Tell EPA to protect our health and climate

10 =)

Thanks Cindy it very important that the politicians know they are being watched.

Let's hope that a new era of EPA activity is ushered in with the new administration. Simple things, like actually following Federal law, not having the justice dept fight the Endangered Species Act, and having an EPA where data rather than politics are the basis for decisions, will all be welcome changes.

It will take a while to undo the damage that President Bush has wreaked on the environment and environmental regulation, but we need to do more, and the EPA needs the funding to carry out new policies and enforce regulations.

Having the President pardon people convicted of environmental crimes is a disgrace- those convictions are far too rare as it is.

Thanks for the post.

I do not think we will see the change needed because Obama is picking the same criminals that are running the EPA now. Congress is just as guilty as Bush and their were to many Washington insiders reelected to make any real progress. If people would stop following party lines and look at what is happening we could make some progress.

Jack, I think you are missing the boat on this one. There are really loud outcries for reform at EPA from within EPA (the rank and file members) and from independent scientific and (even) governmental review panels, including congressional panels. The EPA unions came out strongly against the EPA's own director over issues of political interference with science and related interference with the true EPA mission (I wrote about it and related congressional attacks on the Bush White House and upper EPA management here).

As far as I can tell, there is no doubt in anyone's mind within the scientific and regulatory communities that major changes will happen right away at EPA when the new administration takes over. I read the chemistry and science press on this topic from a variety of sources, and am fairly well informed. This matter was just reported on in Chemical & Engineering News. The only real issue seems to be what the budget will be, given all of the financial nightmares we are facing, but there is fairly unanimous support, outside of a few obvious dissenters, for a larger budget at EPA for enforcing regulation and for internal and external research.

Since when is public outcry heard by politicians James? To make any effective change Obama has to cut out the payoffs to his departments and I doubt that he can do it because he can't monitor them on the daily basis that they need to be monitored. Their is to much corruption overlooked instead of being prosecuted and until we have a real justice system to deal with the corruption it will continue.

Jack, as I said, there is also a Congressional outcry. Congress and the GAO have been investigating the Bush EPA for sometime, for many of the reasons you bring up. Of course there are some conflicts of interest, even many, but they don't affect everyone in government all the time. I really thing you are simply overboard here. There is corruption at the top levels of the EPA, where the political appointees are found. Elsewhere in the EPA, employees have been fighting against this corruption in a large number of cases, and most of them, by far, want to do their jobs properly and enforce the spirit and letter of the Agency mission, and improve Agency regulations, if needed, until they are good enough to work.

I am overboard James? Want to tell me that their is no conflict of interest with Cheney and Bush and the no bid contracts going to their former companies along with the billions paid them for work never done? How about the FDA and taking payoffs for approving drugs that have not been tested properly, you know the ones that have killed so many people? Congress as a whole voting for a pork bailout when they were told not to by the public? Everywhere you look their is corruption and cronyism and I am being unreasonable?

I really think the public needs to wake and face reality before its to late and its getting to late real fast.

Their is no department in government today that is not corrupt at all levels.

You hear outcry in congress and then when the cameras are turned off they collect their lobby money to look the other way. You can't fix government by electing the same criminal to office over and over.

Do you really think Obama is going to team up with these criminals and get anywhere? These are the same people that have put us where we are. Obama promised to stay away from Washington insiders and all he has done is suck up to them and keep them in power.

A) Yes, you are overboard.

B) There is no relationship that I see between the Bush/Cheney no-bid thievery and all their related crimes to what we will now find from the new government. Maybe some errors will be made, but Bush/Cheney never even intended to do the right thing. Obama does. Will he always succeed? We'll see. Even 50% success would be an infinite improvement, and I expect much better than that.

C) You clearly don't understand the FDA, the payments made to the FDA by the drug companies, why they occur, , or the drug discovery, development and approval process (which doesn't mean you are completely wrong, but it does mean that you aren't very right on the FDA issue). This is a complex subject and is easily misread or misinterpreted, but I understand it at a detailed level as a professional in the area, and you are way off base (I'm sure, you will say that because I actually understand the process that I must be corrupt, and I hope you realize how anti-intellectual it is to say such a thing).

