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organizations working on - - - - DAY 146: The Bush administration had little in the way of a postwar plan when it invaded Iraq, according to reports released by several news organizations. In March 2003, during a meeting of war planners and intelligence officials at Shaw Air Force Base, an Army official's presentation on the Pentagon's strategy included a slide on "Phase 4-C," the period of rebuilding after fighting had ended. That slide said only "To Be Provided." In April 2003, after American troops had taken Baghdad, General Tommy Franks met with his commanders and said that combat forces should begin to pull out within 60 days, and that only 30,000 troops would still be in Iraq by September. Today, 138,000 soldiers remain in Iraq. These plans were made in the face of intelligence estimates suggesting that the postwar phase would be far more difficult than the war itself. In February 2003, the Army War College prepared a report saying that "the possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace in Iraq is real and serious ... The United States may find itself in a radically different world over the next few years, a world in which the threat of Saddam Hussein seems like a pale shadow of new problems of America's own making." The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency circulated similar forecasts in January and April 2003; the Pentagon's Joint Staff, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and the CIA's National Intelligence Council also made comparable predictions before and during the war. The Army Central Command originally envisioned a force of 380,000 to wage the war; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's original estimate was 40,000. Although the White House ultimately approved the use of about 250,000 troops, additional forces that were meant to be sent to secure Iraq after the war were sent late, or not at all. Two Army divisions that Centcom had been promised for the postwar period were not in Iraq when Baghdad fell. A third, the 1st Cavalry Division, was so delayed by Rumsfeld's questioning of the need for more troops that on April 21 its deployment, set to include 17,500 troops, was canceled. Jay Garner, the initial civilian administrator of Iraq, said that "we did not seal the borders because we did not have enough troops to do that, and that brought in terrorists." James A. Marks, a retired Army major general and the chief intelligence officer for the land war command, said that "the insurgency was not inevitable ... We had momentum going in and had Saddam's forces on the run. But we did not have enough troops ... They took advantage of our limited numbers." Preparations that could have been made before the war were neglected by the administration. The head of the U.S. Agency for International Development requested permission from the Pentagon to position relief supplies in Kuwait, but was ignored. Garner was not appointed until January 2003 and did not organize an interagency conference on postwar Iraq until less than a month before the invasion. The Pentagon never released its Phase 4 plan for Iraq. A plan called Operation Desert Crossing, which addressed the restoration of order after a war in Iraq, was last updated in 2000 and was never utilized. On March 17, 2003, two days before the start of the war, commanders contacted the Army War College to request copies of the handbook the U.S. had used in its occupation of Germany almost 60 years ago. Garner said that "the Bush administration did not [have its head in the postwar game]. Condi Rice did not. Doug Feith didn't. You could go brief them, but you never saw any initiative come of them. You just kind of got a north and south nod. And so it ends with so many tragic things." (Sources: Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott, "Post-war Planning Non-existent," Knight Ridder Newspapers, October 17, 2004. See article at: realcities.com. Michael R. Gordon, "The Strategy to Secure Iraq Did Not Foresee a 2nd War," New York Times, October 19, 2004. See article at: nytimes.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 145: The CIA has yet to release its report on intelligence failures before September 11. The report was requested by Congress almost two years ago, and was completed in June. Intelligence officials and congressional Democrats have suggested that the Bush administration has instructed the CIA to withhold the report until after the election because of its damaging content. An official who had read the report told columnist Robert Scheer that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward ... The report found very senior-level officials responsible." The ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jane Harman, sent a letter requesting the report to the CIA more than two weeks ago, but has received no response. "We believe that the CIA has been told not to distribute the report," she said. (Sources: Greg Miller, "Lawmakers Prod CIA for Pre-9/11 Accountability Report," Los Angeles Times, October 20, 2004. See article at: latimes.com. Robert Scheer, "The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket," Los Angeles Times, October 19, 2004. See article at: latimes.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 144: Without significant interference from the Bush administration, Congress has distributed billions of dollars for terrorism preparedness without taking into account where the risk of terrorism is greatest. Alaska has received almost $92 per resident over the last two years, and North Dakota has received $91 per resident; New York has received $32 per resident, and California has received $22 per resident. This year alone, Juneau, Alaska, has received $962,000, with which it has bought a bomb-deactivating robot, decontamination equipment, night-vision goggles, and other supplies. Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic member of the 9/11 Commission, said that the anti-terrorism funds had become a "general revenue sharing program" driven by "political muscle flexing." (Source: Dean E. Murphy, "Security Grants Still Streaming to Rural States," New York Times, October 10, 2004. See article at: nytimes.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 143: The United States Commission on Civil Rights, a bipartisan agency established by Congress, has prepared a report that is sharply critical of the Bush administration's civil rights record. The report "finds that President Bush has neither exhibited leadership on pressing civil rights issues, nor taken actions that matched his words." The commission's analysis highlights the administration's lack of action on voting rights and election reform, as well as on equal education and affirmative action. The report also criticizes the administration for facilitating racial profiling after September 11, and criticizes the EPA for its lack of attention to the impact of environmental contamination on minority communities. On October 9, after Republican members of the USCCR objected to the timing, the commission voted to postpone final approval of the report until after the election. A draft remains available on the commission's website. (Sources: "Bush's Civil Rights Record Is Criticized, Silently," The Associated Press, October 10, 2004. See article at: nytimes.com. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Press Release, October 5, 2004. See article at: usccr.gov.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 142: Over 100 high-level officials appointed by the Bush administration now oversee industries they previously represented as lobbyists, lawyers, or company advocates. Many of those appointees have pushed for more favorable policies for their respective industries from within the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, and other agencies. Six have been the subject of ethics investigations or have resigned due to conflicts of interest. The Bush-appointed chief counsel for the FDA, Daniel E. Troy, is a former lobbyist for pharmaceutical firms. Last December, he met with several hundred pharmaceutical attorneys and offered them the government's help in dismissing lawsuits against their companies. By then, Troy had already officially intervened on behalf of Pfizer in several cases. A 2002 General Accounting Office study of the FDA's new system for notifying companies of rule violations, implemented by Troy, concluded that warning notices "have taken so long that misleading advertisements may have completed their broadcast life cycle before FDA issued the letters." In 2001, Ann-Marie Lynch, who had lobbied against price controls on prescription drugs on behalf of a trade group, was made the deputy assistant secretary in the office of policy within the Department of Health and Human Services; she has since discouraged the administration from adopting price caps. A report issued by Lynch helped persuade Congress to ban Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices. She has also blocked the release of about a dozen research reports that challenged the claims of drug companies. Charles Lambert, a former meat-industry lobbyist, became a deputy undersecretary in the United States Department of Agriculture in December 2002. As a USDA official, he has argued that mad cow disease is not a threat to the U.S. and that meat-labeling programs are unnecessary. Six months after he told Congress that the disease would not reach America, it was discovered in a cow brought here from Canada. More than a dozen other USDA officials also have connections to the meat industry. Jeffrey Holmstead worked as a lawyer at Latham & Watkins representing a chemical company and a trade group for utility companies until October 2001, when he was appointed to the EPA. The agency's proposed changes to air-pollution rules, released January 30, included at least a dozen paragraphs taken from a proposal submitted to the Bush administration by Latham & Watkins in 2003. Those rule changes will allow many plants to continue to avoid emissions reductions. In June 2001, Bush chose J. Steven Griles, an energy-industry lobbyist, to be the Interior Department's second-highest official. An investigation by the department's inspector general concluded that Griles's appointment had created an "ethical quagmire." A former Griles client has been awarded $2 million in no-bid contracts, and he has pressed the EPA to allow gas drilling by several companies he once represented. (Source: Anne C. Mulkern, "When Advocates Become Regulators," Denver Post, May 23, 2004. See article at: commondreams.org.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 141: On September 7, Government Accountability Office investigators announced that the Bush administration had illegally withheld data on the cost of the Medicare law. Thomas A. Scully, the former head of Medicare, was ordered to repay seven months of his salary to the government for his violations of federal appropriations law. The Medicare law was signed by President Bush on December 8; the White House later admitted that the law would cost $534 billion over 10 years, not the $400 billion it had reported to Congress. The Department of Health and Human Services found that Scully threatened to fire Richard S. Foster, Medicare's chief actuary, in order to prevent Foster from revealing the higher cost estimate to Congress. The GAO said that Scully's threats were "a prime example of what Congress was attempting to prohibit" when it outlawed the imposition of gag rules on civil servants in 1912. (Source: Robert Pear, "Investigators Say Ex-Medicare Chief Should Repay Salary," New York Times, September 7, 2004. See article at: nytimes.