What happens to federal employees who ignore safety warnings, cover up incompetent or even criminal behavior, destroy official documents and mislead members of Congress? At the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), they get promoted.
That's the take-away from last week's National Whistleblowers Assembly on Capitol Hill, sponsored by the Government Accountability Project (GAP) and featuring famous NYPD whistleblower Frank Serpico and former FBI agent Coleen Rowley.
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Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s investigation of former University of Virginia climatologist Michael Mann under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act for his role in Climategate has sent more than 800 academics across the nation into a royal tizzy.
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Chris Horner, counsel for the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for records outlining the University of Virginia’s policies and procedures for maintaining and releasing faculty records.
The May 24 FOIA follows an earlier subpoena by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli for the records of former climatologist Michael Mann. Mann’s emails and other communications with key members of the Climategate scandal are currently under investigation by Cuccinelli’s office.
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A proposed amendment to rewrite the Safe Drinking Water Act that may be considered by the House Energy and Commerce Committee today could have “serious consequences” for hydraulic fracturing, a key technology used for decades to extract natural gas from shale formations, Energy In Depth executive director Lee Fuller warned in a letter to chairman Henry Waxman, D-CA, and ranking member Joe Barton, R-TX.
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Federal Transit Administration Administrator Peter Rogoff was unflinchingly candid in a May 18 speech he delivered to the nation’s top public transit officials in Boston. Pointing out that the future of public transportation in the U.S. is in jeopardy, Rogoff bluntly told attendees that solutions are not only about engineering and economics: They are also about "honesty" and "moral choices."Transit officials and local politicians need to be more honest with the public, Rogoff said bluntly, especially about the high costs of rail versus bus transportation.
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City bus drivers in New York can take up to two months off to heal from the indignity of being spat upon by angry or abusive passengers, the New York Post reports. Under their union contract, which defines being spat upon as “assault,” they are allowed to take paid sick leave to recover.
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In 2001, when Mayor Martin O’Malley announced that an 88-acre biotech park would be part of a new $12.8 billion redevelopment project north of Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital, city residents had every reason to cheer. City development officials insisted that the new research park would create 8,000 high-paying jobs and help rebuild Baltimore’s dwindling middle class.
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A survey of 18 urban Trial Urban School Districts by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) indicates that not much has changed despite No Child Left Behind and the millions of dollars spent to raise test scores in urban areas.
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Hard to believe that it’s been a quarter of a century since “Buenas dias Cuba” started off Radio Marti’s first broadcast to Cuba. The all-news station and its sister TV and Internet outlets have been broadcasting news to a country Freedom House ranks as one of the 10 countries with the most restrictive media environments – and one of the 10 worst for bloggers.
Despite the Cuban government’s continuing efforts to jam its broadcasts, Radio Marti still dishes out three daily half-hour programs featuring political dissidents, independent journalists and pro-democracy advocates.
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What do federal law enforcement officers do when they know that certain misguided policies within their agencies directly endanger the safety and security of their fellow Americans?
If they have any sense, they keep their mouths shut.
That’s the only conclusion to be drawn from a May 12 ruling by Merit Systems Protection Board administrative judge Franklin M. Kang, who dismissed an appeal filed by former U.S. air marshal Robert MacLean.
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Two Buffalo NY businessmen forced to close their small manufacturing company a year and a half ago have managed to cut through the media clutter like Joe the Plumber and focus on the major economic problem facing many Americans today:
“Dear Mr. President, I need a freakin job. Period,” says the billboard sponsored by the INAFJ Project, which will coincide with President Obama’s trip to the Rust Belt city on his “Main Street Economic Tour” Thursday.
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On April 26, the American Academy of Pediatrics went completely bonkers and essentially gave its members permission to participate in a scaled-down version of the genital mutilation of female children under the guise of “cultural sensitivity,” Time magazine reports.
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Now we know why so many Securities and Exchange Commission attorneys and accountants did little or nothing to prevent Wall Street bankers from playing musical chairs with toxic assets or stop Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford from stealing billions from investors — they were too busy downloading porn on their government computers.
That also explains why the SEC didn’t bother to investigate serious allegations regarding the United Airlines bankruptcy and the largest corporate pension default in U.S. history.
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A number of activist groups – including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the National Council of LaRaza – plan to announce a boycott of the State of Arizona on Thursday to protest its recently enacted immigration law.
If so, this is one of the law’s unintended benefits.
Imagine no more La Raza members arriving with “Whites Get Out” posters, no union chiefs organizing “workers rallies” to protest reductions in cost-of-living raises for state employees or holding sit-ins to protest the deportation of foreign criminals who prey on citizens.
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For those who still believe the global warming people are all about saving the planet instead of lining their own pockets, here’s another clue:
Prosecutors in Frankfort, Germany investigating massive carbon trading fraud froze the assets of their nation’s largest bank and second-largest utility, Bloomberg reports. This is comparable to telling Bank of America and Southern California Edison that they can’t take any money out of their own bank accounts.
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URL: http://www.sfexaminer.com/people/barbara-hollingsworth?page=12
