WiserBlog

One thing I do know though...

"I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose -- you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down,"
--William J. Bennett, education secretary under President Reagan, director of drug policy For Bush I and current talk radio host for "Morning in America."

Bennett's defenders will, of course, point to the fact that he added "That [it] would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down." However, notwithstanding the obvious ways that such a "clarification" fails to mitigate the offensiveness of such a statement, notice that the first reason for dismissing such a plan is that it would be "impossible." 

I doubt many people will pay much attention to that, but I find it quite telling.

Congressional Caucus Opposes Awarding Halliburton Contracts

NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SEPTEMBER 26, 2005
CONTACT: BILL GOOLD
(202) 225-5161 OR (202) 226-4055

Congressional Caucus Co-Chairs and Members Oppose President Bush Awarding Hurricane –Related Contracts and Taxpayer Dollars to Discredited Halliburton Corporation and Its Subsidiaries

Washington, D.C. --  U.S. Representatives Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee, Co-Chairwomen of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and 17 of their colleagues today released a copy of their letter to President Bush demanding that Halliburton be suspended from eligibility for any additional hurricane –related or other federal contracts pending resolution of all current allegations alleging waste, fraud, and other contract-related abuses by this company in Iraq and elsewhere.

“Study Links Environmental, Occupational Exposures To Cancers”

"The sum of the evidence makes an airtight case for reconsideration of chemicals policies in the U.S. We need to follow the example of the European Union's REACH program, which prevents the use of known or suspected carcinogens when suitable substitutes are readily available…. Our review makes it clear that new knowledge about multiple causes of cancer, including involuntary exposures, early-life exposures, synergistic effects, and genetic factors, renders making such estimates not just pointless, but counterproductive."
--Dr. Richard W. Clapp, adjunct professor at UMass Lowell and lead epidemiologist for the report.

"Known and preventable exposures are clearly responsible for tens of thousands of excess cancer cases each year. It is unconscionable not to implement policy changes that we know will prevent sickness and death."
-- Molly Jacobs, project manager

Yes, yet another study... 

This one, the"Environmental and Occupational Causes of Cancer: A Review of Recent Scientific Evidence" by the University's Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, linked chemicals to different cancers, including, but not limited to bladder cancer from dry cleaning solvent, breast cancer from endocrine disruptors like bisphenol-A and other plastics components, lung cancer from residential exposure to radon, non- Hodgkin's lymphoma from solvent and herbicide exposure, and childhood leukemia from pesticides.

When are we going to start hearing about these in the mainstream press, or from the EPA or the FDA or seeing some "warning" labels on some of the chemical products we use daily, are exposed to daily?

Oh, that's right! They have to wait until tort law is completely gutted, I mean, "reformed" and there can be no private cause of action for petrochemical industries poisoning people and their air, water and soil. Only then, and perhaps not even then, will industry and our current "protective" agencies acknowledge what is already well known by both.
 

A Modern Form of Barbarism

From GregPalast.com

The racial horrors of Louisiana underneath the quaint touristy gloss of New Orleans exposed by Hurricane Katrina are old news for those of us who have worked there. Not that Louisiana is more racist than the rest of America, it's only that its poverty makes deadly the bias endemic throughout the USA. here is a dispatch from GregPalast.com investigator, Adrianna Alty, who was conducting research in Louisiana prior to the Great Flood.
--G. Palast 

By Adrianna Alty

Securing the Homeland pre-Katrina: Baton Rouge's finest respond to "suspicious" activity by environmental students touring "Cancer Alley."

photo by Antioch New England student, Stephen C. Kowal

My flight landed in Costa Rica at about the same time that Katrina—which I had experienced as a Category One hurricane in Fort Lauderdale three days earlier—made its landfall in Louisiana. I have not yet returned to the States, but I know that the death and destruction that visited, or rather made itself at home, in New Orleans a week ago is providing endless loop footage for news-entertainment-reality shows on every channel there.

While the country should be focused on what Hurricane Katrina has done to Louisianans and others in the Gulf Coast, it is equally important that this tragedy is viewed in its broader context. By now everyone is aware of the dangers presented by the contaminated standing water, which will be an environmental nightmare whether it is pumped into Louisiana’s lakes or back into the Gulf of Mexico or continues to foul the streets of New Orleans.

Mainstream coverage may even be acknowledging that it was black people and poor people who bore the brunt of the storm—or at least reporting that this is being alleged by others who might actually care about black people and poor people.

It’s even possible that the various unconscionable circumstances preceding and following Hurricane Katrina’s rampage are being discussed. However, what is probably not being discussed is that the full degree of devastation is not so much attributable to a random natural disaster or isolated examples of poor judgment on the part of specific actors as it is the foreseeable result of positions and policy decisions when taken to their logical conclusions.

 

What Rehnquist Couldn’t Do in 50 Years...

There was a time, not so long ago, that Justice Rehnquist stepping down from the High Court would have been cause for celebration.  But a lot has changed in four short years.  Literally from its inception, the Bush presidency has shown contempt for the integrity and tradition of America’s democratic institutions heretofore unseen.  It has encouraged disregard for fair and open process and even the appearance of propriety.  The Supreme Court is not exempt from this corrosion.  We now have to accept the reality that whomever Bush II would replace Justice Rehnquist with will be many times more likely to do his bidding—and  will be joining a panel already compromised.

Reposted from October 30, 2004:


What Rehnquist Couldn’t Do in 50 Years...
October 30, 2004

Rehnquist’s failing health

Back in March, there were reports that Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist was considering retirement but hadn’t indicated exactly when he might step down. At the time, I speculated that although Rehnquist’s health was not great, the discussion might indicate something else—perhaps neocons just wanted to make sure that Bush got the chance to appoint the Chief Justice’s successor (in case the presidential selection process wasn’t already locked up after all).  Was the New World Order worried about that?  I confess that it was somewhat heartening to contemplate such a failure in confidence.   

However, it seems that that Rehnquist’s heath problems are actually quite serious.  He has thyroid cancer and last Friday he was admitted to Bethesda Naval Hospital on Friday where he underwent a tracheotomy. With Rehnquist’s departure now nearly certain, the outcome of the upcoming Presidential election seems even more important (and more urgent) to the Court and to democracy.

Rather than discuss the composition of the current Supreme Court and what a further shift to right could actually mean for democracy as we know it—every publication in the country should be, and will be, writing about it—I’d rather write about what Justice Rehnquist. Looking at what he has meant to the political and judicial landscape for the last 50 years and what he means now tells us a lot about who we are as a county and who we are becoming.

A Security Issue

"It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
-- Walter Maestri, New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.  Mr. Mastri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, commenting over a year ago about the reasons that the levess that gave way were not repaired.
.