Bad Deeds for 1-9-2009

Conservative Lies Keep Coming Even After the Election – Consider some of the bogus claims debunked just since Election Day:

It’s not true that unionized auto workers at Detroit’s Big Three make more than $70 an hour, as claimed by some opponents of federal aid.

President-elect Obama never promised to seek a ban on all semi-automatic weapons, as claimed by some fearful gun owners.

And no, Obama did not propose a Gestapo-like civilian security force as claimed by a Republican member of Congress from Georgia and any number of overwrought bloggers.

Democrats in Congress are not discussing any plan to confiscate the assets in 401(k) retirement accounts, another falsehood spread about by chain e-mails and Internet postings.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not demand a 757-size personal jet, a false claim resurrected when Democrats criticized Big Three executives for flying to D.C. on their own private jets to beg for aid.

And Pelosi’s husband doesn’t own a $17 million stake in a food company that she may (or may not) have tried to help with an exemption from a new minimum wage law.

 

FDA Has Been Squelching Science and Putting People at Risk – In an unusually blunt letter, a group of federal scientists is complaining to the Obama transition team of widespread managerial misconduct in a division of the Food and Drug Administration.

“The purpose of this letter is to inform you that the scientific review process for medical devices at the FDA has been corrupted and distorted by current FDA managers, thereby placing the American people at risk,” said the letter, dated Wednesday and written on the agency’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health letterhead.

In their letter the FDA dissidents alleged that agency managers use intimidation to squelch scientific debate, leading to the approval of medical devices whose effectiveness is questionable and which may not be entirely safe.

“Managers with incompatible, discordant and irrelevant scientific and clinical expertise in devices…have ignored serious safety and effectiveness concerns of FDA experts,” the letter said. “Managers have ordered, intimidated and coerced FDA experts to modify scientific evaluations, conclusions and recommendations in violation of the laws, rules and regulations, and to accept clinical and technical data that is not scientifically valid.”

 

Bush Administration Sneaks in Provision to Bar Autoworkers From Striking Against GM, But CEO is Doing Just Fine – A little-noticed provision buried in the Bush Administration’s $13.4 billion loan package to General Motors will prohibit the United Auto Workers from launching a strike as long as the company receives funds from the federal government. The terms of GM’s loan package were reported last night in the Detroit Free Press. They did not become public until GM filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Not everyone has felt the full brunt of the declining auto market, however. In 2008, GM CEO Rick Wagoner received a salary increase — to $2.2 million, plus stock options — despite the fact the company had been losing money since 2005.

 

Tennessee Valley Authority Releases Sludge into River – More pollution from a coal-fired power plant.

 

Toxic Coal Ash Piling Up In Many States – Millions of tons of toxic coal ash is piling up in power plant ponds in 32 states, a practice the federal government has long recognized as a risk to human health and the environment but has left unregulated. An Associated Press analysis of the most recent Energy Department data found that 156 coal-fired power plants store ash in surface ponds similar to the one that collapsed last month in Tennessee.

Regards,

Jim