by Christy Harvey, Judd Legum and Jonathan Baskin
NAUGHTY AND NICE 2004
The Progress Report makes this year's holiday list and checks it twice
Naughty: Ron Artest, for
punching out the front row at an NBA game.
Nice: Mark Cuban and Dallas Mavericks season ticket holders, for offering
140 front row seats to American soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Naughty: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, for sending U.S. soldiers into battle
without the equipment and armor they need to fight.
Nice: Grassroots charity groups like "
Give 2 The Troops" and "
Operation Gratitude," for sending care packages, supplies and reminders of home to American troops abroad.
Naughty: Merck, for spending millions to market the pain-reliever Vioxx to consumers
long after the company knew it was unsafe.
Nice: Dr. David Graham, of the FDA's Office of Drug Safety, for fighting to
keep dangerous drugs off the market.
Naughty: Bernard Kerik, for turning an apartment donated for weary Ground Zero police and rescue workers into
a love nest for his adulterous affairs.
Nice: Miramax Films, for
putting the kibosh on Kerik's summer blockbuster biopic.
Naughty: Congress, for underfunding the
Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). allocating "$164 million less than needed to cover the expected 24 percent increase in home heating costs" this winter.
Nice:
Richard Hamann and his wife, Donna, for paying the electricity bills for the entire town of Anthon, Iowa, because they wanted to give something back to their community.
Naughty:
NRA Radio, for broadcasting anti-gun-control propaganda and calling it legitimate news.
Nice:
Ed Schultz,
Arnie Arnesen,
Tony Trupiano,
Thom Hartmann,
Wendy Wilde,
Al Franken,
Katherine Lanpher and the rest of the
Air America crew, for showing progressive radio can be thought-provoking, hard-hitting and fun.
Naughty: Department of Homeland Security, for
omitting "major sites" like chemical plants and dams from its unfinished national database of potential terrorist targets.
Nice: Department of Homeland Security, for
including "water parks and miniature golf courses" in the national database. At your local putt putt, the terrorists never win.
Naughty: The Environmental Protection Agency, for
using camcorders to bribe parents into offering up their toddlers as guinea pigs for a study about the dangers of pesticides on children…
sponsored by the chemical industry.Nice: The
Natural Resources Defense Council, for fighting to protect kids from the harmful effects of pesticides and chemicals.
Naughty: Right-wing conservatives in the House of Representatives, for
changing ethics rules so Tom DeLay (R-TX) could one day be their indicted leader.
Nice: Whistleblowers like
Bunnatine Greenhouse,
Richard Foster and
Paul O'Neill, for holding our government to a higher ethical standard.
Naughty: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, for letting a machine do his work (and
not hand-signing condolence letters to grieving families).
Nice: Ashlee Simpson, for letting a machine do her work (and
not forcing us to listen to her natural singing voice).
Naughty: Medicare head
Tom Scully, Rep.
Billy Tauzin, Rep.
James Greenwood and trade representatives
Ralph Ives and Claude Burcky, for using public service for personal benefit, taking lucrative, top-dollar jobs with the pharmaceutical industry they had formerly regulated.
Nice: Rep. Henry Waxman, for using public service for public benefit, compiling reports on everything from the Halliburton to
undue secrecy in the White House.
Naughty: Russian President
Vladimir Putin, for single-handedly shutting down the press, jailing his political opposition and trying to validate his hand-picked, fraudulently elected
lapdog in Ukraine.Nice: Viktor Yushchenko and supporters of the Orange Revolution, for fighting against all odds -- including poison -- to bring
democracy to the Ukraine
Naughty: Bill "I Like Families" Donahue, for using his pulpit to launch partisan,
hate-filled attacks.
Nice: The Reverend Jim Wallis, for teaching us something about real "
moral values."
Naughty:
Alberto Gonzales, for crafting memos which provided legal justification for torturing detainees.
Nice: The
International Committee of the Red Cross, for exposing brutal treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.
Naughty: EPA administrator Mike Leavitt, for
blaming pollution on poverty.Nice: The
Union of Concerned Scientists, for giving us the facts about
global warming,
pollution,
clean energy and the Bush administration's
ideological approach to science.
Naughty: Sinclair Media, for planning to run an
hour long anti-Kerry screed as "news" just before the U.S. presidential election.
Nice:
Media Matters and the blogosphere, for forcing Sinclair to change its plans. (And
continuing to demand that Sinclair stop broadcasting one-sided political spin.)
Naughty:
Sen. Norm Coleman, for using the oil-for-food scandal as an excuse to launch an attack against the United Nations.
Nice: U.N. Secretary General
Kofi Annan, for launching the first serious attempt to reform the United Nations and bring it into the 21st Century.
Naughty: The Kuwaiti Hilton, for giving Halliburton's employees a
place to stay while they bilked US taxpayers.
Nice: Paris Hilton, for bringing the "simple life"
to Washington, D.C.
Naughty: Bill O'Reilly, for claiming Christmas is "
under siege."
Nice: Americans, for
not laying siege to Christmas.
Happy Holidays from
The Progress Report Team and everyone at American Progress, dedicated to making America a little less naughty and a lot more nice.
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