Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) has released a call to action for improved oversight and investigation of workplace exposures to toxic and hazardous substances.

The U.S. Census Bureau has just issued a snapshot overview of data on health care coverage using new data. They are interested in public input. The data comes from the 2008 American Community Survey and in this new report the outcomes are compared with other sources of similar data.

I am pulling out just a few findings from the report for comment here. And perhaps a bit of a rant in the end.

Media Matters is really not pulling the punches anymore. In recent days it has been posting stories that show Glenn Beck's support for provisions of the US Constitution that support slavery and the slave trade. (Those provisions have long been repealed by the post-Civil War amendments).

It’s been interesting seeing signs of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act sprouting here and there. I recall seeing the first one months ago along a rural road. In the past, I saw those sorts of signs as helping us put aside the inconvenience we experience from road construction and make the connection that this is our money at work - and it is an investment in our future welfare.

And say the rules said that whistleblowing employees could either contact the DOD Inspector General to disclose the practice the employee believes to be unethical or the employee could report the unethical practice to the contractor-employer. And now, finally, suppose that the rules also say that contractors can choose to opt out of posting the contact information for the DOD IG hotline.

The question is: Would you post the DOD IG whistleblower hotline information and provide information on protections for employees who blow the whistle on unethical contractor practices?

From providing a database of “lessons learned” for disaster planners to providing a toll-free hotline for reporting gaps in disaster response, the Disaster Accountability Project (DAP) works in a variety of ways to prevent another disaster response failure like the one that followed Hurricane Katrina. The nonprofit, founded by Ben Smilowitz, challenges government agencies to do better and lets them know when changes are needed.

Tort reform is not the solution to the problem. First, it is simply shifting the costs of the problem out of sight.

The goal of tort reform seems to be to ensure that greedy, lying plaintiffs don’t win and that their greedy lawyers don’t get paid.

But as Part 1 showed, there is not really a tort or litigation explosion. In fact, consider that those results mean that people getting remedies have actually been injured, seriously injured, and they need help. There are actually products and doctors who injure people.

The federal government cash for clunkers program is over, and as the pessimists predicted, the program merely borrowed sales from the future rather than generated sustainable growth.

September’s light-vehicle sales rate will fall to 8.8 million units, consumer auto site Edmunds.com said. That would be the lowest rate in nearly 28 years, tying the worst demand on record.
After the cash-for-clunkers program boosted August sales to their first year-over-year increase since October 2007, demand has plunged. In at least the last 33 years, the U.S. seasonally adjusted annual rate has only dropped as low as 8.8 million units once -- in December 1981 -- with records stretching back to January 1976.
...
“Many people regard February as the darkest month of the recession, but even then the SAAR was higher, at 9.1 million units,” Edmunds.com senior statistician Zhenwei Zhou said in a statement.

Tort reform is one of the big rallying cries among those who oppose the various Democratic Party proposals for health care reform. Part 1 briefly reviews the arguments for tort reform and some studies on the issue.

Yes, there will be a test. A very fun test. But first, consider this.

It’s not that they don’t want to know or to share information about employers who are violating the law. It’s that there are laws that forbid sharing crucial information. Among other things.

Cross-posted from Daily Kos.

After a CNN report of a homeland security incident on the Potomac River turned out to be a Coast Guard exercise, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs suggested that CNN failed to fact check the story before broadcasting it. The Coast Guard subsequently claimed the exercise was "normal" and "routine." But, a retired FBI official said incident was "felony stupid."

The conduct of today's exercise was not consistent with the practices I observed in 16 years of planning, evaluating and participating in federal exercises. It undermined the safety of the President, Vice President and others attending a 9/11 memorial ceremony at the Pentagon, on the banks of the Potomac. The incident also demonstrated, ironically, that Coast Guard officials still have not learned the lessons of September 11, 2001.

With most of the media focused on Obama's speech about health care on Wednesday, this item got largely overlooked.

Sweeping regulatory reform of the financial sector-thought to be a 2009 legislative given just four months ago-may now come down to a piece-meal approach, with the White House and its allies happy to see a couple prized components signed into law this year.
"I think it's unraveling,' says former FDIC Chairman William Isaac. "It is hard for me to see how this legislation gets done this year."

One year removed from a catastrophic, global, economic meltdown, and 26 months removed from the start of the credit crisis, our political establishment is either unwilling or unable to reform the system and punish the perpetrators of this debacle. The situation is so far beyond the pale that it makes one wonder if another catastrophe is even avoidable.

The Denver area has certainly been the poster child for transportation privatization. Unbossed has been on this issue since 2005, with the Roads Scholar series and follow ups since.

The most recent follow up and overview of infrastructure privatization was just a few weeks ago and may be found here. To understand the issue - and especially if you plan to attend the hearings, it is required reading. That post includes many links and basic information. It also includes information and links to new research on exactly what is in infrastructure privatization contracts. That new information describes the impact these contracts have on how governments function when there is a privatization contract in the area. It may be found here and is recommended reading for those new to the issue, those who want to get up to date, and those who want a reminder of how we got to where we area.

