Day: April 8, 2005

If Karl Rove dictated language discipline for the Left instead of the Right, Eric Rudolph would be referred to in all references as a rightwing domestic terrorist:

Accused 1996 Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph has agreed to plead guilty to all charges against him…

Rudolph is charged with the bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, that killed one person and injured more than 100. [He] also is charged in the 1997 bombings of an abortion clinic and a gay nightclub in the Atlanta area.

The Schiavo memo was written by Sen. Mel Martinez’ staff attorney, one Brian Darling, who is a former staffer for none other than … Tom DeLay.

None of these dots are being connected for John & Jane Q Public by the media, of course. The cablers have been fixated on the Pope’s funeral, now its 15th year. Wait, no – that was the Schiavo coverage. Teed up for the weekend is the Royal Wedding. Next is coverage of the funeral for Prince Ranier. Then who knows – maybe another Very Famous Person could die. If DeLay is lucky – and God knows he is – his troubles will all blow over before the likes of Judy Woodruff and Tim Russert take notice.

Imagine if it were Hillary Clinton who’d been connected to four scandals in one week. The DC Kool Kids would have decamped from Rome on the first plane to Chappaqua. Buh-bye Pope! Have a nice eternity.

Meanwhile shoes are dropping in rapid succession around Tom DeLay, and the reaction by the Washington press corps barely rates negligible.

While Florida’s new senator, Mel Martinez, disgraces himself and the state, veteran Sen. Bill Nelson continues to do the right thing. The St. Petersburg Times covered his press conference yesterday with California Sen. Barbara Boxer, where he announced he is blocking Bush’s pick to lead the EPA. Nelson is leading a group of Democratic senators who oppose an EPA study in Northeast Florida of the effect of pesticides on babies.

“The government should not be asking families to turn their babies into guinea pigs,” Nelson said.

Despite its snappy name – CHEERS (Children’s Environmental Exposure Research Study) and partial funding of $2.1-million from the American Chemistry Council, the chief lobbying group for chemical companies, Nelson thinks it might not be such a good idea to test pesticides on newborns.

According to an EPA brochure distributed in parts of Jacksonville, the two-year study was designed to help the government learn more about the effects of pesticides on children; it is open to any family with an infant up to three months old, or between the ages of nine and 12 months.

Participants must agree to use household pesticides and to allow periodic visits from EPA researchers. They must collect food and urine samples from their children and record their infants’ behavior with a videocamera.

In return, the families get $970, a T-shirt and a calendar. They also get to keep the videocamera.

Well, who could pass up a t-shirt and a camcorder? Especially when it could be years and years before the effects of those chemicals show up. By then, if history is any indication (remember the movie, A Civil Action?), it will be impossible to directly prove it was the pesticides that produced Johnny’s horrible disease.

Florida is stuck with Mel Martinez, but that makes it even more important to support a really true public servant like Sen. Bill Nelson next year.

LA Times:

State officials say $3.2 billion has come into California coffers through a tax amnesty program that is sparking a national debate over how aggressive governments should be in pressuring corporations to pay all they owe…

Lenny Goldberg of the California Tax Reform Assn., a group that advocates for low-income taxpayers and unions, said he has little sympathy for companies caught in state tax officials’ nets.

“In a lot of these cases, the disputes are dragging on because they are paying accounting firms to get in there, stonewall for them and make it as contentious as possible,” he said. “They make a living out of getting everything they do to get corporations not to pay taxes. They try to be as uncooperative as possible, and then they make complaints about audits and requests for information.”

The state is in dire need of revenue as lawmakers try to close a budget gap now estimated at $8.6 billion.

Florida Politics has done an early and masterful job of exposing freshman Florida Sen. Mel Martinez as the weasel he is. Almost all Florida’s major newspapers are running editorials about Mel’s tried and true pattern of slinging the slime and then hiding behind aides or other scapegoats, and FlaPol has the complete round-up. Considering that Mel did the impossible during the last election cycle – actually make me support Bill McCollum* – I am not at all surprised. But as the blog points out, Florida’s stuck with this jack-ass for six long years.

* Actually, I was only pulling for Bill in the Republican primary, in which I cannot vote.