The "Protect Halliburton and Fuck Navy Veterans Act" of 2005

As if the greedy pig motherfuckers at Halliburton weren't already fattening themselves enough at the public slop trough, a little-noticed bill is worming its nasty way through the greased machinery of the Repugnican senate.

It's called the FAIR Act, for Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution -- yet another in a long line of Orwellian naming conventions -- that would establish a $140 billion trust fund to be drawn down by sufferers from one or more of the many asbestos-related diseases such as mesothelioma.

Yeah, sounds great, but there are many troubling aspects to it:

• The bill would shield companies from further damage lawsuits filed by asbestos victims.


• It would also protect those companies from disclosing any asbestos information at all that is of a "confidential commercial or financial" nature.


• The companies themselves are the ones who get to make that designation.


• When that money is gone, anyone else that develops an asbestos-related health problem will be fucked.

Read the Society of Environmental Journalist's tip sheet for more information.

The chief beneficiary of this congressional largess: Halliburton, who inconveniently found itself saddled with a tremendous potential liability after its purchase of Johns-Manville. This is the company that is still paying Vice President Dickless Crashcart, in case you forgot.

The chief victims of this congressional mugging: America's veterans. Over 1/3 of the asbestos-related deaths in this country occur among Navy veterans who served between WWII and the mid-1970s, a time when asbestos was used extensively as insulation and fire retardant in Navy ships.

Read the chilling account of his father's death from asbestos-caused mesothelioma by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt's son, James, and heed his call for action to defeat this bill.

America's veterans have already been made to suffer far too much by this maladminstration. Let's not add to this grief. Contact your senators to urge them to kill this bill.