dubya's politicized EPA staying the course ... doing nothing

[boutons_]

... to make America neither safe nor safer.

====================

September 22, 2006

E.P.A. Chief Rejects Recommendations on Soot

By FELICITY BARRINGER
WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 — The Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator on Thursday rejected the recommendations of his staff — and an unusual public plea from independent science advisers — choosing instead to tighten only one of two standards regulating the amount of lethal particles of soot in the air.

The short-term daily standard, intended to control acute exposure to the minute particles, was cut nearly in half. But the annual standard, which affects chronic exposure, remains at its original 1997 level.

A large volume of research has implicated the soot particles — which are less than one-thirtieth the diameter of a human hair and can penetrate deep into the lungs and the circulatory system — in tens of thousands of deaths annually from both respiratory and coronary disease. Scientists say they are among the deadliest contaminants to which the public is regularly exposed and for which the E.P.A. sets exposure levels.

Stephen L. Johnson, a career scientist at the agency and the third administrator appointed during President Bush’s six years in office, said in a conference call Thursday that the annual standard would remain at its current level while research continued. No change was made now, Mr. Johnson said, “due to insufficient evidence’’ linking health problems to long-term exposure.

( so the Repugs prefer to err on the side of danger, and on the side of the corps who would have to clean up their products )


“Wherever the science gave us a clear picture, we took clear action,” Mr. Johnson said, adding, “All Americans deserve to breathe clean air, and through these more protective standards that is exactly what we are delivering today.”

The E.P.A. sets standards under the 36-year-old Clean Air Act and is required to review the standards every five years, taking into account the latest science. There have been no new standards since the first ones were established in 1997. The agency was under a court-ordered deadline to finalize new rules by Sept. 27.

The process of setting the new standards for soot, which comes from sources that include power plants, heavy industry and vehicle tailpipes and tires, drew intense scrutiny from medical and environmental, as well as industry, interests. Neither side was pleased with the final results.

In a rare display of solidarity, all but 2 of the 22 members of the agency’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Council had urged that the long-term standard be lowered to a range of 12 to 14 micrograms per cubic meter, from 15.

The American Medical Association, which seldom intervenes in such cases, agreed with the scientists in a letter to the agency in April. The letter also recommended that the daily, or acute exposure standard, be further reduced. The action on Thursday reduced the daily standard to 35 micrograms per cubic meter from 65, though the A.M.A. favored a level of 25 micrograms.

The Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned power plants that generate about 60 percent of the country’s electricity, said the agency was going too far in nearly halving the daily standard.

Dan Reidinger, an Edison spokesman, said power plant emissions associated with fine particles had been cut by 40 percent since 1980.

“E.P.A. persists in overemphasizing studies that suggest a possible benefit to tightening the air quality standard, ’’ Mr. Reidinger said, “while downplaying those suggesting that doing so may not provide the health benefits E.P.A. is seeking to achieve.”

The reactions from medical and environmental groups were sharper. Joel Schwartz, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health who has written many peer-reviewed papers on the health effects of particulates, said lowering the standard to the level urged by the science advisers would prevent 3,000 premature deaths annually.

( hmm, just about one WTC death toll saved PER YEAR )

Frank O’Donnell, who heads Clean Air Watch, an environmental lobbying group in Washington, said, “Particle soot kills more people than any other form of air pollution, and this E.P.A. decision will allow particle soot to continue killing many thousands of Americans that would be spared if the air were cleaned up.”

( industry-friendly, industry-owned Repugs: "needs more study" )

In the teleconference, Mr. Johnson, the E.P.A. administrator, and two top agency officials, William Wehrum, the acting assistant administrator who heads the Office of Air and Radiation, and Dr. George Gray, an assistant administrator who heads the Office of Research and Development, stressed that the science advisers were not unanimous in their recommendations.

In an interview later, Mr. Johnson said, “The bottom line is these air standards are more protective today than they were yesterday.”

