Click here to download, circulate and distribute a PDF version of this article.
IRAQ
1. The Bush Administration has spent more than $140 billion on a war of choice in Iraq.
Source: American Progress
2. The Bush Administration sent troops into battle without adequate body armor or armored Humvees.
Sources:
Fox News,
The Boston Globe
3. The Bush Administration ignored estimates from Gen. Eric Shinseki that several hundred thousand troops would be required to secure Iraq.
Source: PBS
4. Vice President Cheney said Americans "will, in fact, be greeted as liberators" in Iraq.
Source: The Washington Post
5. During the Bush Administration's war in Iraq, more than 1,000 US troops have lost their lives and more than 7,000 have been injured.
Source: globalsecurity.org
6. In May 2003, President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit,
stood under a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," and triumphantly
announced that major combat operations were over in Iraq. Asked if he had any
regrets about the stunt, Bush said he would do it all over again.
Source: Yahoo News
7. Vice President Cheney said that Iraq was "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11." The bipartisan 9/11 Commission found that Iraq had no involvement in the 9/11 attacks and no collaborative operational relationship with Al Qaeda.
Source: MSNBC , 9-11 Commission
8. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said that high-strength aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," warning "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." The government's top nuclear scientists had told the Administration the tubes were "too narrow, too heavy, too long" to be of use in developing nuclear weapons and could be used for other purposes.
Source: New York Times
9. The Bush Administration has spent just $1.1 billion of the $18.4 billion Congress approved for Iraqi reconstruction.
Source: USA Today
10. According to the Administration's handpicked weapon's inspector, Charles Duelfer, there is "no evidence that Hussein had passed illicit weapons material to al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations, or had any intent to do so." After the release of the report, Bush continued to insist, "There was a risk--a real risk--that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons, or materials, or information to terrorist networks."
Sources: New York Times,
White House news release
11. According to Duelfer, the UN inspections regime put an "economic strangle hold" on Hussein that prevented him from developing a WMD program for more than twelve years.
Source: Los Angeles Times
TERRORISM
12. After receiving a memo from the CIA in August 2001 titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack America," President Bush continued his monthlong vacation.
Source: CNN.com
13. The Bush Administration failed to commit enough troops to capture Osama bin Laden when US forces had him cornered in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan in November 2001. Instead, they relied on local warlords.
Source: csmonitor.com
14. The Bush Administration secured less nuclear material from sites around the world vulnerable to terrorists in the two years after 9/11 than were secured in the two years before 9/11.
Source: nti.org
15. The Bush Administration underfunded Nunn-Lugar--the program intended to keep the former Soviet Union's nuclear legacy out of the hands of terrorists and rogue states--by $45.5 million.
Source: armscontrol.org
16. The Bush Administration has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's money.
Source: sfgate.com
17. According to Congressional Research Service data, the Bush
Administration has underfunded security at the nation's ports by more
than $1 billion for fiscal year 2005.
Source: American Progress
18. The Bush Administration did not devote the resources necessary to prevent a resurgence in the production of poppies, the raw material used to create heroin, in Afghanistan--creating a potent new source of financing for terrorists.
Source: Pakistan Tribune
19. Vice President Cheney told voters that unless they elect George Bush in November, "we'll get hit again" by terrorists.
Source: Washington Post
20. Even though an Al Qaeda training manual suggests terrorists come to the United States and buy assault weapons, the Bush Administration did nothing to prevent the expiration of the ban.
Source: sfgate.com
21. Despite repeated calls for reinforcements, there are fewer experienced CIA agents assigned to the unit dealing with Osama bin Laden now than there were before 9/11.
Source: New York Times
22. Before 9/11, John Ashcroft proposed slashing counterterrorism funding by 23 percent.
Source: americanprogress.org
23. Between January 20, 2001, and September 10, 2001, the Bush Administration publicly mentioned Al Qaeda one time.
Source: commondreams.org
24. The Bush Administration granted the 9/11 Commission $3 million to investigate the September 11 attacks and $50 million to the commission that investigated the Columbia space shuttle crash.
Source: commondreams.org
25. More than three years after 9/11, just 5 percent of all cargo--including cargo transported on passenger planes--is screened.
Source: commondreams.org
NATIONAL SECURITY
26. During the Bush Administration, North Korea quadrupled its suspected nuclear arsenal from two to eight weapons.
Source: New York Times
27. The Bush Administration has openly opposed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, undermining nuclear nonproliferation efforts.
Source: commondreams.org
28. The Bush Administration has spent $7 billion this year--and plans to spend $10 billion next year--for a missile defense system that has never worked in a test that wasn't rigged.
Sources: www.gao.gov/new.items/d04409.pdf,
Los Angeles Times
29. The Bush Administration underfunded the needs of the nation's first responders by $98 billion, according to a Council on Foreign Relations study.
Source: nationaldefensemagazine.org
CRONYISM AND CORRUPTION
30. The Bush Administration awarded a
multibillion-dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton--a company that
still pays Vice President Cheney hundreds of thousands of dollars in
deferred compensation each year (Cheney also has Halliburton stock
options). The company then repeatedly overcharged the military for
services, accepted kickbacks from subcontractors and served troops
dirty food.
Sources: The Washington Post,
The Tapei Times,
BBC News
31. The Bush Administration told Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan about plans to go to war with Iraq before telling Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Source: detnews.com
32. The Bush Administration relentlessly pushed an energy bill containing $23.5 billion in corporate tax breaks, much of which would have benefited major campaign contributors.
