Adele Ferguson - Doctored drilling report, fed pay to dead people on comment list

ITEM-The Interior Department's inspector general confirmed the White House edited a drilling safety report that made it falsely appear that scientists and experts supported the administration's six month moratorium on new deep water oil and gas exploration. The scientists and experts, who hadn't even mentioned moratorium in their review of new safety measures for off shore drilling, are furious.

COMMENT-The inspector general's report says White House energy adviser Carol Browne's staff, by moving up a reference to peer review, could have implied the scientists had endorsed the moratorium. Browner is one of the president's "czars," serving at his pleasure and not required to be examined or confirmed by the Senate as to her knowledge and experience. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, by the way, also recommended the moratorium which may be why it suddenly surfaced in the report.

ITEM-The federal government has paid out more than $1 billion in checks to dead people for over a decade, according to a report by the top Republican on the Senate's investigative panel. Washington paid for dead people's prescriptions and wheelchairs, subsidized their farms, helped pay their rent and even chipped in for their heating and air conditioning bills, said Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. He also said Congress is to blame for rules that required dead farmers to receive benefits, more than $1 billion sent to nearly 173,000 deceased farmers over seven years.

COMMENT-This kind of thing happens pretty often, mostly in Social Security checks sent to dead recipients. But doesn't somebody have to sign the checks to convert them into cash? And if the money goes instead into bank accounts, doesn't the bank have an obligation to inform the sender that the account holder is no longer among the living?

ITEM-U.S Sen. Patty Murray was ninth in the Top Ten list of "Hey, Big Spenders" in the Senate, compiled for 2010 by Taxpayers for Common Sense in the Wall Street Journal. The mom in tennis shoes managed to get away with $219.5 million in spending for earmarks without having to justify them to a committee.

COMMENT-No wonder the Seattle Times was so fond of her, while at the same time urging the governor and legislature to cut to the bone. The eight ahead of her were Republicans Thad Cochrane and Robert Wicker of Mississippi, and Democrats Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Chuck Schumer of New York, Carl Levin of Michigan and Harry Reid of Nevada. Tenth was Diane Feinstein of California.

ITEM-The number of federal workers earning $150,000 a year has doubled since President Obama took office and he plans a 1.4 percent across the board raise to the feds.

COMMENT-Government workers historically are expected to make less than private sector workers because they have better job security but Democrats fatten their ranks and salaries as a built in Democratic voting corps.

ITEM-A man who said he was a doctor called the Lars Larsen show to report he had several patients he gave flu shots to become seriously ill, one spending ten days in the hospital. He was reluctant to publicize it, he said, for fear of alarming older people who would not get flu shots and get sick or die for lack of same.

COMMENT-I heard the call and had just gotten my own flu shot a few days before from an Albertson's pharmacist. She said this year's shot contained a new vaccine for a different strain of flu that is expected but has failed to show up yet. I had no reaction to the shot. Medicare paid for it.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)