Prominent voices Opposed to Bush

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Prominent voices Opposed to Bush
18
Mon, 10-11-2004 - 2:08am
Secrets and Lies Becoming Commonplace

By Walter Cronkite

April 7, 2004

The initial refusal of President Bush to let his national security adviser appear under oath before the 9/11 Commission might have been in keeping with a principle followed by other presidents -- the principle being, according to Bush, that calling his advisers to testify under oath is a congressional encroachment on the executive branch's turf. (Never mind that this commission is not a congressional body, but one he created and whose members he handpicked.)

But standing on that principle has proved to be politically damaging, in part because this administration -- the most secretive since Richard Nixon's -- already suffers from a deepening credibility problem. It all brings to mind something I've wondered about for some time: Are secrecy and credibility natural enemies? When you stop to think about it, you keep secrets from people when you don't want them to know the truth. Secrets, even when legitimate and necessary, as in genuine national-security cases, are what you might call passive lies.

Take the recent flap over Richard Foster, the Medicare official whose boss threatened to fire him if he revealed to Congress that the prescription-drug bill would be a lot more expensive than the administration claimed. The White House tried to pass it all off as the excessive and unauthorized action of Foster's supervisor (who shortly after the threatened firing left the government). Maybe. But the point is that the administration had the newer, higher numbers, and Congress had been misled. This was a clear case of secrecy being used to protect a lie. I can't help but wonder how many other faulty estimates by this administration have actually been misinformation explained as error.

The Foster story followed by only a few weeks the case of the U.S. Park police chief who got the ax for telling a congressional staffer -- and The Washington Post -- that budget cuts planned for her department would impair its ability to perform its duties. Chief Teresa Chambers since has accepted forced retirement from government service.

Isolated incidents? Not really. Looking back at the past three years reveals a pattern of secrecy and of dishonesty in the service of secrecy.

Some New Yorkers felt they had been lied to following the horrific collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Proposed warnings by the Environmental Protection Agency -- that the air quality near ground zero might pose health hazards -- were watered down or deleted by the White House and replaced with the reassuring message that the air was safe to breathe. The EPA's own inspector general said later that the agency did not have sufficient data to claim the air was safe. However, the reassurance was in keeping with the president's defiant back-to-work/business-as-usual theme to demonstrate the nation's strength and resilience. It also was an early example of a Bush administration reflex described by one physicist as "never let science get in the way of policy."

In April 2002, the EPA had prepared a nationwide warning about a brand of asbestos called Zonolite, which contained a form of the substance far more lethally dangerous than ordinary asbestos. However, reportedly at the last minute, the White House stopped the warning. Why? The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which broke the story, noted that the Bush administration at the time was pushing legislation limiting the asbestos manufacturer's liability. Whatever the reason, such silence by an agency charged with protecting our health is a silent lie in my book.

One sometimes gets the impression that this administration believes that how it runs the government is its business and no one else's. It is certainly not the business of Congress. And if it's not the business of the people's representatives, it's certainly no business of yours or mine. But this is a dangerous condition for any representative democracy to find itself in. The tight control of information, as well as the dissemination of misleading information and outright falsehoods, conjures up a disturbing image of a very different kind of society.

Democracies are not well-run nor long-preserved with secrecy and lies.

Pages

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Mon, 10-11-2004 - 2:13am
Posted on Wed, Jul. 23, 2003

Scientists: Bush administration needs plan to tackle global warming

By Seth Borenstein

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration plans to spend at least two more years and another $103 million studying what it calls the "uncertainty" of the science behind global warming instead of deciding how to fix it.

Scientists and environmentalists say the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, which will be released Thursday, focuses too much on scientific questions that already have been answered and not enough on action. Knight Ridder obtained parts of the plan Wednesday

The science plan is the Bush administration's next move on the thorny issue of global warming. Soon after taking office, President Bush withdrew from a 1997 international treaty to reduce emissions of so-called "greenhouse gases" - which contribute to global warming - and reneged on a campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. The president said restricting emissions of such fossil fuels to slow global warming would cost too much, given how uncertain he believes the issue is.

Summaries of the report use the word "uncertainty" 15 times and the phrase "fossil fuels" only once. But uncertainty is more in the eyes of politicians than of scientists.

While scientists still quibble about how bad the problem will become, an overwhelming majority of climate scientists say global warming is man-made and is caused primarily by burning fossil fuels. A team of top international scientists predicts that world temperatures will increase somewhere between 2.5 to 10 degrees by the year 2100.

Spending so much time looking at the so-called uncertainty "is a little bit like somebody sending a letter to the fire department trying to find out their capabilities when there is already smoke coursing through the house," said Michael MacCracken, an atmospheric scientist. He was the federal government's top scientist in charge of studying the impact of global warming from 1993 to 2001.

The prestigious National Research Council, which does scientific and engineering studies for the federal government, said in February that an early version of the Bush strategy took good first steps, but "lacks most of the basic elements of a strategic plan" that would help lead to action. Officials at the council did commend the Bush administration for seeking scientific review.

Thursday's plan calls for more research in five key areas:

- Understanding today's climate and how the climate has changed in the past.

- Figuring out more precisely what causes global warming.

- Reducing the wide range of estimates on how hot the atmosphere will get.

- Understanding how humans and the environment could adapt to global warming.

- Deciding on "the limits" and risks of what can and can't be done about it.

Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, in a prepared statement, said: "The Bush administration has brought a total government spending on climate-change related programs to $4.5 billion. The critical investment announced today will accelerate select high-priority research projects and climate observations that will help us fill critical knowledge gaps."

According to Dan Lashof, science director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Washington environmental group, the problem isn't uncertainty, but Bush's unwillingness to listen to scientists' pleadings that global warming is a serious problem that must be addressed now.

"The administration is trying to call attention to its research plan to distract attention from its lack of an action plan to actually reduce global-warming pollution," Lashof said. "There is a lot of reiteration of questions that have been asked and answered for a number of years."

But Bill Kovacs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's vice president for environment and energy, said: "Uncertainty is what the problem is, and before you decide you're going to wreck an economy you need to decide the uncertainties."









iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Mon, 10-11-2004 - 2:16am
February 18, 2004

Scientists Accuse White House of Distorting Facts

By JAMES GLANZ



he Bush administration has deliberately and systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry at home and abroad, a group of about 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, said in a statement issued today.

The sweeping charges were later discussed in a conference call with some of the scientists that was organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent organization that focuses on technical issues and has often taken stands at odds with administration policy. The organization also issued a 37-page report today that it said detailed the accusations.

Together, the two documents accuse the administration of repeatedly censoring and suppressing reports by its own scientists, stacking advisory committees with unqualified political appointees, disbanding government panels that provide unwanted advice, and refusing to seek any independent scientific expertise in some cases.

"Other administrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systematically nor on so wide a front," the statement from the scientists said, adding that they believed the administration had "misrepresented scientific knowledge and misled the public about the implications of its policies."

