Gag Order Imposed

Your tax dollars at work. The Environmental Protection Agency is protecting itself from everyone, including it’s own Inspector General’s Office. (IG)

In a report released by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility website workers in the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance were forbidden to speak with anyone in an effort to “ensure timely responses and assist in tracking and record keeping obligations”.  The order came in a June 16th email, stating that if an employee is approached by a reporter, the IG’s office or GAO requesting any kind of information, to say nothing other than refer that party to the proper authority.

The EPA public affairs office released it’s explanation of the gag order, saying it was implemented to respond to the IG’s report, and ensure “consistency and coordination among those responding to the IG and GAO reports”.

The EPA has been under a lot of heat recently, in one case the IG’s report, “EPA Can Improve its Oversight of Audit Followup” which was issued in May of 2007.  The report chided the EPA for it’s lack of accountability for correcting admitted deficiencies reported in previous IG audits.  Congress has attempted to subpoena agency files and agency director Stephen L Johnson has reportedly refused to appear before a Senate committee.

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For the average American working for a paycheck, May Day — a pagan spring ritual where you dance around a Maypole — marks yet another, less festive occasion.

From the first of January until around the first of May, all the money many of us will earn goes to pay our share of income tax to the US government.

Kiss those months — that money — goodbye (the present tax stimulus package is really just a refund).

We followed the advice of our parents, as most children do: get a good education, go to college and get a job — a nice, secure, well-paying one, with great fringe benefits, stock options or profit-sharing. But the bimonthly paychecks — after the government gets its share for income, Social Security and Medicare taxes — aren’t enough to keep up with the bills. Even with raises and promotions, many of us feel that we keep getting further in the hole, since the more we earn in earned income, the more it’s taxed. The reality is that the system is largely devised this way, not to tax the very rich but to exact a fee on the middle class and poor to keep these wage earners on the treadmaster of a job — or “promising career.”

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