( aka, safer, BUT NOT SAFE )

Asked about the health-related benefits of the tighter standard for daily exposure, he cited the agency’s statistical estimates that the new rule would avoid an estimated “2,500 premature deaths in people with heart or lung disease; 2,600 chronic bronchitis cases; 5,000 nonfatal heart attacks,” among other improvements. He said he could not provide estimates for the benefits associated with toughening the annual standard to 14 micrograms from 15.

Ron Wyzga, a scientist and biostatistician with the Electric Power Research Institute, an industry group, said a review of health studies showed that “there’s no magic number saying what a standard should or shouldn’t be, so it’s a matter of judgment.

“And different people,’’ Mr. Wyzga said, “have different judgments.”

========

Repugs have the judgements that insdustry pays them to have.

[nkdlunch]

the goverment is the terrorist in this topic

[boutons_]

And the hits just keep coming ....

September 22, 2006
Bush Reading Program Blasted in Internal Audit

By REUTERS
Filed at 9:57 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A $1 billion reading program that is a key part of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind education law was mismanaged and rife with conflicts of interest, according to an internal audit released on Friday.

The audit by the inspector general's office of the Reading First program -- the largest early reading program in U.S. history -- found that officials in 2002 and 2003, shortly after the program was established, improperly tried to influence states on which curricula they should use.

In addition, some officials with the power to approve certain reading materials for states had connections with the publishers, according to the report. It added the department had not properly reviewed the officials for such potential conflicts.

As a result of the findings, the director of the program at the Education Department resigned and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings took steps to improve the department's screening process and management, a department spokeswoman told Reuters. The department has also taken the steps recommended by the inspector general to avoid conflicts of interest.

``Some of the actions taken by Department officials and described in the Inspector General's report reflect individual mistakes,'' Spellings said in a statement.

``Although these events occurred before I became Secretary of Education, I am concerned about these actions and committed to addressing and resolving them,'' Spellings added, vowing to put all the inspector general's recommendations in place.

The department says that while there had been issues with management and conflicts of interest, the program had been successful in improving the reading skills among the nation's younger students.

Reading First has served more than 1.7 million students in kindergarten through third grade.

State educational agencies have received over $4.8 billion in Reading First grants, helping about 5,600 schools.


Copyright 2006 Reuters Ltd. (http://www.online.reuters.com/)

===================

September 23, 2006
Report Says Education Officials Violated Rules

By SAM DILLON (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/sam_dillon/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Department of Education officials violated conflict of interest rules when awarding grants to states under President Bush’s billion-dollar reading initiative, and steered contracts to favored textbook publishers, the department’s inspector general said yesterday.

In a searing report that concludes the first in a series of investigations into complaints of political favoritism in the reading initiative, known as Reading First, the report said officials improperly selected the members of review panels that awarded large grants to states, often failing to detect conflicts of interest. The money was used to buy reading textbooks and curriculum for public schools nationwide.

States have received more than $4.8 billion in Reading First grants during the Bush administration, and a recent survey by an independent group, the Center on Education Policy, reported that many state officials consider the initiative to be highly effective in raising reading achievement. But the report describes a tangled process in which some states had to apply for grants as many as six times before receiving approval, with department officials scheming to stack panels with experts tied to favored publishers.

In one e-mail message cited in the report, from which the inspector general deleted some vulgarities, the director of Reading First, Chris Doherty, urged staff members to make clear to one company that it was not favored at the department.

“They are trying to crash our party and we need to beat the [expletive deleted] out of them in front of all the other would-be party crashers who are standing on the front lawn waiting to see how we welcome these dirtbags,” Mr. Doherty wrote.

Mr. Doherty recently resigned from the department to “return to the private sector,” Katherine McLane, a department spokeswoman said.

Officials relayed reporters’ requests for comment to Mr. Doherty, and he declined to be interviewed, an official said.

The abuses described in the report occurred during 2002 and 2003, when Rod Paige (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/roderick_r_paige/index.html?inline=nyt-per) was education secretary. John Grimaldi, spokesman for the Chartwell Education Group where Mr. Paige is chairman, said he had not read the report but would seek Mr. Paige’s reaction to it.

