to my suburban Maryland neighborhood and get me an antiviral or antibiotic.”

And biosecurity specialists lament that little progress has been made even on the most public of possible biological threats: countering an anthrax attack. Seven years after the nation contended with just such an attack, an $877 million effort to develop a new anthrax vaccine has failed; there’s no quick way to test patients for an anthrax infection; and efforts to develop a drug to counter anthrax’s lethal chemicals haven’t produced much.

[From Bioterrorism’s Threat Persists As Top Security Risk – WSJ.com] [non-WSJ subscribers use this link]

What are the 30 cities who are participants in this boondoggle, you might ask? Not mentioned in the article, but there’s a list at wikipedia. The budget is somewhere around $1,000,000 per city, per year, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wants to expand the program to include 120 cities.

BioWatch is a United States Federal Government program to detect the release of pathogens into the air as part of a terrorist attack on major American cities. Reportedly operating in Philadelphia, New York City, Washington, DC, San Diego, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, Houston, Los Angeles and 21 other cities, the BioWatch program was created in 2001 in response to the increased threat of bioterrorism sparked by the 2001 anthrax attacks, and was announcing in President George W. Bush’s State of the Union Address of 2003. The program, described as “the nation’s first early warning network of sensors to detect biological attack” operates via a system of filters located within existing Environmental Protection Agency air filters which monitor the quality of the air. Results from these filters are analyzed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who then pass any significant results to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

and

The BioWatch system has received a mix of responses since coming online, many that result in waste of resources and a lowering public confidence in the system. A Congressional report in 2003 recorded that there was concern that the BioWatch filters would fail to detect indoor or underground releases, and also that the existence of BioWatch filters in some cities would direct terrorists to attack other cities without such protection. The report also highlighted the risk of the filters themselves being detected and destroyed. The report also states that, as EPA filters are located based on different policies than those which would provide optimum locations for counter-bioterrorism sensors, the BioWatch filters may not be optimally located. Furthermore, the BioWatch system may miss releases that take place within the gaps in coverage. The House of Representatives also concluded that models used to predict the spread of an infectious agent after release and detection may be inaccurate.

The Congressional Report also raises concerns as to whether BioWatch can detect pathogens in large, polluted cities, as well as issues relating to the BioWatch filter reporting harmful pathogens which are actually within safe background levels, and thus would throw up more positive hits than actual investigation warrants. There are also concerns that the BioWatch filters kill whatever pathogen has set them off, thus removing the possibility of further tests being undertaken.[8] Finally, concerns were raised in the Congressional Report regarding the sensitivity of the filters, and the fact that each filter would be exposed to different environmental conditions and thus a standardized detection rate would be near impossible to achieve. The complicated response that would be required should the BioWatch filter detect a pathogen would also be difficult to implement and put strain on local health authorities.

A probable big waste of money, in other words, protecting nobody in particular, with the exception of some defense contractors and other DHS friends and cronies. BioWatch does contribute to the climate of fear and apprehension, the so-called terrorism theatre.

No More Nancy Nord

swanksalot0 comment

Nancy Nord is the worst kind of government official: more interested in protecting the businesses she is supposed to regulate than protecting the consumer. Surprisingly, the Chicago Tribune editorial board agrees with me.

Nancy Nord, the acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has to go. If she won’t quit, fire her.

Nord ought to be too embarrassed to stay on the job. She spent the last few months working to weaken Congress’ efforts to strengthen her own agency. Fortunately, Congress didn’t listen to her. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act was approved overwhelmingly in the House and Senate.

…

The act authorizes more money for the commission, hikes fines for companies that violate product-safety rules, and makes more information about potentially dangerous products available to consumers.

It virtually bans lead in toys. It requires manufacturers to test the safety of toys and baby products—through independent third-party labs—before they hit store shelves.

Nord argued against many of those provisions. She doesn’t want the commission to have more power to do its job.

[From Time for Nord to go — chicagotribune.com]

and the real reason Nord should be forced to resign sooner than later:

Nord is far too cozy with manufacturers, lobbyists and industry lawyers to lead the oversight work of the commission. As the Tribune’s Patricia Callahan reported, Nord, and her predecessor, Hal Stratton, went on dozens of junkets that were paid for, at least in part, by the industries her agency regulates.