33. The Bush Administration paid Iraqi-exile and neocon darling Ahmad Chalabi $400,000 a month for intelligence, including fabricated claims about Iraqi WMD. It continued to pay him for months after discovering that he was providing inaccurate information.
Source: MSNBC
34. The Bush Administration installed as top officials more than 100 former lobbyists, attorneys or spokespeople for the industries they oversee.
Source: Source: commondreams.org
35. The Bush Administration let disgraced Enron CEO Ken Lay--a close friend of President Bush--help write its energy policy.
Source: MSNBC
36. Top Bush Administration officials accepted $127,600 in jewelry and other presents from the Saudi royal family in 2003, including diamond-and-sapphire jewelry valued at $95,500 for First Lady Laura Bush.
Source: Seattle Times
37. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge awarded lucrative contracts to several companies in which he is an investor, including Microsoft, GE, Sprint, Pfizer and Oracle.
Source: cq.com
38. President Bush used images of firefighters carrying flag-draped
coffins through the rubble of the World Trade Center to score
political points in a campaign advertisement.
Source: The Washington Post
THE ECONOMY
39. President Bush's top economic adviser, Greg Mankiw, said the outsourcing of American jobs abroad was "a plus for the economy in the long run."
Source: CBS News
40. The Bush Administration turned a $236 billion surplus into a $422 billion deficit.
41. The Bush Administration implemented regulations that made millions of workers ineligible for overtime pay.
Source: epinet.org
42. The Bush Administration has crippled state budgets by underfunding federal mandates by $175 billion.
Source: cbpp.org
43. President Bush is the first President since Herbert Hoover to have a net loss of jobs--around 800,000--over a four-year term.
Source: The Guardian
44. The Bush Administration gave Accenture a multibillion-dollar border
control contract even though the company moved its operations to
Bermuda to avoid paying taxes.
Sources: The New York Times,
cantonrep.com
45. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush said "the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum." He passed the tax cuts, but the top 20 percent of earners received 68 percent of the benefits.
Sources: cbpp.org,
vote-smart.org
46. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to pay down the national debt to a historically low level. As of September 30, the national debt stood at $7,379,052,696,330.32, a record high.
Sources: www.georgewbush.com , Bureau of the Public Debt
47. As major corporate scandals rocked the nation's economy, the Bush Administration reduced the enforcement of corporate tax law--conducting fewer audits, imposing fewer penalties, pursuing fewer prosecutions and making virtually no effort to prosecute corporate tax crimes.
Source: iht.com
48. The Bush Administration increased tax audits for the working poor.
Source: theolympian.com
49. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to protect the Social
Security surplus. As President, he spent all of it.
Sources: georgewbush.com,
Congressional Budget Office
50. The Bush Administration proposed slashing funding for the largest
federal public housing program, putting 2 million families in danger
of losing their housing.
Source: San Francisco Examiner
51. The Bush Administration did nothing to prevent the minimum wage from falling to an inflation-adjusted fifty-year low.
Source: Los Angeles Times
EDUCATION
52. The Bush Administration underfunded the No Child Left Behind Act by $9.4 billion.
Source: nwitimes.com
53. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to increase the maximum federal scholarship, or Pell Grant, by 50 percent. Instead, each year he has been in office he has frozen or cut the maximum scholarship amount.
Source: Source: edworkforce.house.gov
x
54. The Bush Administration's Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, called the National Education Association--a union of teachers--a "terrorist organization."
Sources: CNN.com
HEALTHCARE
55. The Bush Administration, in violation of the law, refused to allow Medicare actuary Richard Foster to tell members of Congress the actual cost of their Medicare bill. Instead, they repeated a figure they knew was $100 billion too low.
Source: Washington Post,
realcities.com
56. The nonpartisan GAO concluded the Bush Administration created illegal, covert propaganda--in the form of fake news reports--to promote its industry-backed Medicare bill.
Source: General Accounting Office
57. The Bush Administration stunted research that could lead to new treatments for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, spinal injuries, heart disease and muscular dystrophy by placing severe restrictions on the use of federal dollars for embryonic stem-cell research.
Source: CBS News
58. The Bush Administration reinstated the "global gag rule," which
requires foreign NGOs to withhold information about legal abortion
services or lose US funds for family planning.
Source: healthsciences.columbia.edu
59. The Bush Administration authorized twenty companies that have been
charged with fraud at the federal or state level to offer Medicare
prescription drug cards to seniors.
Source: American Progress
60. The Bush Administration created a prescription drug card for Medicare
that locks seniors into one card for up to a year but allows the
corporations offering the cards to change their prices once a
week.
Source: Washington Post
61. The Bush Administration blocked efforts to allow Medicare to negotiate cheaper prescription drug prices for seniors.
Source: American Progress
62. At the behest of the french fry industry, the Bush Administration USDA changed their definition of fresh vegetables to include frozen french fries.
The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration
by Judd Legum
Source: commondreams.org
63. In a case before the Supreme Court, the Bush Administrations sided with HMOs--arguing that patients shouldn't be allowed to sue HMOs when they are improperly denied treatment. With the Administration's help, the HMOs won.
Source: ABC News
64. The Bush Administration went to court to block lawsuits by patients who were injured by defective prescription drugs and medical devices.
