Op-Ed Contributor: More Jobs to the Gallon

The Bush administration has issued a proposal that would weaken one of the nation’s most successful environmental laws. The administration’s plan would change current automotive fuel economy standards and allow a loophole that would hurt the environment, auto workers and the economy. …

Under current law, automakers are required to meet an average fuel economy standard for their fleets of cars and light trucks. They can make vehicles that fall below the average so long as they make enough that exceed it. By requiring an average fuel economy of 27.5 miles per gallon for cars and 20.7 for light trucks, current standards save more than 2.8 million barrels of oil per day while reducing heat-trapping global warming emissions by nearly 600 million tons per year. [mjh: my Toyota light truck gets 27 mpg.] …

The Bush administration is proposing to scrap these standards for a new system that would establish a series of vehicle weight categories, with a separate standard for each category. Basically, heavier vehicles would have lower fuel standards. Since they would no longer need to meet a fleetwide average, automakers would be free to add weight to all of their vehicles to make them qualify for heavier weight categories.

The result would be a reduction in overall fuel economy and an increase in pollution. America’s dependence on foreign oil would increase, and our environment would suffer.

The shift to a weight-based system could also jeopardize the jobs of thousands of Americans who work, either directly or indirectly, on the production of small cars. …

Even some automakers have expressed concern about these new standards, preferring the existing rules to uncertain new requirements.

The Sierra Club and the United Auto Workers do not always agree on automobile policy. We do agree, however, that the Bush administration’s proposal would destroy American jobs, reduce fuel economy and increase global warming emissions — and add to the burdens of an already struggling auto industry.

Carl Pope is executive director of the Sierra Club. Ron Gettelfinger is president of the U.A.W.

Turns out Bush really is a uniter — of people who oppose him. Well, you’re with him or you’re against him. mjh

Ralph, Don’t Run!

Keep Nader out of this race.mjh

Nader 2004 Presidential Exploratory Committee

A message from Ralph Nader:

Welcome to our exploratory website, which could be subtitled — for both you and me — ”keep an open mind and evaluate the variables.”

President’s Budget Is Out of Touch With American Conservation Values

The President’s Budget showcases the Administration’s real priorities for the year. That’s because, once all the talking is over, what gets funded is what gets done. This year, the budget lays out a disturbing under-investment in the parks, forests and wildlife refuges that form a critical piece of what makes America a beautiful and unique country. This budget weakens protection of America’s lands and includes provisions that would make it easier to sell public lands for private profit. Then it adds insult to injury by using ‘smoke and mirrors’ budget tricks to try to mask these cuts.

Clearing away the sleight-of-hand, this budget:

* Falls far short (to the tune of almost $600 million) of the President’s claim that he is “fully funding” the Land and Water Conservation fund;

* Assumes revenue from opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling;

* Opens the door for a sell-off of wildlands managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

In good times and in bad, we have always invested in the places and wildlife that make America special. This budget is out of touch with mainstream American values and priorities. Americans want and deserve a consistent commitment to conservation spending.

Why Bush stopped flying remains a mystery By Dave Moniz and Jim Drinkard, USA TODAY

The positive descriptions of Bush’s military service make his sudden decision to quit flying in the spring of 1972 — two years before his pilot commitment was up — all the more puzzling. …

* Bush was accepted into pilot school even though he scored in the 25th percentile on a standardized test. The test was given to all prospective pilots and there was no specific score that disqualified a candidate. In addition, Bush had two arrests for college pranks and four traffic offenses before applying for pilot training. Former and current military pilots say it was uncommon for an applicant to be approved for training with such a record.

* There is no record of a formal procedure called a “flying evaluation board,” which normally would have been convened once Bush stopped flying in April 1972.

* Bush’s records do not show he was given another job in the Air Guard once he quit flying. Pilots and Bush comrades say his records should reflect some type of new duties he was assigned. …

A contemporary of Bush, Dean Roome, a former Texas Air National Guard fighter pilot, was Bush’s roommate when they were flying in Houston. … During a telephone interview with USA TODAY in 2002, Roome described Bush’s career as mercurial; the first three years were outstanding, the final two troubled. “You wonder if you know who George Bush is,” Roome said.

“I think he digressed after awhile,” he said. “In the first half, he was gung-ho. … Where George failed was to fulfill his obligation as a pilot. It was an irrational time in his life.”

Contacted by e-mail last week, Roome pulled back from those comments.

