"Clearing forests for tobacco production causes soil erosion and related ecological damage, and is responsible for deforestation in Brazil and in Africa," according to WFPHA Position Paper No. 98-1, adopted by the World Federation of Public Health Associations General Assembly, at its 32nd Annual Meeting 11 May 1998, citing D. Yach, Tobacco in Africa, World Health Forum, Vol. 17, 1996, and the Forum on Global Tobacco Control Policies - Background, San Francisco Tobacco Free Coalition.

"Farmers in Kenya's Kunati Valley have stopped growing maize--the country's most important staple food--and are now growing tobacco for a multinational company, according to a report by the All Africa Press Service. . . .

"The slopes on the sides of the Kunati Valley, ner Mount Kenya, are now 'completely bare.' Their former covering of trees has been cut down to be used as fuel for curing tobacco.

"With most of the fertile ground given over to tobacco, some farmers have tried to grow maize on the formerly forested hillsides. But heavy rains wash away soil, plants, and all. The topsoil has eroded in some places, and rocks and boulders are already washing down toward the fertile fields below, the report says.

"Only 17 percent of Kenya's land can support crops, and an even smaller area has forest cover, so the country cannot afford to lose yet more.

"Tobacco growing brings the farmers more profits than maize did. . . . "'What is happening in the Kunati Valley is being repeated in a thousand other places in all of Africa,' the All Africa Press Service says. 'Exports are being promoted at the expense of local consumption. In the long run the ecological basis of all production is being permanently destroyed.'" See "Tobacco Depletes Food-Crop Land," 28 Smoke Signals (3) 7 (March 1982).

          "Worldwide, between 1.2 and 5.5 million ha of forest are destroyed annually to grow and cure tobacco." See John Revington, "The Causes of Tropical Deforestation."

          When whistleblowers are fired from the government for doing their job, the public is harmed, not just the worker. Some function of the government that ought to be done, is left undone. See a recent Texas example of the funeral industry regulator. Worse, many times, coworkers become afraid to act in the subject matter re which they saw their colleague fired.

          As Thomas M. Devine and Donald G. Aplin, "Whistleblower Protection—The Gap Between the Law and Reality," 31 Howard Law Journal (#2) 223-239 (1988), show, becoming a whistleblower can be the end to a federal employee's career, family, health, and normal life circumstances. And, "the threat of being fired is equal to the threat of most minor and some not so minor criminal sanctions," Herzbrun v Milwaukee County, 338 F Supp 736, 738 (ED Wis, 1972).

           The public relies on civil service workers to protect them. Such workers are supposed to observe events and how they inter-connect, so that they can take action to serve the public, as the public would do if in that position. For example, government workers are supposed to observe the link between

• environmental toxins and cancer, so they can act to protect the public, clean up the contaminated site, and prevent future incidents.

• flood plains, destruction of wetlands, inappropriate dam construction, and resultant floods, so that they can prevent such destruction.

• unsafe job sites, toxic chemicals, and resultant worker injuries and ill health, so they can enforce protective rules, and prevent such harms.

           Observing such connections between events (that might seem unrelated to lay observers) requires having an educated governmental workforce able, willing, and unafraid to study data, observe connections, and act to protect the public accordingly. This means that public employees must be unhindered, unretaliated against, fearless to perform their duties. To protect your jobsite, your home, your life, they must not be fearful for their own!

           So to protect the government workers from being retaliated against, and thus to protect themselves, the public has adopted a law, 5 USC § 7513 that bans firings except when specific charges of genuine misconduct are first presented thirty days in advance, with opportunity to reply, and defend. This is of the essence of due process of law. This due process requirement has been upheld as a requirement PRIOR to a firing, by the U.S. Supreme Court, Cleveland Board of Education v Loudermill, 470 US 532; 105 S Ct 1487; 84 L Ed 2d 494 (1985).

           As we saw above, tobacco is linked to deforestation. Government workers can aid in preventing this in various ways: (a) enforcing 'no logging" rules if any, at the supply end of the cycle; (b) reducing use of tobacco at the demand end of the cycle by enforcing pertinent tobacco control rules, if any; (c) observing other pertinent rules that, if enforced, can assist in preventing the problem. The public expects government workers to be educated and use their minds to devise appropriate methods.