Politicians and pundits are all atwitter today because a Republican member of Congress shouted out “You lie!” during the President’s speech, when Obama declared that health care benefits would not be extended to illegal immigrants. Their outrage is directed not so much at the accusation, which was false, as at the fact he displayed disrespect for the country’s chief executive.

Yet as the last eight years have made clear again and again, we need to show less respect to the president…much less. It’s our political class in particular that needs to learn how to be boldly and loudly confrontational whenever the president is behaving outlandishly.

The Hudson Institute, which, as prior unbossed stories have shown, has historically been a shill for the tobacco industry, Monsanto products, and more, is now making a huge push to go after unions . . . Unions and their allies should take this attack seriously.

A recent Hudson Institute "study" on pensions, claims (among other things) that comparing union pensions versus company pensions (a vague division of a complex area) shows that unions underfund pensions for their members but generously fund pensions for their own employees. Holy shades of Central States Pension Fund scandal!

The charges, if taken seriously, could be the sort of thing that leads to indictments or at least investigations or at least calls for investigations. What could be a better way to knock out one of Obama's supporters and supporters of progressive causes than to tar them with scandal and charges of corruption?

Casino capitalism has returned to Wall Street with a vengeance.

Lehman shares peaked last week at 32 cents, having spent much of the year at less than 5 cents. When the rally in Lehman began in late August, trading volume soared above 100m shares on one day, compared with virtually no activity earlier in the year.

You read that right - Lehman Brothers.

But it doesn't stop there. Washington Mutual and IndyMac have also rallied hard in recent days.

The rally in Lehman shares has followed explosive rises in the share price of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mortgage companies taken over by the US government last year. Shares in AIG and to a lesser extent Citi, two companies with significant US government ownership, have also risen sharply in recent weeks.

This is the last week for controversial Dennis Wolff as Pennsylvania's Secretary of Agriculture, according to a press release issued by PA Governor Rendell.

One question on everyone's mind is why?

Just a few months ago, Wolff was issuing press releases announcing that he was humbled to be under consideration for the position of Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And now he’s leaving government?

The unemployment rate climbed to 9.7% last month, a 26-year high...and the media told us that this is a good thing.

“[W]hether or not today’s and other recent reports overstate the case, the improving trend of the labor market after the autumn/winter carnage cannot be denied.

Ah, yes. The trend.
First of all, let's be clear what trend we are talking about. We've lost a lot of jobs, and we are still losing them - that is the trend.
Trying to spin that into a good thing is like putting lipstick on a pig. For the job situation to be "improving" requires that we stop losing jobs.

What's more, the job situation is somewhat more bleak than the news media is reporting. To understand that we need to delve into the numbers.

Next Tuesday President Obama plans to talk to high school students in Virginia and make the speech available simultaneously to schools around the country as a White House video feed. His focus will be encouraging students to do well in school and to take their studies seriously.

As might be expected, when news of the plan became public it immediately caused a furor among conservatives, who are used to having only Republican presidents talk to students. Schools are being inundated with complaints about the attempt by that man in the White House to indoctrinate children with his 'socialist agenda' and to create a 'cult of personality' such as exist in Cuba and North Korea. Initially Republican critics sought to prevent schools from letting students see that man in the White House speak, or keep their children home from school to teach them a kind of civics lesson.

Today, however, GOP leaders settled on a more aggressive strategy. Congressional Republican leaders demanded that the television networks grant them equal time to respond to the President's message on September 8.

Folks at the tea parties are pretty teed off over paying taxes, even going so far as to suggest that not paying was patriotic. Their harkening back to the good ol’ days of dumping British tea into the big drink has been coupled with people showing up at events packing heat and signs that essentially saying shedding peoples’ blood is patriotic.

Forgotten in this discussion are actual founding documents, as opposed to the actions or words of a few.

This nutter at the right-wing National Legal and Policy Center is advancing the latest conspiracy theory about a "secret plan" by that man in the White House to destroy our freedoms: Barack Obama will be tracking what we say about him on Facebook and, you know, taking names and stuff. Very reminiscent of the fake controversy whipped up by right-wingers when the White House asked people to forward information about any crazy rumors they heard being spread by the anti-health-care reform crowd.

The truth, as usual, is rather mundane.

This article by Edward Wasserman is generating some discussion about what the traditional media should do when influential people spread misinformation to the public. Propaganda works essentially by means of repetition, so reporting the lies only to correct them typically assists in disseminating them. No wonder that so many Americans believe the nonsense being spread by opponents of health care reform, given that the US media, without bothering to explain the details of the proposed reforms, has played those myths up even when reporters did point out that the complaints are imaginary.

Wasserman is of course right that merely debunking persistent lies doesn't work to deflate them. But his proposed solution won't work either.