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 140: The White House has proposed a 12.6 percent reduction in the Federal Aviation Administration's budget for the purchase of new air-traffic-control equipment. Tom Brantley, the president of the Professional Airways Systems Specialists union, said that "cutting the budget by almost 14 percent is insane. Seventy percent of the systems out there are in need of upgrade or replacement." September 2 was the U.S. air-traffic-control system's busiest day ever. (Source: Leslie Miller, "White House Wants to Cut FAA Budget," The Associated Press, September 16, 2004. See article at: miami.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 139: In his speech to the Republican National Convention, President Bush announced a $1 billion plan to enroll poor children in government health-insurance programs. But at the end of September, the Bush administration returned $1.1 billion in unspent children's-health funds to the Treasury. As a result, six states participating in the State Children's Health Insurance Program will not be able to meet their budgets in 2005. According to two analyses by advocacy organizations, the federal money could have provided health coverage for 750,000 uninsured children. The National Governors Association and a bipartisan group of legislators had asked for an extension on SCHIP spending, but Bush refused to include such an extension in the budget. During his speech at the convention, Bush said that "in a new term, we will lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of poor children who are eligible but not signed up for the government's health insurance programs. We will not allow a lack of attention, or information, to stand between these children and the health care they need." It is projected that 17 states will run out of SCHIP funds by 2007. (Source: Ceci Connolly, "Words, Actions at Odds on Children's Health Care," Washington Post, September 25, 2004. See article at: washingtonpost.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 138: Earlier this year, the Bush administration sent out "video news releases" to publicize its Medicare plan (see Day 40). The videos, which were shown on local TV stations, did not make clear that the announcers were actors hired by the government, not reporters. Although the General Accounting Office ruled that those ads violated a statute that forbids the use of federal money for propaganda, the White House has used the same tactic to promote its education law. A video prepared for the Education Department by Ketchum, a public-relations firm, includes a "news story" on the No Child Left Behind law. As in the Medicare video, the story ends with a woman saying, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting." The government is not identified as the report's source, and the reporter is not revealed to be an actor. The department has stopped using the videos since the release of the GAO report, but at least one television station in New York ran the video in 2003. (Source: "Bush Ad Appears to Be News Story," The Associated Press, October 11, 2004. See article at: abcnews.go.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 137: "The reality-based community ... believe[s] that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." (Source: Ron Suskind, "Without a Doubt," New York Times, October 17, 2004. See article at: nytimes.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 136: The Bush administration has spent $31 billion on its missile-defense program; plans call for an additional $53 billion through 2009. The $10.7 billion spent this year alone is equal to the Army's entire research-and-development budget, and twice the budget of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. In July, the program's first component was installed in an Alaskan missile silo, and on August 17, President Bush told an audience at a Boeing plant that "we say to those tyrants who believe they can blackmail America and the free world, 'You fire, we're going to shoot it down.'" The administration has pushed for full deployment by October 2004; only some aspects of the system are now being put in place, and even those parts that are in place have either not yet been tested or have failed tests. Between 1999 and the end of 2002, a prototype interceptor hit a dummy warhead five times out of eight, but those tests are considered preliminary—the interceptor knew the missile's trajectory, as well as the time and place of its launch. The Pentagon's chief of testing, Thomas P. Christie, has estimated that the system would not be ready for operational tests for a decade or more. Christie is unsure if the system will ever be able to distinguish between warheads and decoys, and has calculated that it could hit its targets about 20 percent of the time. Tests scheduled since 2002 have been canceled or delayed; the most recent postponement was made public on September 14, just two weeks before a test was to take place. Potential weapons systems are usually assessed periodically by the Defense Acquisition Board and made to meet a set of specific requirements designed by the Pentagon, but in 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld authorized the Missile Defense Agency to work outside of such oversight. An audit released by the Government Accountability Office last April noted the lack of reliable estimates of system performance and cost. The report concluded that the system now being deployed remains "largely unproven." Last spring, 49 retired generals and admirals called upon the president to delay deployment and transfer missile-defense funds to security for nuclear facilities and American ports and borders. "A system is being deployed that doesn't have any credible capability," said retired General Eugene Habiger, who headed the U.S. Strategic Command in the mid-1990s. "I cannot recall any military system being deployed in such a manner." (Sources: Fred Kaplan, "Missile Defense: Mission Unaccomplished," Slate, September 17, 2004. See article at: slate.com. Frances FitzGerald, "Indefensible," The New Yorker, October 4, 2004. See article at: newyorker.com. Bradley Graham, "Test of Missile Defense System Delayed Again," Washington Post, September 14, 2004. See article at: washingtonpost.com. Ibid., "Interceptor System Set, but Doubts Remain," Washington Post, September 29, 2004. See article at: washingtonpost.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 135: "Mountaintop removal," a coal-industry practice that began to be widely used in the late 1980s, has led to the dumping of thousands of tons of debris into valleys and the burial of more than 700 miles of mountain streams. By 1999, the mining method had been mostly halted by court rulings. But in May 2002, the Bush administration reclassified the resultant debris as "fill" instead of "waste," essentially legalizing the technique, and the dumping, once again. As a result, industry activity has rebounded. The administration has also proposed a regulatory change that would end a two-decade ban on mining within 100 feet of a stream, and another that would allow ditches dug by coal companies to serve as substitutes for streams that companies had destroyed. The coal industry has raised $9 million for the Republican Party since 1998. Such rephrasing has played a role in other Bush administration environmental policies as well. In 2003, the Environmental Protection Agency downgraded the "hazardous" classification of mercury pollution from power plants, effectively granting utilities a 15-year extension on the implementation of pollution controls. And earlier this year, the Energy Department reclassified millions of gallons of "high-level" radioactive waste as "incidental," and in doing so, allowed the government to avoid the expense of removing it. (Source: Joby Warrick, "Appalachia Is Paying Price for White House Rule Change," Washington Post, August 17, 2004. See article at: washingtonpost.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 134: Under the Bush administration, the Internal Revenue Service has increased its auditing of the working poor; it has audited corporations and high-income citizens at record low levels. In 2001, audits of the working poor increased 48.6 percent, and accounted for 55 percent of all audits. The odds of being audited that year for those seeking the earned-income tax credit reserved for the working poor were 1-in-315; for everyone else, the odds were 1-in-431. By 2003, the audit rate for large corporations was 29 percent, down from 33.7 percent in 2002. For all corporations, the rate fell from 8.8 percent in 2002 to 7.3 percent in 2003. (Sources: David Cay Johnston, "I.R.S. Audits of Working Poor Increase," New York Times, March 1, 2002. Ibid., "Corporate Risk of a Tax Audit Is Still Shrinking, I.R.S. Data Show," New York Times, April 12, 2004. See article at: nytimes.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 133: President Bush and his appointees have repeatedly taken credit for programs that the administration has attempted to eliminate or sharply reduce. The administration has publicized the $11.6 million it has given states to fund the purchase of defibrillators; Bush had tried to cut that funding by 82 percent, to $2 million. Tommy Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, announced this year that the administration was giving out $11.7 million in grants to help 30 states provide care for the uninsured. He did not mention that Bush has annually proposed the cancellation of that program for the last three years. Thompson has also made announcements about grants to improve rural health care, part of a program that the White House wanted to cut by 72 percent in 2005, and about awards to universities to provide for the medical training of minority students, an effort that the administration wished to abolish entirely. In May, the Justice Department announced a new round of awards through the Community Oriented Policing Services program, which supports the hiring of police officers at the local level. Each year he has been in office, Bush has attempted to drastically reduce the program; in 2003, he proposed eliminating it altogether. For 2005, Bush proposed cutting the COPS budget by 87 percent, to $97 million. The cuts that have been successful have forced many departments to dismiss the officers the program allowed them to hire. COPS grants helped Minneapolis hire 81 officers by 1997; the city has dismissed 140 since then, including 38 in 2003, and crime rates have risen. New York City received grants for 4,700 new officers; the department has dropped 3,400 since 2000. (Sources: Robert Pear, "White House Trumpets Programs It Tried to Cut," New York Times, May 19, 2004. See article at: nytimes.com. Kevin Johnson, "Federal, Local Cuts Pull Cops Off Streets," USA Today, December 1, 2003. See article at: usatoday.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 132: On September 26, the Washington Post published a story on the increasing activity of Iraqi insurgents, whose attacks now number roughly 70 each day. The article cited daily reports prepared by Kroll Security International for the U.S. Agency for International Development and distributed to congressional officials. On September 27, a USAID official wrote to congressional aides that "this is the last Kroll report to come in. After the WPost story, they shut it down in order to regroup." A spokesman for the agency said that the reports are now "restricted to those who need it for security planning in Iraq," and that the information was being restricted because of a fear that it "would fall into insurgents' hands." While campaigning, President Bush has avoided mention of the increasing frequency of insurgent attacks. An administration official told the New York Times that "the decision's been made that the president just isn't going to get into an introspective mode of 'we could have done this better.'" The official added that there was a time for the president to make such a statement, but "that moment passed months ago." (Sources: Dana Milbank and Mike Allen, "U.S. Effort Aims to Improve Opinions About Iraq Conflict," Washington Post, September 30, 2004. See article at: washingtonpost.com. Richard W. Stevenson and David E. Sanger, "Stump Speech Retooled, Bush Goes on Attack," New York Times, October 7, 2004. See article at: nytimes.