Feds tried to cut aid (....for sick and dying nuclear weapons workers)

[Judi Lynn]

Feds tried to cut aid
Limits sought on help for ill workers

By Ann Imse And Laura Frank, Rocky Mountain News
March 10, 2007

Federal officials secretly schemed to limit payouts for sick and dying nuclear weapons workers, including thousands from the Rocky Flats plant outside Denver, newly released documents show.

The officials responsible for helping those workers went behind their boss's back, called on White House officials for help and tried to hide their efforts, according to internal e-mails and memos obtained by a congressional committee and posted on its Web site.

They also wanted to get the White House to override scientific decisions granting compensation and pack the program's advisory board with members less sympathetic to workers.

Labor officials say the plans were never carried out, and they deny trying to hide them.
(snip/...)

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5408519,00.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Published: March 10, 2007 at 12:34 PM
Report: Nuke worker benefits were targeted

DENVER, March 10 (UPI) -- The U.S. Labor Department says a move to limit payments to ailing nuclear weapons workers in Colorado was never carried out.

Newly released documents indicated Labor Department officials responsible sought White House assistance in finding ways to limit payouts to workers from the now-closed Rocky Flats weapons plant, including allegedly overriding scientific evidence and manipulating the makeup of the program's advisory board, the Rocky Mountain News reported.

One memo cited by the newspaper came from an official who bemoaned the lack of "fiscal conservatives" out there.

Thousands of former Rocky Flats workers are eligible for assistance due to illness linked to exposure to radioactive and toxic materials. The News said about 16,000 workers received $2.6 billion and the tab could reach $7 billion over 10 years.
(snip/...)

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/20070310-124046-8676r/

[Judi Lynn]

1. Long wait for relief drags on

Long wait for relief drags on
In fight for life, ex-worker hopes for compensation

By Laura Frank, Rocky Mountain News
March 10, 2007

Laura Schultz sits surrounded by an army of medicine bottles that keep her 49-year-old body going.
She takes her last pill of the day at midnight.

Schultz has survived two kinds of cancer, cataracts, seizures and a pituitary tumor. Her immune system malfunctions. Her bones don't heal properly. Her intestines process too quickly. She vomits daily. A tube feeds oxygen through her nose. And now her blood is showing a protein that is sometimes an early warning sign for blood cancer.

For a dozen years, Schultz worked as an engineer at Rocky Flats, the nuclear weapons plant between Denver and Boulder that made plutonium triggers for atomic bombs until it shut down production in the 1990s.

She believes that all her ailments - and a litany of former co-workers' troubles that she knows by heart - are related to working at the plant.

Schultz celebrated in 2000 when then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, now governor of New Mexico, became the first official to publicly acknowledge that nuclear weapons workers had been placed in harm's way in the push to build atomic bombs from World War II through the Cold War.
(snip/...)

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5408507,00.html

[stonebone]

2. There's just no end to all the good deeds done by compassionate conservatives

:sarcasm:

[Turbineguy]

3. Dept. of Labor

Yes, that's sounds like the one I'm familair with.

[annabanana]

4. Any money that doesn't go straight into the pockets of

BFEE cronies is, to them, money wasted.

As the term winds down, watch for more obvious, more egregious, and grander scale theft than we've ever seen in this Country before!

[gratuitous]

5. Paris Hilton NEEDS a tax cut, you heartless bastards

And really, do we need 16,000 sick workers? Priorities, people. Also, we're still making payments on that shiny war that so many people liked when they saw it in the showroom back in 2003.

[rodeodance]

6. Rocky Mt has more details:-------the GAO is investigating:

......Now, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is looking into whether the Labor Department overstepped its bounds and meddled in the payments illegally.

Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., said, "Clearly, the administration put dollars above honoring the nation's promise to the Cold War veterans."

He added this is "almost worse" than the bad conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. That was negligence, Udall said, where "this seems to be a pretty callous plan that the administration knew could harm sick veterans."

Some lawmakers see the documents as evidence of continued stonewalling in the program, as workers died before they could collect benefits.

"Those involved in this back-room manipulation of the program have destroyed the government credibility again," U.S. Rep. John Hostettler said in December. The Indiana Republican held hearings last year to investigate the program, which has been plagued by delays since 2000.

[robinlynne]

7. You know I've yet to see ailing solar power workers....

[youngdem]

8. You very well may one day soon....Cadmium telluride is very, very toxic

and is used in the manufacture of many solar panels (though not third generation, apparently). This stuff is terrible if inhaled, ingested or absorbed and is being investigated for causing cancers. And this stuff is paired up with Cadmium Sulfide which isn't very nice stuff either - it is classified as a carcinogen, a reproductive risk and an environmental hazard.

But yeah, not likely as bad as working on Plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons.

[Red1]

9. Accountability

Yes, we do seem to end up paying for our mistakes.

Whether from corporate indifference or our military research and
development it always falls on the backs of the American worker.

I believe the demise of Unions during the bush admin, has contributed to
this.

It is (and has always been) up to the the people to be aware of
the "progressive" products pushed upon us. How they might effect
our health and country.