Naughty and Nice 2004

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: 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: 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 [and Rapid Response!], for forcing Sinclair to change its plans. (And continuing to
demand that Sinclair stop broadcasting one-sided political spin.)