TrenchNews, Verse 2

Before we get going here, a short word from not our sponsor:

Tammy, from USMWF (United Support and Memorial for Workplace Fatalities), used to do the “Weekly Toll” feature at Confined Space. She’s determined to keep it going and to that end has set up a special site for it here (or click the link on the sidebar). It’s still called Weekly Toll, but unlike the CS version, it looks like it’s going to be able to concentrate on single cases per post, which I think could make it stronger as a more focused voice for families hit by the unnecessary deaths of loved ones in their workplaces.

It’s been a little slow getting off the mark because Tammy had to deal recently with a terrible personal tragedy of the kind that turns your world upside-down and makes all other concerns seem trivial by comparison. Despite that, the first post is up now and it’s a heartbreaker – a father of six accidentally killed by his son.

Marquez worked the overnight shift six days a week, where he hand-sorted pieces of metal and concrete from the giant piles of debris. It was a grueling but solid living with union benefits, and two of his sons worked there with him.

Early Friday, just a couple of hours after his shift started, Marquez was run over and killed by a Payloader driven by one of his sons, Luis Marquez.

TrenchNews, Verse 2

Thomas Nephew, newsrack blog: “New ICE age for labor?”

Thomas catches ICE Director Julie Meyers sounding like she thinks Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a corporate subsidiary that ought to be investigating unions for “harboring” illegal aliens. Thomas replies:

Bush Priorities: Iraq v. Medicare

Juxtaposing two articles, one from the NYT on Friday and the other printed in the WaPo yesterday, says pretty much all that needs to be said about what the Bush Administration thinks is important. From the WaPo:

President Bush will ask Congress for close to three-quarters of a trillion dollars in defense spending on Monday, including $245 billion to cover the cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and other elements of the “global war on terror,” senior administration officials said yesterday.

Democrats said the gigantic spending request will precipitate “sticker shock” on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers were already planning to scrutinize White House war-spending requests more zealously.

But on Friday:

President Bush will ask Congress in his budget next week to squeeze more than $70 billion of savings from Medicare and Medicaid over the next five years, administration officials and health care lobbyists said Thursday.The proposals, part of a White House plan to balance the budget by 2012, set the stage for a battle with Congress over entitlement spending. Even some administration officials say they cannot imagine approval of such large cutbacks in a Congress now controlled by Democrats.

Mr. Bush is also expected to propose changes in the Children’s Health Insurance Program to sharpen its focus on low-income families. The changes could reduce federal payments to states that cover children with family incomes exceeding twice the poverty level. Under federal guidelines, a family of four is considered poor if its annual income is less than $20,650.

For an illegal, pre-emptive war based on lies and greed, everything. Massive debt, death and destabilization? He’s for them. But for the poor, even poor children? “Go suck an egg.”

To quote Molly, this crowd is beyond belief.

HUD Clean, Says GAO, But Is It?

For the first time in 13 years, the Government Accounting Office has taken the Dept of Housing and Urban Development off their “high-risk” list. Corruption and mismanagement charges have been flying thick and fast for a decade, and if this report can be believed the clean-up at HUD should be cause for celebration.

For much of the 1980s, HUD was buffeted by allegations of corruption and influence-peddling that often masked systemic problems caused by poor financial management, inadequate record-keeping and staff shortages.

HUD worked through its problems, and, by 2001, had only two programs left on the GAO list — single-family-housing mortgage insurance and rental-housing assistance. The GAO said the department has significantly improved its oversight of lenders, appraisers and property management contractors and does a better job of estimating subsidy costs and defaults by borrowers.

But is it believable? If this were any administration other than Bush’s I wouldn’t hesitate to extend kudos where they were due, but it isn’t. Long years of lies and misdirection, misinformation and manipulation, have made me properly suspicious. Coming from the BA, this just doesn’t make sense.