“Some of the actions taken by department officials and described in the inspector general’s report reflect individual mistakes,” Secretary Margaret Spellings said in a statement. “Although these events occurred before I became secretary of education, I am concerned about these actions and committed to addressing and resolving them.”

Officials will review by the end of the year all Reading First applications that the department approved, to determine that they met all applicable requirements, Ms. McLane said.

The report recounts how during the formation of a review panel in 2002 a journalist asked the department whether federal officials were trying to stack the panel so that some reading programs would not be treated fairly.

The report cited the Reading First director’s response to the department employee who relayed the journalist’s question: “Stack the panel? ... I have never heard of such a thing ....<harumph, harumph>” the director replied.

“The response,” the report concluded, “suggests that he may indeed have intended to ‘stack’ the expert review panel.”

The report mentions Reid Lyon, the former chief of a branch of the National Institutes of Health (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_institutes_of_health/index.html?inline=nyt-org), who was a research adviser to President Bush and an architect of Reading First. He exerted immense influence at the department when Mr. Paige was there.

( dubya's political henchman fucking another department )


In 2002, Dr. Lyon told the Reading First director and other department officials that a woman whom the department had already selected to be on a review panel had been “actively working to undermine” a reading initiative he favored, the report said.

“Chances are that other reviewers can trump any bias on her part,” Dr. Lyon told the officials.

“We can’t uninvite her,” a senior adviser to Mr. Paige wrote in response, the report said. “Just make sure she is on a panel with one of our barracuda types.”

The incident demonstrated “the intention of the former senior adviser to the secretary to control another panelist,” the report said.

In an interview yesterday, Dr. Lyon said that in the 2002 incident he sought to neutralize bias.

“If we detected bias, we had to make sure that the review panel was put together so that that bias would be neutralized,” he said.

Dr. Lyon left the national institutes in August 2005 and is now an executive vice president for Higher Ed Holdings, a company based in Dallas that is working to found a college of education.

“Oh man, I’m mortified,” Dr. Lyon said of the report. “To see the facts that were presented today was very disappointing, because it’s an outstanding program.”

The investigation was opened last year after the inspector general received accusations of mismanagement and other abuses at the department from publishers of several reading programs, including Robert E. Slavin, a director of a research center at the Johns Hopkins University (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/j/johns_hopkins_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org) who is chairman of Success for All, a nonprofit foundation that produces reading materials.

“The department has said at least 10,000 times that they had no favored reading programs, and this report provides clear evidence that they were very aggressively pressing districts to use certain programs and not use others,” Dr. Slavin said.

===================


I mean, it's just a fucking reading project, and dubya can't even get that right.

Have the Repug's done anything right in 6 years? Or have they just fucked up everything they've touched?

Invade the wrong fucking country,

calling Mission Accomplished that still unaccomplished 3+ years later,
letting OBL take out the WTC without even raising a single alert

etc, etc, etc.

[boutons_]

one more!


September 23, 2006

Study Condemns F.D.A.’s Handling of Drug Safety

By GARDINER HARRIS

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 — The nation’s system for ensuring the safety of medicines needs major changes, advertising of new drugs should be restricted, and consumers should be wary of drugs that have only recently been approved, according to a long-anticipated study of drug safety.

The report by the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, is likely to intensify a debate about the safety of the nation’s drug supply and the adequacy of the government’s oversight. The debate heated up in September 2004 when Merck withdrew its popular arthritis drug Vioxx after studies showed that it doubled the risks of heart attacks.

Several senators have already proposed significant changes, some of which the report seems to endorse.

The report’s conclusions are often damning. It describes the Food and Drug Administration as rife with internal squabbles and hobbled by underfinancing, poor management and outdated regulations.

“Every organization has its share of dysfunctions, unhappy staff members and internal disputes,” the report said. But panel members said that they were deeply concerned about the agency’s “organizational health” and its ability to ensure the safety of the nation’s drug supply.