           As it happens, cigarette emit vast quantities of dangerous emissions of toxic chemicals. The Surgeon General long ago pointed this out in an official government document easily accessible to any government worker. Here are details:

           Due to cigarettes' inherently deleterious nature and ingredients, they, when lit, emit deleterious emissions. The Department of Health, Education and Welfare (DHEW), Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, PHS Pub 1103, Table 4, p 60 (1964), lists examples of cigarettes' deleterious emissions compared to the chemicals' "speed limits" (set in the toxic chemical regulation 29 CFR § 1910.1000, available at your local library), including but not limited to:

           Additional data of this type can be found in the book by Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., The Politics of Cancer (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1978).

           As the Surgeon General data shows, the federal safety law (applicable to all job sites) bans emissions of such high levels as cigarettes emit. The safety rules are written in both

• general terms (words against jeopardizing safety across the board, the "general duty clause") and in

• numeric terms, quantities of toxic chemcials shall not exceed X amount, in essence, a speed limit, a quantity limit.

           Cigarettes emit illegal levels of toxic chemical emissions. Here is a word picture (using the example of carbon monoxide) of what this type data means:

| 42,000 ppm - cigarettes' carbon monoxide
|      
|
| 32,000       For perspective, police stop speeders going 60 in a 50 mph zone.
|                   Tobacco far exceeds the "speed limits." Tobacco kills precisely
|                   because its toxic chemicals are above the safe levels.
| 22,000
|
|      
| 12,000 ppm - cars' limit           "Cigarette Makers Get Away With Murder,"
|  (40 CFR § 85.2203-81)            says Elizabeth M. Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H.,
|                                                    in The Detroit News, p 4B (3-14-93). The
|                                                    above "speed limit" numbers show why.
|      
| 2,000                       (Not to scale)
|      
|      
|      50 - legal amount indoors (29 CFR § 1910.1000)
|        9 - legal amount outdoors
|        0 - amount cigarette pushers allow from their personal furnaces

          It is because cigarettes' emissions vastly exceed the "speed limits" that they are dangerous and so fatal as to kill millions of people. If cigarettes' toxic chemicals were under the "speed limits," they'd be safe! Example: The "speed limit" for carbon monoxide is about 50, whereas it's doing 42,000. Enforcing safety rules promotes efficiency of the service, indeed, the well-being of society at large. And as a helpful by-product, it is known that when there is less smoking on the job, about ˝ the average workers' waking day, smoking declines across the board. Reducing demand by enforcing job emissions rules can thus be beneficial in reducing deforestation (in addition of course to other benefits more traditionally thought of as health-oriented). The public hires educated workers to think of these things. (Of course, we are supposed to be enforcing the emissions rules anyway!) Firing people who want to do their job, violates efficiency.

          "For almost four hundred years, European and American physicians have observed the toxic effects of tobacco . . . . physicians have known for centuries that smokers were daily taking into their bodies large quantities of one of the most poisonous substances known to man." See Frank L. Wood, M.D., What You Should Know About Tobacco (Wichita, KS: The Wichita Publishing Co, 1944), p 67.

          Here are is an example of what Dr. Wood means. Cigarettes are inherently dangerous. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Reducing the Health Consequences of Smoking: 25 Years of Progress: a Report of the Surgeon General, Publication CDC 89-8411, Table 7, pp 86-87 (1989), lists examples of deleterious ingredients including but not limited to:

          The public hires educated workers to notice such things. How about noticing Michigan's cigarette control law, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216. Most people have heard of laws on cigarettes, 'don't sell to children,' 'don't smoke at automobile refueling locations (gas stations),' 'don't sell smuggled cigarettes,' 'don't sell unlicensed cigarettes,' etc. Michigan has such laws indeed, but it also has MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216. That law forbids

"any person within the state" from action that "manufactures, sells or gives to anyone, any cigarette containing any ingredient deleterious to health or foreign to tobacco . . . ."

          An educated workforce, what the public hires and pays for, can observe this law, cigarettes' deleteriousness as identified by the Surgeon General in detail, and enforce the law. In conjunction with the demand side, cited above, this is at the supply side. Reducing supply by enforcing the cigarette consumer protection law (requiring the product be safe for intended use like all other products, ending discrimination against smokers otherwise sold a dangerous product) can thus be beneficial in reducing deforestation (in addition of course to other benefits more traditionally thought of as health-oriented). The public hires educated workers to think of these things. (Of course, we are supposed to be enforcing the cigarette control laws anyway!) Firing people who want to do their job, violates efficiency.

