| That started a long saga, After months of being left on administrative leave, they ultimately fired her. And the chief offense was speaking honestly to the Washington Post. So this has become a case of whether or not honesty was a firing offense in federal service. It's one that a number of Democrats including several that are now in the Obama Administration had decried as a prime example of the excess of the Bush Administration, But now that these people are in power, we're having a hard time getting them to take notice of it, and to take action because we're still in litigation, both at a federal appeal court level and ironically enough one of the side journeys of this case is that top Bush Administration officials shredded exonerating documents.
And so we have filed under the Privacy Act to seek relief for them wrongfully destroying those documents. These Bush officials are being defended by the Obama Justice Department, in a trial that makes no sense, at least form our point of view. We are confident we are going to prevail, but the thing that's more disquieting is why the Obama Administration is not taking these courageous public servants and putting them back to work.
OL: What's your sense of why is the Obama Administration still battling against her? Which of those categories that you mentioned before?
Jeff Ruch: It's just autopilot. We don't think anyone's paid enough attention to make a decision.
OL: Can you talk about how her case was related to the larger pattern of behavior by the Bush Administration? I think you said something about that, but I was wondering if you could flesh that out a bit more?
What was striking about the Chambers case was that she was targeted for removal even though she was the head of a department. And it created a chilling effect throughout the federal government, it was called the Chambers effect, because no one wanted to say anything that would be considered off message. It wasn't like Theresa Chambers was trying to embarrass the administration, she was trying to honestly answer the questions, and thought by telling the truth that that would defuse the issue. And the fact it never would be an issue had their not been this hyper-reaction. As a result, not just in her agency, but there were parallels in other agencies. People were given what were called talking point, where they were told to use these when answering any kind of question, and if they wanted a media interview, they need permission from headquarters.
And so there was this very elaborate attempt to control what federal employees said in public or to Congress, that lead to a lot of controversy and in some instances whistleblower cases that the Bush Administration was more inclined to settle than the Obama Administration has been. At least the Bush people had people who were in decision-making positions that could make decisions and that's not true in this administration.
OL: Intuitively, based on statements by Obama during the campaign, I think most people would have expected a significant change in direction towards more openness. Could you make that more explicit in terms of what PEER was hoping for? You've touched on some of it, but could you give me more of a focused statement about that?
We work with public employees, and so we were hoping for clear rules that employees could be honest. President Obama said he hoped to make it cool to work for the federal government again. And if he was going to make federal service cool, the first step is to make it survivable.
You shouldn't have to lie to be working in a public agency. Any time there was an issue with the slightest bit of controversy that arose. And so there's a whole suite of issues on scientific integrity, the right to publish, the ability to communicate with Congress, and the like, as well as whistleblower protection, where Obama has yet to formulate policy.
In some instances they've announced they want to begin to formulate policy, but they either haven't or they are months behind their own schedule. So, for example, they announced with some fanfare in March that they were going to have proposed scientific integrity rules out in July. And these rules would prevent a repeat of what had happened in the Bush Administration, of scientific and technical documents being re-written for political reasons. We haven't seen them and we can't get the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to indicate what's the status of them, or whether we'll ever see them.
Even in agencies like the EPA, which has put out transparency memos, we had one where the administrator Lisa Jackson reaffirmed that EPA will operate as if it's in the fishbowl. She has told employees that they still may not speak to Congress or the media without permission. And they're still developing policy.
Well, you're either in a fishbowl or you're not in a fishbowl. Those kinds of things are unclear. And the same time, scientists within EPA are unclear about their right to publish.
And so you have these kind of rhetorical commitments that aren't followed up by anything. And one of the things that worries me is that President Obama as candidate-and I think the people around him are as concerned with message control as the Bush Administration. They're very, very disciplined. And at the same time they're committed to transparency. Well, transparency is the antithesis of message control, in that if everything is open you're going to hear discordant voices, it's not going to be all singing from the same page at the same time. It will be a thousand flower blooming. So the question is whether or not he means to be committed to transparency, even where it's inconvenient and undercuts the message of the day,
OL: What about the case of Robert McCarthy? Can you summarize what this is about, and what the Obama Administration has done or failed to do?