A White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said today he had not seen the text of the scientists' accusations. "But I can assure you that this is an administration that makes decisions based on the best available science," he said.

Dr. Kurt Gottfried, an emeritus professor of physics at Cornell University who signed the statement and spoke in the conference call, said the administration had "engaged in practices that are in conflict with the spirit of science and the scientific method." Dr. Gottfried asserted that what he called "the cavalier attitude toward science" could place at risk the basis for the nation's long-term prosperity, health and military prowess.

The scientists denied that they had political motives in releasing the documents as the 2004 presidential race began to take shape, with Howard Dean dropping out a day after Senator John Kerry narrowly defeated Senator John Edwards on the Wisconsin Democratic primary. The organization's report, Dr. Gottfried said, had taken a year to prepare — much longer than originally planned — and had been released as soon as it was ready.

"I don't see it as a partisan issue at all," said Russell Train, who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, and who spoke in the conference call in support of the statement. "If it becomes that way I think it's because the White House chooses to make it a partisan issue," Mr. Train said.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Mon, 10-11-2004 - 2:17am
Scientific Integrity in Policy Making

Further investigation of the Bush administration's abuse of science

On February 18, 2004, 62 preeminent scientists including Nobel laureates, National Medal of Science recipients, former senior advisers to administrations of both parties, numerous members of the National Academy of Sciences, and other well-known researchers released a statement titled Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy Making. In this statement, the scientists charged the Bush administration with widespread and unprecedented "manipulation of the process through which science enters into its decisions." The scientists’ statement made brief reference to specific cases that illustrate this pattern of behavior. In conjunction with the statement, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released detailed documentation backing up the scientists’ charges in its report, Scientific Integrity in Policy Making.

Since the release of the UCS report in February, the administration has continued to undermine the integrity of science in policy making seemingly unchecked. Many scientists have spoken out about their frustration with an administration that has undermined the quality of the science that informs policy making by suppressing, distorting, or manipulating the work done by scientists at federal agencies and on scientific advisory panels. For instance, Michael Kelly, a biologist who had served at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service for nine years, recently resigned his position and issued an indictment of Bush administration practices. As Kelly wrote, "I speak for many of my fellow biologists who are embarrassed and disgusted by the agency’s apparent misuse of science."1

Scientific Integrity in Policy Making: Further investigation of the Bush administration's abuse of science investigates several new incidents that have surfaced since the February 2004 UCS report. These new incidents have been corroborated through in-depth interviews and internal government documents, including some documents released through the Freedom of Information Act. The cases that follow include:

egregious disregard of scientific study, across several agencies, regarding the environmental impacts of mountaintop removal mining;

censorship and distortion of scientific analysis, and manipulation of the scientific process, across several issues and agencies in regard to the Endangered Species Act;

distortion of scientific knowledge in decisions about emergency contraception;

new evidence about the use of political litmus tests for scientific advisory panel appointees. These new revelations put to rest any arguments offered by the administration that the cases to date have been isolated incidents involving a few bad actors.

Concern in the scientific community has continued to grow. In the months since the original UCS report, more than 5,000 scientists have signed onto the scientists’ statement. Signers include 48 Nobel laureates, 62 National Medal of Science recipients, and 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences. A number of these scientists have served in multiple administrations, both Democratic and Republican, underscoring the unprecedented nature of this administration’s practices and demonstrating that the issues of scientific integrity transcend partisan politics.

The United States has an impressive history of investing in and reaping the benefits of scientific research. The actions by the Bush administration threaten to undermine the morale and compromise the integrity of scientists working for and advising America’s world-class governmental research institutions and agencies. Not only does the public expect and deserve government to provide it with accurate information, the government has a responsibility to ensure that policy decisions are not based on intentionally or knowingly flawed science. To do so carries serious implications for the health, safety, and environment of all Americans.

Given the lack of serious consideration and response by the administration to concerns raised by scores of prominent scientists, UCS is committed to continuing to investigate and publicize cases—corroborated by witnesses and documentation—in which politics is allowed to stifle or distort the integrity of the scientific process in governmental policy making. UCS—working with scientists across many disciplines, other organizations, and elected officials—will also seek to develop and implement solutions that will protect government scientists from retribution when they bring scientific abuse to light, provide better scientific advice to Congress, strengthen the role of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, strengthen and ensure adherence to conflict of interest guidelines for federal advisory panels, and ensure full access to government scientific analysis that has not been legitimately classified for national security reasons.


iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Mon, 10-11-2004 - 2:26am
10 Nobel economists endorse Kerry

Experts criticize Bush's 'reckless and extreme course'

Aug. 25, 2004

PHILADELPHIA - John Kerry won the endorsement of 10 Nobel Prize-winning economists Wednesday as he attacked President Bush for policies that he said have led to the creation of only low-paying jobs.

The Democratic presidential nominee released a letter from the economists saying the Bush administration had “embarked on a reckless and extreme course that endangers the long-term economic health of our nation.”

They cited “poorly designed” tax cuts that instead of creating jobs have turned budget surpluses into enormous budget deficits, a “fiscal irresponsibility threatens the long-term economic security and prosperity of our nation.”

The endorsement, in the form of an open letter American voters, was signed by George Akerlof and Daniel McFadden of the University of California at Berkeley, Kenneth Arrow and William Sharpe of Stanford University, Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University, Lawrence Klein of the University of Pennsylvania, Douglass North of Washington University, Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow of MIT and Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Mon, 10-11-2004 - 2:29am
Published on Tuesday, July 29, 2003 by IRNA and Der Spiegel (Berlin)

US Nobel Laureate Slams Bush Gov't as "Worst" in American History



George A. Akerlof, 2001 Nobel prize laureate who teaches economics at the University of California in Berkeley.



BERLIN - American Nobel Prize laureate for Economics George A. Akerlof lashed out at the government of US President George W. Bush, calling it the "worst ever" in American history, the online site of the weekly Der Spiegel magazine reported Tuesday.

"I think this is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extradordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign policy and economics but also in social and environmental policy," said the 2001 Nobel Prize laureate who teaches economics at the University of California in Berkeley.

"This is not normal government policy. Now is the time for (American) people to engage in civil disobedience. I think it's time to protest - as much as possible," the 61-year-old scholar added.

Akerlof has been recognized for his research that borrows from sociology, psychology, anthropology and other fields to determine economic influences and outcomes.

His areas of expertise include macro-economics, monetary policy and poverty.

Text of Der Spiegel interview by Matthias Streitz

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Professor Akerlof, according to recent official projections, the US federal deficit will reach $455 billion this fiscal year. That's the largest ever in dollar terms, but according to the President's budget director, it's still manageable. Do you agree?

George A. Akerlof: In the long term, a deficit of this magnitude is not manageable. We are moving into the period when, beginning around 2010, baby boomers are going to be retiring. That is going to put a severe strain on services like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. This is the time when we should be saving.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So it would be necessary to run a budget surplus instead?

