Governmental Accountability

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/10/news/china.php

Can you imagine this kind of accountability in D.C.? There'd be no one left :lol

[boutons_]

If the FDA chief were convicted, dubya would pardon.

Gotta keep those Big Pharma $Ms pouring into Repug pockets.

[George Gervin's Afro]

Holy sh!t... DC would be a ghost town.. :lol

[Oh, Gee!!]

as the Beijing leadership scrambled to show that it was serious about improving the safety of Chinese products.

that made me laugh

[boutons_]

July 5, 2007

China Reportedly Urged Omitting Pollution-Death Estimates

By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI, July 4 — Chinese government officials pressed the World Bank into removing estimates of the number of premature deaths linked to pollution in China from a bank report, according to a person involved in drafting the report.

A formal draft of the report, “Cost of Pollution in China,” was released at a conference in Beijing in March after the deletions. The excised information included statistical models estimating that as many as 750,000 people a year die prematurely in China, because of air and water pollution.

( that's not too bad, really, considering the estimates say about 100K die in USA due to prescription drug reactions and health care errors )


The person involved in drafting the report said the Chinese authorities had wanted the information removed because they had doubts about the method used to estimate the deaths and they were worried about the social consequences of making such statistics public. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is considered so delicate in China.

In a statement released Tuesday, the World Bank did not deny that some data had been removed from the draft report at the request of China.

But a World Bank spokeswoman in Washington said that the matter was under review and that a final report had not been issued.

“Consistent with the World Bank’s approach to this type of joint research project, the findings of the report are being discussed with the government,” the World Bank’s statement said. “The conference version of the report did not include some of the issues that are still under discussion.”

The disclosure that China had pressed the World Bank to remove some information was first reported Tuesday in The Financial Times.

The Chinese government agencies participating in the project include the State Environmental Protection Administration and the Ministry of Health.

Despite the omissions, the report, which was developed over three years by a large group of World Bank scientists, Chinese government officials and academics, is still a grave warning about the costs and consequences of the pollution and environmental degradation that have resulted from China’s economic boom.

Researchers estimated that pollution would cost China as much as 5.8 percent of its gross domestic product, or about $160 billion a year. China said its trade surplus in 2006 was about $177 billion.

The report also says that because of China’s dependence on fossil fuels, particularly coal, it is the largest source of sulfur dioxide emissions in the world. Sulfur dioxide is a pollutant that helps produce acid rain.

( about the same as the USA's dependence on dirty coal plants that the coal refuses to clean up, and that Repugs refuse to force a clean up. And the US coalcos want to keep building dirty coal plants rather than clean ones, about 1000 of the dirty plants are planned around the world. )

The study found that acid rain caused more than $4 billion a year in crop damage, and that water scarcity and water pollution resulted in more than $21 billion a year in losses.

The report also says that China’s worst air and water pollution is in the north, and that the poor bear a disproportionate share of the health consequences.

“The findings suggest that environmental pollution falls disproportionately on the less economically advanced parts of China, which have a higher share of poor populations,” the draft report says.

In the draft, which is posted on the World Bank Web site, the authors of the study hint at disagreement about what should be made public.

The report says, “Some of the subjects that have been carefully developed during the course of implementation, including certain physical impact estimations as well as economic cost calculations at local levels, have been left out of this conference edition due to still some uncertainties about calculation methods and its application.”

[Wild Cobra]

How about some perspective. The FDA and here doesn't do anything as bad as what China had been doing. I'm not claiming they are saints, just that there is a tremendous difference.

Now as for executing politicians who take bribes and abuse their power.... Maybe we should!

Harry Ried... Remember those land deals...
Dianne Fienstein... Remember the federal contracts directed to your husband...

To bad there is the "ex post facto" qualifier in the constitution, isn't it.

As for China's pollution. I wonder how much money they saved by not building current technology into their coal plants. They have so many now that year ending 2006, they beat the USA on CO2 production by 8%! My estimate in year end 2007, it will be about 20% more! That's how fat they are building coal electrical generation plants!

[Nbadan]

Harry Ried... Remember those land deals...
Dianne Fienstein... Remember the federal contracts directed to your husband...

I'm assuming that the bribes have to be real to qualify, even in China..

[Wild Cobra]

I'm assuming that the bribes have to be real to qualify, even in China..
Of course. I'm just expanding it to abuse of power.

These two cases didn't involve bribes. Besides, belongs in a different thread. I shouldn't have brouight it up here, but the thread was already going at the heart of DC.