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 131: An analysis of four federal regulatory agencies by OMB Watch, a nonprofit watchdog organization, has found that the Bush administration has stopped work on dozens of significant proposals in the last year. The Environmental Protection Agency withdrew 25 items from its agenda in that period; it has withdrawn 90 since Bush entered office. Most of those addressed the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. The EPA, in the last six months, also failed to achieve 73 percent of its projected benchmarks for addressing agenda items. The Food and Drug Administration withdrew four items, bringing its total since 2000 to 62, and failed to complete 70 percent of its benchmarks. The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration withdrew 13 items in the last year, for a total of 31, and fell short of 71 percent of its benchmarks. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration removed two items, for a total of 24, and fell short of 75 percent of its benchmarks. Overall, the Bush administration has approved 25 economically significant rules put forth by the four agencies; 74 such regulations were approved by George H. W. Bush, and Clinton approved more than 50 in each of his terms. In the period surveyed, the EPA proposed a revision meant to minimize enforcement of the New Source Review, a regulation intended to ensure that coal-fired power plants would be made to comply with the Clean Air Act when they underwent major upgrades. Before the New Source Review was altered, EPA and Justice Department investigators had forced several companies to install modern pollution controls, and many other companies were in talks with the agency. But the Bush administration's revision allowed power plants with upgrades that had not yet reached a cost equivalent to 20 percent of the value of the plant to operate without pollution controls. Agency enforcement officials had recommended that the cut-off be no higher than three-quarters of 1 percent, and the inspector general of the EPA, Nikki L. Tinsley, has said that the revision has "seriously hampered" the agency's ability to pursue cases against major polluters. Among the items withdrawn by the EPA were the addition of 40 chemicals and one chemical category to community right-to-know regulations and a proposal to reduce the construction industry's estimated annual discharge of 80 million tons of solids into U.S. waterways. Items on the agenda that were not addressed include drinking-water regulations for radon and disinfectants. The FDA withdrew a rule that would have created a blood-supply tracking system designed to allow quick notification in the event of contamination. The agency also withdrew a proposal that would have banned the use of material from cattle that had passed through any country thought to present an undue risk of introducing mad cow disease into the U.S.; it delayed a regulation meant to close a loophole that has left U.S. cattle at risk of exposure to mammalian protein in feed, and thus at risk of contracting mad cow disease. After the delay was announced, the normally nonpartisan National Cattlemen's Beef Association endorsed Bush for re-election. Gene Kimmelman, a senior director of public policy at Consumers Union, told the New York Times that "generally, regulatory submissions often get pushed off in election years. What is unusual this time is the clear pattern of holding back regulatory decisions that will benefit the largest industry players and will drive up prices and marketplace risks for consumers, ranging from telephones to drugs to the risks of contaminants of food." (Sources: Robert Shull and Genevieve Smith, "The Bush Regulatory Record: A Pattern of Failure," OMB Watch, September 2004. See article at: ombwatch.org (PDF). Stephen Labaton, "Agencies Postpone Issuing New Rules Until After Election," New York Times, September 27, 2004. See article at: nytimes.com. Ibid., "Do Not Open Before the Presidential Election," New York Times, September 27, 2004. See article at: nytimes.com. Michael Janofsky, "Inspector General Says E.P.A. Rule Aids Polluters," New York Times, October 1, 2004. See article at: nytimes.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 130: The Supreme Court's current membership came together 10 years ago; the court has not gone so long without a new jurist since 1823. Eight of the nine Supreme Court justices are now 65 or older; John Paul Stevens, part of the court's liberal minority, is 84, and Sandra Day O'Connor, who has voted with the liberals to form majorities on several occasions, is 74. Boyden Gray, the White House counsel to George H.W. Bush and founder of the Committee for Justice, has said that the next president "will appoint at least two and as many as four justices to the Supreme Court." Ralph G. Neas, the president of People for the American Way, a progressive organization, has made the same prediction. If President Bush is re-elected and a liberal justice retires, it is likely that his appointee—or appointees—will move the court toward a willingness to restrict abortion and affirmative action and overturn civil rights protections. Bush has said that Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the court's most conservative members, are the models for his appointments. Samuel Alito, a 3rd Circuit Appeals Court judge believed to be a potential Bush nominee, has voted to uphold abortion regulations, including one requiring women to tell their husbands before having an abortion. That law was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1992. Miguel Estrada, whose nomination to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2001 was blocked by Democrats after the Bush administration refused to release memos Estrada had written as a government lawyer and Estrada refused to articulate the positions he had taken in the memos, is also thought to be a possible nominee. Other judges considered contenders for a Bush nomination have similarly divisive records. Emilio Garza, a 5th Circuit Appeals Court judge, has criticized Roe v. Wade and said that abortion regulation should be left to the states. Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel, wrote a memo in 2002 arguing that foreign fighters captured in Afghanistan were not covered by the Geneva Conventions. And Michael Luttig, a 4th Circuit Appeals Court judge, allowed a Virginia ban on "partial-birth" abortion to take effect while it was being challenged as unconstitutional, and later voted to uphold the law. It was invalidated after the Supreme Court struck down a similar ban in 2000. The next president will also appoint many federal-appeals-court and trial judges, who also serve until they choose to retire. In his first term, Bush appointed 201. (Sources: Joan Biskupic, "The Next President Could Tip High Court," USA Today, September 30, 2004. See article at: usatoday.com. Joan Biskupic, "Some Potential Nominees for the Supreme Court," USA Today, September 29, 2004. See article at: usatoday.com. James Vicini, "Next President Could Get to Reshape High Court," Reuters, October 1, 2004. See article at: olympics.reuters.com. Mary Deibel, "Future of Supreme Court Likely at Stake in Election," Scripps Howard News Service, September 30, 2004. See article at: knoxstudio.com. Ralph Neas, "The Future of the Supreme Court as an Issue in the Presidential Election," People For the American Way, September 30, 2004. See article at: pfaw.org. "Next President May Pick Supreme Court Justice," The Associated Press, September 27, 2004. See article at: cnn.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 129: During his September 23 press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, President Bush said that "nearly 100,000 fully trained and equipped Iraqi soldiers, police officers, and other security personnel are working today. And that total will rise to 125,000 by the end of this year. The Iraqi government is on track to build a force of over 200,000 security personnel by the end of next year. With the help of the American military, the training of the Iraqi army is almost halfway complete." He repeated this claim during the first debate last week. According to Pentagon documents given to Congress, only 53,000 of the Iraqis on duty have been trained. Of the 82,051 police officers on duty, only 8,169 have completed the eight-week academy. The rest have received a three-week course; Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage described those officers as "shake and bake" trainees that had been instructed "primarily in human rights, respect for law, things of that nature." The administration's goal of 135,000 fully-trained police officers will not be met until July 2006. (Sources: Anna Willard and Adam Entous, "U.S. Documents Question Iraqi Police Training," Reuters, September 24, 2004. See article at: abcnews.go.com. Walter Pincus, "U.S. Says More Iraqi Police Are Needed as Attacks Continue," Washington Post, September 28, 2004. See article at: washingtonpost.com. Transcript at: whitehouse.gov.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 128: Last October, the White House Office of Management and Budget ended the EPA's 10-year effort to introduce regulations restricting the use of atrazine. The chemical, a popular weed killer, has been found to disrupt hormones in wildlife; in some instances, exposure to the chemical turned frogs into hermaphrodites. This effect was found with exposure to one-thirtieth the level currently allowed in drinking water. The European Union banned atrazine at the same time that the EPA decided to permit its ongoing use. The agency concluded that hormone disruption was not a "legitimate regulatory endpoint at this time" because the government had not settled on a way to measure such disruption. That stance was prompted by the Data Quality Act, a two-sentence addition to the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act of 2001. The Data Quality Act, which was written by an industry lobbyist and inserted into the bill without debate, directs the OMB to issue guidelines "ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information ... disseminated by Federal agencies." With this authority, the OMB has repeatedly dismissed scientific information in response to industry petitions arguing that the data could not be considered conclusive. In the case of atrazine, a petition was filed on behalf of the manufacturer, Syngenta, by Jim J. Tozzi, the same lobbyist who drafted the DQA. John Graham, the head of the OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has said that the DQA is a tool for both business and environmental interests. But critics have pointed out that it is most useful to those seeking to decrease governmental regulation, since it is designed to challenge the evidence necessary for such oversight. In the first 20 months since the act's implementation, 39 petitions of regulatory significance were filed; of those, 32 were filed by regulated industries. Tozzi's most recent petition was directed against the National Institutes of Health's National Toxicology Program, which determines if chemicals are carcinogenic. The lobbyist argued that the program's procedures were in violation of the DQA and that it should not be allowed to review any chemicals. (Source: Rick Weiss, "'Data Quality' Law Is Nemesis of Regulation," Washington Post, August 16, 2004. See article at: washingtonpost.