Source: Washington Post
65. President Bush signed a Medicare law that allows companies that reduce healthcare benefits for retirees to receive substantial subsidies from the government.
Source: Bloomberg News
66. Since President Bush took office, more than 5 million people have lost their health insurance.
Source: CNN.com
67. The Bush Administration blocked a proposal to ban the use of arsenic-treated lumber in playground equipment, even though it conceded it posed a danger to children.
Source: Miami Herald
68. One day after President Bush bragged about his efforts to help seniors afford healthcare, the Administration announced the largest dollar increase of Medicare premiums in history.
Source: iht.com
69. The Bush Administration--at the behest of the tobacco industry--tried to water down a global treaty that aimed to help curb smoking.
Source: tobaccofreekids.org
70. The Bush Administration has spent $270 million on abstinence-only education programs even though there is no scientific evidence demonstrating that they are effective in dissuading teenagers from having sex or reducing the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases.
Source: salon.com
71. The Bush Administration slashed funding for programs that suggested ways, other than abstinence, to avoid sexually transmitted diseases.
Source: LA Weekly
ENVIRONMENT
72. The Bush Administration gutted clean-air standards for aging power plants, resulting in at least 20,000 premature deaths each year.
Source: cta.policy.net
73. The Bush Administration eliminated protections on more than 200 million acres of public lands.
Source: calwild.org
74. President Bush broke his promise to place limits on carbon dioxide emissions, an essential step in combating global warming.
Source: Washington Post
75. Days after 9/11, the Bush Administration told people living near Ground Zero that the air was safe--even though they knew it wasn't--subjecting hundreds of people to unnecessary, debilitating ailments.
76. The Bush Administration created a massive tax loophole for SUVs--allowing, for example, the write-off of the entire cost of a new Hummer.
Source: Washington Post
77. The Bush Administration put former coal-industry big shots in the government and let them roll back safety regulations, putting miners at greater risk of black lung disease.
Source: New York Times
78. The Bush Administration said that even though the weed killer atrazine was seeping into water supplies--creating, among other bizarre creatures, hermaphroditic frogs--there was no reason to regulate it.
Source: Washington Post
79. The Bush Administration has proposed cutting the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency by $600 million next year.
Source: ems.org
80. President Bush broke his campaign promise to end the maintenance backlog at national parks. He has provided just 7 percent of the funds needed, according to National Park Service estimates.
Source: bushgreenwatch.org
RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES
81. Since 9/11, Attorney General John Ashcroft has detained 5,000 foreign nationals in antiterrorism sweeps; none have been convicted of a terrorist crime.
Source: hrwatch.org
82. The Bush Administration ignored pleas from the International Committee of the Red Cross to stop the abuse of prisoners in US custody.
Source: Wall Street Journal
83. In violation of international law, the Bush Administration hid prisoners from the Red Cross so the organization couldn't monitor their treatment.
Source: hrwatch.org
84. The Bush Administration, without ever charging him with a crime, arrested US citizen José Padilla at an airport in Chicago, held him on a naval brig in South Carolina for two years, denied him access to a lawyer and prohibited any contact with his friends and family.
Source: news.findlaw.com
85. President Bush's top legal adviser wrote a memo to the President advising him that he can legally authorize torture.
Source: news.findlaw.com
86. At the direction of Bush Administration officials, the FBI went door to door questioning people planning on protesting at the 2004 political conventions.
Source: New York Times
87. The Bush Administration refuses to support the creation of an independent commission to investigate the abuse of foreign prisoners in American custody. Instead, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld selected the members of a commission to review the conduct of his own department.
Source: humanrightsfirst.org
FLIP FLOPS
88. President Bush opposed the creation of the 9/11 Commission before he supported it, delaying an essential inquiry into one of the greatest intelligence failure in American history.
Source: americanprogressaction.org
89. President Bush said gay marriage was a state issue before he supported a constitutional amendment banning it.
Sources: CNN.com, White House
90. President Bush said he was committed to capturing Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" before he said, "I truly am not that concerned about him."
Source: americanprogressaction.org
91. President Bush said we had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, before he admitted we hadn't found them.
Sources: White House, americanprogress.org
92. President Bush said, "You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror," before he admitted Saddam had no role in 9/11.
Sources: White House, Washington Post
BIOGRAPHY
93. George Bush didn't come close to meeting his commitments to the National Guard. Records show he performed no service in a six-month period in 1972 and a three-month period in 1973.
Source: boston.com
94. In June 1990 George Bush violated federal securities law when he failed to inform the SEC that he had sold 200,000 shares of his company, Harken Energy. Two months later the company reported significant losses and by the end of that year the stock had dropped from $3 to $1.
Source: The Guardian
95. When asked at an April 2004 press conference to name a mistake he made during his presidency, Bush couldn't think of one.
Source: White House
SECRECY
96. The Bush Administration refuses to release twenty-seven pages of a Congressional report that reportedly detail the Saudi Arabian government's connections to the 9/11 hijackers.
Source: philly.com
97. Last year the Bush Administration spent $6.5 billion creating 14 million new classified documents and securing old secrets--the highest level of spending in ten years.
Source: openthegovernment.org
98. The Bush Administration spent $120 classifying documents for every $1 it spent declassifying documents.
Source: openthegovernment.org
99. The Bush Administration has spent millions of dollars and defied numerous court orders to conceal from the public who participated in Vice President Cheney's 2001 energy task force.