Akerlof: That would probably be impossible in the current situation. There's the expenditure for the war in Iraq, which I consider irresponsible. But there's also a recession and a desire to invigorate the economy through fiscal stimulus, which is quite legitimate. That's why we actually do need a deficit in the short term - but certainly not the type of deficit we have now.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Because it's not created by investment, but to a large extent by cutting taxes?

Akerlof: A short-term tax benefit for the poor would actually be a reasonable stimulus. Then, the money would almost certainly be spent. But the current and future deficit is a lot less stimulatory than it could be. Our administration is just throwing the money away. First, we should have fiscal stimulus that is sharply aimed at the current downturn. But this deficit continues far into the future, as the bulk of the tax cuts can be expected to continue indefinitely. The Administration is giving us red ink as far as the eye can see, and these permanent aspects outweigh the short-term stimulatory effects.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: And secondly, you disagree with giving tax relief primarily to wealthier Americans. The GOP argues that those people deserve it for working hard.

Akerlof: The rich don't need the money and are a lot less likely to spend it - they will primarily increase their savings. Remember that wealthier families have done extremely well in the US in the past twenty years, whereas poorer ones have done quite badly. So the redistributive effects of this administration's tax policy are going in the exactly wrong direction. The worst and most indefensible of those cuts are those in dividend taxation - this overwhelmingly helps very wealthy people.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The President claims that dividend tax reform supports the stock market - and helps the economy as a whole to grow.

Akerlof: That's totally unrealistic. Standard formulas from growth models suggest that that effect will be extremely small. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has come to a similar conclusion. So, even a sympathetic treatment finds that this argument is simply not correct.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: When campaigning for an even-larger tax cut earlier this year, Mr. Bush promised that it would create 1.4 million jobs. Was that reasonable?

Akerlof: The tax cut will have some positive impact on job creation, although, as I mentioned, there is very little bang for the buck. There are very negative long-term consequences. The administration, when speaking about the budget, has unrealistically failed to take into account a very large number of important items. As of March 2003, the CBO estimated that the surplus for the next decade would approximately reach one trillion dollars. But this projection assumes, among other questionable things, that spending until 2013 is going to be constant in real dollar terms. That has never been the case. And with the current tax cuts, a realistic estimate would be a deficit in excess of six trillion.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So the government's just bad at doing the correct math?

Akerlof: There is a systematic reason. The government is not really telling the truth to the American people. Past administrations from the time of Alexander Hamilton have on the average run responsible budgetary policies. What we have here is a form of looting.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: If so, why's the President still popular?

Akerlof: For some reason the American people does not yet recognize the dire consequences of our government budgets. It's my hope that voters are going to see how irresponsible this policy is and are going to respond in 2004 and we're going to see a reversal.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What if that doesn't happen?

Akerlof: Future generations and even people in ten years are going to face massive public deficits and huge government debt. Then we have a choice. We can be like a very poor country with problems of threatening bankruptcy. Or we're going to have to cut back seriously on Medicare and Social Security. So the money that is going overwhelmingly to the wealthy is going to be paid by cutting services for the elderly. And people depend on those. It's only among the richest 40 percent that you begin to get households who have sizeable fractions of their own retirement income.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is there a possibility that the government, because of the scope of current deficits, will be more reluctant to embark on a new war?

Akerlof: They would certainly have to think about debt levels, and military expenditure is already high. But if they seriously want to lead a war this will not be a large deterrent. You begin the war and ask for the money later. A more likely effect of the deficits is this: If there's another recession, we won't be able to engage in stimulatory fiscal spending to maintain full employment. Until now, there's been a great deal of trust in the American government. Markets knew that, if there is a current deficit, it will be repaid. The government has wasted that resource.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Which, in addition, might drive up interest rates quite significantly?

Akerlof: The deficit is not going to have significant effects on short-term interest rates. Rates are pretty low, and the Fed will manage to keep them that way. In the mid term it could be a serious problem. When rates rise, the massive debt it's going to bite much more.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why is it that the Bush family seems to specialize in running up deficits? The second-largest federal deficit in absolute terms, $290 billion, occurred in 1991, during the presidency of George W. Bush's father.

Akerlof: That may be, but Bush's father committed a great act of courage by actually raising taxes. He wasn't always courageous, but this was his best public service. It was the first step to getting the deficit under control during the Clinton years. It was also a major factor in Bush's losing the election.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: It seems that the current administration has politicised you in an unprecedented way. During the course of this year, you have, with other academics, signed two public declarations of protest. One against the tax cuts, the other against waging unilateral preventive war on Iraq.

Akerlof: I think this is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extraordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign and economic but also in social and environmental policy. This is not normal government policy. Now is the time for people to engage in civil disobedience.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Of what kind?

Akerlof: I don't know yet. But I think it's time to protest - as much as possible.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Would you consider joining Democratic administration as an adviser, as your colleague Joseph Stiglitz did?

Akerlof: As you know my wife was in the last administration, and she did very well. She is probably much better suited for public service. But anything I'll be asked to do by a new administration I'd be happy to do.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You've mentioned the term civil disobedience a minute ago. That term was made popular by the author Henry D. Thoreau, who actually advised people not to pay taxes as a means of resistance. You wouldn't call for that, would you?

Akerlof: No. I think the one thing we should do is pay our taxes. Otherwise, it'll only make matters worse.


iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Mon, 10-11-2004 - 2:33am
REALITY CHECK

by PHILIP GOUREVITCH

The New Yorker

John Kerry’s Iraq attack.

Issue of 2004-10-18

Despite a pre-debate “memorandum of understanding” between the Bush campaign and the Kerry campaign that there would be no televised “cutaways” or reaction shots, more than sixty-two million Americans watched George W. Bush appear to come unglued while hearing, for the first time, John Kerry’s forceful voice of opposition.

Bush’s face betrayed him on the very first cutaway. He had insisted that the focus of his initial encounter with Kerry, in Coral Gables, Florida, be foreign policy and national security—the issues on which, as a self-proclaimed “war President,” he believes himself to be strongest, and on which he has staked his bid for a second term—yet, barely a minute into the debate, he had been subjected to more direct criticism than he had endured in public in the previous four years, and it soon became obvious that he couldn’t take it. A coin toss had earned Kerry the opening question—“Do you believe you could do a better job than President Bush in preventing another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States?”—and, with his answer, he established a command of the room that he never relinquished. “Yes, I do,” Kerry said. “I believe America is safest and strongest when we are leading the world and we are leading strong alliances. I’ll never give a veto to any country over our security. But I also know how to lead those alliances. This President has left them in shatters across the globe, and we’re now ninety per cent of the casualties in Iraq and ninety per cent of the costs. I think that’s wrong, and I think we can do better.” Kerry spoke with confidence and a newfound crispness, and, as he went on, there was Bush on the split screen, looking irked and puckered.

