Channel: Bush & Co.
GAO Says Bush Administration Violated Law on SCHIP Program
This may come as a news flash to the White House, but even the Bush administration has to obey the law. A government watchdog agency says the administration violated federal law last August when it blocked states from covering more uninsured children under the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a ruling Friday that found the administration's unilateral implementation of new rules to prevent states from expanding SCHIP to cover more of the nation's 9 million uninsured children violated the Congressional Review Act. The act requires that significant changes to programs and policies be subject to a public comment period or congressional approval.
Don’t Believe Wall Street Hype About Social Security
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Earlier this week, the Social Security Board of Trustees released the 65th annual report on the program’s financial status.
And on cue, the Bush administration and the Wall Street-knows-best crowd—now joined by Sen. John McCain (who acknowledges " economics is something I've never really understood as well as I should")—used the occasion to push for privatizing Social Security. You know, turning over seniors' retirement security to the stock market's financial wizards who supposedly will show a bit more fiduciary acumen than the folks who presided over Bear Stearns' crash and burn.
Workers’ Political Strength Helps Stall NLRB Assault on Rights
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Instead of protecting the rights of workers to join unions and bargain for a better life, a Republican-dominated National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in recent years took away the rights of millions of workers to be represented by unions, made it harder to form unions through majority sign-up, limited the ability of illegally fired workers to recover back pay and allowed employers to discriminate against union supporters in the hiring process.
In recent months, our allies on Capitol Hill joined our campaign for a fair NLRB that does its job to protect workers’ freedom to join a union. Last November, workers across the country protested the ongoing assault on worker rights by the Bush-appointed NLRB, saying until a pro-worker labor board is appointed, the agency should be "closed for renovations."
Now, it seems, workers have successfully stalled, if not derailed, the NLRB’s assault on workers’ rights until a new president can appoint new board members.
Greed is Not Good
As we watch the Federal Reserve hand over billions of dollars to tanking Wall Street firms to stave off a nationwide Titanic, the words of author and activist Barbara Ehrenreich especially resonate:
The rich are a burden to the rest of us.
Ehrenreich, appropriately enough, was speaking at "Challenging the Second Gilded Age," a session at this week's Take Back America Conference, where she was joined by Bill Gates Sr., a working families' activist in his own right.
Ehrenreich's point is that the growing wealth gap in this country matters. It matters because when a lot of people are impoverished, it creates societal problems—like the poor's inability to consume at a level our economy requires to stay in equilibrium.
OSHA’s Four-Year Delay on Crane Safety Standard Highlighted in Wake of N.Y. Deaths
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) estimates that between 64 and 82 construction workers are killed and 263 are injured working around cranes and derricks each year.
The latest tragic evidence of the dangers construction workers face when working on and around the towering cranes that dot so many city skylines—sometime reaching several hundred feet in the air—came March 15. Six construction workers and an out-of-town visitor were killed when a 300-foot-tall crane collapsed on Manhattan’s East Side, severely damaging a 19-story apartment building and demolishing a four-story town house.
Initial reports indicate the collapse occurred as the workers were “jumping” or assembling a new section so the crane could extend higher as the project continued.
But just as OSHA has failed to issue so many vital safety standards during the Bush administration—combustible dust, personal protective gear, diacetyl (a cancer-causing chemical) and more—it has yet to issue a crane and derrick safety standard, despite the urging of both industry and unions.
Hearings Spotlight OSHA Inaction in Setting Combustible Standards to Save Lives
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Edwin Foulke, head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), defended his agency's actions in preventing combustible dust explosions like the Feb. 7 blast that claimed the lives of 12 workers and seriously injured 11 others at an Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Ga.
We've taken strong measures on combustible dust.
But several other safety experts and members of the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee laid out a pattern of inaction on OSHA's part in setting a dust standard, including ignoring the 2006 recommendation of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) that an emergency combustible standard was needed to save lives.
Report: Change is Gonna Come
As we approach the 2008 election, America is poised to make big changes in the way we’re governed. The crisis in the economy and the failures of the Bush administration have left people looking for a way to turn America around, and if a new report is correct, they’ll start at the polls this fall.
Progressives Rising—2008: A Sea-Change Election was assembled by the Campaign for America’ Future. The organization is presenting the report in conjunction with next week’s Take Back America 2008 conference.
Campaign for America's Future Co-Director Robert Borosage says the key to making the most of this moment isn’t just winning the election, but in making sure political leaders follow through on their promises and enact progressive policies.
Bush to McCain: ‘Four More Years!’
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| Strike up the violins: Bush and McCain in an earlier get-together. |
It got pretty cozy in the White House Rose Garden today when Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain sidled up to George W. Bush to pick up his endorsement.
McCain's pilgrimage is a reminder that when it comes to backing Bush and his failed policies, McCain is no “maverick.”
Bush was so effusive in today's press event he barely let McCain speak—making it clear that he expects McCain to be a successor in his own image. Bush can’t run for a third term and wouldn’t win if he did—with approval rating at or below 30 percent for months—but with McCain as the Republican nominee, he’s got the next best thing.
Here's how close the two are: McCain has voted in support of Bush’s positions 89 percent of the time—a lifetime voting record that in 2007, rose to a striking 95 percent, according to Congressional Quarterly.
Union-Made Ship Includes Steel from World Trade Center
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Yesterday, the USS New York, the Navy's most modern troop and equipment transport ship, was christened at Northrop Grumman's Avondale Shipyard in New Orleans. What makes the ship unique is the 7.5 tons of steel taken from the wreckage of the World Trade Center destroyed in the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks that was cast into the bow of the ship.
There is something else special about the USS New York, says Ron Ault, president of the AFL-CIO Metal Trades Department. The hundreds of union members from the unions that make up the New Orleans Metal Trades Council built that ship while they were still dealing with the devastating impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. One of those workers is Boilermakers (IBB) member J.F. Martinez, who every night after work went home to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trailer he and his wife share.
9/11 First Responders Protest Bush Health Care Funding Cuts
Today, three weeks after President Bush cut health care funding by 77 percent for Sept. 11 first responders, many of whom are developing serious and deadly illnesses because of their work at Ground Zero, some 200 9/11 workers rallied on Capitol Hill this morning, calling on Congress to restore the health care money.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health estimates the cost of treating Ground Zero workers is about $218 million year and is expected to grow as the workers' illnesses worsen and as more firefighters, police officers, emergency medical technicians and rescue and recovery workers develop Ground Zero-related diseases.