USATODAY.com – Prosecutor in terror case controversy sues Ashcroft

A federal prosecutor in a major terrorism case in Detroit has taken the rare step of suing Attorney General John Ashcroft, alleging the Justice Department interfered with the case, compromised a confidential informant and exaggerated results in the war on terrorism.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino of Detroit accused the Justice Department of ”gross mismanagement” of the war on terrorism in a whistleblower lawsuit filed late Friday in federal court in Washington. …

Convertino came under internal investigation last fall after providing information to a Senate committee about his concerns about the war on terror. His testimony came just months after he helped convict some members of an alleged terrorism cell in Detroit.

The government now admits it failed to turn over evidence during the trial that might have assisted the defense, including an allegation from an imprisoned drug gang leader who claimed the government’s key witness made up his story.

Convertino is seeking damages under the First Amendment and Privacy Act, alleging he has been subjected to an internal investigation as retaliation for his cooperation with the Senate and that information from the internal probe was wrongly leaked to news media. …

Convertino also accused Justice officials of intentionally divulging the name of one of his confidential terrorism informants (CI) to retaliate against him. [mjh: just like the CIA agent the Bush team outted]

The leak put the informant at grave risk, forced him to flee the United States and “interfered with the ability of the United States to obtain information from the CI about current and future terrorist activities,” the suit alleges.

Convertino is a federal prosecutor, probably not some wimpy liberal unpatriot. Note the ”Justice” Department broke the law, then attacked one of its own for talking to Congress. Watching Conservatives slit each others throats would be interesting if they weren’t creating American Fascism at the same time. mjh

MEDICAL PRIVACY: Abortion politics has Ashcroft trampling more rights (Detroit Free Press Editorial)

The staunch anti-abortion position of the Bush administration, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, is well established. But attempts by Ashcroft’s Department of Justice to subpoena medical records involving a controversial abortion procedure reveal an even more frightening ideology.

This administration, it seems, doesn’t believe that matters between doctors and patients can be kept confidential.

Your government’s attorneys are trying to make the case that nothing — from common law to the Constitution — protects the privacy of medical records. It will be up to the nation’s judges to uphold this long and well-accepted practice, which actually is written into law in some places. A federal district judge in Chicago has already done so, saying that the medical privacy laws of Illinois protect such records. A New York judge sees it differently. A Philadelphia jurist is still weighing the case.

Ashcroft says the government needs medical records to defend the late-term abortion ban passed by Congress last fall. Doctors who have blocked the ban say it is rarely used and only when medically necessary. Ashcroft intends to disprove their claim by reviewing their records.

But the files he seeks, including some from the University of Michigan Health Systems, go back three years, predating the ban. Those abortions were legal; neither the doctors who performed them nor the women who underwent them broke any law. Even if they had, the government should have to prove a compelling reason to trump the patients’ privacy rights; since they had not, there is no just cause.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be a shock that an administration that doesn’t recognize a woman’s dominion over her own body doesn’t respect the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship. But this effort could have a chilling effect on what patients are willing to tell their doctors and hamper medical research. It’s government overreach for political ends. If Ashcroft won’t stop it, the courts ought to make him.

Op-Ed Columnist: The Five Sisters By WILLIAM SAFIRE, NYTimes

If one huge corporation controlled both the production and the dissemination of most of our news and entertainment, couldn’t it rule the world?

Can’t happen here, you say; America is the land of competition that generates new technology to ensure a diversity of voices. But consider how a supine Congress and a feckless majority of the Federal Communications Commission have been failing to protect our access to a variety of news, views and entertainment.

Conservative Safire has been a leader on this issue of media industry consolidation. One can almost forgive him for failing to state the obvious: Republicans control the FCC, the legislature and the White House (and are stacking the judiciary). mjh

mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: Follow Up on the FCC Giveaway to Fox, et. al.

BILL MOYERS: And so those 24 lines were quietly inserted in last week’s fine print [of the 1,182 page spending bill]. With those lines, the House and Senate agreement was overturned and the new cap was set just high enough to allow Viacom and Murdoch to keep all their TV stations. …

What does it say to you about democracy? That almost a million citizens make themselves heard in support of overturning the FCC ruling. The Senate votes 55 to 40 to overturn those rules. And yet the House can’t vote on it. [because of Hastert and Delay]

SENATOR BYRON DORGAN: Why? Because the President supports the FCC rule. This is his Federal Communications Commission.