The President held his head slightly cocked and low to his shoulders, and his expressions kept shifting, in increments of wincing aggravation—lips drawn tight and downward, nostrils flaring and flattening, eyebrows wriggling—through a range of attitudes: impatience, boredom, indignation, sourness, imperiousness, contempt. This unhappy twitchiness persisted through the evening, as Kerry, the former prosecutor, laid out with cool composure the case for firing Bush, and established his own credibility as a Presidential replacement. Bush, even when he had the floor, grimaced as he spoke, except on several occasions when he lost his way and a look of total erasure came over him, a blank, stricken stare for which the French, alas, have the most apt expression: like a cow watching a train go by.

You didn’t need to be rooting for Bush to be distressed by the spectacle of his discombobulation. You needed only to care for the Republic. Bush takes credit for “changing the world,” and there’s no question that in leading the country to war in Iraq he has altered the international political landscape, and America’s position in it, more than anyone in nearly half a century. The Republican domination of both houses of Congress has allowed him to do this almost by fiat, without domestic political resistance or accountability. At the White House, too, Bush is ferociously insulated from exposure to opinions that deviate from the party line. He does not like to be questioned and has little use for argument. Logic has never been his strong suit; in justifying his policies and actions, he prefers stonewalling (admit no error, and ignore or deny bad news) and tautology (I do what’s right because it’s right, and it’s right because I do it). Now, faced for the first time in his Presidency with an inescapable adversary, he appeared to experience the debate as an insult. At times he sulked, at times he winced, as Kerry picked apart the Administration’s catastrophic Iraq adventure. “I didn’t need anybody to tell me to go to the United Nations,” Bush protested. “I decided to go there myself.” And, a bit later, “Of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. I know that.”

Bush had been favored to win the foreign-policy debate, and since for a month he had enjoyed a solid lead in the polls, reporters arrived in Coral Gables prepared to write Kerry’s political obituary with a local dateline. An election campaign is largely an affair of competitive storytelling, and Bush is an ingenious sketch artist: just as he had convinced the press and the public that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat, he succeeded, in the late summer, in spinning such a web of confusion out of selective repetition of Kerry’s caveat-laden statements on Iraq that his caricature of Kerry became the prevailing view.

But Kerry’s strong performance was less surprising than Bush’s wipeout. Although most TV viewers had not heard Kerry speak at length about Iraq before, his comeback from a late-summer slump had begun two weeks earlier, on September 16th, at the annual convention of the National Guard Association in Las Vegas. Bush, addressing the gathering earlier in the week, had delivered a glowing review of the war in Iraq and the broader war on terror, and was frequently interrupted by standing ovations. Now it was Kerry’s turn, and, by way of pre-speech spin, his spokeswoman, Stephanie Cutter, told reporters on his campaign plane during the flight to Nevada to expect an overwhelmingly Republican audience of active-duty servicemen and women who might boo upon hearing their Commander-in-Chief criticized.

“Two days ago, President Bush came before you and you received him well, as you should,” Kerry told the National Guard. “But I believe he failed the fundamental test of leadership. He failed to tell you the truth.” Nobody booed and nobody clapped, and Kerry went on, “The President stood right where I’m standing and did not even acknowledge that more than a thousand men and women have lost their lives in Iraq. He did not tell you that with each passing day we’re seeing more chaos, more violence, more indiscriminate killings. He did not tell you that with each passing week our enemies are getting bolder—that Pentagon officials report that entire regions of Iraq are now in the hands of terrorists and extremists. He did not tell you that with each passing month stability and security seem farther and farther away. He did not tell you any of this, even though—as the country learned today in the New York Times—his own intelligence officials have warned him for weeks that the mission in Iraq is in serious trouble. But that is the truth—hard as it is to hear. You deserve a President who will not play politics with national security, who will not ignore his own intelligence, while living in a fantasy world of spin.”

The President’s conduct of the war was defined by “serious mistakes” and “wrong choices” from the outset, Kerry said. “And, perhaps worst of all, the mess in Iraq has set us back—way back—in the war on terror. The simple fact is, when it comes to the war on terror, George W. Bush has taken his eye off the ball.” Kerry said that he would have done “almost everything differently,” but he insisted that it was not too late to correct the damage done by Bush’s bad leadership. When he finished, at least half the audience stood and clapped, albeit briefly.

A few days later, at New York University, Kerry delivered another major speech on the war. “The President now admits to ‘miscalculations’ in Iraq,” he said. “That is one of the greatest understatements in recent American history. His were not the equivalent of accounting errors. They were colossal failures of judgment—and judgment is what we look for in a President.” The war had made America weaker, he said, and less safe. “Yet, today, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again, the same way. How can he possibly be serious?” And on September 24th, in Philadelphia, Kerry took the war on terrorism as his theme. “The invasion of Iraq was a profound diversion from the battle against our greatest enemy—Al Qaeda,” Kerry said. “George Bush made Saddam Hussein the priority. I would have made Osama bin Laden the priority. As President, I will finish the job in Iraq and refocus our energies on the real war on terror.”

In these speeches, staggered over eight days, Kerry managed to come across both as anti-war and as a hawk on terrorism—a remarkable political balancing act. He spoke of winning in Iraq, recommitting to Afghanistan, bolstering homeland security, reviving alliances, waging a peaceful war of ideas to tame extremism in the Muslim world, and hunting down Osama bin Laden. His “plan” for Iraq was as sketchy as it was ambitious—bring in allies, step up training, intensify reconstruction, foster and recruit a United Nations protection force to make elections possible, and, if successful, begin to withdraw American forces within a year. Kerry did not pretend that it would be easy to get other countries to help him realize these ends. “But I have news for President Bush,” he said. “Just because you can’t do something doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”

Kerry’s focus on war and terrorism was strategically timed to lead up to the first debate, and, more immediately, to overshadow Bush’s address to the U.N. General Assembly, in New York, and the state visit to Washington of Iraq’s American-installed interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi (whose morning-in-Iraq rhetoric in an address to Congress might as well have been drafted by a Bush-campaign speechwriter). Kerry’s preëmptive strategy was successful: at a Rose Garden press conference with Allawi, Bush was repeatedly asked, with reference to Kerry’s charges, how he accounted for the discrepancies between his triumphalist claims about the pacification and democratization of Iraq and the anarchic scenes of battle, bombardment, carnage, and beheading that filled the news. For the first time since the Democratic Convention, at the end of July, Kerry was setting the agenda for the nation’s political press, and he was doing it by speaking substantively to the all-dominating issue of this election year. “He’s wanted to give that speech for a long time,” Stephanie Cutter told me after Kerry delivered his withering assessment of Bush’s war policy, and Senator Joseph Biden said that Kerry had told him, “I feel liberated.”

“Because guess what?” Biden said to a half-dozen reporters who were standing around after an outdoor Kerry rally in Philadelphia. “Bush’s strength on foreign policy is incredibly thin, shallow, and weak. It is. Factually.” What’s more, he said, “If John crosses that threshold on national security, this is over. Does anybody think George Bush has a plan for the economy and jobs? Does anybody think George Bush has a plan for health care? Does anybody think George Bush is actually going to spend more money on education?”

