A Letter From Julie Colombero (pass it on!)

As the saying goes, desperate times call for desperate measures. This is why I periodically send these politically oriented emails to almost everyone I know. This includes Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and non-voters.

Our government, particularly at the national level, has been usurped by dangerous, extremist politicians. This is no exaggeration and is not the traditional “Democrat vs. Republican” situation. It’s more dire than that. The situation is so bad that even a handful moderate Republican politicians have recently begun to break ranks with their party. That says a lot.

These extremists know that many of us, due to our extremely busy lives and the relative ease in which we’ve lived in this country, do not always pay close attention political affairs. We need to stop this complacency.

Everyone who knows me knows I’ve never been politically involved or particularly interested in government affairs.

That sure has changed. Funny how having kids and caring about the future of other people’s children changes you.

Feel free to pass this on if you like. I want people to know what’s happening.

If you think our government is working in our best interest, think again.

I’m Losing My Voice

As early as next week, the Senate will work to eliminate the filibuster on presidential judicial nominations. This will mute any voice of dissent from the minority party. This overturns over 200 years of Senate procedure. This country was not built on the premise of majority rules. Our current administration appears to think otherwise.

The elimination of the filibuster means that the Senate will now be allowed to confirm for life several extremist Federal judges chosen by President Bush. Despite that the Senate has confirmed over 200 of his nominations, Bush is sending back 10 nominees who were previously rejected.

An excerpt from an email I received from Senator John Kerry states that:

President Bush has nominated William Myers for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals -- the nation's largest appellate court, and a potential stepping stone to the Supreme Court. It also has jurisdiction over vast expanses of public land and our magnificent natural resources.

Myers has spent his career trying to dismantle the protections our courts exist to preserve. He was a lobbyist for mining interests, and was later handpicked by President Bush to supposedly regulate the industry. His only experience has been manipulating laws and regulations for corporate gain, against the public interest.

A recent announcement from MoveOn.org also reviews one of the judges:

Janice Rodgers Brown will most likely be the first judge the radical Republicans push through using the nuclear option-onto the D.C. Court of Appeals, a stepping stone to the Supreme Court. It's not hard to see why she is so important to them or so dangerous for the American people.

Judge Brown is against the most basic protections for workers and the environment that have kept our country strong since the Great Depression. She follows a radical judicial philosophy, (often called "Constitution in Exile") that says courts have a duty to block Congress from interfering with a corporation's "right" to profitably pollute, or an employer's "right" to demand unlimited hours at any wage from their employees. With judges like Brown flooding the bench, and as many as four Supreme Court vacancies coming in the next four years, bedrock laws from the Clean Water Act to the 40-hour work week could be struck down and eliminated forever.

According to CNN.com, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is planning to deliver a taped message to Christian conservatives on April 24 saying Democrats are "against people of faith" for blocking Bush's nominees.

Did you know?

The No Child Left Behind education law of 2002 provides military recruiters with public high school student’s home addresses and telephone numbers. With military recruitment at an all time low, recruiters are actively reaching out to students at home. The Los Angeles Times recently reminded us of this April 5^th, page 1. Thought I’d share.

Pesticide testing on infants

President Bush’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Stephen L. Johnson, almost lost his chance to be confirmed by the Senate. It appears that Senate Democrats such as Barbara Boxer (D-California) and Bill Nelson (D- Florida) were concerned about his controversial program that would pay families to videotape the effect of pesticide exposure on infants through routine spraying in their homes. The Children’s Environmental Exposure Research Study, was going to pay 60 families $970 each, plus a camcorder and children’s clothing, for letting agency officials track the effect of pesticide exposure on children in their first year of life. Guess those “obstructionist” Democrats didn’t like turning children into human guinea pigs. Johnson cancelled the program and as of this writing, his confirmation is pending.

Government 101

House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay, (R-Texas) needs to be reminded that the judiciary branch of government is separate from the Legislative and Executive branches of government. This is evidenced by his threat on the day of Terri Schiavo’s death regarding the federal judges upheld the law, “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.” He continued his tirade against federal judges by saying that recent decisions “are not examples of a mature society, but of a judiciary run amok. The response of the legislative branch has mostly been to complain. There is another way...and that is to reassert our constitutional authority over the courts.”

DeLay has blamed the storm of public outcry directly on the Democrats. Funny thing, however. Recent critics have included Newt Gingrich, Republican Senator Rick Santorum (third ranking Republican in the Senate), Republican Congressman Christopher Shays of Connecticut. Arch- conservative Wall Street Journal smeared DeLay in a recent editorial.