Source: Washington Post
100. The Bush Administration--reversing years of bipartisan tradition--refuses to answer requests from Democratic members of Congress about how the White House is spending taxpayer money.
Source: Washington Post
OPINION
If the past informs the future, four more years of the Bush Administration will be a tragic period in the history of the United States and the world.
Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 75 cents a week!
If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.
about Judd LegumJudd Legum is deputy research director of strategic communications at the American Progress Action Fund.
From the NYT
ASHINGTON, Aug. 13 - April 21 was an unusually violent day in Iraq; 68 people died in a car bombing in Basra, among them 23 children. As the news went from bad to worse, President Bush took a tough line, vowing to a group of journalists, "We're not going to cut and run while I'm in the Oval Office."
On the same day, deep within the turgid pages of the Federal Register, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published a regulation that would forbid the public release of some data relating to unsafe motor vehicles, saying that publicizing the information would cause "substantial competitive harm" to manufacturers.
As soon as the rule was published, consumer groups yelped in complaint, while the government responded that it was trying to balance the interests of consumers with the competitive needs of business. But hardly anyone else noticed, and that was hardly an isolated case.
Allies and critics of the Bush administration agree that the Sept. 11 attacks, the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq have preoccupied the public, overshadowing an important element of the president's agenda: new regulatory initiatives. Health rules, environmental regulations, energy initiatives, worker-safety standards and product-safety disclosure policies have been modified in ways that often please business and industry leaders while dismaying interest groups representing consumers, workers, drivers, medical patients, the elderly and many others.
And most of it was done through regulation, not law - lowering the profile of the actions. The administration can write or revise regulations largely on its own, while Congress must pass laws. For that reason, most modern-day presidents have pursued much of their agendas through regulation. But administration officials acknowledge that Mr. Bush has been particularly aggressive in using this strategy.
"There's been more federal regulations, more regulatory notices, than previous administrations," said Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, though he attributed much of that to the new rules dealing with domestic security.
Scott McClellan, the chief White House spokesman, said of the changes, "The president's common-sense policies reflect the values of America, whether it is cracking down on corporate wrongdoing or eliminating burdensome regulations to create jobs."
Some leaders of advocacy groups argue that the public preoccupation with war and terrorism has allowed the administration to push through changes that otherwise would have provoked an outcry. Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club, says he does not think the administration could have succeeded in rewriting so many environmental rules, for example, if the public's attention had not been focused on national security issues.
"The effect of the administration's concentration on war and terror has been to prevent the public from focusing on these issues," Mr. Pope said. "Now, when I hold focus groups with the general public and tell them what has been done, they exclaim, 'How could this have happened without me knowing about it?' "
The administration has often been stymied in its efforts to pass major domestic initiatives in Congress. Even when both houses have been under Republican control, Senate Democrats, using parliamentary rules, have been able to block legislation eagerly sought by the White House and business groups, including bills on energy, bankruptcy and medical malpractice. So officials have turned to regulatory change.
Chad Colton, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, which approves all new regulations, defends the administration's handling of new rules, saying: "The process is very open, very transparent. Some regulations we post get hundreds of comments, even thousands." Mr. Colton acknowledged that most comments came from industry or from public interest groups. "But those groups represent consumers."
Clarence Ditlow, who directs one of those public interest groups, the Center for Auto Safety, said: "People in my line of work are frustrated. We try to work harder. But the amount of media attention and public attention to consumer issues has gone way, way down since 9/11."
Stuart M. Butler, senior domestic policy analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation, while agreeing that the wars "push a lot of other issues off the page, literally and figuratively," said, "It cuts both ways." The White House "also can't get traction on issues they care about, like Social Security reform, because of all the noise from the war in Iraq."
Bush administration officials and their allies say they use regulations because new laws are not needed for many of the changes they have made and going to Congress every time would be needlessly complicated. But Representative David R. Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who is the ranking minority member of the Appropriations Committee, said regulatory changes did not benefit from the "checks and balances and oversight" that Congress provides.
New regulations first appear as notices of proposed rule-making in the Federal Register, which is published every weekday. Generally, government officials and others directly concerned with government business read this dense publication.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published the new rule on the public release of auto-safety information on July 28, 2003, but outside the industry hardly anyone took notice. In the following months, allies of tire manufacturers and automakers flooded the agency with comments, and all of them "contended that the release of early warning data is likely to cause substantial competitive harm," the agency said. At the same time, consumer groups argued that the data "should be released because it is important to the identification of potential defects," the agency added.
When the agency published a revised final rule on April 21, 2004, it exempted from public release warranty-claim information, industry reports on safety issues and consumer complaints, among other data, saying that releasing that information would cause "substantial competitive harm."
Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, filed suit, saying consumers needed the data to inform themselves about unsafe vehicles and tires. But Ray Tyson, the chief spokesman for the highway safety agency, said: "The suggestion that the American consumer is missing out is off the mark. I can't believe this information would be of much interest to the general public."
A Pro-Business Tilt
The overall regulatory record shows that the Bush administration has heeded the interests of business and industry. Like the Reagan administration, which made regulatory reform a priority, officials under Mr. Bush have introduced new rules to ease or dismantle existing regulations they see as cumbersome. Some analysts argue that the Bush administration has introduced rules favoring industry with a dedication unmatched in modern times.
