U.S. government

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is working to relax air quality rules and make it easier to build coal-fired power plants, oil refineries and other pollution-emitting enterprises near national parks and wilderness areas, even though half of the EPA's ten regional administrators have formally opposed the plan. The push to weaken the Clean Air Act involves changing the method used to measure air pollution near national parks so that pollution is averaged over much longer periods, effectively diluting large spikes and protecting polluters from violating the law. Mark Wenzler, who directs clean-air programs for the National Parks Conservation Association, remarked that "The Bush administration's staunch commitment to coal is so deep that they're willing to sacrifice our national parks on the way out the door." Jeffrey R. Holmstead, who served as chief of EPA's air and radiation office, helped initiate the change. Holmstead has since left EPA and now works at the power industry legal and lobbying firm Bracewell & Giuliani.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to open up the "white spaces" on the television spectrum that will be available when the U.S. switches from analog to all-digital in February 2009. Sascha Meinrath, research director of the wireless future program at the New America Foundation, said that "All the PR spin and FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) failed in the face of physics and the ground reality of engineering." Wired.com sees consumers as the big winners, but there are corporations that will benefit as well. Intel's chips could power new devices made by companies like Motorola, Philips, and Dell that will be used to access the broadband services in the newly available whites spaces. On the other hand, there are industry losers as well. Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast "have paid billions over the years to gain exclusive rights to the spectrum," which will now disappear. "All those problems of diversity on the airwaves and access to internet broadband connectivity are predicated on the artificial scarcity of airwaves," Meinrath said. "They will be alleviated."

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, has released its list of "urgent," "critical" and "time sensitive" policy concerns for President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress. Several are military-related, such as the "U.S. efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan," "undisciplined defense spending," "caring for service members," and "rebuilding military readiness." Another priority, "improving the U.S. image abroad," arguably makes the list because of U.S. military actions. The GAO recommends better "strategic planning, coordination, and performance measurement" of public diplomacy efforts. In particular, the State Department should "improve the delivery of public diplomacy messages to Muslim audiences," develop "a strategy to guide department efforts to engage the private sector," and standardize approaches "for marking and publicizing all U.S. foreign assistance." Among the GAO's other top priorities are better managing "financial institutions and markets" by "reforming the U.S. financial regulatory system to reflect 21st century realities."

In the final months of his administration, George W. Bush is working to enact a flurry of new federal regulations that will weaken rules protecting consumers and the environment. The so-called "midnight regulations" aim to relax standards that protect drinking water, loosen controls on global warming pollutants, remove obstacles to ocean fishing and ease restrictions on mountaintop coal mining activities. The new regulations would be difficult to undo, since the law mandates lengthy periods for re-drafting, re-analysis and public comment. Such activity by an outgoing president is not unusual, nor is the number of regulations being considered. But Matthew Madia of OMB Watch, a group formed to "lift the veil of secrecy surrounding the White House's Office of Management and Budget," called Bush's deluge of rules "a last-minute assault on the public ... happening on multiple fronts."

Allison Barber, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense who launched the America Supports You (ASY) program and was also heavily involved in the Pentagon pundit program, is resigning. Barber leaves as the Pentagon's inspector general continues to investigate ASY's financial practices and the pundit program (which is also being investigated by the Government Accountability Office and the Federal Communications Commission). Her boss, Robert Hastings, says Barber's resignation has nothing to do with the ASY investigation. "She and I have been discussing the timing of her departure since early summer," Hastings told Stars and Stripes. "I asked her to stay until DMA was launched," he said, referring to the Defense Media Activity, which has consolidated the Pentagon's media operations. The Pentagon announced DMA's "activation" on October 20. According to military support blogs, Barber sent a farewell to ASY groups saying, "Our troops deserve this type of support and together, we have made it happen." Neither the Pentagon public affairs office nor Barber herself responded to the Center for Media and Democracy's request for comment.