Jeff Ruch: Robert McCarthy was the general counsel of an obscure agency that works on the border, called the International Boundary and Water Commission. It was set up 137 years ago in a treaty with Mexico. He was hired this past January, and we knew Robert because he'd previously been a whistleblower during the Bush Administration as a lawyer for the Interior Department in a very high profile case which they settled.
So Robert was hired with a clear history that he was a whistleblower, and to his surprise he found an awful lot of misconduct and problems at this agency, and a lack of willingness to deal with them. And so, after months of-the term is "remonstrating" within the agency, he kept sending letters up the chain of command to the commissioner, which was his immediate supervisor, in charge of the agency, who was a presidential appointee of, in this case, President Bush.
He decided to send all these to the inspector general of the State Department, which is the parent agency for this commission. And two days after he did this, the commissioner who was still in place (and this was in the summer) fired him.
As we speak the commissioner who was a pleasure appointee of the President is still in place and has hired a major anti-labor law firm at taxpayer expense for what we can tell, based on the number of motions they've filed, for tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money to fight this whistleblower who rightfully reported misconduct.
Well, we're sort of at a loss as to why this Bush appointee is still in place and why the Obama Administration has not stepped in. In the meantime, we're defending Robert McCarthy yet again. And we're at a loss to understand how this is different from the Bush Administration.
OL: Important as the treatment of whistleblowers is, this is not the only problem PEER has focused on in recent months. Can you talk about a couple of other areas of concern that PEER is working on?
Jeff Ruch: One agency we do an awful lot of work in is Environmental Protection Agency. And scientists within the agency have brought to our attention public health problems that are brought about by EPA's own policies. EPA has an arm that works on solid waste and they promote the recycling of material. And two of their initiatives, one involves shredded tire crumbs in playgrounds. And the other, much larger one involves a partnership with the coal industry to recycle coal ash. Not only in concrete and other industrial purposes, but also in agriculture-about a million tons of what is highly toxic material is placed on crops, as well as for consumer uses. So, in wallboard, carpet backing, concrete kitchen counters, the coal industry is able to sell its waste products as a beneficial re-use.
And these scientists indicate that, and the administrator admitted on 60 Minutes about a month ago, they have no reason to believe this is safe. There may be not only flaking of the material, what happens when it breaks, but in cases of flood or fire it will be introduced in the environment in a way that it was not intended to be introduced. Yet EPA is promoting it. They have an actual partnership agreement with the coal ash industry called the Coal Combustion Product Partnership or C2P2. And now about half of the entire waster stream of 16 millions tons a year are being taken from coal-fired plants out of the smokestack and into your living room, kitchen, nursery, school buildings all across the country, without any examination of the public health implications.
One reason this has come into sharp focus is that in last December there was horrendous spill of coal ash from these gigantic sludge ponds that were maintained by the Tennessee Valley Authority in Tennessee, where waste that was not going into reuse was in these sludge ponds, and the levees broke, and a black tsunami contaminated a very large area, and the EPA has responded by saying that they will move to classify this as hazardous waste, because one of the reasons it was allowed to accumulate is that it's essentially unregulated. The only regulation in place had todo with the strength of dikes, not what was behind it.
What we're concerned about, and internal sources tell us we have reason to be is that EPA will classify coal ash and the other combustion products as waste only if they're in wet disposal, but they will continue to be unregulated when they're sold as consumer and industrial products. So that it will be toxic in a sludge pond, but okay in your kitchen counter.
Those are the kinds of concerns that employees bring to us, and so we're trying to get others to put pressure on EPA to take a more comprehensive look at this, and moreover to get out of the business of promoting things that they're not sure of the consequences of.
We've pointed out that they're a regulatory agency, EPA should not be in marketing agreements or partnerships with the industry they purport to regulate.
OL: How does this relate to other aspects of the Obama Administration policy towards coal?
Jeff Ruch: One of the central things that we're grappling with is that coal is the centerpiece of the Obama energy and climate program. That's reflected not only in the continuing embrace of marketing coal ash which is a $13 billion subsidy to the coal industry, and relieves them of the responsibility for having to handle their own waste, but practices such as mountaintop removal, which is a form of mining, which as the name implies involves blowing off the top of mountains into mountain streams in order to get to the coal seams underneath.