At that time, six days before the debate in Coral Gables, the suggestion that Bush might be vulnerable on Iraq or the war on terror was a kind of heresy. A wire-service reporter urged Biden to reconsider. Kerry’s “core competencies,” the reporter said, were the economy and health care. Wasn’t Kerry just being opportunistic, now that Iraq was in the headlines? “No!” Biden shouted, and when the reporter persisted—“What if the beheadings aren’t in the news in October?”—the Senator tipped back on his heels a moment, as if to get a better look at him, and said, “Hey, you are a real horse’s ass, aren’t you?” Mike McCurry, a former Clinton press secretary, who has been travelling with Kerry since early September, stood nearby, jiggling with laughter. McCurry told me, “The subtext of this whole week was: If you think that George Bush’s strength is foreign policy and national security, think again, then look at Kerry.”

In the Coral Gables debate, as in Kerry’s three mid-September speeches, the underlying message of his challenge to Bush’s view of Iraq was: Let’s get real. “We’re making progress,” Bush said several times during the debate, in response to Kerry’s recitations of all the ways that “this incredible mess in Iraq” had gone from very bad to much worse. Bush had dismissed Kerry’s speech in Las Vegas, by declaring, as he often does, “Freedom is on the march.” Now he conceded, “In Iraq, no doubt about it, it’s tough. It’s hard work. It’s incredibly hard.” He used the phrase “hard work” eleven times that evening, mostly to describe the war, and he said, “We’re getting the job done.” Kerry, who likes to point out that it is impossible to fix a problem that you refuse to acknowledge, kept up the attack. “This President, I don’t know if he sees what’s really happened over there,” he said, returning to the theme of his National Guard speech, and he added, “What I’m trying to do is just talk the truth to the American people and to the world. The truth is what good policy is based on. It’s what leadership is based on.” Bush rested his case on different values—staying “on the offensive,” for instance—and he concluded, “By being steadfast and resolute, and strong, by keeping our word, by supporting our troops, we can achieve the peace we all want.”

Steadfastness, however, seemed to be in shorter than usual supply within the Administration in the week after Coral Gables. Perhaps it was the onset of an election-year October—the political hurricane season—or perhaps just the relentlessness of the bad news from Iraq. There was Condoleezza Rice being forced by a newspaper article to admit she had been aware before the war that the true use of some aluminum tubes she once touted as proof of an Iraqi nuclear-arms program was actually a subject of dispute among intelligence experts. (In fact, at the time, senior nuclear experts in Bush’s Energy Department doubted that the tubes had anything to do with nukes.) There was Donald Rumsfeld being asked at the Council on Foreign Relations about the supposed link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda and responding, “To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two.” (Rumsfeld later claimed that he’d been misunderstood, but his answer was a model of unambiguous lucidity.) There was Paul Bremer, the Bush-appointed former head of the Coalition Authority in Iraq, declaring—as John Kerry likes to say on the stump—that the Administration failed to send a sufficient number of troops. (Kerry, campaigning in Iowa, reacted to the news by saying, “I don’t know if the President is constitutionally incapable of acknowledging the truth, I don’t know if he’s just so stubborn that he’s going to go down.”) There was a new C.I.A. report, which undermined the notion that the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—who is blamed for many of the beheadings in Iraq—had ties to Saddam Hussein. (Vice-President Cheney, who had commissioned the report, chose to ignore its conclusions.) There was Iyad Allawi in Baghdad, back from the Rose Garden, sounding grim and embattled.

And there was, at last, a definitive report from the chief U.S. arms inspector for Iraq, Charles A. Duelfer, which found that Saddam had had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and no active weapons programs in the period before Bush invaded. On the day that Duelfer’s report was released, Bush—no doubt eager to blunt its impact and regain the campaign offensive—went to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to deliver what the White House billed as a “significant speech.” In fact, the event was a campaign rally, Bush’s favorite format, and the speech was a beefed-up stump speech, packed with all the lines he should have said in Coral Gables. After a recitation of his standard explanation for the Iraq war as integral to the war on terror, an act of punishment of Saddam’s defiance that was necessitated by the experience of September 11th, Bush omitted his usual acknowledgment that weapons of mass destruction may never be found in Iraq. Instead, he said, “I understand some Americans have strong concerns about our role in Iraq. I respect the fact that they take this issue seriously, because it is a serious matter.” And then he invoked, once again, the tautological imperative: “I assure them we’re in Iraq because I deeply believe it is necessary and right and critical to the outcome of the war on terror.”

So we are there because he believes. As for Kerry, Bush said, “In our debate, he once again came down firmly on every side of the Iraq war. He stated that Saddam Hussein was a threat and that America had no business removing that threat. Senator Kerry said our soldiers and marines are not fighting for a mistake—but also called the liberation of Iraq a ‘colossal error.’ He said we need to do more to train Iraqis, but he also said we shouldn’t be spending so much money over there. He said he wants to hold a summit meeting, so he can invite other countries to join what he calls ‘the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ He said terrorists are pouring across the Iraqi border, but also said that fighting those terrorists is a diversion from the war on terror. You hear all that and you can understand why somebody would make a face.”

Before an adoring crowd, with a few days’ reaction time and the help of a good speechwriter, Bush proved to be an electrifyingly clever debater. But, just when he was scoring his best points in Wilkes-Barre, he started making things up. During the Coral Gables debate, Kerry had been asked about his attitude toward preëmptive war—the main ingredient of the “Bush doctrine,” which also advocates unilateralism. “No President, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preëmpt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America,” Kerry said. “But if and when you do it you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you’re doing what you’re doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.”

By “global test,” Kerry obviously meant not so much a formal procedure as an attitude—the spirit expressed by the Founding Fathers when they drafted the Declaration of Independence with “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” Bush, however, seized on the phrase as an ideal target for ridicule and distortion. He called it “the Kerry doctrine” (in Wilkes-Barre, he even pretended that Kerry had called it that), and he made it out to mean a system of subjugating America’s war-making authority to foreigners—the opposite of what Kerry had said. “Under this test, America would not be able to act quickly against threats, because we’re sitting around waiting for our grade from other nations and other leaders,” Bush said mockingly, and went on, “This mind-set will paralyze America in a dangerous world. . . . The Senator would have America bend over backwards to satisfy a handful of governments with agendas different from our own. This is my opponent’s alliance-building strategy: brush off your best friends, fawn over your critics. And that is no way to gain the respect of the world.”