The Higher They Climb...

Let’s not forget that this is the same Congressman who was admonished three times last year for ethics violations. House Republicans, however, in order to shield him from potential indictment, changed the ethics rules by removing the Ethics Chair Joel Hefley (R-Colo) and two other moderate Republicans from the committee and replaced them with DeLay loyalists. Additionally, they changed the rules so that no ruling on DeLay would be possible; the new rules require an ethics complaint to be dismissed if the evenly-divided committee is deadlocked. Last week, however, House Republicans voted against a resolution to change back the rules to restore public confidence in the ethics process. So much for moral values.

Read about this ethics fiasco further in The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48136-2005Apr12.html

Don’t Drink the Water!

It was announced today that House Republicans passed an energy bill which protects manufacturers of MTBE, a gasoline additive, from lawsuits.

According to CNN.com, the bill calls for shielding MTBE makers from product liability lawsuits stemming from contamination of drinking water supplies. Democrats warned the liability waiver would leave the public with billions of dollars in cleanup costs.

An attempt by Rep. Lois Capps, D-California, to strip the MTBE assistance from the energy bill was defeated, 219-213.

Capps said groundwater contamination from the gasoline additive has affected more than 1,800 community water systems in 29 states with a potential cleanup cost of $29 billion. MTBE makers, including large oil companies and refiners, dispute that estimate but have argued they need liability protection because of an expected surge in lawsuits.

The energy bill would shield these companies from lawsuits claiming that MTBE is a defective product and that the companies knew all along it would cause water contamination problems. At least 80 lawsuits involving MTBE have been filed.

The bill calls for $8.1 billion in tax breaks over 10 years, most of it going to promote the coal, nuclear, oil and natural gas industries. In addition it calls for $2 billion over 10 years to fund research into oil and gas recovery in extremely deep areas of the Gulf of Mexico.

Has Congress not heard of alternate energy sources?

Black Gold/Texas Tea

With all the recent news focused on the deaths of Terri Schiavo and the Pope, you might have missed the recent announcement that a presidential appointed commission exploring U.S. intelligence gathering efforts in Iraq was “dead wrong.” If there is anyone out there who thinks that this war had nothing to do with controlling Iraqi oil, please see the attached links to a Presidential Executive Order. It clearly describes a major focus of this administration.

Executive Order: Protecting the Development Fund for Iraq and Certain Other Property in Which Iraq Has an Interest

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/print/20030522-15.html

...and at the California state level, I present:

The People’s Governor

According to a recent Los Angeles Times article, “negligent doctors and other professionals in California have deterred their victims from reporting them to state regulators by making silence a condition of settling lawsuits.” A California woman was blinded in one eye by a plastic surgeon who was attempting to smooth a forehead scar. His victim could not speak out against him. A year later, the same doctor “botched a breast implant surgery in another woman and then failed to anesthetize her properly during a subsequent surgery, causing her to experience the entire painful operation.”

Legislation regarding the removal of gag rules has passed with bipartisan support. The Governor has vetoed this, however, saying that eliminating gag clauses, “does not further the goal of making California more business-friendly.”

In closing, let’s...

Compare and Contrast

In this month’s Washington Monthly, columnist Bruce Reed compares George Bush to Franklin D. Roosevelt:

In the wake of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, FDR transformed a struggling, isolationist nation into the greatest economic and military power on earth, laid the groundwork for the most dramatic explosion of middleclass opportunity in history, and unleashed a spirit of sacrifice and responsibility we have prized for 60 years since. In the wake of 9/11, George W. Bush has corroded America’s economic engine, mismanaged the military, concentrated wealth, and fostered an ethic of debt and irresponsibility that will force our children to sacrifice for 60 years hence.

In honor of the 60^th anniversary of FDR’s death, Bob Herbert printed an article about him in the New York Times this week. Here is an excerpt:

Roosevelt was far from a perfect president, but he gave hope and a sense of the possible to a nation in dire need. And he famously warned against giving in to fear. The nation is now in the hands of leaders who are experts at exploiting fear, and indifferent to the needs and hopes, even the suffering, of ordinary people.

The test of our progress," said Roosevelt, "is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

Sixty years after his death we should be raising a toast to F.D.R. and his progressive ideas. And we should take that opportunity to ask: How in the world did we allow ourselves to get from there to here?

Thanks for paying attention.

Julie