          Now you get an idea of what happened to me, age 34. It's not uncommon, sadly, the firing of a whistleblower for doing their job, protecting the public. Think of the recent Texas example of the funeral industry regulator. Such retaliations have long been knonw, as shown by, among others, Devine and Aplin, "Whistleblower Protection—The Gap Between the Law and Reality," 31 Howard Law Journal 223 (1988).

          Of course, the law, 5 USC § 7513 that bans unwarranted firings is supposed to protect us and thus the public. But . . . when the underlying subject matter laws are unenforced, would this one be? That would simply restore the troublesome, honest whistleblower!! PROBLEM!

          The case file is thousands of pages. It includes documents showing that my allegations were supported by my immediate supervisor (Mr. Jeremiah Kator) and upheld by an investigator (Ms. Norma Kennedy). The agency's own investigator ruled for me! That enraged top management!

          They retaliated, fired me without filing charges of any misconduct. The efficiency of the federal service is not promoted by such firings! No employee has ever failed to win his job back in such circumstances, as the advance notice law, 5 USC § 7513.(b) is so clear, notice must be in writing 30 days PRIOR to the ouster! Kenneth Starr aided and abetted the illegality. But he had a severe conflict of interest. He is pro-tobacco.

          Actually, there is yet another reason for aiding in stopping tobacco-caused deforestation. That is that it is typical that cigarettes are the starting point in the drug abuse lifestyle; they are the delivery agent for nicotine, the gateway (starter) drug for children. The average age of onset is 12. Next in sequence, alcohol follows, average age 12.6; then marijuana, average age 14. See, e.g., DHEW National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Research on Smoking Behavior, Research Monograph 17, Publication ADM 78-581, p vi (Dec 1977); DuPont, Teen Drug Use, 102 J Pediatrics 1003-1007 (June 1983); Fleming, et al., Cigarettes' Role in The Initiation And Progression Of Early Substance Use, 14 Addictive Behaviors 261-272 (1989); and DHHS, Preventing Tobacco Use Among Young People: Surgeon General Report (1994). Page 10 supports law enforcement, saying, "Illegal sales of tobacco products are common." Enforcement is needed, to win the war on drugs. "A stitch in time saves nine."

          Americans are being killed due to drugs, due to the inordinate demand. The medical literature shows that demand arises primarily among smokers; nonsmokers do not use the starter drug, so rarely are the typical drug abuser. I want to do my job, deal with the massive violation of the cigarette law, thus save lives. "A stitch in time saves nine." Remember, my immediatesupervisor, Jeremiah Kator, is supportive. In addition, the drug gives off toxic emissions, making its use a job safety issue. People such as Kenneth Starr, etc., SAY they want to win the war on drugs, but they fight behind the scenes, and sometimes openly, against dealing with the gateway drug, and indeed, against enforcing any rule or law that might reduce tobacco supply or demand!

          Another website writer has identified the overview of the tobacco lobby connection to Kenneth Starr and the Federalist Society. Further note the tobacco farmer connection to slavery. Tobacco farmers began the major use of slaves in the U.S. See Glenn Porter, ed., Encyclopedia of American Economic History, Vol II (NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1980), "Slavery," pp 552-561. It says "of the American slave population . . . most worked in tobacco," p 552. Tobacco farmers were family-destroyers in more ways than one.

          Kenneth Starr, James Ryan, Roy C. Hayes, Jr., Maura Corrigan, Stephen Markman, and/or others in the Federalist Society, with its Confederate-type views, became involved in my case in this way. As part of my blowing the whistle, I (a crime prevention officer and personnel specialist, with support by Jeremiah Kator, my immediate supervisor who continued giving me good performance recognition and ratings unceasingly), reported the widespread violations to the regional Appellate Authority (USACARA), and the above-cited Ms. Norma Kennedy. After investigation, USACARA ruled in my favor, told the federal agency to come into compliance.

          Instead, the agency fired me without 30 days notice, violating 5 USC § 7513.(b). This was unequal treament, disparate treatment, not done to others. It was done to intimidate coworkers from doing their job on the subject. That violates efficiency of the federal service, vs promoting it. I immediately sought review pursuant to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) system pursuant to 29 CFR § 1613.

          The agency was afraid of EEOC's known integrity. An EEOC official, Administrative Judge Henry Perez, Jr., by letter notified TACOM that he had observed the firing; and TACOM knew that he had observed this without the agency having first issued me the prerequisite 30 days notice, violating 5 USC § 7513.(b) whjich requires 30 days ADVANCE notice with opportunity to reply.