Even with the fabrications and the misrepresentations, there was no denying that, with barely four weeks until Election Day, America was engaged, at last, in the sort of vigorous national debate that one might imagine to be the whole point of a Presidential-campaign season. Yet so much is left unsaid. In Iraq, there are only bad options—exit or escalate. And Kerry and Bush agreed in Coral Gables that Iraq is not even our greatest problem. Nuclear proliferation is, and particularly the possibility of loose nukes falling into the hands of terrorists. Of course, Bush credits the war in Iraq with sending a message to rogue proliferators: You could be next. By way of example, he cites Libya, whose leader, Muammar Qaddafi, he says, undertook to “disarm” his nuclear-weapons program shortly after marines toppled the statue of Saddam in Baghdad. (In fact, the equipment for Qaddafi’s reactor was still in crates, unassembled, and he had been negotiating the trade-in for a long time, without any reference to Saddam.) In the meantime, Iran and North Korea, Iraq’s original partners in Bush’s “axis of evil,” have heard the President’s message differently, and have advanced their nuclear programs significantly since the American takeover of Baghdad; the North Korean state news agency has cited Iraq as an example of what can happen to countries that can’t defend themselves with nukes.

For Bush, to say that the world is not as he describes it is to give solace to our enemies, undermine our forces on the field of battle, and endanger the lives of the citizenry. Even as the Duelfer report made it clear that Saddam Hussein had posed no threat to America, had no capacity to produce a threat, and had nothing to give to others to threaten us with, Bush stood on the stump in Wilkes-Barre scolding Kerry for saying the very same thing. “The problem with this approach is obvious,” the President proclaimed. “If America waits until a threat is at our doorstep, it might be too late.” Kerry is offering himself as the candidate of change—truth vs. unreality, a fresh start vs. more of the same. We need friends in this dangerous world, he says, and we need diplomacy to try and disarm and contain our enemies lest it should be our burden, otherwise, to destroy them. What Kerry doesn’t say—and cannot say—is that when it comes to real threats, like North Korea and Iran, Bush’s fixation with Iraq may already have made it too late for any American President to find a peaceful solution.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Mon, 10-11-2004 - 2:36am
3 Nobel Laureates Criticize Bush Nuclear Posture Review

March 18, 2002

Washington, D.C. . . Three Nobel Laureates, including atomic pioneer Hans Bethe, today released a statement condemning the Bush Administration's Nuclear Posture Review.

The three experts declared: "The Nuclear Posture Review signals an unfortunate reversal of longstanding policy, ending the taboo against nuclear weapons by including them in the full range of weapons to be used against countries with which the U.S. has major disagreements. "

They continued: "The Bush administration may be embracing what every previous President has rejected and could provoke a dangerous escalation of the nuclear arms race at a time when nuclear weapons should be eliminated."

The three signers are:

Hans A. Bethe, one of the original Manhattan Project scientists and a 1967 Nobel Laureate in Physics;

Dudley Herschbach, 1986 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry; and

John C. Polanyi, also a 1986 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.

The statement was issued by Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation (formerly Council for a Livable World Center for Arms Control), which was founded in 1982. Council for a Livable World, its sister organization, was founded 20 years earlier by nuclear physicist Leo Szilard, who led the scientific community's efforts to end the nuclear arms race.

The entire statement follows:

Statement by the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation on the Bush Administration's Nuclear Posture Review

For 56 years, the world has avoided the use of nuclear weapons despite many grave crises. While nuclear options were presented to Presidents Truman (Korean conflict), Eisenhower (Vietnam war) and others, all Presidents have rejected the option as too dangerous to the planet and humanity. Ronald Reagan said, "A nuclear war can not be won and must never be fought." However, the Bush administration may be embracing what every previous President has rejected and could provoke a dangerous escalation of the nuclear arms race at a time when nuclear weapons should be eliminated.

The Pentagon has undertaken a Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that broadens the role of nuclear weapons beyond their cold war function of deterring a Soviet attack. According to the NPR, U.S. nuclear weapons will now target seven countries. Russia, China, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Situations in which the weapons could be used include a war in the Middle East between Israel and Iraq; military conflict between China and Taiwan; North Korean invasion of South Korea; or responding to what are vaguely referred to as "surprising military developments." Understanding of the danger inherent in nuclear weapons has clearly been lost.

Since Hiroshima, nuclear weapons have been viewed as weapons of last resort, posing a threat of such magnitude that they served as a deterrent. While a single nuclear bomb could reduce an entire city to rubble, eight countries have produced some 50,000 nuclear weapons-enough to destroy the planet several times over. A nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan could eradicate one sixth of humanity. The taboo against using these terrible weapons has therefore remained strong despite countless military and political conflicts.

The United States, the only country ever to use nuclear weapons, has maintained an enormous nuclear force for the single purpose of deterring a nuclear attack and has drawn a firm line between the use of conventional weapons and nuclear bombs. Official U.S. policy states that nuclear weapons will be used only against countries that possess such weapons or ally themselves with a nuclear power.

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has undertaken to reduce and de-emphasize its nuclear forces while greatly improving its conventional weapons capabilities. Today no other nation can match the United States in overall military spending - the anticipated fiscal 2003 military budget of $400 billion is more than the combined defense expenditures of every other country in the world. This superiority in non-nuclear weapons has led some former hard-liners such as Paul Nitze to recommend abolition of nuclear weapons.

The Nuclear Posture Review signals an unfortunate reversal of longstanding policy, ending the taboo against nuclear weapons by including them in the full range of weapons to be used against countries with which the U.S. has major disagreements.

The plan also calls for development of new types of nuclear weapons that can be used against hardened or deeply buried targets. However, developing "usable" nuclear weapons with perceived military value will encourage other states to pursue similar capabilities. Moreover, even the use of "small" nuclear weapons will invite other states to retaliate against the U.S. with larger and more devastating nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.

The NPR undermines the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which 187 countries have signed and that commits the five major nuclear weapon states (the U.S., Russia, China, France, and the UK) to eventual nuclear disarmament. Instead, the Pentagon plan signals a new nuclear build-up that will undercut U.S. diplomatic efforts focused on stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons to terrorists or hostile states. The few countries already developing nuclear weapons will become more determined to do so. Countries that have agreed not to develop nuclear weapons under the NPT, already distressed by a growing trend of U.S. unilateralism, may abandon the treaty in the face of a U.S. buildup.

If the NPR is made policy, it will undermine U.S. security by encouraging other states to pursue nuclear weapons, and thereby increase the likelihood that nuclear weapons will actually be used.

Hans A. Bethe Cornell University 1967 Nobel Laureate in Physics

Dudley Herschbach Harvard University 1986 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry

John C. Polanyi University of Toronto 1986 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry



iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Mon, 10-11-2004 - 2:42am
Nobel winner says Bush is politicizing science

by Tom Scheck, Minnesota Public Radio

October 1, 2004

Peter Agre says the Patriot Act, which is meant to protect the nation from terrorists, is discouraging foreign scientists from studying and working in the United States.



The 2003 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry criticized President Bush on Friday for politicizing science. Minnesota native Peter Agre spoke to students and faculty at St. Olaf College on Thursday and the University of Minnesota on Friday. He is one of 25 leading scientists who are touring the country speaking about the future of science under the Bush administration.