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 127: One-third of the tax cuts created by President Bush in the last three years have gone to the richest 1 percent of Americans, who earned an average of $1.2 million annually, according to a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That 1 percent received an average tax cut of $78,460; those in the middle 20 percent got only $1,090 on average. The average after-tax income for the top 1 percent climbed 10.1 percent; that of those in the middle 20 percent climbed 2.3 percent—and their share of the overall tax burden went from 18.5 percent to 19.5 percent. The after-tax income of the bottom fifth rose only 1.6 percent. Independent analysts have argued in the past that Bush's tax cuts favored the wealthy, but the CBO, run by the former chief of Bush's own Council of Economic Advisers, is considered authoritative. (Sources: Edmund L. Andrews, "Report Finds Tax Cuts Heavily Favor the Wealthy," New York Times, August 13, 2004. "Middle-Income Americans Now Bear More of the Brunt of Federal Taxes," Newsday, August 17, 2004.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 126: Before the Iraq War, the White House repeatedly rejected Pentagon plans to attack the camp of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant affiliated with Al Qaeda who is now blamed for more than 700 killings in Iraq. In June 2002, U.S. intelligence found that Zarqawi had set up a weapons lab in northern Iraq to manufacture ricin and cyanide; the Bush administration rejected a potential strike. Four months later, when intelligence suggested that Zarqawi would use ricin in Europe, the administration again rejected a plan to attack the camp. In January 2003, when London police discovered a ricin lab connected to the Zarqawi camp, the Pentagon drafted a third attack plan, which the White House rejected. NBC News reported that "military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi's operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam." (Source: Jim Miklaszewski, "Avoiding Attacking Suspected Terrorist Mastermind," NBC News, March 2, 2004. See article at: msnbc.msn.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 125: The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, prepared by the National Intelligence Council and released in July, found that the chance of stability in Iraq over the next 18 months is limited. The report set out three scenarios for the future of Iraq; the worst was civil war, and the best was, according to the New York Times, "an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms." When asked about the Estimate last Tuesday, President Bush said that "the CIA laid out several scenarios. It said that life could be lousy, life could be OK, life could be better. And they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like." The report was initiated by then-CIA Director George Tenet and approved by the National Foreign Intelligence Board under John McLaughlin, the acting director of central intelligence, as well as by the heads of the other intelligence agencies. The National Intelligence Council is meant to reflect the consensus of these agencies. (Sources: "Bush Dismisses Gloomy CIA Report on Iraq," Reuters, September 21, 2004. See article at: reuters.com. Douglas Jehl, "U.S. Intelligence Shows Pessimism on Iraq's Future," New York Times, September 16, 2004. See article at: informationclearinghouse.info.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 124: "It struck me as I was speaking to people in Bangor, Maine, that this president sees America as we think about a 10-year-old child. I know as a parent I would sacrifice all for my children." (Source: Sarah Schweitzer, "Card Says President Sees America as a Child Needing a Parent," Boston Globe, September 2, 2004. See article at: boston.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 123: When President Bush traveled to Pittsburgh in 2002, a protester named Bill Neel who refused to move to the "designated free-speech zone"—a baseball field a third of a mile from Bush's speech—was arrested for disorderly conduct. At Neel's trial, a police detective testified that the Secret Service had told local police to keep "people that were there making a statement pretty much against the president and his views" in the free-speech zone. The judge threw out the charge, saying, "I believe this is America. Whatever happened to 'I don't agree with you, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it'?" Similar incidents have occurred at Bush appearances around the country. At a Florida rally in 2001, three demonstrators were arrested for holding up signs outside of the designated zone; the next year, seven protesters were arrested outside of a rally at the University of South Florida. At a St. Louis event in 2003, a woman and her 5-year-old daughter who protested outside of the approved area were detained by police and taken away in separate vehicles. This year, a West Virginia couple wearing anti-Bush T-shirts was detained by the Secret Service at a July 4 rally, and on September 17, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq was arrested and charged with trespassing at a Laura Bush appearance. When seven AIDS activists were ejected from a Bush event in Washington, D.C., on September 9, the Secret Service told journalists that if they approached the demonstrators, they would not be allowed to re-enter the event. One agent told a reporter who was prevented from returning to the speech that there was a "different set of rules" for journalists who did not talk to the activists. Brett Bursey, who held up a "No War for Oil" sign amidst hundreds of Bush supporters at a 2002 appearance by the president in Columbia, South Carolina, was arrested by a police officer who told him that "it's the content of your sign that's the problem." He was charged with trespassing; when that charge was dropped because Bursey was on public property at the time of his arrest, the Justice Department charged Bursey with "entering a restricted area around the President of the United States." He faced six months in jail; in January, he was convicted and fined $500. The federal magistrate, Bristow Marchant, denied Bursey's request for a jury trial, and later ruled that the protester had not been unreasonably singled out among the Bush supporters by police—although other people were there, he said, they did not refuse to leave, as Bursey did. In a May 2003 terrorist advisory, the Homeland Security Department told local law-enforcement agencies to pay special attention to anyone who "expressed dislike of attitudes and decisions of the U.S. government." In April of that year, after the federally funded California Anti-Terrorism Task Force fired rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters at the Port of Oakland, a spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center said that "if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest. You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act." Secret Service agent Brian Marr told NPR that the agency creates free-speech zones because "these individuals may be so involved with trying to shout their support or nonsupport that inadvertently they may walk out into the motorcade route and be injured ... we want to be sure that they are able to go home at the end of the evening and not be injured in any way." The ACLU is suing the Secret Service for suppressing protest at Bush events in Arizona, California, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, Texas, and elsewhere. (Sources: James Bovard, "Free-Speech Zone," The American Conservative, December 15, 2003. See article at: amconmag.com. Jonathan M. Katz, "Thou Dost Protest Too Much," Slate, September 21, 2004. See article at: slate.com. Dana Milbank, "Secret Service Not Coddling Hecklers," Washington Post, September 10, 2004. See article at: washingtonpost.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 122: For over a year, the White House has blocked the appointment of Howard Zucker to the post of deputy secretary of health in the Department of Health and Human Services. Bush administration officials said that they have not approved the appointment because Zucker made a donation to the Democratic National Committee in 2000. Zucker, who has traveled to Iraq with HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson and led the administration's health-care-education efforts in Afghanistan, made the contribution while working as an associate professor at Columbia. A Republican candidate for another top health care position told The Hill that the White House's interview process for such jobs was meant to "see how much of a Republican you are." (Source: Bob Cusack, "W. House Is Blocking Dem Donor," The Hill, September 20, 2004. See article at: hillnews.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 121: The Central Intelligence Agency now has fewer case officers assigned to its Osama bin Laden unit than it did on September 11, 2001. Michael F. Scheuer, the former chief of the unit, said in a letter sent to Congress that "there has been no systematic effort to groom al-Qaeda expertise among Directorate of Operations officers since 11 September. Today, the unit is greatly understaffed because of a 'hiring freeze' and the rotation of large numbers of officers in and out of the units every 60 to 90 days—a process in which experienced officers do less substantive work and become trainers for officers who leave before they are qualified to support the mission. The excellent management team now running operations against al-Qaeda has made repeated, detailed, and on-paper pleas for more officers to work against the al-Qaeda—and have done so for years, not weeks or months—but have been ignored." (Sources: James Risen, "C.I.A. Unit on bin Laden is Understaffed, a Senior Official Tells Lawmakers," New York Times, September 15, 2004. See article at: nytimes.com. "CIA Officer: al-Qaida Efforts Still Lag," The Associated Press, September 17, 2004. See article at: nytimes.com. Spencer Ackerman, "Iraq'd," The New Republic Online, September 16, 2004. See article at: tnr.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 120: Eleven days after taking office, President Bush suspended the contractor-responsibility rule; 11 months later, he revoked it. The regulation, which took effect the day before President Clinton left office, would have allowed federal agencies to deny contracts to companies that have violated federal laws. Bush administration officials argued that existing law, which requires federal contracting officers to determine if a contractor has a "satisfactory record of integrity and business ethics" was enough to protect the public interest. When the rule was first proposed, Clinton officials said that, with no clear definition of "satisfactory," "the government continues to award contracts to firms that have violated procurement and other federal laws." A General Accounting Office study found, over a four-year period, more than 100 instances in which a major defense contractor violated procurement law. And a Mother Jones survey of the nation's top 200 contractors found that, between 1995 and 2000, 46 had been prosecuted for failing to take responsibility for environmental violations. Fifty-five of those contractors had, together, been cited for 1,375 workplace-safety-law violations that put their workers at risk of death or serious injury. (Sources: Ellen Nakashima, "Bush Administration Suspends Contractor Regulation," Washington Post, March 31, 2001. See article at: detnews.com. Ken Silverstein, "Unjust Rewards," Mother Jones, May/June 2002. See article at: motherjones.