If you don't want a new drug, don't take it, pure and simple. Nobody is forcing anyone to take drugs, but the American people can't get enough, while simultaneously failing to understand the nature of risk and how it is measured, and completely failing to understand the difference between a statistical correlation and actual cause and effect in a specific case.

D) You clearly don't know anyone working in government and trying to do the best under difficult circumstances, without being influenced by outside sources (I do). Believe me, there are plenty. Now that they will be out from under the thumb of Bush/Cheney, we should see major improvements.

E) A lot of corruption is in no way equivalent to universal corruption.

F) You think the country is going to sit by while Obama lets a bunch of newbies get on-the-job-training during a major set of crises? No way, so let's allow him to lead with people who can get things done, but who will work under Obama's close watch (that's what I say, anyway).

G) In our country, the only way to fix government is to elect people. I think we need to accept that and move on. You are free to run for office.

Even if many conspiracies and corrupt collaborations are real, they aren't nearly as ubiquitous as you suggest, and there are normal people in the government trying to do their jobs. Now, with the new administration, they may have a chance to do so. That doesn't mean that we have to be complacent and accept criminal behavior, but I think it is overboard (that word again) to claim law-breaking before anyone in the new administration has even taken office.

James I think you have no idea about the payoffs that you profess as good business and you are very deluded about a politician that took money from poor people and offered them hope only to align himself with the former Clinton gang as well as Bush cronies and so why don't you try explaining the change to me when it is clear that you support this cronyism and moving backwards.

How many people have to die because of untested medicine because the FDA is taking bribes to throw them into the public domain? How many drug companies have paid lawsuits over drugs that cause death because they were not thoroughly tested? How many of these drugs have vanished from the market after cause deaths?

The FDA is pure James? Why did they try to cover up the cases of mad cow disease? Why did the FDA allow Cheney to let the drug companies to write their own legislation? Why has so much poison foreign food shown up in our stores since Bush and his gang took over? The FDA is nothing but another Bush gang on the take. These are the kind of criminals Obama has attached himself to.

Well Jack, you are putting words in my mouth. I never said anything was pure. I never supported anything that Cheney did.

What you don't seem to know is that the FDA budget was cut back dramatically, mainly by Republicans, and they did not and do not have enough inspectors to do their job (just like EPA). A solution to this problem, caused by creating smaller government, was for companies to pay fees to help support the necessary FDA activities. This is a "use tax" on the companies that they are willing to pay. If the government funded the FDA to an appropriate level, this would not be necessary.

It is usually exactly the same people who, in one breath will complain about the lack of medicine to treat whatever ailment they have and in the next breath, complain if there are consequences to taking the drug. Let me tell you a secret, drugs are complicated. Many of the drugs that are available over the counter now are grandfathered in and would not pass current FDA requirements, yet they still help a lot of people. In fact, many people's lives are saved every day by new and old drugs. Not everybody's life is saved, but that doesn't mean that there was a problem with a drug. Practically everybody wants something simple to blame for life's misfortunes, and preferably something with deep pockets. We're a "have our cake and eat it, too" society. That has nothing to do with actual right or wrong, or actual cause and effect.

As for drug companies that have paid money because of testing issues, most of these trials are decided by juries who are completely incapable of understanding the facts, but who are happy to take money from big companies and give it to poor little Miss whoever. That doesn't mean that the companies are never at fault, but the percentage is much lower than your comments would suggest, and the fact remains that nobody is forcing anyone to take these drugs. If you don't trust the FDA and the drug companies, quit taking drugs. When you die from a curable bacterial infection, you can feel really righteous. The fact is that there are risks associated with eating apples, crossing the street, not washing your hands, not buckling your seat belt, etc., but only some of these risks give people the opportunity to sue. Modern life is complex and risky in many areas.