"My thoughts go back to Herbert Hoover," said Robert Dallek, the presidential historian. "No president could have been more friendly to business than Hoover" until the Bush administration.
While John D. Graham, administrator of information and regulatory affairs at the Office of Management and Budget, does not dispute the administration's pro-business tilt, he said there had been notable exceptions, which his office approved when government officials "provided adequate scientific and economic justification."
Examples, Mr. Graham added, include "stricter fuel-saving rules for S.U.V.'s" and "a 90-percent reduction in diesel-engine exhaust," as well as "mandatory criteria for the lifesaving performance of side-impact air bags" in cars.
But examples of countervailing, business-friendly changes abound, some that broke through the flak thrown up from the wars, and others that remain little known.
The administration, at the request of lumber and paper companies, gave Forest Service managers the right to approve logging in federal forests without the usual environmental reviews. A Forest Service official explained that the new rule was intended "to better harmonize the environmental, social and economic benefits of America's greatest natural resource, our forests and grasslands."
In March of 2003, the Mine Safety and Health Administration published a proposed new regulation that would dilute the rules intended to protect coal miners from black-lung disease. The mine workers union called the new rules "extremely dangerous," while a mine safety administration official contended, "We are moving on toward more effective prevention of black-lung disease."
In May 2003, the Bush administration dropped a proposed rule that would have required hospitals to install facilities to protect workers against tuberculosis. Hospitals and other industry groups had lobbied against the change, saying that it would be costly and that existing regulations would accomplish many of the same aims.
But workers unions and public health officials argued that the number of tuberculosis cases had risen in 20 states and that the same precautions that were to have been put into place for tuberculosis would also have been effective against SARS.
The next month, the Department of Labor, responding to complaints from industry, dropped a rule that required employers to keep a record of employees' ergonomic injuries. Labor unions complained that without the reporting, it would be difficult to identify dangerous workplaces. But the department, in a statement, argued that the records "would not provide additional information useful to identifying possible causes or methods to prevent injury."
The administration's 2004 budget proposed to cut 77 enforcement and related positions from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, while adding two new staff members whose jobs would be to help industry comply with agency rules. Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao explained to a House committee that the agency would "continue to target inspections based on the worst hazards and the most dangerous workplaces." As the budget proposal was announced, President Bush and other senior officials focused most of their remarks on the large increases proposed for defense and domestic security.
A Case of Tired Truckers
In one little-known case, litigants say the administration managed to turn a Congressional mandate on its head. In 1995, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a startling study on fatal truck accidents. Thousands of people die on the highways each year in collisions with heavy trucks. The board studied 107 crashes in which the truck driver survived and found that more than half resulted from truck-driver fatigue. Nineteen of the truckers admitted to falling asleep at the wheel.
As a result of that report, Congress the same year ordered the government to revise driving-hour rules for truckers. Under regulations unchanged since 1939, truckers could drive 10 hours at a stretch and then had to rest for eight hours. The rules, Congress said, were to be changed to "reduce fatigue-related incidents and increase driver alertness." At that time, both the Senate and the House were under Republican control, and lawmakers began debating what to do.
The truck-related accident death toll hit a new high in 1997; 5,398 people died. Congress went further in 1999 and created a new federal agency, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and the Clinton administration set a goal of reducing truck-related accident fatalities by half over the following 10 years.
Consumer and driver-safety groups, including Public Citizen and Parents Against Tired Truckers, started lobbying the new agency to shorten the number of hours drivers could stay behind the wheel. But trucking industry officials argued that shorter shifts would disrupt delivery schedules, which in turn would raise prices on thousands of products delivered by truck.
Last year, the Department of Transportation finally issued a new rule, saying in a prepared statement that it would "save hundreds of lives" and "protect billions in commerce." The change would increase allowable driving time from 10 hours without a break to 11 hours. But after 11 hours, drivers would have to take 10 hours off instead of eight.
Trucking companies said they were satisfied with the rule while truck drivers deplored it, saying the added hours of driving time would increase driver fatigue.
Public Citizen and the other safety groups filed suit, saying the new rule, in all its detail, actually increased driving hours per week by 30 percent. The suit is pending. Joan Claybrook, the president of Public Citizen, said the new rule "does nothing positive, it does a lot of negative, and it's a big waste of four years' effort."
Courts Have Their Say
For all the ambition behind the campaign to remake the government's regulatory structure, courts have forced the administration to pull back a striking number of initiatives.
Last August, for example, the administration relaxed its clean-air rules by allowing thousands of corporations to upgrade their plants without having to install expensive pollution-control equipment, saying that would allow plants to modernize more easily, leading to greater efficiency and lower consumer costs.
Utilities had lobbied for change; environmental groups filed suit. In December, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit blocked the rule, at least temporarily, indicating that the court doubted the administration had authority to modify the Clean Air Act by regulation.
In a case involving air-conditioners, the Department of Energy announced in May 2002 that it would weaken a standard issued during the Clinton administration to make home air-conditioners more efficient. The department did order an efficiency increase, but less than had been mandated under Mr. Clinton. An Energy Department official said: "This is not a rollback. It is an increase" in efficiency.
Major air-conditioner manufacturers had lobbied against the improved efficiency standard, saying the new models would be unaffordable. Right away, the attorneys general from seven states, including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and California, filed suit to restore the old standard. In January of this year, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, ruled that the Bush administration did not have the legal right to revise the efficiency rule.