          Wherefore the agency decided to obstruct my obtaining review in the EEOC forum. TACOM is in Warren, Michigan. TACOM therefore unlawfully forced the case to be heard against my will, and in violation of 29 CFR § 1613.403, in the corrupt Chicago Cook County system, specifically, the federal "Merit Systems Protection Board," with same type of "integrity" as such Cook County judges! (The Chicago MSPB office has jurisdiction over Michigan federal employee cases, when the federal employees voluntarily seek such review; and that was the pretext).

          I sued in federal court to get review, specifically, EEOC review, of my appeal of being fired without notice. No federal employee has ever lost a case in such a circumstance (except me, at MSPB!). And my case would be even easier to win, due to the Perez letter citing observing the firing.

          However, the sad state of judicial institutions (in essence, as Molly Ivins in reporting the above-cited Texas whistleblower case, called it, "legalized bribery" and/or a racist attitude among federal attorneys and judges), made me the one and only exception. To prevent my appeal being heard, they said I applied to disability retire myself! retroactively, years after the firing, long after the one-year statute of limitations, contrary to all medical writings!! And then they ignored it when my doctor wrote the court and said I did no such thing, I have no medical condition preventing me working!!

          Others on "total disability" had to have significant medical data showing 100% inability to do the job! The civil service system provided no "partial disability" (1-99%). The rule was 100% disability necessary to qualify, anything less, application denied. I am the healthiest "totally disabled" person you will ever meet!

          However, "once bribed, always bribed" (meaning, no retraction even when caught) so I am on total disability at taxpayer expense! That does not promote efficiency of the service, but is contrary to it (the whole idea of course, behind illegally getting rid of a whistleblower. And my appeal of being fired illegally was never heard in the 29 CFR § 1613 system I want!! In addition, I sought review of the agency decision to even apply to force me onto disability. The agency refuses to allow that request for review to be heard either!

          There is more evidence showing the cigarette hazard for those who wish more details.

          In view of it being known a century ago, the hazard cannot legitimately be denied! As Starr's conduct obstructing my getting EEOC review, violated federal and state law, I filed a complaint on the subject in January 1991 pursuant to this being discriminatory (others are not denied EEOC review on request). Investigation of that complaint is being obstructed as well. This is further obstruction of justice. Starr wants to force others to testify, but he doesn't do so in my case pending against him for now over eight years.

           To try to get review of the matter to begin on merits, I filed a petition to attempt to get an order to move the case forward in Washington, D.C. The text of that petition and copies of others of the papers from my voluminous case file are reproduced below.

---

Related Websites

Analysis of Chicago Area Judges

The Website Promoting Justice For This Situation

An Neutral Private Citizen's Analysis of Kenneth W. Starr and the Like

         While decision is pending on whether to even allow review on the merits to begin, the petitioner will continue to post additional materials from the case file, including issues on the merits, as able.

         Your assistance is requested. Please write to the President asking him to order a genuine investigation, and when he verifies that no notice of charges was issued me (unlike what is provided to others accused of genuine wrongdoing), to reinstate me.

The President's Address for Employee Issues

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue % White House Office of Agency Liasion Old Executive Office Building, Room 6 Washington DC 20502

         "Removal" is defined as "A disciplinary separation action, other than for inefficiency or unacceptable performance . . . where the employee is at fault," according to Federal Personnel Manual Supplement 296-33, Subchapter 35, Glossary, page 35-11, pursuant to pre-identified (30 days prior) written notice of charges of violating conduct rules or performance standards, citing the rules, qualifications requirements, and/or performance standards involved as allegedly having been flagrantly and willfully violated, incidents, dates, witness names, etc., and typically citing prior corrective action (warnings, unsatisfactory ratings, reprimands, suspensions, etc.) having failed to secure improvement in performance and/or conduct..

         You can easily verify the lack of notice. Cite the Freedom of Information Act, 5 USC § 552. Request a copy of the notice of charges (misconduct, malperformance, etc., warranting disciplinary removal) citing the rules, qualifications requirements, and/or performance standards involved, incidents, dates, witnesses, etc., all 30 days prior to ordering me off the premises. When you get a denial letter, or no response, you will have verified my claim. Of course, when there is no notice, legally the person is on the rolls. Analogy: when there is no divorce decree, there is no divorce, no matter how many years have transpired!

Analysis of Chicago Area Judges Where MSPB Is

A Recent Texas Firing Of A Whistleblower

Email@Crime Prevention Officer