The report made these recommendations, most of which would require Congressional authorization:

¶Newly approved drugs should display a black triangle on their labels for two years to warn consumers that their safety is more uncertain than that of older drugs.

¶Drug advertisements should be restricted during this initial period.

¶The F.D.A. should be given the authority to issue fines, injunctions and withdrawals when drug makers fail — as they often do — to complete required safety studies.

¶The F.D.A. should thoroughly review the safety of drugs at least once every five years.

¶The F.D.A. commissioner should be appointed to a six-year term.

¶Drug makers should be required to post publicly the results of nearly all human drug trials.

In a telephone conference with reporters on Friday, top F.D.A. officials struck an awkward balance between thanking the institute for its work and defending their own leadership. They said they needed to study the report before deciding which of its recommendations to endorse.

“While considerable work has been done over the past two years to improve our approach to drug safety, work still needs to be done,” said Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach, the acting commissioner of the agency and the nominee for commissioner.

An internal e-mail message sent Friday to agency staff members by Dr. Sandra L. Kweder, deputy director of the Office of New Drugs, was blunter, bemoaning the report’s criticism of what it described as the agency’s dysfunctional culture.

“It is a long, inflammatory section of the report that will certainly generate the most public attention and hit our people hard,” Dr. Kweder wrote, according to a copy provided to The New York Times.

Agency critics were elated.

“The new report validates what the watchdog community has been saying for the last two years,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee has overseen investigations into drug safety problems. “Problems are systemic, and solutions must reflect a new mind-set by the agency leadership.”

The drug industry, through its trade organization, reacted warily. “Though there is always room for improvements, it would be a mistake to accept the notion that the F.D.A. drug safety system is seriously flawed,” said Caroline Loew, senior vice president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

The Institute of Medicine is a nonprofit organization created by Congress to advise the federal government on health issues. The report was issued by the Committee on the Assessment of the United States Drug Safety System, led by Sheila P. Burke, deputy secretary and chief operating officer of the Smithsonian Institution.

The report described fierce disagreements between those who approve drugs and those who study their effects after approval, disputes that repeated F.D.A. efforts have not resolved. Indeed, managers’ failure to address such disagreements competently “has played an important role in damaging the credibility” of the agency, it said.

Critics of the food and drug agency have long been divided into two warring camps. Some say the agency fails to approve life-saving medicines quickly enough, while others say that it is so intent on rapid approvals that it fails to ensure the safety of the drugs.

The institute’s report champions the latter view by calling for greater caution. It suggests that one of the agency’s biggest problems is a deal struck in 1992 between Congress and the drug industry in which drug makers agreed to pay millions in fees to speed reviews. This deal has increased pressures on drug reviewers to act quickly, and it has limited “the ability of reviewers to examine safety signals as thoroughly as they might like,” the report said.

“Some also have serious concerns that the regulator has been ‘captured’ by industry it regulates, that the agency is less willing to use the regulatory authority at its disposal,” the report said, criticizing the agency’s regulatory tools as “all-or-nothing.”

“The agency needs a more nuanced set of tools to signal uncertainties, to reduce advertising that drives rapid uptake of new drugs, or to compel additional studies in the actual patient populations who take the drug after its approval,” it said.

The pharmaceutical industry is likely to fight at least some of the proposals, said Charlie Cook, a Washington political analyst.

“One should never underestimate the influence of the drug industry,” Mr. Cook said. “But I would think that at least the outlines of many of these recommendations would have a decent chance of getting through Congress.”

Senators Michael B. Enzi, Republican of Wyoming and chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the committee, have jointly proposed a bill that would undertake at least some of the changes advocated by the report.

Another bill, sponsored by Senator Grassley and Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, offers similar proposals.

There is little chance that Congress will act on any of these proposals before next year, when it must reauthorize the 1992 financing deal with the drug industry. Negotiations between the drug industry and agency about the parameters of that deal are already under way.