Peter Agre spent 2003 lecturing at colleges and universities about his Nobel Prize-winning work. This year, the professor at Johns Hopkins University is spending his time travelling the country talking about politics.

Agre is one of 10 Nobel laureates who belong to Scientists and Engineers for Change. He is also one of 48 Nobel aureates who have signed a letter endorsing Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry for president. He says he hopes such lectures will help the public understand that many of the nation's leading scientists are not happy with the current administration.

"When you have that much interest on one side compared to the other side, you have to think that these are not irrational hotheads who don't know what they're doing. I think they understand science very well," he said.

Agre says his lectures are meant to spur debate among the audience. He says the Patriot Act, which is meant to protect the nation from terrorists, is discouraging foreign scientists from studying and working in the United States.

He also says he'd like to see the Bush administration spend more money on science research and should allow full federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Agre says he's concerned that the Bush administration is ignoring evidence that increased carbon emissions are causing global climate change. He says most other industrialized nations have signed a treaty that would limit such emissions.

"The Bush administration has been a disaster for the environment. They're playing Russian roulette by not signing the Kyoto Accord. If we wait until there's unequivocal proof that this is the cause of global climate change, it will be too late," he said.

Agre says he's concerned that the president is politicizing science by only appointing scientists who agree with his policies. He says such a policy limits the free and open discussion needed to move science forward.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Mon, 10-11-2004 - 2:43am
Nobel Laureates' Letter to President Bush

Eighty Nobel laureates were among those who signed a letter to President Bush urging funding for research on human embryo cells.

To the Honorable George W. Bush,

President of the United States



We the undersigned urge you to support Federal funding for research using human pluripotent stem cells. We join with other research institutions and patient groups in our belief that the current National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidelines, which enable scientists to conduct stem cell research within the rigorous constraints of federal oversight and standards, should be permitted to remain in effect. The discovery of human pluripotent stem cells is a significant milestone in medical research. Federal support for the enormous creativity of the US biomedical community is essential to translate this discovery into novel therapies for a range of serious and currently intractable diseases.

The therapeutic potential of pluripotent stem-cells is remarkably broad. The cells have the unique potential to differentiate into any human cell type. Insulin-producing cells could be used to treat - or perhaps even cure - patients with diabetes, cardiomyocytes could be used to replace damaged heart tissue, chondrocytes could be used for arthritis, and neurons for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, ALS and spinal cord injuries to name a few examples. There is also the possibility that these cells could be used to create more complex, vital organs, such as kidneys, livers, or even entire hearts.

Some have suggested that adult stem cells may be sufficient to pursue all treatments for human disease. It is premature to conclude that adult stem cells have the same potential as embryonic stem cells -- and that potential will almost certainly vary from disease to disease. Current evidence suggests that adult stem cells have markedly restricted differentiation potential. Therefore, for disorders that prove not to be treatable with adult stem cells, impeding human pluripotent stem cell research risks unnecessary delay for millions of patients who may die or endure needless suffering while the effectiveness of adult stem cells is evaluated.

The therapeutic promise of pluripotent stem cells is based on more than two decades of research in mice and other animal models. This research confirms that pluripotent stem cells are capable of generating all of the cell types of the body. Most importantly, the therapeutic potential of these cells has already been demonstrated. Cardiomyocytes generated in the laboratory from these cells have been transplanted into the hearts of dystrophic mice where they formed stable intracardiac grafts. Nerve cells have successfully reversed the progression of the equivalent of multiple sclerosis in mice and have restored function to the limbs of partially paralyzed rats; and insulin-secreting cells have normalized blood glucose in diabetic mice. These findings suggest that therapies using these cells may one day provide important new strategies for the treatment for a host of currently untreatable disorders.

While we recognize the legitimate ethical issues raised by this research, it is important to understand that the cells being used in this research were destined to be discarded in any case. Under these circumstances, it would be tragic to waste this opportunity to pursue the work that could potentially alleviate human suffering. For the past 35 years many of the common human virus vaccines -- such as measles, rubella, hepatitis A, rabies and poliovirus -- have been produced in cells derived from a human fetus to the benefit of tens of millions of Americans. Thus precedent has been established for the use of fetal tissue that would otherwise be discarded.

We urge you to allow research on pluripotent stem cells to continue with Federal support, so that the tremendous scientific and medical benefits of their use may one day become available to the millions of American patients who so desperately need them.

Yours respectfully,

Kenneth J. Arrow*, Stanford University

Julius Axelrod*, National Institute of Mental Health, Education & Welfare

Baruj Benacerraf*, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Paul Berg*, Stanford University

J. Michael Bishop*, University of California, San Francisco

Nicolaas Bloembergen*, Harvard University

Herbert C. Brown*, Purdue University

Jose Cibelli, Advanced Cell Technology

Stanley Cohen*, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine

Leon N. Cooper*, Brown University

E. J. Corey*, Harvard University

James W. Cronin*, University of Chicago

Robert Curl, Jr.*, Rice University

Peter Doherty*, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Johann Deisenhofer*, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Reneto Dulbecco*, Salk Institute

Edmond H. Fischer*, University of Washington

Val L. Fitch*, Princeton University

Robert Fogel*, University of Chicago

Jerome I. Friedman*, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Milton Friedman*, Hoover Institute

Robert F. Furchgott*, State University of New York Health Sciences Center

Murray Gell-Mann*, Santa Fe, NM

Walter Gilbert*, Harvard University

Alfred Gilman*, University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center

Donald Glaser*, University of California, Berkeley

Sheldon Lee Glashow*, Boston University

Ronald M. Green, Dartmouth College

Paul Greengard*, The Rockefeller University

Roger Guillemin*, The Salk Institute

Leonard Hayflick, University of California, San Francisco

Herbert A. Hauptman*, Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research

James J. Heckman*, University of Chicago

Alan Heeger*, University of California, Santa Barbara

Dudley Herschbach*, Harvard Medical School

David H. Hubel*, Harvard Medical School

Russell Hulse*, Plasma Physics Laboratory

Eric Kandel*, Columbia University

Jerome Karle*, Washington, D.C.