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 119: The Department of Energy will spend $6.5 billion on nuclear weapons in 2004. President Bush has requested $6.8 billion for 2005, and $30 billion for the following four years. Adjusted for inflation, the 2004 expenditure is over 50 percent more than the United States' average annual spending on nuclear weapons during the Cold War—$4.2 billion. President Clinton's last budget devoted $5.2 billion to nuclear activities. Bush's five-year nuclear-spending plan includes $485 million for the development of a "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrating Warhead," a weapon designed to destroy underground facilities. The fiscal-year-2005 budget for this program includes $27.5 million for "development ground tests" on "candidate weapon designs." Such weapons were singled out in the Bush administration's 2002 Nuclear Posture Review as likely instruments of pre-emptive nuclear strikes against "potential contingencies"—countries like North Korea, Iran, Libya, and Syria. David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said in 2003 that "it is a bad idea to develop [earth-penetrating nuclear weapons], which probably would never be used, and do so openly. It develops a lot of paranoia among proliferating states who believe the U.S. is planning to attack them." (Sources: Fred Kaplan, "Our Hidden WMD Program," Slate, April 23, 2004. See article at: slate.msn.com. Walter Pincus, "Pentagon Pursues Nuclear Earth Penetrator," Washington Post, March 7, 2003. See article at: washingtonpost.com. Ibid., "U.S. Nuclear Arms Stance Modified by Policy Study," Washington Post, March 23, 2002. See article at: washingtonpost.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 118: In December 2003, President Bush signed the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. The measure streamlined the approval process for timber-industry projects in federal forests and authorized a $340 million increase for "thinning projects" on 20 million acres of federal land. It also mandated that court orders blocking such projects be reconsidered every 60 days. At the same time, the Bush administration adopted a rule allowing the Forest Service or another land-management agency to decide if a timber-thinning project would affect any endangered species. Previously, the Forest Service was required by the Endangered Species Act to consult the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service, the agencies devoted to the protection of rare plants and animals. Marty Hayden, the legislative director for an environmental-law firm, said that "the conflict of interest is that the agency whose top job is to do the logging will make this decision, rather than the agency whose top job is to protect threatened or endangered species." Since 1999, the timber industry has contributed $14.1 million to political campaigns. Eighty percent of those donations have gone to Republicans. President Bush has received $519,350 from the industry in the same period. (Sources: "Bush Signs Forest Bill," The Associated Press, December 4, 2003. See article at: cnn.com. Elizabeth Shogren and Richard Simon, "New Forest-Thinning Policy Droops Safeguard for Wildlife," Los Angeles Times, December 4, 2003. See article at: commondreams.org.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 117: By combining political events and government business on his trips, President Bush has transferred some of the costs of primarily political appearances to taxpayers. In February 2002, Bush raised $2 million at two receptions for New York Governor George Pataki. Because he also gave a 21-minute speech at the New York Police Department's command-and-control center, 54 percent of the trip's expenses were billed to the government. Taxes are also used for the full $57,000-an-hour cost of flying Air Force One, regardless of the purpose of the trip, as well as for all communications and security costs. President Bush took 28 political trips in his first 16 months in office, eight more than President Clinton did in the same period. At each political stop, the White House staged an official event as well. In January, Bush visited the grave of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. just before attending a $2,000-a-person fundraiser in Atlanta. A church near the memorial site hosted a civil-rights symposium on the same day; the Secret Service initially told organizers that they would have to cut it short. (Sources: Jeffrey Gettleman and Ariel Hart, "Bush Plan to Honor Dr. King Stirs Criticism," New York Times, January 15, 2004. See article at: commondreams.org. Mike Allen, "On the Way to the Fundraiser," Washington Post, May 20, 2002. See article at: washingtonpost.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 116: On Monday, September 13, the ban on semiautomatic assault weapons expired. President Bush, who officially endorsed the ban, took no action to move it through Congress. A study by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence found a 66 percent drop in use of assault weapons in crimes after the ban was first enacted in 1994, prohibiting the sale of 19 types of semiautomatic weapons. A report by the Consumer Federation of America on the expiration of the ban concluded that "assault weapons will be more lethal and less expensive." A poll by the National Annenberg Election Survey found that 68 percent of Americans wanted the ban extended. But Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said last week, "I think the will of the American people is consistent with letting it expire, so it will expire." At least 2,000 sheriffs, police chiefs, law enforcement groups, and prosecutors also endorsed the ban and asked the president to extend it. Joseph M. Polisar, the president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, said that the White House ignored a request for a meeting. (Sources: Fox Butterfield, "As Expiration Looms, Gun Ban's Effect Is Debated," New York Times, September 10, 2004. See article at: nytimes.com. "Bringing on the Guns," Washington Post, September 12, 2004. See article at: washingtonpost.com. Dan Eggen, "Enthusiasts Eye Assault Rifles as Ban Nears End," Washington Post, September 8, 2004. See article at: washingtonpost.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 115: Bushisms "We've got an issue in America. Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories ... for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them." (Sources: (1) whitehouse.gov. (2) whitehouse.gov.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 114: The Bush administration has valued the lives of senior citizens less than the lives of younger people when conducting cost-benefit analyses of anti-pollution regulations. Such analyses are employed to determine whether potential regulations would benefit the public enough to justify the cost to industry. Twice in 2002, the White House Office of Management and Budget instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce the $6 million valuation of a human life traditionally used by the federal government for cost-benefit assessments. Under the OMB's directive, anyone under the age of 70 would instead be valued at $3.7 million; anyone over 70 would be valued at $2.3 million, or 62 percent of the worth of a younger individual. These figures have allowed the EPA to forecast smaller societal benefits in its analyses of proposed regulations on power-plant pollution and snowmobile emissions. The Bush administration's valuations were based on a 1982 survey of British citizens that asked how much they would be willing to pay for a safer bus system. It found that elderly respondents would not pay as much to avert death. The study's author, Michael Jones-Lee, told reporters that the data was out of date and could not be applied to the United States. (Source: Seth Borenstein, "Elderly Less Valuable in Cost-Benefit Analysis," Knight Ridder Newspapers, December 18, 2002. See article at: bradenton.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 113: In April, the Bush administration deleted all discussion of potential economic benefits from a report on the protection of the bull trout, which is listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released only the parts of the report that described the costs of saving the fish. Fifty-five pages were excised; they detailed the estimated $215 million return over 20 to 30 years that would arise from maintaining the bull-trout population. The benefits included reduced drinking-water costs, more water for irrigation, and revenue from sports fishing, as well as gains for other fish species. The projected costs came mainly from increased expenses for hydropower, logging, and highway construction. Diane Katzenberger, a Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman, told the Montana Missoulian that "the removal was a policy decision made at the Washington level." Chris Nolin, chief of the division of conservation and classification at the agency, said that the section on economic benefits was not published because it did not conform to the standards of the White House Office of Management and Budget. He told the Washington Post that the OMB has "told us repeatedly in the past to remove this kind of analysis" from public reports. (Sources: Blaine Harden, "Trout-Protection Data Questioned," Washington Post, April 17, 2004. See article at: washingtonpost.com. Sherry Devlin, "Economic Benefits of Recovery Omitted From Bull Trout Report," Missoulian, April 15, 2004. See article at: missoulian.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 112: President Bush's proposal for renewing the 1996 welfare-reform law included a provision that would have exempted welfare recipients from minimum-wage laws. Those in "workfare" programs, which provide workers with credit toward welfare benefits but no cash income, were targeted by the proposal. According to Bush's welfare plan, payments for those programs "are not considered compensation for work performed ... thus, these payments do not entitle an individual to a salary or to benefits provided under any other provision of the law." A Department of Health and Human Services official confirmed that "any other provision" was meant to include the minimum-wage provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act and said that "these programs are designed so you gain experience so you can get a better job where you would get a salary and would fall under" the FLSA. The change would have reversed a 1997 Labor Department ruling that working welfare recipients must be paid the minimum wage. (Source: Mike Allen, "Bush Proposes Welfare Change," Washington Post, March 6, 2002. See article at: washingtonpost.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 111: In May, President Bush announced plans to give the first of five weekly speeches on the U.S. plan for Iraq. A White House official said, "We're entering a critical phase, and the president will be speaking out each week to discuss with the American people, and the world, the way forward in Iraq ... Some speeches will have more details than others, and will be given at different places and times." Ultimately, Bush delivered only two of these speeches; the second did not focus on Iraq. (Sources: Robin Wright and Mike Allen, "Bush to Detail Transition Monday in First of Several Iraq Speeches," Washington Post, May 20, 2004. See article at: washingtonpost.com. Marie Horrigan, "Bush Foreign Policy Speech Knocks Realists," United Press International, June 2, 2004. See article at: washingtontimes.com. Paul Slansky, "The Thirteenth Hundred Days," The New Yorker, August 30, 2004. See article at: newyorker.