While the administration has had some successes in relaxing environmental rules, other changes have been stymied by the courts. A federal judge blocked a plan by the Department of the Interior to allow an energy company to drill for oil at one proposed location, adjacent to the Arches National Park in Utah, saying the government had not adequately considered the environmental impact of the plan. And an Interior Department judicial agency blocked a plan to develop the Powder River Basin in Wyoming.
Still, the administration is pleased with its overall record of regulatory change. Mr. Graham, the budget office official, eagerly acknowledged that the regulatory tilt had been toward business. "The Bush administration has cut the growth of costly business regulations by 75 percent, compared to the two previous administrations," he said.
Representative Obey said he believed most Americans remained unaware of many of the changes.
"Most people are busy just trying to make a living," he said. "And with all the focus on Iraq and bin Laden, it gives the administration an opportunity to take a lot of loot out the back door without anybody noticing."
August 14, 2004
Out of Spotlight, Bush Overhauls U.S. Regulations
By JOEL BRINKLEY
Dell "threw in" a free network switch with our new monster server, and now we're finding out why it was free. While the network (and Internet) is down, I thought I'd work on thumbnailing some images and updating the html so I can upload it all as soon as the intarweb is back up.
The following are pics of a mask I made for the anual July 4th Dooh Dah parade. Too go with it I wore a "mission accomplished" flight suit & harness, and I drug an Uncle Sam doll through the muck behind me. I actually wore this thing outside, and lived. Vishnu bless America!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
So a few weeks ago I noticed the telltale signs of mouse intrusion in one my kitchen drawers. Being a conscientious person, I went out and bought a live trap and set it in there. No joy.
This weekend I noticed they'd spread to a couple other drawers. With all the food now consigned to the metal shelving, I went out and picked up some old-school spring-loaded neck-breakers. The live trap was $12, the killers were four for $1.45: one for the floor under the sink, one for the drawer by the stove, and two for the drawer they started out in.
Set them up Sunday night. No joy by bedtime. No breakfast treats. Came home from work today, grabbed a glass of water at the sink, looked down... GORE.
Sweet! Opened the drawer...
MORE CARNAGE!
Notice that I left the live trap in place- I gave them every opportunity to come along quietly.
Holding my breath, I moved to the other drawer. Do we have a hat-trick? Why, yes, Mario, we do!
That'll teach the fuckers to mess with me.
BTW, mouse blood is a real bitch to get our of the slate floor.
then...
"Iyad Akmush Kanum, 23, learnt the limits of sovereignty on Monday when US prosecutors refused to uphold an Iraqi judges' order acquitting him of attempted murder of coalition troops."
and...
"The former dictator is facing what one senior Iraqi called "the trial of the century" after he was transferred from American to Baghdad legal custody today. He will remain in the physical custody of US forces."
and...
"Although the interim government will have "full sovereignty", according to a UN security council resolution on the handover earlier this month, there are significant constraints on its powers.
It is barred from making long-term policy decisions, and will not have control over the 160,000 foreign troops who will remain in Iraq to help to restore order. "
(ganked from
Transcript of The Editors' regular Saturday-night poker game with Dick Cheney, 6/19/04. Start tape at 12:32 AM.
The Editors: We'll take three cards.
Dick Cheney: Give me one.
Sounds of cards being placed down, dealt, retrieved, and rearranged in hand. Non-commital noises, puffing of cigars.
TE: Fifty bucks.
DC: I'm in. Show 'em.
TE: Two pair, sevens and fives.
DC: Not good enough.
TE: What do you have?
DC: Better than that, that's for sure. Pay up.
TE: Can you show us your cards?
DC: Sure. One of them's a six.
TE: You need to show all your cards. That's the way the game is played.
Colin Powell: Ladies and gentlemen. We have accumulated overwhelming evidence that Mr. Cheney's poker hand is far, far better than two pair. Note this satellite photo, taken three minutes ago when The Editors went to get more chips. In it we clearly see the back sides of five playing cards, arranged in a poker hand. Defector reports have assured us that Mr. Cheney's hand was already well advanced at this stage. Later, Mr. Cheney drew only one card. Why only one card? Would a man without a strong hand choose only one card? We are absolutely convinced that Mr. Cheney has at least a full house.
Tim Russert: Wow. Colin Powell really hit a homerun for the Administration right there. A very powerful performance. My dad played a lot of poker in World War 2, and he taught me many things about life. Read my book.
TE: He's extremely good at Power Point. But we would like to see the cards, or else we can't really be sure he has anything to beat two pair. We don't think he would lie to us, but ... well, it is a very rich pot.
Jonah Goldberg: Liberal critics of Mr. Cheney's poker hand contend that "he doesn't have anything". Oh, really, liberal critics? Cheney has already showed them the six of clubs, and yet these liberals persist in saying he has "nothing". Why do liberals consider the six of clubs to be "nothing"? Is it because the six of clubs is black?
Matt Drudge: ****DRUDGE REPORT EXCLUSIVE****
TE: Perhaps if you could just show us a subset of your cards which beat 2 pair? Or tell us exactly what your hand is?
DC: We will show you our cards after we have collected the pot. It is important that things be done in this order, otherwise the foundation of our entire poker game will be destroyed.
TE: We aren't sure ...
DC: Very good. And here are my cards. A straight flush.
Judith Miller: Dick Cheney has revealed a straight flush, confirming his pre-collection claims about beating two pair.
