Bad Deeds for 3-17-2008

Bush Asked for Weaker Smog Standard – The Environmental Protection Agency agreed to weaken an important part of its new smog requirements after being told at the last minute that President Bush preferred a less stringent approach, according to government documents. They show tense exchanges between the EPA and the White House Office of Management and Budget in the days before the smog air quality standard was announced Wednesday. Changes directed by the White House were made only hours before the agency issued the regulation. The late activity forced the EPA to delay the announcement for five hours.

British Government Figures Hide Scale of CO2 Emissions, Says Report – Britain’s climate change emissions may be 12% higher than officially stated, according to a National Audit Office investigation which has strongly criticized the government for using two different carbon accounting systems. There is “insufficient consistency and coordination” in the government’s approach, the NAO said. Using one system, which the government presents to the UN and in public, Britain emitted 656m tonnes of CO2 in 2005, and claims an improvement on 1990 figures. However, the lesser-known but more accurate data in the government’s national environmental accounts show emissions to be in the region of 733m tonnes in 2005, a NAO report says today.

More Than 200 Thousand Public-Records Requests Unanswered – Two years after President Bush signed an executive order designed to strengthen FOIA compliance and reduce backlogs of pending requests, an audit of public information procedures finds some progress but persistent problems. Hundreds of thousands of requests remain unanswered, and compliance with electronic requests has not kept pace with technological innovation.

Americans Don’t Care About Their Liberty – In recent weeks, the papers have been full of stories about the warehousing of information on Americans by the National Security Agency, the interception of financial information by the CIA, the stripping of authority from a civilian intelligence oversight board by the White House, and the compilation of suspicious activity reports from banks by the Treasury Department. On Thursday, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine released a report documenting continuing misuse of Patriot Act powers by the FBI. And to judge from the reaction in the country, nobody cares.

Four Articles That Say There’s Something Strange Behind the Spitzer Investigation;

Even Some Conservative Republicans are Calling it Strange – While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators. Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.

Intrigue: Novak suggests GOP operative behind Spitzer fall – Conservative columnist Robert Novak suggests a Republican political operative was behind the fall of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. “Republican political operative Roger Stone, Eliot Spitzer’s longtime antagonist, predicted his political demise more than three months in advance,” Novak writes. “Spitzer’s entrapment by federal authorities investigating a prostitution ring raised speculation that Stone, with a 40-year record as a political hit man, somehow was behind it.” Speaking of the scandal Stone added cryptically: “My work isn’t done there. Just watch.”

Alan Dershowitz, in the Wall Street Journal, averred that the story of Spitzer’s ‘capture’ doesn’t entirely ring true to career prosecutors – “There is no hard evidence that Eliot Spitzer was targeted for investigation, but the story of how he was caught does not ring entirely true to many experienced former prosecutors and current criminal lawyers,” Dershowitz wrote. “The New York Times reported that the revelations began with a routine tax inquiry by revenue agents ‘conducting a routine examination of suspicious financial transactions reported to them by banks.’ This investigation allegedly found ‘several unusual movements of cash involving the Governor of New York.’ But the movement of the amounts of cash required to pay prostitutes, even high-priced prostitutes over a long period of time, does not commonly generate a full-scale investigation.”

“We are talking about thousands, not millions, of dollars. We are also talking about a man who is a multimillionaire with numerous investments and purchases,” he added. “The idea that federal investigators would focus on a few transactions to corporations — that were not themselves under investigation — raises as many questions as answers.”

Ben Stein deeply disturbed by Spitzer investigation – Former Nixon speechwriter and Republican talking head Ben Stein is troubled by what he calls the actions of a few “nosy civil servants” using evidence gained from wiretaps to unravel the career of the outgoing New York Governor, and undo a majority vote by the people of New York.

“Something sinister is happening,” he says, “and it scares me.”
“Men hire prostitutes by the thousands,” Stein continues, “maybe tens of thousands, every day. They also bring women across state lines for sex every day.

“The punishment for the men who hire hookers is usually nil, or at most, a small fine, close to what you’d get for a traffic ticket.”

Spitzer, on the other hand, was humiliated and run out of office as punishment, with Stein protesting a small number of federal officials having what he essentially calls veto power over the electoral process. Spitzer, he continues, has been stripped of his career for something picked up on a wiretap that was not a high crime like terrorism or treason.

Millions of Iraqis Lack Water and Healthcare Says Red Cross – Five years after the United States led an invasion of Iraq, millions of people there are still deprived of clean water and medical care, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday

Regards,

Jim