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 110: The provisional Iraqi government set up by the Bush administration cannot account for at least $8.8 billion given to Iraqi ministries, according to an audit by the inspector general of the Coalition Provisional Authority. The audit found that payrolls under CPA control contained thousands of ghost employees. In one instance, the CPA paid for 74,000 guards without validating that number; in another, 8,206 guards were listed on a payroll, but only 603 were known to exist. In a letter sent to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, three Democratic senators wrote that "such enormous discrepancies raise very serious questions about potential fraud, waste and abuse." Another audit, released last month by the International Advisory and Monitoring Board, found no evidence of fraud but said that CPA oversight had been insufficient. Despite repeated requests, the monitoring board was given no access to U.S. audits of Halliburton contracts. And in June, the British Charity Christian Aid said that at least $20 billion had disappeared from banks administered by the CPA. (Sources: Sue Pleming, "Senators Ask Where $8.8 Bln in Iraq Funds Went," Reuters, August 19, 2004. See article at: yahoo.com/news. Emad Mekay, "'Staggering Amount' of Cash Missing in Iraq," Inter Press Service News Agency, August 21, 2004. See article at: ipsnews.net.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 109: In February, the Bush administration proposed reclassifying employees of fast-food restaurants as manufacturing workers. The idea appeared in the Economic Report of the President, which questioned the inclusion of fast-food restaurants in the service sector and suggested reclassifying such businesses as manufacturers. The report said that the current system for classifying jobs "is not straightforward ... When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a 'service' or is it combining inputs to 'manufacture' a product?" David Huether, the chief economist for the National Association of Manufacturers, said that expanding the definition of "manufacturing" would produce statistics showing more jobs in that sector, which has been in decline. (Source: David Johnston, "In the New Economics: Fast-Food Factories?" New York Times, February 20, 2004. See article at: independent-media.tv.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 108: In 2001, the Bush administration created the Task Force on Energy Project Streamlining to pass the concerns of energy companies directly to federal-land-management employees. The White House has since written to Cabinet officers instructing them to "identify ways your agency could expedite the review of permits or other authorizations for energy-related projects ... and accelerate the completion of such projects." Administration officials have also pressured the Bureau of Land Management to issue more permits for oil and gas drilling on federal land. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Bush administration "commended offices that approved large numbers of drilling permits and chastised those that were slow." The BLM, in turn, issued an agency directive ordering field officers "to take the necessary steps to work with local oil and gas operators." Permits have been issued at a rate 70 percent above that of the Clinton years. Funding for the BLM program administering oil and gas exploration on public land has risen by 50 percent since the Bush administration took office, while funding for wildlife management has declined. A career BLM staff member in a Western office told the Los Angeles Times that "all we do is issue permits for oil and gas ... We're told to follow new deadlines that are totally driven by industry. We're not given time to do adequate [environmental reviews] and to consider the consequences of our decisions." Another BLM employee told the paper he left the bureau in 2002 because the Bush administration had begun to refer to wildlife protections as "impediments" to leasing. With a legal settlement signed by Interior Secretary Gail Norton last year, the Bush administration opened 2.6 million acres in Utah and 600,000 acres in Colorado to development, reversing a Clinton administration policy shielding those areas. After the settlement, the BLM leased tens of thousands of acres in the area to oil and gas companies. The settlement also stripped the BLM of the authority to protect lands proposed for wilderness conservation. President Bush has signed legislation preserving only 528,604 acres, far less than any president since the Wilderness Act was passed in 1964. President Reagan preserved 10.6 million acres; President George H.W. Bush preserved 4 million. And last month, the Department of Agriculture rolled back another Clinton administration rule in order to allow the construction of new roads on 58 million acres managed by the Forest Service. According to the Los Angeles Times, the ban on road construction "had kept the remote lands off limits to industry." In New Mexico, ranchers have complained that wastewater from natural-gas drilling has contaminated their water sources, and that the industry activity is depleting the water table. Last month, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department criticized the BLM's efforts to safeguard wildlife, saying that protective measures had been "inconsistently applied" and "frequently modified or waived." In 2002, the BLM's Wyoming field director gave an award to the Buffalo, Wyoming, field office for approving more drilling permits than all other BLM offices combined. (Source: Alan C. Miller, Tom Hamburger, and Julie Cart, "White House Puts the West on Fast Track for Oil, Gas Drilling," Los Angeles Times, August 25, 2004. See article at: latimes.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 107: On May 19, the White House issued a memo preliminarily outlining widespread domestic-funding cuts to be included in the 2006 budget. The memo, sent out to government agencies, said that spending levels for 2006 must not exceed the levels specified in a database included with the 2005 budget. According to that database, overall domestic spending will drop by $2.3 billion in 2006, not including inflation. The budget for the EPA will be cut by $161 million. The Department of the Interior will lose $200 million. A nutrition program for women, infants, and children will be cut by $122 million; Head Start, the early-childhood-education program, will be cut by $177 million. Other programs due for cuts include the National Science Foundation, the Small Business Administration, the Transportation Department, and the Social Security Administration. The Defense Department, though, will receive a 5.2 percent budget increase, to $422.7 billion, and the Justice Department will receive a 4.3 percent increase, to $19.5 billion. The Bush administration has publicized its plans to increase spending in many areas in 2005, without mentioning that funding would be reversed a year later. The 2005 budget gives the Education Department a $1.7 billion increase; the 2006 budget memo reduces that by $1.5 billion. The Veterans Affairs budget will get a $519 million increase in 2005, and then, according to the memo, a $910 million cut in 2006. A homeownership program will be increased by $78 million in 2005, as President Bush has repeatedly noted; it stands to be cut by $53 million in 2006. The National Institutes of Health would lose $600 million in 2006 after gaining $764 million in 2005. And homeland-security spending, described by the Washington Post as "a centerpiece of the Bush reelection campaign," would be reduced by $1 billion. (Sources: "White House Budget Memo Riles Democrats," CNN.com, May 28, 2004. See article at: cnn.com. "Bush Plan Eyes Cuts for Schools, Veterans," The Associated Press, May 27, 2004. See article at: usatoday.com. Jonathan Weisman, "2006 Cuts in Domestic Spending on Table," Washington Post, May 27, 2004. See article at: washingtonpost.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 106: In 2002, President Bush appointed Dr. W. David Hager to a Food and Drug Administration panel on women's health; this June, Bush renewed the appointment. Hager is the author of As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now and (with his wife, Linda) Stress and the Woman's Body, which recommends prayer for the treatment of headaches and premenstrual syndrome. He has criticized the birth-control pill for promoting promiscuity. Last December, when the panel considered permitting the morning-after pill called Plan B to be sold over the counter, Hager argued that the pill had not been adequately tested on adolescents. Another physician on the panel called Plan B "the safest product that we have seen brought before us," and the committee recommended that it be sold without a prescription by a vote of 23-4. In May, the FDA disregarded that recommendation and the endorsements of other FDA staff members and refused to allow Plan B to be sold over the counter. The rationale provided in the rejection letter was "inadequate sampling of younger age groups." Dr. Alastair Wood, who voted for approval of Plan B as part of the FDA's Nonprescription Drugs Advisory Committee, said that "there's no evidence that this drug has different side effects in younger girls." James Trussell, the director of Princeton University's Office of Population Research, said that the stated FDA justification for rejection was a "political fig leaf," and that scores of drugs, as well as contraceptives such as the vaginal sponge and the female condom, were approved without data on specific age groups. (Sources: Karen Tumulty, "Jesus and the FDA," Time (online edition), October 5, 2002. See article at: time.com. Chris Mooney, "Christian Science?" Mother Jones, September/October 2004. See article at: motherjones.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 105: Last week, the Bush administration issued a report acknowledging that carbon dioxide emissions were the only likely explanation for global warming. Dr. James R. Mahoney, the director of the Bush administration's climate-change-science program, delivered the report to Congress; he said that it reflected "the best possible scientific information" on climate change. But this report, according to the administration, does not indicate a shift in its position—President Bush maintains that the science on global warming is not strong enough. When the Bush administration issued a document in 2002 suggesting that global warming had a human cause, President Bush dismissed it as "put out by the bureaucracy." The new report was signed by Bush's secretaries of energy and commerce, and by his science adviser. The New York Times reported that, in an interview, President Bush "appeared unfamiliar" with the report. When asked why the administration had changed its position on the causes of global warming, the President said, "Ah, we did? I don't think so." John H. Marburger, the president's science adviser, said the report has "no implications for policy." James R. Mahoney said that the main cause of climate change is water vapor. (Sources: Andrew Revkin, "U.S. Report Turns Focus to Greenhouse Gases," New York Times, August 26, 2004. See article at: nytimes.com. David Sanger and Elisabeth Bumiller, "Bush Dismisses Idea That Kerry Lied on Vietnam," New York Times, August 27, 2004. See article at: nytimes.com. Juliet Eilperin, "Administration Shifts on Global Warming," Washington Post, August 27, 2004. See article at: washingtonpost.