That doesn't mean I'm giving drug companies a free pass. I think that advertising drugs on TV should be banned. Companies should be held accountable for wrongdoing. However, do you think farmers are evil because some people are lactose intolerant? Do you think the sun is evil because people get skin cancer? Do you think that water is evil and corrupt because people down? Maybe we should take milk and peanuts off the market because they were not thoroughly tested, and wheat. Your arguments to date would suggest that yes, you do, but you probably don't, really. We would all like life to be neat, simple and safe, but it just isn't, and that is for us in the US- think about places where they don't even have antibiotics, and tell me who is better off. The truth is that defining "thoroughly tested" is not necessarily possible. Plenty of people die from Tylenol, either in combination with alcohol or because parents give kids too much. But that's OK, because we all know... what? what do we all know? maybe we should learn that there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that is risk free, and quit trying to live in a fairly tale.

As for mad cow disease, the major cover-up was by the British government, who were trying to cover their rear ends for the calamitous results of deregulation of the animal feed industry. We've never had a problem of anywhere near that scale with the FDA in the US, to my knowledge.

I don't understand why you think I am defending anything done by the Bush-Cheney crowd. I most certainly am not, and what is it you want? On the one hand, you want better protection by the FDA, on the other hand, you call them criminals. So, do you want to disband the FDA? What is that going to solve? How about funding it properly so it can do its job?

should say "people drown" above

The U.S. didn't have a problem with mad cow James? ok. And as far as the FDA it just does not come up to your idea of fair play. You said it right when you said the drug companies were funding the FDA to approve drugs that are hardly tested and yes I do think their is a responsibility for these companies that develop drugs that are not tested and kill people. All the excuses in the world will not change what has gone on in this adminestration and if the FDA was doing its job it would expose any criminal action by Bush and not have allowed Cheney to hold secret meetings with drug companies and write their own legislation.

There is no such think as a drug that is "not tested", and I would not characterize anything as "hardly tested", that is just wrong (I've read (some of) the requirements; can you say 21 CFR Part 11?). Does that mean that some problems show up after testing and once a drug is in the general population? Perhaps, but unless you want to run a test that involves (and in your view, risks) substantially more people, while at the same time significantly adding to the cost of drugs (which I presume you think is unfair on principle), then what alternatives have you? Don't forget, as I've already said, the same process has been gone through with grandfathered drugs, whose properties we learned about after the fact in many cases, but we still use them to great effect when used properly, and this has nothing to do with Bush/Cheney.

Was Cheney ever in a meeting that wasn't secret? The man is a walking "undisclosed location."

Believe it or not, Jack, it is not usually financially favorable for the drug companies to have major problems and lawsuits on their hands, so they have some incentives to get things right, institutionally, though their may be individuals who are less concerned with getting things right. Admittedly, company actuaries probably have this figured out down to the penny, which is admittedly sick. However, the hyper-scrutiny of drugs and the "quick to blame" lawsuits have gotten so far out of hand in some cases that a number of companies have pulled valuable products off the shelves because of the threat or occurrence of frivolous lawsuits (Searle's Copper 7 IUD is an example; it has no problems, and came back to the market many years later via a different company).

The US is one of the few countries actually inventing new drugs, though it has slowed dramatically. Do you want to stop it altogether? This is a tune that changes pretty rapidly when people develop some unfortunate disease. So, why through the baby out with the bathwater? The levels of corruption are probably not 1/100 of what you suggest. That doesn't mean we should ignore the corruption, but it does mean we shouldn't shut down the whole system, and I'm sure that the majority of patients would agree.

So, it is an uneasy balance of power that we have to deal with regarding FDA, drug companies and the public. Uneasy is probably how it should be. If you view the company fees as taxes supporting an underfunded FDA, you should be thankful that these fees are paid. Otherwise, no drugs would be examined in a timely manner. Is there some collusion going on? Probably some, but not nearly to the extent that you suggest.

I'm with you Charles.

We need to disband every department that is not mandated by the constitution and start being free people again.

Disbanding the EPA sure would be a good start...

By rights disbanding is the wrong way to go, what we need to do is start prosecuting the corporate cons that run the department and make presidents put people in place that want to do the job for the public they are put there to serve.