Bad Deeds for 1-16-2008

Bill O’Reilly Gets Facts Wrong About Veterans – Last night, in reference to our nation’s homeless veterans, Bill O’Reilly said: “They may be out there, but there’s not many of them out there. Okay? … If you know where there’s a veteran sleeping under a bridge, you call me immediately, and we will make sure that man does not do it.” He raises an important issue. Unfortunately, he got the facts wrong. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, almost 200,000 veterans are homeless on any given night in America, accounting for about one-third of the adult homeless population. Sign the open letter to Bill O’Reilly, and urge him to set the record straight.

How NBC Changed the Facts to Block Dennis Kucinich from the Nevada Debate – Nevada’s Supreme Court today upheld NBC’s exclusion of presidential contender Dennis Kucinich from tonight’s MSNBC Democrats’ debate. But the TV network’s own appeal to the court reveals that its managers changed the program’s qualification rules a move that threw Kucinich off the program. An NBC Emergency Petition’s “statement of facts” filed today admits that Kucinich may have qualified for the debate under the rules outlined by Democratic party consultant Jenny Backus. Those guidelines said that a candidate had to finish in at least fourth place in the New Hampshire primary or Iowa Caucus to participate in the January 15th debate. A candidate could also qualify by being included “in the top four in one of six credible random-sample telephone national news media polls conducted since the Iowa Caucus.” On January 10th, NBC Political Director Chuck Todd rescinded the networks’ invitation. He explained that under NBC’s “revised debate criteria, Mr. Kucinich no longer qualified thereunder.” “The revised criteria required that invited candidates must have finished first, second or third in either the Iowa Caucus or the New Hampshire Primary,” NBC’s petition says.

Senate Fails to Enact Real Farm Bill Reform – The Senate passed a Farm Bill last month that failed to reform the trade-distorting subsidies that drive farmers around the world into grinding poverty. The Dorgan-Grassley Payment Limits amendment, which would have established a $250,000 limit for federal farm subsidy payments to agricultural producers – garnered the support of a majority of US senators, with a vote of 56-43. Unfortunately, the amendment failed after Senate leadership succumbed to pressure from Southern senators and made an 11th hour rule change requiring 60 votes for passage. In doing so, they rigged the rules for this key vote to ensure that despite achieving a clear majority, it would not be adopted.

President Bush Hates Whales – President Bush exempted the Navy from an environmental law so it can continue using sonar in its anti-submarine warfare training off the California coast — a practice critics say is harmful to whales and other marine mammals. The White House announced Wednesday that Bush had signed the exemption Tuesday while traveling in the Middle East. “The president’s action is an attack on the rule of law,” said Joel Reynolds, director of the Marine Mammal Protection Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “By exempting the Navy from basic safeguards under both federal and state law, the president is flouting the will of Congress, the decision of the California Coastal Commission and a ruling by the federal court.”

Regards,

Jim