TE: Those cards are of different suits. It's not a flush.
Mark Steyn: When will it end? Now liberal critics complain that Dick Cheney's cards are not all the same suit. Naturally, these are the same liberals who are always whining about a lack of diversity in higher education. It seems like segregation is OK with these liberals, as long as it damages Republicans.
MD: ****DRUDGE REPORT EXCLUSIVE****
TE: Wait! It's not even a straight! You've got a eight and ten of hearts, a six of clubs, and the seven and five of diamonds. You have a ten high. That's nothing.
Sean Hannity: Well, well, well. In another sign of liberal desperation, liberals now complain that a ten high is "nothing". Does ten equal zero in liberal mathematics? That would explain a lot.
Robert Novak: It's a perfectly valid poker hand. Apparently, liberals have never heard of a "skip straight". It's a kind of straight, just with one card missing. But if you skip around the missing nine, it's a straight.
Alan Colmes: Mother says I mustn't play poker.
TE: There is no such thing as a "skip straight".
Brit Hume: It seems like some people are still playing poker like it's September 10th. Back then, you needed to have all your cards in order to claim a straight. But, as we learned on that day, sometimes you won't have perfect knowledge. Sometimes you have to learn to connect the dots, and see the patterns which are not visible to superficial analysis of the type favored by the CIA and the State Department. Dick Cheney's skip straight is a winning poker hand for the post-9/11 world.
Rush Limbaugh: Do The Editors have two pairs, or a pair of twos? First they say one thing, then another. What are they hiding?
Andrew Sullivan: Dick Cheney never said he had a straight. He was very careful about this. His cards can form many different hands. None of these hands alone can beat a pair of twos; but, taken together, the combination of all possible hands presents a more compelling case for taking the pot than simply screaming "Pair of twos! Pair of twos!" as unprincipled liberal critics of the Vice President so often do.
MD: ****DRUDGE REPORT EXCLUSIVE****
Zell Miller: As a lifelong liberal Democrat, I believe Dick Cheney, and I hate liberals and Democrats.
William Safire: Why are liberals so obsessed by Dick Cheney's poker hand? The pot has been taken, the deal is done. If liberals are upset that we are no longer playing by the Marquis of Queensbury patty-cake poker rules, they clearly lack the stomach to play poker in the post-September 11th environment. And why do they never complain about Saddam Hussein's poker playing, which was a thousand times worse?
Christopher Hitchens: The Left won't be happy until the pot is divided up equally between Yassar Arafat, Osama bin Laden, and Hitler. Orwell would have seen this.
Ann Coulter: Why do liberals object so strenuously to the idea of conservatives having a "straight"? Perhaps because it doesn't fit in with the radical homosexual/Islamist agenda they hold so dear?
Report of the Bipartisan Commission on Poker Hands: There is no such thing as a "skip straight".
DC: I have access to poker rules that the Commission doesn't, and so I know for a fact that the cards in my hand are all intimately connected.
George W. Bush: Dick Cheney is telling the truth. I'm a nice man who would drink a beer with you.
Vladimir Putin: I dealt Dick Cheney three aces and two kings.
DC: My deal.
Ever have a day where you were just waiting for the deathblow?
Yesterday I woke up tired. Got out of the house late because of the extra time it took to change the bandages on my newly stitched up finger (my bad Tuesday started last Saturday). I'd decided to take the Fox to work, having "corrected" an idle adjustment problem the day before, and because at least one of the wheels on the car needed balanced (steering wheel shake at 55+mph), and a tire had a slow leak. Figured I could get that done on my lunch break. I also was toting my hockey skates with me, to be sharpened for my two games that night.
Came out to find the car covered in bird shit, and the slow-leak tire flat. I considered taking the convertible, but it was supposed to storm and hail, and I wanted to get the wheels taken care of. Grabbed my air tank (the fact that I own a 5-gallon tank for filling flat tires should tell you a lot about the quality of my cars), filled the tire, hopped in, and fired it up: "Welcome back, mister scary-high idle!" Screw it. Took the surface streets to work because of the wheels. That took another ten minutes, with the idle issue making it scream at 2500rpm every time I stopped for a light.
So I got to work late, then had a busy morning. At lunch time I adjusted the idle again (now it wouldn't idle when warm, and I had to feather the throttle at lights), dropped off my skates at Play-it-Again to be sharpened, and ran over to Discount Tire. The slow-leak was in the sidewall, so they couldn't fix it. They didn't have a replacement in stock, so I drove out on the leaker. Between dropping off my skates and taking the car in, I was already late back from lunch, so I left the skates to pick up on the way home from work.
One of the guys at work had to take his VW to the dealer for service, so I offered to drop him off to retrieve it. Saw a cute girl in the lot checking out Jettas. Made eye contact, and the Fox promptly stalled. Got out of there an headed back into work. Got stuck in a two-mile traffic stop and go traffic jam. Only stalled once.
Finished up my day and headed home. On the highway I quickly realized that my slow-leaking tire now seems to be a fast-leaker. Thirty seconds later the 0-visibility, 40mph gusts thunderstorm hit. I drove along on my deflating tire for a couple more miles, exited to a gas station, waited 15 minutes for the rain to let up a bit, then filled it back to 44psi from 20. Got back on the highway just as the storm stopped, and got nicely back up to speed. That's when it really got weird.