As a candidate Barack Obama promised to stop mountaintop removal.
As President the permits have continued to be approved. There's an additional step, but ultimately they've all been approved. His appointees have, for the most part, been approved by the coal industry, and the other aspect of what they're doing is a centerpiece of their climate program is something called "clean coal", which is a technology that does not exist. They've pledged to spend billions of dollars to develop this technology, and in the meantime they will continue to allow the permitting of additional coal-fired plants.
And so the problem that's being raised to us by the employees, particularly from within the Environmental Protection Agency, there will not be meaningful change in terms as climate control as long as our electricity is based primarily in coal. But that appears to be primarily what the Obama posture is.
OL: Are there any members of Congress who've been helpful to you on any of these issues you're focusing on now with the Obama Administration?
Jeff Ruch: They've not been very helpful since the inauguration. They were far more helpful during the Bush Administration. So a number of the people that were doing vigorous oversight for the last couple of years have stopped doing oversight. And there's been an unusual degree of cooperation between the Democratic leadership in Congress and the White House, whivh in some ways is laudable, but to the extent you're trying to bring about oversight is not very productive.
Some of these issues are beginning to come to a head. And so we expect there to be more Congressional attention soon. Others will be litigated, and so will be resolbed in court, not in Congress. So a lot of these decisions are still in the early stages, where at the moment we're waiting for the administration to make the first move. And coal ash is a prime example of that.
OL: What can people to help effect a change in how the Obama Administraiton has been acting?
Jeff Ruch: One thing they can do is visit our website, which is PEERorg, and on the homepage you'll see a center, ObamaWatch, Change We Still Need. And they can register their opinion there. They can look at the compilation of failures and disappointments that we've had just in these few months In addition they can contact their member of Congress, and ask them to begin to be skeptical, and ask them to put pressure on the Obama Administration to do the right thing.
And finally the White House itself through new means of electronic communication has made itself more accessible to citizens than ever before, and so there are a lot of ways people can communicate to the White House to communicate their displeasure. And if they get any interesting answers we would love to see them.
OL: Okay, finally, I always like to end this way by asking, what's the most important question I haven't asked-and what's the answer to it.
Jeff Ruch: Well, we've been speaking about how slow it's been for appointees to be appointed, and to be confirmed, and to take office. But what we haven't talked about is the nature of some of the appointments that have been confirmed, and it's been a fairly disappointing industry-oriented lot, such that there's not been a real reformer that Obama has appointed, and they've been very cautious. As we indicated, very few of them have caused the slightest bit of industry opposition.
Something we point to as the very epitome of what concerns us about the Obama Administration is the Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, who was a senator from Colorado, and Barack Obama's senate seatmate.. Ken Salazer has repeatedly said his number one priority as Secretary of the Interior is energy independence. Virtual no rational observers believe that energy independence-because you're talking about independence from Canada, among other places-is a realistic goal, one. And two, for the Secretary of Interior-who's in charge of protecting nation parks and other lands-to say his number one priority is energy production is a little alarming. That rhetoric you didn't even hear out of the Bush Administration. Makes Bush's Secretary, Gail Norton sound like John Muir.
So you have this orientation where, basically that energy production on public lands is going to dominate things. Which is precisely what the Bush Administration tried to do. And the only difference is that we think we're going to see the same number of oil rigs both onshore and off, but they may have windmills on top of them.
The people who are in place are bringing policies that are, in our view, not the change we need. And one reason we're seeing so many people come out of the agencies is that in many instances they were sort of hunkered down waiting for meaningful change, and they're now seeing that meaningful change is not on the horizon. And so they're taking action on their own.
OL: Thank you for your time, this has been very informative, and I do look forward to doing followup and talking to you again in the future.
Jeff Ruch: Okay. And the nature of this is that there's certainly no shortage of issues.
OL: Okay, yes, that's certainly true. And thank you very much for your time. |
I intersperse today's focus on the aftermath of the House vote on health care with this interview that shifts focus back onto the Obama Administration. Although the underlying subject matter is the environment and public health, the focus on openness, transparency, accountability, freedom from corporate influence, and fulfilling the promise of the 2008 campaign have application to virtually every issue in the book.