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 104: President Bush's new rules on travel to Cuba went into effect on June 30. They allow Cuban-Americans only one visit home every three years, eliminate humanitarian permission to attend funerals or to see dying relatives, and remove all extended family—such as aunts, uncles, and cousins—from the list of government-approved relatives. Violators are fined $65,000. In July, during a speech about the travel restrictions, President Bush told an audience of Florida law-enforcement officials that Fidel Castro was promoting sex tourism to Cuba. "The dictator welcomes sex tourism," Bush said. "Here's how he bragged about the industry. This is his quote: 'Cuba has the cleanest and most educated prostitutes in the world.'" The quote was from a paper written by a Dartmouth undergraduate, Charles Trumbull, in 2001. His paper provided no footnote for the quote, but when reached by the Los Angeles Times, Trumbull guessed that it was a paraphrase of comments Castro made in 1992. In that year, Castro told the Cuban parliament that "there are prostitutes, but prostitution is not allowed in our country. There are no women forced to sell themselves to a man, to a foreigner, to a tourist." A State Department official said that the White House asked for material on human trafficking in Cuba less than a day before the speech and that the department then found Trumbull's paper on the Internet. (Sources: Maura Reynolds, "Bush Took Quote Out of Context, Researcher Says," Los Angeles Times, July 20, 2004. See article at: commondreams.org. Portia Siegelbaum, "Castro Blasts Bush on Sex Charges," CBS News, July 27, 2004. See article at: cbsnews.com. Mary Murray, "Castro Responds to Bush's Prostitution Charges," NBC News, July 27, 2004. See article at: msnbc.msn.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 103: On October 12, 2001, the FBI requested $1.5 billion to fund its counterterrorism efforts. The Bush White House cut that request by two-thirds, to $531 million. Attorney General John Ashcroft cut the FBI's request for items including computer-networking and foreign-language intercepts by half, a cyber-security request by three-quarters, and eliminated altogether a request for "collaborative capabilities." Before September 11, the FBI requested $588 million in increased funding for 2003. Part of that increase would have been used to hire 54 translators and 248 counterterrorism agents. In the 2003 budget request Ashcroft sent to the White House, on September 10, 2001, he did not include the FBI's request and he proposed cuts in some counterterrorism programs. In April 2000, Ashcroft's predecessor, Janet Reno, called terrorism "the most challenging threat in the criminal justice area." Reno also increased the Justice Department's counterterrorism budget by 13.6 percent in 1999, 7.1 percent in 2000, and 22.7 percent in 2001. A "Strategic Plan" produced by Ashcroft's office on August 9, 2001, did not include fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals; it was listed as a subgoal, beneath gun violence and drugs, and was not among the 13 objectives highlighted as an "Attorney General Goal." A month earlier, however, in July 2001, Ashcroft began using a private jet after an FBI "threat assessment" warned him against commercial flights. (Sources: Dana Milbank, "FBI Budget Squeezed After 9/11," Washington Post, March 22, 2004. See article at: washingtonpost.com. Adam Clymer, "How Sept. 11 Changed Goals of Justice Dept.," New York Times, February 28, 2002. See article at: criminology.fsu.edu. Julian Borger, "Ashcroft Drawn Into Row Over September 11," Guardian, May 21, 2002. See article at: guardian.co.uk.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 102: President Bush appointed Jay Bybee, the author of a Justice Department document authorizing the torture of detainees, to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Several of Bush's other appeals-court nominees were also involved in the creation of the administration's policy on torture. As the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel, Bybee wrote a memo setting out what the White House counsel called the "definitive interpretation" of the law on torture. He defined torture as any action that causes as much pain as "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." "Cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" is, according to Bybee's memo, acceptable. That document was issued on August 1, 2002. On January 7, 2003, Bush nominated Bybee for the judgeship, and in March 2003, he was confirmed. A month later, on April 4, 2003, a Defense Department memo employed Bybee's definition of torture. That memo also argued that, as commander in chief, the president was able to override constitutional restraints against mistreatment of detainees. The Defense Department general counsel who approved the memo was William Haynes; in September of 2003, he was nominated to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. An appointee to the 3rd Circuit, Michael Chertoff, headed the Justice Department Criminal Division when it reviewed and cleared "stress and duress" methods used by the CIA against detainees in 2002. He was nominated by President Bush a year later. (Sources: Herman Schwartz, "Twisting the Law on Interrogating Detainees," Newsday, August 18, 2004. See article at: newsday.com. Kenneth Ofgang, "Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee Confirmed as Ninth Circuit Judge," Metropolitan News-Enterprise, March 14, 2003. See article at: metnews.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 101: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration began creating regulations to guard against workplace tuberculosis infection in 1993, predicting that its work could prevent 25,000 infections and 135 deaths a year. On the last day of 2003, when those regulations were nearly complete, the Bush administration ceased all work on them—claiming that voluntary measures were effective enough. President Bush attempted, in his first year in office, to eliminate 100 of OSHA's jobs and to cut the funding for its standards-setting section by 8 percent. With its current staff, OSHA can only visit about 2 percent of the nation's workplaces each year. Since President Bush began his term, OSHA has eliminated almost five times as many pending standards as it has approved. On the day that Bush was sworn in, his chief of staff, Andrew Card, froze all standards that had not yet gone into effect. Within months, more than a dozen of those pending regulations were eliminated. President Bush personally signed the repeal of the central worker-safety standard created during the Clinton administration, which set safeguards against ergonomic injuries.When a standard for safety masks was being created, 3M asked OSHA to give its disposable dust masks the same rating as more sophisticated respirators. Even after scientists from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and from an American National Standards Institutes committee testified that the masks were not as safe as respirators, last June OSHA gave all masks the same rating. In 2001, OSHA also canceled standards for a group of chemicals suspected of causing miscarriages. Its explanation at the time was only this: "OSHA is withdrawing this entry from the agenda at this time due to resource constraints and other priorities." (Source: Amy Goldstein and Sarah Cohen, "Bush Forces a Shift in Regulatory Thrust," Washington Post, August 15, 2004. See article at: washingtonpost.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 100: When the Bush administration took office, the Justice Department abruptly settled several cases against Koch Industries, dropping criminal charges and drastically reducing penalties. Koch, an oil conglomerate privately owned by brothers Charles and David Koch, has donated $3 million to the Republican Party since 1998 and has spent another $3.88 million on direct lobbying in Congress. In late 2000, at the end of the Clinton administration, Koch received a 97-count indictment for concealing the discharge of benzene from a refinery in Texas. Benzene is carcinogenic; the company had released more than 15 times the legal limit. Penalties were projected to exceed $350 million, and four Koch employees faced up to 35 years in prison. Three months after the Bush administration entered office, as the lawsuit was about to go to trial, the Justice Department dropped all but a single count of concealment of information, and fined Koch $20 million. The four employees were not charged at all. The government had also sued Koch in 1995 and 1997 for a reported 300 oil spills from the company's pipelines, seeking between $71 million and $214 million in penalties. It was estimated that the spills had dumped 3 million gallons of oil into lakes and streams spread over six states. On January 13, 2000, the case was settled for $35 million. In another case, Koch was sued under the False Claims Act, which gives private plaintiffs the right to sue companies defrauding the government. Koch was accused of stealing millions of barrels of oil, worth about $170 million, from federal and Native American lands. In May 2001, that case was settled for $25 million. Again, all charges were dismissed. The Koch brothers are also involved with a range of advocacy groups that have influenced legislation in the company's favor. Between 1985 and 2002, Koch-family foundations gave more than $23 million to George Mason University, the site of the Mercatus Center, among other Koch-funded institutes. When the White House's Office of Management and Budget chose eight major EPA rules for review in December of 2001, five of them had been the subject of public-interest comments filed by Mercatus. According to the Government Accountability Office, Mercatus submitted more comments than any other organization for OMB review; 23 were marked as "high priority" by the OMB. John Graham, a senior OMB official, was once an advisory-board member at the Mercatus Center. Another think tank founded by the Koch brothers in 1984, Citizens for a Sound Economy, is the subject of a recent Federal Election Commission complaint. It is charged with illegally contributing to Ralph Nader's presidential campaign. (Source: Bob Williams and Kevin Bogardus, "Koch's Low Profile Belies Political Power," The Center for Public Integrity, July 15, 2004. See article at: publicintegrity.org.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 99: When Vice President Dick Cheney spoke in New Mexico last month, non-Republicans who attempted to attend were prevented from doing so. Campaign workers required proof that each attendee was a member of the Republican Party, or had contributed money to the party. All others were asked to sign forms endorsing President Bush. An endorsement form obtained by the Albuquerque Journal said "I, (full name) ... do herby [sic] endorse George W. Bush for reelection of the United States ... In signing the above endorsement you are consenting to use and release of your name by Bush-Cheney as an endorser of President Bush." A spokesman for the Kerry campaign said that the Democratic Party has no screening requirements at its events. (Source: Jeff Jones, "Obtaining Cheney Rally Ticket Requires Signing Bush Endorsement," Albuquerque Journal, July 30, 2004. See article at: abqjournal.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 98: President Bush praised an American Indian housing program during a speech last week but did not mention that he plans to cut almost 80 percent of its funding. Speaking to a crowd of about 1,000 in Albuquerque, Bush said of the program, "Doesn't it make sense to have public policy aimed at helping people own their own home? I can't think of a better use of resources." Bush's proposed budget, however, reduces the Indian Housing and Guarantee Fund's funding from $5.3 million to $1 million, and seeks the return of $33 million in additional funds. Chester Carl, the chairman of the National American Indian Housing Council, said that the cuts would cripple the program. "It's going to go backward," Carl said. "We're just now starting to see tribes understand that there's another way and banks understand that they can make loans on trust land. You're pulling the rug out from under them." Arnold Reano, whose family was the first from Santo Domingo Pueblo to take advantage of the program, stood with Bush on stage in Albuquerque while the president said that the program showed that the American dream of home ownership was "valid for everyone." Reano was not told that Bush had chosen to cut back funding for the program. "If I had known, I would have asked the president about it," he said. (Sources: "Bush to Cut Indian Housing He Praised," Associated Press, August 14, 2004. See article at: latimes.com. Leslie Linthicum, "Bush Sends Mixed Messages," Albuquerque Journal, August 13, 2004. See article at: abqjournal.