Dr Mengele Nominated To Lead EPA

If George Bush's nomination of Stephen L. Johnson goes through goes through, we will be one step closer to poisoning small children and babies for fun and profit.

The E.P.A. is targeting the poor and African-Americans for the study, presumably in the hope that they will be less informed about the dangers of exposing their children to pesticides, and will therefore continue to expose them over the two-year period. The study actually mandates that parents not be provided information about the proper ways to apply or store pesticides around the home. And the parents cannot be informed of the risks of prolonged or excessive exposure to pesticides. Additionally, the study does not provide guidelines to intervene if the children show signs of developmental delay or register dangerous levels of pesticide exposure in the periodic testing.



Parents receive $970 for participating, but only if they continue over the two-year period. This is a powerful inducement for these impoverished parents to keep exposing their children to pesticides. Even some E.P.A. officials have been troubled by the lack of safeguards to ensure that these parents are not swayed into exposing their children to the chemicals. Troy Pierce, a scientist in the E.P.A.'s Atlanta based pesticides office, wrote to his colleagues last year via e-mail, "This does sound like it goes against everything we recommend at EPA concerning use of (pesticides) related to children.

Why wound anybody, even an impoverished and uneducated person put their children through that? Hunger.

The latest measure on the "War on the Poor" is to cut back on the already insufficient food subsidies available to them.

The government is projected to spend $52 billion this year on nutrition programs like food stamps, school lunches and special aid to low-income pregnant women and children.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., said the $36 billion food stamp program is a good place to look for savings.

``There's not the waste, fraud and abuse in food stamps that we used to see. ... That number is down to a little over 6 percent now,'' he said. ``But there is a way, just by utilizing the president's numbers, that we can come up with a significant number there.''

Bush is proposing to withdraw food stamps for certain families already receiving other government assistance. The administration estimates that plan would remove more than 300,000 people from the rolls and save $113 million annually.

[...]

`Particularly in the House, the members are talking about taking all or most of it from nutrition,'' said Jim Weill, president of the Washington-based Food Research and Action Center. ``There isn't a way to do it that doesn't hurt, because the program's very lean and doesn't give people enough anyhow. The benefits are less than people need. The program's not reaching even three-fifths of the people who are eligible. And the abuse rate is very low and is going down further.''

Eric Bost, the Agriculture Department's undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer programs, told a House appropriations panel this week the programs are so efficient now it would be difficult to save money by targeting waste and fraud.

Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said food stamps are vital to many Americans, ``but like all government programs, there are ways to save money.''

How does Senator chambliss feel about taking food from the hungry?

`I want this to be as painless to every farmer in America as we can make it,''

Now you know the way we celebrate this "culture of life".

(notice-farm links weren't added until 03-16-05)