Despite its fierce criticisms, the report may bolster the confirmation prospects of Dr. von Eschenbach. A Senate committee approved his nomination on Wednesday, but two Republican senators have vowed to block it.

Over the past 10 years, no commissioner has served more than two years, though the term is open-ended. The report deplored this “lack of stable leadership.”

“Without stable leadership strongly and visibly committed to drug safety, all other efforts to improve the effectiveness of the agency or position it effectively for the future will be seriously, if not fatally, compromised,” the report states.

It recommends that the commissioner be nominated for a six-year term, but such a change may not solve the problem of early exits. President Bush has nominated two past commissioners. The first left for another job within the administration; the second left amid accusations of financial improprieties.

The report recommends that Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, appoint an independent board to advise the commissioner “to implement and sustain the changes necessary to transform” the agency’s culture.

It rejects suggestions by Mr. Grassley and others that the F.D.A. create a center for drug safety to monitor drugs after approval.

“Achieving a balanced approach to the assessment of risks and benefits would be greatly complicated, or even compromised, if two separate organizations were working in isolation from one another,” the report concludes.

The F.D.A. asked the Institute of Medicine to review its drug safety system shortly after the Vioxx withdrawal in 2004, and the agency has agreed to pay $3 million for the study.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Repugs have the judgements that insdustry pays them to have.


Which makes them just like the democrats.

[boutons_]

AHF's defense of the Repugs is that they REALLY ARE as shitty as the Dems. :lol

Way to root for your side, dickless.

With supporters like you, the Repugs don't need detractors.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

My side? I've got news for you, you little high school reject... For the most part it doesn't matter which *party* is in charge. The bottom line is the rich are in charge, and pretty much all politics serve their interests.

Sure, there are some differences (cut and run in wartime by the democrats vs. stay the course by Repubs), but here at home, the shit's all the same no matter which side of the aisle the politician is on.

Yeah, I support Bush, I considered him the lesser of two evils in the past two elections. Maybe one day about 10 years from now when you graduate HS and are a little older and have some life experience, you'll get the fucking picture. Until then, you're one of the most ignorant people on this site, and for that I feel sorry for you.

Dickless? The first sign of inferior intellectual capability is the reliance on terms like dickless, dickhead, shrub, etc. Maybe one day when you graduate 8th grade you can graduate to some bigger words.

[Ozzman]

AHF's defense of the Repugs is that that REALLY ARE as shitty as the Dems. :lol

Way to root for your side, dickless.

With supporters like you, the Repugs don't need detractors.

you know, this is where the U.S. has problems. this is a country split in half by politics. If you were really all about peace, you would START with making peace with the republicans/Dems. To be honest, with so many americans like you boutons, i'm surprised we haven't seen an assassination of Dubya. You guys are so split that you can't even have a semi intellectual convo w/ somone, because they support 'the repugs' and and therefore are all bumbling idiots who don't know their ass from a hole in the side of a cheese grater. same problem with the Republican party. you guys somehow seem to think that all Democrats are all wimpy little morons. well, all of them arent. boutons is, but not all of them are. that is the problem of the U.S.

[boutons_]

Boutons a wimp?
Go fuck yourself, poofter.

[Ozzman]

oooo i'm so intimidated. I feel so scared at my computer that I think I'll go hide under my bed cause boutons might throw some, tofu's or bean curds at me!!!

[Ozzman]

I must give you credit for actually reading it, though. proves that you actually can.

[Yonivore]

poofter?

[Zunni]

poofter?
I think he meant Pooftah, from classic Monty Python.

Rule #1: No Pooftahs!!!

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Boutons a wimp?
Go fuck yourself, poofter.

:lmao boutons got owned, and all he can come up with is 'poofter'.

[boutons_]

you don't own your own asshole, aggie. Who's up there tonight?

[01Snake]

you don't own you own asshole, aggie. Who's up there tonight?

What?

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

you don't own your own asshole, aggie. Who's up there tonight?

Your mom's tongue.

[Ozzman]

pwned...