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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. - - - -< |