Lawrence R. Klein*, University of Pennsylvania

Walter Kohn*, University of California, Santa Barbara

Arthur Kornberg*, Stanford University School of Medicine

Edwin G. Krebs*, University of Washington

Robert P. Lanza+, Advanced Cell Technology

Robert Laughlin*, Stanford University

Leon Lederman*, Illinois Institute of Technology

David M. Lee*, Cornell University

Edward Lewis*, California Institute of Technology

William Lipscomb, Jr.*, Harvard University

Rudolph A. Marcus*, California Institute of Technology

Daniel McFadden*, University of California, Berkeley

R. Bruce Merrifield*, The Rockefeller University

Robert Merton*, Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration

Franco Modigliani*, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Mario J. Molina*, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Ferid Murad*, University of Texas Medical School

Marshall W. Nirenberg*, NIH National Heart, Lung & Blood Institute

Douglass C. North*, Washington University

George A. Olah*, University of Southern California

Douglas Osheroff*, Stanford University

George E. Palade*, University of California, San Diego

Martin Perl*, Stanford University

Norman F. Ramsey*, Harvard University

Burton Richter*, Stanford University

Richard J. Roberts*, New England Biolabs

Paul A. Samuelson*, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Melvin Schwartz*, Columbia University

Phillip A. Sharp*, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Richard E. Smalley*, Rice University

Hamilton O. Smith*, Celera Genomics

Robert M. Solow*, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Horst Stormer*, Columbia University

Henry Taube*, Stanford University

Richard Taylor*, Stanford University

E. Donnall Thomas*, University of Washington

James Tobin*, Yale University

Susumu Tonegawa*, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Charles Townes*, University of California, Berkeley

James D. Watson*, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Steven Weinberg*, University of Texas

Thomas H. Weller*, Harvard School of Public Health

Michael D. West+, Advanced Cell Technology

Eric F. Wieschaus*, Princeton University

Torsten N. Wiesel*, The Rockefeller University

Robert W. Wilson*, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

* Nobel Laureate

+ Corresponding Author

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Mon, 10-11-2004 - 2:45am
Top EPA offical resigns

Read the resignation letter from Eric Schaeffer, former head of the U.S. EPA's Office of Regulatory Enforcement

01 Mar 2002

The following letter of resignation was submitted on Feb. 27, 2002, by Eric Schaeffer, head of the U.S. EPA's Office of Regulatory Enforcement, to protest White House and Energy Department attempts to weaken federal clean air policy. Schaeffer's resignation has prompted Senate hearings into the Bush administration's environmental record.

Christine Whitman

Administrator

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20004

Dear Ms. Whitman:

I resign today from the Environmental Protection Agency after 12 years of service, the last five as Director of the Office of Regulatory Enforcement. I am grateful for the opportunities I have been given, and leave with a deep admiration for the men and women of EPA who dedicate their lives to protecting the environment and the public health. Their faith in the Agency's mission is an inspiring example to those who still believe that government should stand for the public interest.

But I cannot leave without sharing my frustration about the fate of our enforcement actions against power companies that have violated the Clean Air Act. Between November of 1999 and December of 2000, EPA filed lawsuits against nine power companies for expanding their plants without obtaining New Source Review permits and the up-to-date pollution controls required by law. The companies named in our lawsuits emit an incredible 5 million tons of sulfur dioxide every year (a quarter of the emissions in the entire country) as well as 2 million tons of nitrogen oxide.

As the scale of pollution from these coal-fired smokestacks is immense, so is the damage to public health. Data supplied to the Senate Environment Committee by EPA last year estimate the annual health bill from 7 million tons of SO2 and NO2: more than 10,800 premature deaths; at least 5,400 incidents of chronic bronchitis; more than 5,100 hospital emergency visits; and over 1.5 million lost work days. Add to that severe damage to our natural resources, as acid rain attacks soils and plants and deposits nitrogen in the Chesapeake Bay and other critical bodies of water.

Fifteen months ago, it looked as though our lawsuits were going to shrink these dismal statistics, when EPA publicly announced agreements with Cinergy and Vepco to reduce Sox and Nox emissions by a combined 750,000 tons per year. Settlements already lodged with two other companies -- TECO and PSE&G -- will eventually take another quarter million tons of Nox and Sox out of the air annually. If we get similar results from the nine companies with filed complaints, we are on track to reduce both pollutants by a combined 4.8 million tons per year. And that does not count the hundreds of thousands of additional tons that can be obtained from other companies with whom we have been negotiating.

Yet today, we seem about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We are in the ninth month of a "90 day review" to reexamine the law, and fighting a White House that seems determined to weaken the rules we are trying to enforce. It is hard to know which is worse, the endless delay or the repeated leaks by energy industry lobbyists of draft rule changes that would undermine lawsuits already filed. At their heart, these proposals would turn narrow exemptions into larger loopholes that would allow old "grandfathered" plants to be continually rebuilt (and emissions to increase) without modern pollution controls.

Our negotiating position is weakened further by the Administration's budget proposal to cut the civil enforcement program by more than 200 staff positions below the 2001 level. Already, we are unable to fill key staff positions, not only in air enforcement, but in other critical programs, and the proposed budget cuts would leave us desperately short of the resources needed to deal with the large, sophisticated corporate defendants we face. And it is completely unrealistic to expect underfunded state environmental programs, facing their own budget cuts, to take up the slack.

It is no longer possible to pretend that the ongoing debate with the White House and Department of Energy is not effecting our ability to negotiate settlements. Cinergy and Vepco have refused to sign the consent decrees they agreed to 15 months ago, hedging their bets while waiting for the Administration's Clean Air Act reform proposals. Other companies with whom we were close to settlement have walked away from the table. The momentum we obtained with agreements announced earlier has stopped, and we have filed no new lawsuits against utility companies since this Administration took office. We obviously cannot settle cases with defendants who think we are still rewriting the law.

The arguments against sustaining our enforcement actions don't hold up to scrutiny.

Were the complaints filed by the U.S. government based on conflicting or changing interpretations? The Justice Department doesn't think so. Its review of our enforcement actions found EPA's interpretation of the law to be reasonable and consistent. While the Justice Department has gamely insisted it will continue to prosecute existing cases, the confusion over where EPA is going with New Source Review has made settlement almost impossible, and protracted litigation inevitable.

What about the energy crisis? It stubbornly refuses to materialize, as experts predict a glut of power plants in some areas of the U.S. In any case, our settlements are flexible enough to provide for cleaner air while protecting consumers from rate shock.

The relative costs and benefits? EPA's regulatory impact analyses, reviewed by OMB, quantify health and environmental benefits of $7,300 per ton of SO2 reduced at a cost of less than $1,000 per ton. These cases should be supported by anyone who thinks cost-benefit analysis is a serious tool for decision-making, not a political game.

Is the law too complicated to understand? Most of the projects our cases targeted involved big expansion projects that pushed emission increases many times over the limits allowed by law.

Should we try to fix the problem by passing a new law? Assuming the Administration's bill survives a legislative odyssey in today's evenly divided Congress, it will send us right back where we started with new rules to write, which will then be delayed by industry challenges, and with fewer emissions reductions than we can get by enforcing today's law.

I believe you share the concerns I have expressed, and wish you well in your efforts to persuade the Administration to put our enforcement actions back on course. Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican and our greatest environmental President, said, "Compliance with the law is demanded as a right, not asked as a favor." By showing that powerful utility interests are not exempt from that principle, you will prove to EPA's staff that their faith in the Agency's mission is not in vain. And you will leave the American public with an environmental victory that will be felt for generations to come.

Sincerely,

Eric V. Schaeffer, Director

Office of Regulatory Enforcement

Pages