In a speech last May, as a conference committee was crafting the compromise safety bill, Nord urged the National Retail Federation to push back. Among the things she suggested they fight: The provision to make product safety information available to the public in a searchable Internet database.

Granite Countertop Radiation Risk

Seth Anderson4 Comments

Why Go to Night School?
[The Pope checks out our Volga Blue granite table]

A mildly scary story you are bound to hear of sooner or later1

SHORTLY before Lynn Sugarman of Teaneck, N.J., bought her summer home in Lake George, N.Y., two years ago, a routine inspection revealed it had elevated levels of radon, a radioactive gas that can cause lung cancer. So she called a radon measurement and mitigation technician to find the source.

“He went from room to room,” said Dr. Sugarman, a pediatrician. But he stopped in his tracks in the kitchen, which had richly grained cream, brown and burgundy granite countertops. His Geiger counter indicated that the granite was emitting radiation at levels 10 times higher than those he had measured elsewhere in the house.

[Click to read more details of What’s Lurking in Your Countertop? – NYTimes.com]

For me the real crime is hinted at in a paragraph towards the end of the article:

Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking and is considered especially dangerous to smokers, whose lungs are already compromised. Children and developing fetuses are vulnerable to radiation, which can cause other forms of cancer. Mr. Witt said the E.P.A. is not studying health risks associated with granite countertops because of a “lack of resources.”

What the hell is the EPA doing instead? Going to lunch with the chemical industry executives who are offering future employment? What? The Environmental Protection Agency should have the funding and desire to conduct careful study of such topics so that there is real data available for consumers to make informed decisions whether granite countertops are a risk or whether they are harmless. How about instead of buying yet another Trident Missile or B2 Spirit, the government throws a few pennies at the EPA?

—
update:
Dean Armstrong also notices this story, and writes, in part:

But is this a hazard? Granites I’ve encountered have rates ranging from nothing to about 10x background. This isn’t that much. Time spent at cruising altitude is about 40x background at 500ft. It certainly wouldn’t be worth the fuss of ripping up a kitchen, unless it was proven to be the source of elevated radon levels. After reading the literature about naturally occurring radon sources, I have difficulty assigning the radon to just a small granite piece. Any soil or rock within 4 gas-diffusion-days of the basement or slab can be a source of radon for a home, and the total amount of uranium in that quantity is going to exceed the amount in the countertop (especially the part of the countertop that is within radon’s half-life time of the surface). If you covered your walls in granite it might be different.

Footnotes:
  1. such news stories are custom made for our sensationalistic media [↩]

Bush Wants to Kill Workers

Seth Anderson0 comment

Follow up on yesterday’s surprising1 admission that there is a secret plan to reduce the possibilities that workers will have safe workplaces. Reduce it to zero, in fact. The Bush-ites want workers just to be happy they have jobs, and not worry about having safe jobs.

Congressional leaders demanded yesterday that the Labor Department withdraw an eleventh-hour rule proposal that would make it more difficult to set industry limits on the amount of dangerous chemicals that U.S. workers are exposed to on the job.

In a letter to Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao, the Democratic chairmen of the Senate and House labor committees accused her department of crafting a secret rule in the final months of the Bush administration, with the goal of weakening worker safety and helping businesses avoid regulations.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.) and Rep. George Miller (Calif.) said Chao’s department violated the rule requiring federal agencies to alert the public twice a year to any directives it was considering. They asked her to turn over internal documents of any meetings or communications Labor officials had with business or outside groups relating to the proposal.

Their demand came the day The Washington Post reported that the agency began actively researching the proposal as early as last September, when it commissioned a $347,000 outside study of the idea. It did not disclose its interest until it formally submitted a draft rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget on July 7.

“For nearly eight years, this administration has consistently failed to respond in a meaningful way to the real health and safety threats workers face while on the job,” Miller said. “But now they will stop at nothing to rush through a secret rule that will tie the hands of health and safety experts.”