Pete Yost reports that "Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse. In the cross hairs of the campaign carried out by DCI of Washington were Republican senators and a regulatory overhaul bill sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. DCI's chief executive is Doug Goodyear, whom John McCain's campaign later hired to manage the GOP convention in September. ... The Republican senators targeted by DCI began hearing from prominent constituents and financial contributors, all urging the defeat of Hagel's bill because it might harm the housing boom. The effort generated newspaper articles and radio and TV appearances by participants who spoke out against the measure. Inside Freddie Mac headquarters in 2005, the few dozen people who knew what DCI was doing referred to the initiative as 'the stealth lobbying campaign,"' according to three people familiar with the drive. They spoke only on condition of anonymity, saying they fear retaliation if their names were disclosed."

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission "has bolstered its PR staff after the agency and its chair Christopher Cox have been criticized" over the current financial crisis, reports O'Dwyer's. Riding to the SEC's assistance are Erik Hotmire and Andrew Weinstein. Hotmire is "a former Bush administration and Senate communications aide" who left a position at the PR firm Clark & Weinstock to work for the SEC. Weinstein has his own firm, Ridgeback Communications, and also served as AOL's chief spokesman and vice-president of corporate communications. He previously was "spokesman for ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich and directed media relations for Bob Dole's presidential run" in 1996.

The U.S. Navy Seals have hired Gallup Consulting on a $500,000 contract, to help the force "develop a new branding and marketing strategy," reports PR Week. Gallup will write a two-year marketing plan for the Seals, including the "development of market segmentation, target candidate profiles, key marketing messages, competitive analysis, and positioning." One of the contract's goals is to increase recruitment. The U.S. Navy now has 2,400 Seals, but wants to increase that number "by as many as 500 during the next few years to meet a general need for military special forces."

Volunteers at the Center for Media and Democracy's Election Protection Wiki have collected unbelievable reports of voter suppression nationwide in the nine days since it went online.

Among the reports on the EPWiki:

• In Colorado and New Mexico there are not enough voting booths or machines for Election Day.
• Students in Virginia are receiving probing questionnaires from voting officials falsely implying they don't have the right to vote there.
• In Ohio alone, more than 600,000 newly-registered voters are threatened with purging.
• There are reports of sometimes-illegal mass voter roll purges in Michigan, New Mexico, Florida, Georgia, Colorado and other states. Several states are even purging voter rolls of people who are "Bob" on driver's licenses and "Robert" on voter registration forms.
• Officials in Indiana are avoiding setting up polling places in areas of the state heavily populated by minorities.
• The Republican Party in Michigan planned to challenge the registrations of every voter whose home had been foreclosed on recently.
• ACORN, which has been held out as a bogeyman for voter fraud (though only 26 TOTAL cases of voter fraud were prosecuted nationwide from 2002 - 2005), has bad registration rates below the California Republican Party's and a lawsuit alleging fraud in 2004 was dismissed by a judge for lack of merit?
• And, of course, there are ongoing worries across the country about electronic voting machines.

The Election Protection Wiki (at EPWiki.org) is the only website trying to document and centralize these reports, which were found scattered across the Web by volunteers. We are trying to get everything ready so activists, advocates and the media have a central place to go on Election Day for immediate information about these issues.

We need your help to collect more reports. No experience is necessary and CMD staffers are here to help with ready-to-go simple tasks and any support you need. Please join us in protecting the right to vote - go to EPWiki.org and click on "things you can do" to begin.

"An e-mail went out last week to government agencies to get working on a project to lay out 'THE BUSH RECORD,'" reports Al Kamen. The e-mail tells agencies to "provide a one or two paragraph summary on the overarching communications strategy for your Department," listing any plans to produce "a document listing your Department's major accomplishments over the past eight years, a video of Department successes, etc." It also asks agencies to categorize accomplishments as one of the "three main themes of 'Kept America Safe & Promoted Liberty Abroad,' 'Lowered Taxes & Reformed Government,' and 'Stood on Principle / Tackled Tough Issues / Showed the Way Ahead.'" Asked for comment, White House spokesperson Tony Fratto said it's "only natural to collect data" to help reporters writing retrospectives on the George W. Bush administration. Otherwise, the public may not be aware that "minority education test scores went up or that teenage drug use is down 18 percent," he added. Kamen concludes, "Looks like a pretty big PR blitz."