Update [2005-7-13 14:42:1 by susanhu]: – Chief Justice Rehnquist hospitalized with “very high fever” – MSNBC
– Ebbers Sentenced to 25 Years
– Homeland Security Dept. To Be Restructured: Major overhaul will change how agency handles intelligence, manages law enforcement. (Details to follow.)
– Doug Feith “Admits Errors in Iraq“: “[M]istaken actions and policies in Iraq resulted in frequent ‘course corrections’.” Huh. Sounds as easy to fix as regrading the 18th hole.
all coming out during summer vacation season the best or maybe the least-worst timing for them?
Good point.
Of course, their poll numbers have reeked pretty much all year. This doesn’t help them turn it around in the fall.
But I agree, summertime isn’t the optimal time.
My litmus test as to whether the reorganization of Homeland Security is serious – or just more “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic” – will be whether the administration is willing to address the threat of terrorist attacks on our chemical plants and refineries. Are they willing to displease one of their constituencies to protect the public health?
The PBS series NOW has reported on this, as did 60 Minutes. Additional information here as well.
And the solution isn’t guards and fences. It’s to provide carrots and sticks to the chemical industry to change their processes wherever possible to use less hazardous materials (which you can learn about here, LOL).
I hope you’ll diary this.
Actually, Ive been writing a diary today (that I’ll post tonight) with a bit of good environmental news.
One thing about taking on the environment beat is that there’s no end of things I could diary on. I could do a daily rant from now ’til 2008, but I’d have to get my doctor to increase my blood pressure medication… 🙁
This is a good topic, though; I’ll move it to the top of the to-do list for you, and get on it right away. Especially since Izzy beat me to the punch on the water privatization diary you asked me to do! LOL
Once Homeland security was created and the various agencies placed under a singly umbrella organization there was a critical need to workout the overall organization. This move has taken too long.
It will also fail. Such first efforts always do. establishing an overall mission and allocating the functions to each department to that overall mission are two complicated and difficult tasks. Change one, it effects the other. Change the second in response, it effects the first back. Such an exercise never works right at first, second, or even third try. Sometimes it never works.
A key point is that each separate agency has had its own mission and a set of procedures for accomplishing it. What is the overall mission of the Dept of Homeland Security? What will each agency contribute to that overall mission? What will each agency give up to accomplish the new missions?
Once a decent mission statement is put together, the next question is how the department will accomplish it. Not the agencies, but how will the overall department do the job. Only then do the different agencies begin to change their own mission statements and procedures in response.
This is a critically needed, very messy procedure.
I’ve got 2 things to say:
Woo Hoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Some of the best news I’ve heard all day. That, and seeing Scotty getting grilled.
Just in on CNN,2:37pm. Rehnquist was hospitalized overnight with a fever. He was transported to the hospital by ambulance.
Just heard that on MSNBC too. Shit.
I am not suprised. Onocology (cancer patients) pt’s are like that. Their immune system can not take any infections whatsoever. They have nothing there to fight with.
It just isn’t long enough. Greed, dishonesty and incompetence in high corporate office need to be strongly punished.
We license corporations because they are supposed to benefit society. Ripping of investors and employees as Ebbers did (and also the Enron guys) is ripping off all of society.
The greater the theft, the greater should be the punishment. Ebbers didn’t get a long enough sentence.