Bad Deeds for 7-14-2008

What’s Wrong With Offshore Drilling – The Bush administration’s latest plan to drive down skyrocketing oil prices by lifting the executive ban on domestic offshore drilling has revived an old question in American politics: is such drilling ecologically responsible? The Washington Post today recalls when this kind of offshore drilling lead to disaster. See photos of the oil spill at the link [above]. Remember that offshore drilling really means close-to-shore drilling.

 

The Press is Helping the Administration Control the News – In its investigation of the misleading accounts that initially surrounded Pat Tillman’s death and Jessica Lynch’s rescue the House Oversight Committee on Monday shed some light on the White House’s press-management apparatus and the chummy relationship between Karl Rove and AP scribe Ron Fournier.

The report details the Bush administration’s exploitation of Tillman’s death and suppression of evidence that the former football pro who joined the Army Rangers after 9/11 was killed by friendly fire. In the day’s after Tillman’s death, on April 22, 2004, the committee examined e-mails from the White House’s communications team, including some exchanges with reporters.

Commentators and reporters contacted the White House to offer advice. For example, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan e-mailed the White House’s Director of Strategic Initiatives, Peter Wehner, recommending that he “find out what faith Tillman practiced and have the president go by that church and light a candle or say a prayer.” Karl Rove exchanged e-mails about Pat Tillman with Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier, under the subject line “H-E-R-O.” In response to Mr. Fournier’s e-mail, Mr. Rove asked, “How does our country continue to produce men and women like this,” to which Mr. Fournier replied, “The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight.”

 

Bush Aide Offering Access for Donations – A lobbyist with close ties to the White House is offering access to key figures in George W Bush’s administration in return for six-figure donations to the private library being set up to commemorate Bush’s presidency. Payne has close ties to the Bush administration and has accompanied Bush and Cheney on several foreign trips, according to the article, which confirms suspicions that the White House offers political favors in return for large donations.

 

Ad Misrepresents Who It’s From and What It’s About – An ad by the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) and Wal-Mart, masquerading as a pro-union, pro-worker group on behalf of Republican Sen. Norm Coleman exploits “a distorted stereotype of the Mafia, and of labor unions as tools of organized crime” to misrepresent legislation that, despite what the ad implies, would actually make it easier for workers to organize unions.

 

The Terrorist Watch List is a Mess – Why are there so many names on the U.S. government’s terrorist list? In September 2007, the Inspector General of the Justice Department reported that the Terrorist Screening Center (the FBI-administered organization that consolidates terrorist watch list information in the United States) had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007 – and that the list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month.1 (See also this new March 2008 report.2)

By those numbers, the list now has over one million names on it. [And how many individuals match those the names one the list?] Terrorist watch lists must be tightly focused on true terrorists who pose a genuine threat. Bloated lists are bad because:

• They ensnare many innocent travelers as suspected terrorists, and
• They waste screeners’ time and divert their energies from looking for true terrorists.

Many innocent individuals have already been caught up by our government’s bloated watch lists.

Regards,

Jim