The proposed rule, which would have the force of law, would call for reexamining long-standing agency assumptions used to weigh risks from toxins, including the notion that some workers spend 45 years in the same kind of job. The proposal has not been made public, but according to sources and internal documents, it aims to address business complaints that previous agency risk assessments exaggerate risk and cost industry too much.

[From Democrats Ask Labor to Forgo ‘Secret Rule’ – washingtonpost.com]

Oh, poor, poor industry, having to maintain safe workplaces when there are profit margins to increase, second homes to pay for in Aspen, yadda yadda. I’ve never understood how working class folks could ever vote for a Republican – screwing people and slurping on corporations is what the Republicans do best.

Footnotes:
  1. and yet, not so surprising, given the track record of the anti-consumer activists currently running the executive branch of the US [↩]

Exposing Bush’s historic abuse of power

swanksalot0 comment

Tim Shorrock writes in Salon:

The last several years have brought a parade of dark revelations about the George W. Bush administration, from the manipulation of intelligence to torture to extrajudicial spying inside the United States. But there are growing indications that these known abuses of power may only be the tip of the iceberg. Now, in the twilight of the Bush presidency, a movement is stirring in Washington for a sweeping new inquiry into White House malfeasance that would be modeled after the famous Church Committee congressional investigation of the 1970s.

While reporting on domestic surveillance under Bush, Salon obtained a detailed memo proposing such an inquiry, and spoke with several sources involved in recent discussions around it on Capitol Hill. The memo was written by a former senior member of the original Church Committee; the discussions have included aides to top House Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers, and until now have not been disclosed publicly.

Salon has also uncovered further indications of far-reaching and possibly illegal surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency inside the United States under President Bush. That includes the alleged use of a top-secret, sophisticated database system for monitoring people considered to be a threat to national security. It also includes signs of the NSA’s working closely with other U.S. government agencies to track financial transactions domestically as well as globally.

The proposal for a Church Committee-style investigation emerged from talks between civil liberties advocates and aides to Democratic leaders in Congress, according to sources involved. (Pelosi’s and Conyers’ offices both declined to comment.) Looking forward to 2009, when both Congress and the White House may well be controlled by Democrats, the idea is to have Congress appoint an investigative body to discover the full extent of what the Bush White House did in the war on terror to undermine the Constitution and U.S. and international laws. The goal would be to implement government reforms aimed at preventing future abuses — and perhaps to bring accountability for wrongdoing by Bush officials.

“If we know this much about torture, rendition, secret prisons and warrantless wiretapping despite the administration’s attempts to stonewall, then imagine what we don’t know,” says a senior Democratic congressional aide who is familiar with the proposal and has been involved in several high-profile congressional investigations.

“You have to go back to the McCarthy era to find this level of abuse,” says Barry Steinhardt, the director of the Program on Technology and Liberty for the American Civil Liberties Union. “Because the Bush administration has been so opaque, we don’t know [the extent of] what laws have been violated.”

[Click to read more of Salon.com News | Exposing Bush’s historic abuse of power]

Troubling, frightening, disturbing, pick your adjective. There is apparently a database called Main Core which contains the names of over 8,000,000 American citizens who are considered to be persons of interest to the state, and who would be imprisoned, or worse, if a national emergency occurred.

A prime area of inquiry for a sweeping new investigation would be the Bush administration’s alleged use of a top-secret database to guide its domestic surveillance. Dating back to the 1980s and known to government insiders as “Main Core,” the database reportedly collects and stores — without warrants or court orders — the names and detailed data of Americans considered to be threats to national security.

According to several former U.S. government officials with extensive knowledge of intelligence operations, Main Core in its current incarnation apparently contains a vast amount of personal data on Americans, including NSA intercepts of bank and credit card transactions and the results of surveillance efforts by the FBI, the CIA and other agencies. One former intelligence official described Main Core as “an emergency internal security database system” designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law. Its name, he says, is derived from the fact that it contains “copies of the ‘main core’ or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community.”

[snip]

An article in Radar magazine in May, citing three unnamed former government officials, reported that “8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect” and, in the event of a national emergency, “could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and even detention.”

Scary stuff.