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 97: Earlier this month, at the "Unity: Journalists of Color" convention, the president answered a question about the meaning of tribal sovereignty in the 21st century, and his response drew derisive laughter from the crowd. Bush said, "Tribal sovereignty means that ... it's sovereignty. I mean, you're a—you're a—you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity." Jacqueline Johnson, the executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, was one of many Native Americans offended by the president's comments. She said that sovereignty is "the nearest and dearest, No. 1 issue in Indian Country ... It's not something that was given to us. As tribes, we see sovereignty as something we've always had." Ron Allen, the NCAI's treasurer and the chairman of the Jamestown S'Kallam tribe, said that "it was disappointing to hear his statements ... It was clear to us that he didn't know what he was talking about." At the same convention, President Bush was asked if he would endorse an amendment guaranteeing the right to vote. The amendment is meant to ensure that the disenfranchisement of many Florida voters in 2000 would not be repeated. The president responded: "Just don't focus on Florida. Now, I'll talk to the governor down there to make sure it works." (Sources: Shannon Gibney, "Bush, Kerry Address Journalists of Color," Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, August 13, 2004. Lewis Kamb, "Bush Comment on Tribal Sovereignty Creates a Buzz," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 13, 2004. Marcus Mabry, "A Tale of Two Candidates," Newsweek, August 7, 2004. whitehouse.gov.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 96: "A generation shaped by Vietnam must remember the lessons of Vietnam: When America uses force in the world, the cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming." (Source: cnn.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 95: In his memoir A World Transformed (1998), George Bush Sr. wrote: "Trying to eliminate Saddam ... would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible ... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq ... There was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." (Sources: Thomas M. DeFrank, "Book: Poppy Opposed Dubya's War," Daily News, April 6, 2004. See article at: nydailynews.com. David T. Pyne, "Not Too Late for an Iraqi Exit Strategy," military.com, Nov. 19, 2003. snopes.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 94: On April 29, 2004, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations asked Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, how many U.S. soldiers had been killed since the invasion of Iraq. Wolfowitz responded: "It's approximately 500, of which—I can get the exact numbers—approximately 350 are combat deaths." According to the Pentagon and news reports, the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq on the day Wolfowitz appeared before the committee was 722 (521 of them killed in combat). Wolfowitz is a chief architect of the U.S. war in Iraq. (Sources: Les Payne, "Wolfowitz Is Numerically Challenged," Long Island (N.Y.) Newsday, May 2, 2004. "At Hearing, Wolfowitz Falls Short," The Associated Press, April 30, 2004.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 93: Bush has fought to repeal America's Better Classroom Act, which provides funds for repairing qualified public schools. His budget plans have consistently omitted any dedicated resources to help states and local governments address the estimated $127 billion needed for school maintenance. The average American school is 43 years old. Almost one-third of all public-school buildings require major repair of roofs, exterior walls, windows, plumbing, lighting, and other features. Also, many schools do not have the wiring needed to support today's Internet and computer technology. When the American Society of Civil Engineers released its 2001 report card on the nation's infrastructure, school buildings received a D-, the worst grade given that year. (Sources: Committee on Education and the Workforce, edworkforce.house.gov. American Society of Civil Engineers, "Full Report Card for 2001," asce.org. National Center for Education Statistics, "How Old Are America's Public Schools?," nces.ed.gov. National Education Association, "School Modernization Bill Just Common Sense," nea.org.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 92: The Bush administration defends its recent decision to freeze the Child Care and Development Block Grant—a major source of federal child-care funding for states—by claiming that it will deprive only 200,000 eligible children of assistance by 2009. The actual number is significantly larger. The administration's figures are based on unrealistic and misleading assumptions. The key assumption is that states will continue to devote the same level of welfare funds to child care as they did in 2001. However, as recent welfare cuts in Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, and West Virginia indicate, the level of state-provided child-care funding is on the decline and will continue to decline in the future. This is primarily due to two factors: (1) buffer welfare funds from previous years are nearly exhausted, and (2) the rising cost of other state welfare programs is eating into the amount available for child care. More-realistic estimates, which account for inflation and decline in funding, place the total number of children who will lose coverage by 2009 at 365,000. This is almost double of what Bush has suggested. (Source: cbpp.org.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 91: Bushism "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." (Source: ap.tbo.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 90: President Bush's campaign demanded to know the ethnicity of a journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Cheney at an Arizona rally. A spokesman for the re-election campaign, Danny Diaz, said the request was made for security purposes: "All the information requested of staff, volunteers and participants for the event has been done so to ensure the safety of all those involved." When asked if the photographer, Mamta Popat, had been targeted because of her name, Mr. Diaz would not elaborate on his statement. (Source: Karamargin, C.J., "Bush Camp Solicits Race of Star Staffer," Arizona Daily Star, July 31, 2004.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 89: New York's share of homeland-security funding shrank from 25 percent in early 2003 to 7 percent in November, despite being the victim of terrorist attacks in 1993 and 2001. On a per capita basis, New York state is 49th in antiterrorist funding, far below rural, sparsely populated Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota. The New York Daily News reports that New York is also 49th in per capita funding among cities: $5.87 per person. New Haven, Connecticut, on the other hand, has the highest per capita allocation: $77.92 per person. According to New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, "The credible threat of terrorism is considered a secondary factor in Washington in the way homeland-security funding is allocated." (Source: Jack Newfield, "Bush To City: Drop Dead," The Nation, April, 2004. See article at: thenation.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 88: In the summer of 2003, the Bush administration passed a bill that added a $400-per-child tax credit to middle- and upper-income families. However, in a last-minute change to the bill, the tax break was denied to families who earn just above minimum wage. Over 6.5 million families, and 12 million children in households earning less than $26,625 a year, did not benefit from the administration's increased tax refunds. Senator Blanche Lincoln, the Arkansas Democrat who tried to extend the tax credit to low-income families, said: "I don't know why they would cut that out of the bill. These are the people who need it the most and who will spend it the most. These are the people who buy the blue jeans and the detergent and who will stimulate the economy with their spending." (Sources: David Firestone, "Tax Law Omits Child Credit in Low-Income Brackets," New York Times, May 29, 2003. "Dems, GOP Spar Over Tax Cut Provision," CNN, May 30, 2003. See article at: cnn.com. cbpp.org.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 87: Since George W. Bush has taken office, his administration has significantly weakened the country's central toxic-waste-cleanup program, Superfund. For 20 years, Superfund identified the country's largest polluters and required them to pay for cleaning the sites they contaminated. When President Bush took office, he did not renew this "polluter pays" program; as a result, taxpayers have been forced to pay for this cleanup. With its limited funding, estimates show that Superfund will run out of money by the end of the year. Without adequate funding, the rate of Superfund cleanups has fallen by half in comparison with the 1990s. An EPA report published in July found that 111 Superfund sites do not have human exposure to hazardous toxic waste and ground-water pollution under control. A Sierra Club report found that these sites threaten to expose 1 in 4 Americans to such dangers. Congress passed Superfund in the late 1970s, in response to an incident in Love Canal, New York, where residents discovered that their homes had been polluted by 20,000 tons of toxic chemical waste discarded by the Hooker Chemical Company in the 1940s and 1950s. This discovery coincided with a slew of miscarriages, birth defects, respiratory ailments, and cancer diagnoses in the region. (Sources: Frohman, Jessica, Ananda Hirsch, and Ed Hopkins, "Communities at Risk: How the Bush Administration Is Failing to Protect People's Health at Superfund Sites," The Sierra Club. See article at: www.sierraclub.org. www.epa.gov. David Hopkins, "Superfund Waste Sites Endanger Human Health, Says Report," Environmental Data Interactive Exchange, July 30, 2004. See article at: www.edie.net. www.news-journalonline.com.) To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here. - - - - DAY 86: Many believe that President Bush's selection of Dick Cheney as his running mate in 2000 violated the 12th Amendment. The amendment mandates that running mates must inhabit separate states: "The electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves." Cheney registered to vote in Wyoming on July 21, 2000, four days before he joined the ticket. Before that, he had lived in Highland Park, Texas, for five years and had identified himself as a Texas resident on tax returns. After the election, a lawsuit was filed arguing that Cheney's residency in Texas violated the 12th Amendment and made Bush ineligible for Texas's electoral votes. The plaintiffs, three Texas voters, claimed that they had been deprived of their constitutional rights to a meaningful vote and to an election held in strict accordance with the law. But the judge, in an accelerated ruling, found that the voters had no standing to bring the suit: "Plaintiffs' allegation that a violation of the Twelfth Amendment would infringe their constitutional rights does not of itself establish an injury in fact to them personally. A general interest in seeing that the government abides by the Constitution is not sufficiently individuated or palpable to constitute such an injury." (Sources: txnd.uscourts.gov (PDF). usa |