So I'm doing about 60-65mph. I have a semi on my right, a car behind me, and another passing me on my left (that's right, I got passed- I'm getting old). About 100 feet in front of me is a pickup. Through the pickup's windshield I see this small black thing pop up in the air. I'm not sure what it was- looked to be about 4 inches in diameter, and probably weighed a pound. I lift off the accelerator and tap my brakes, but I'm completely boxed in.
The little UFO sails about 20ft in the air over the truck, bounces once, twice... CAH-RACK!!! My passenger-side windshield wiper, which through some insane bit of good fortune happened to be in exactly the right point of it's arc across the glass, took the brunt of the impact. The steel arm of it bent inward to bang on the windshield, and the entire blade assembly exploded, but the glass remained undamaged. The UFO continued on it's merry way towards the car behind me, but I didn't see what it accomplished afterwards, as I was too busy not crashing.
But wait, my day wasn't over yet. I had two hockey games scheduled- at my favorite 10:20 and 11:40 time slots, which means getting to sleep around 3am. I decided I'd have to take the convertible, because of the leaky tire and mangled wiper on the Fox. Around 9:15 I went out to the garage to load my hockey gear into the ragtop, and noticed that I was missing something (...wait for it...) yep, I'd forgotten to pick up my skates after work. And the shop closed at 9:00.
So I head to the rink, and ask the guy at the counter if I can rent a pair of skates, which is when he tells me the games may be cancelled, because the Zamboni won't start and the hockey clinic on the ice before us had shredded the ice down to the paint.
Since the 10:20 teams were there and dressed, they let us do a little scrimmaging. It was too late to contact the teams for the 11:40 game, so they all got the word when they arrived, and by the time I got off the ice from the scrimmage. The rental skates have proven to be only mildly crippling. As we hit the showers, they got the Zamboni going, but the 11:40 guys were all gone, so no game.
I fully expected to finish the day with a fatal wreck on the drive home, or at least a speeding ticket, but the Day of Suckitude ended with a merciful whimper.
By comparison, today's mundane uneventfullness feels like a vacation.
Ok, so I'm adding this update a bit late. It's been a busy month, as the more current update I'm about to write above will illustrate.
Went camping down in the Smokies with a bunch of peeps for my friend Mike's 30th birthday. When I was a kid I always HATED going on camping vacations- which is to say, vacations in general; I don't think my folks ever ponied up for a hotel or motel until I was about 16.
I'm not sure why camping appeals to me now, when I have such unpleasant memories of stifling un-airconditioned August nights and dew-soaked, fuzzy-mouthed mornings. Maybe I've mellowed, or maybe it's just that Dad never delivered us to a campground until sometime after 10 pm, to set up tents in the dark (after the pool had closed, of course) then chased us back into the van first thing in the morning for the next 12 hours of driving across the country in a seas-sickness-inducing van. I've probably been to 3/4s of the states in the U.S., but aside from the view of the highway from the van windows, and stumbling several dusty miles in flip-flops to see some "scenic" rock outcropping or another, I don't have much to recall about them.
This trip was different: I spent 14 hours in a van to stumble several miles in comfortable hiking boots to see a scenic rock outcropping.
And then there was the camping, itself. I like toys. I like preparing for every possible contingency. I am not a light packer.
Some of us met at Mike's to pile into another friend, Rich's VW camper. I loaded up a monster tent, folding lounge chair, folding table, full-size rolling suitcase, rolling 8 gallon cooler, rolling 4 gallon folding cooler, and my laptop (for DVD movies on the 7-hour drive).
For a 3-day/2-night outing, I brought 8 uunderwear, 2 jeans, 3 shorts, 10 socks, 6 shirts, 5 flashlights, 3 radios, 3 books, 100 plastic cups, and enough food and bottled water for 3 weeks. Rich was not amused.
And then there was that tent. I don't own one, and had two loaners to choose from: a 2-man pup, and an 8-man cabin. Guess which I chose. Hey, other people might not have brought tents (they all did). And I'm still haunted by the night my little brother and I spent crammed in a $10 pup-tent somewhere in Colorado (or was it Wyoming- which one has pronghorn dear along the highways?) while it stormed outside and rainwater soaked everything in the tent. Then again, maybe my brother just told me it was rainwater. Anyway, the cabin tent left me with plenty of room to spread out all my gear.
I had a great time, and have already started collecting lighter, more compact, practical gear for my next outing- starting with a titanium spork.
(snagged from a message board post)
all he did the whole movie was get pwned.
then he respawned at the end and used a god mode cheat.
he does that and everybody worships him for thousads of years later, but if i did that, you guys would be like 'WTF LAMER ch33t3r f4Gg0t'
"double standardz"
-Bleh
Top 12 Reasons Why Homosexuals Shouldn't Be Allowed to Marry
The Drudge Report has learned that Dick Cheney has a royal flush, hearts. Developing ...
A witness has come forward claiming that The Editors engage in racial profiling in blog-linking. Developing ...
Did The Editors claim to have "a pair of Jews"? Are they anti-Semites as well as racists? Developing ...
5/17/04
Born to lose, destined to fail
4/25/04
What do you mean, there's no shower?
4/18/04
Sunday Comics
3/10/04
A 31337 h@x0r's Review of The Passion of the Christ
2/20/04
Since for some reason I seem to find myself in these arguments all the time...
Current |
2005 |
2004 |
2003 |
Late 2002 |
Early 2002 |
Winter 2002 |
2001 |
2000