This week, former presidential adviser, Karl Rove, has been the subject of international headlines, greeting the demands that he appear before Congress with a queer and deafening silence. According to his lawyer, Rove has been ordered by the White House (the Bush Administration) not to obey the subpoena or give testimony about the possible politicization of the Department of Justice. Congress may have to send out the Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest Rove and bring him to a hearing, no matter what President Bush wants.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched Senator Barbara Boxer convene a hearing, the subject of which was the profound corruption that has rotted away the core of the Environmental Protection Agency. Special interests, dirty money and corrupt politicians have changed the mission of the EPA from being one of protecting public and environmental health to being one of protecting the profits of chemical manufacturers and polluters. Strangely, the head of the EPA did not show up for the hearing, despite requests that he be present to answer questions regarding the obvious criminal activity going on in his agency. Again, there was a very strange silence in that room, filled with senators and media but lacking any testimony from the head of the EPA.

Here in California, we have the same silence ringing in our ears. With the threat of a biochemical assault hanging over the heads of 7 millions citizens, people are demanding answers to their questions and are being met with silence.

I want to know why U.S. Congressman Sam Farr’s direct demand that USDA Secretary, Ed Schafer, and Undersecretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs, Bruce Knight, explain to him how the LBAM was classified as a class A pest in the first place has still not received a reply over a month later.

I want to know why Major Tim Wilcox, whose baby nearly died after being forced by the CDFA to inhale Checkmate Pesticide in 2007, has never received the slightest acknowledgment from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to whom he wrote, pleading for help.

I want to know why neither Sen. Diane Feinstein, Sen. Barbara Boxer, Senator Carol Migden and Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s letters to the USDA and other officials have received no reply.

I want to know why the Monterey Bay Aquarium refused to let their neighbors speak to their staff regarding the dangers of spraying Monterey Bay, and why, even after hundreds of sea birds died from Checkmate spray, the aquarium has maintained a mysterious silence about the poisoning.

I want to know why not one of the 43 Californian Audubon Society chapters I’ve contacted cares that birds have been and will be killed by blanket aerial spraying of California. I want to know why I have not received a single concerned reply.

What can you add to my list?

The policy of silence in California is deadly. Hundreds of families have already been sickened, untold wildlife has died, and our air and water has been polluted with biochemicals and microscopic plastic which causes human fatality. Again and again, our demands for reasonable answers, for rational explanations as to the logic behind this assault on California are met with, at best, lies and at worst, utter silence.

It would appear that what they are experiencing in Washington D.C., with a president who can order someone to defy congress and a host of agencies that are sweltering in sickly corruption, is happening across the United States.

Let it be remembered that when the Ford Pinto was put out on the market, the manufacturers knew that a certain percentage of purchasers would die because of a malfunction in the car’s construction. But, Ford did the math. And, they realized that the total they would have to pay out in lawsuits was less than the total profits they would make before the car was recalled. So, they made a choice. The innocent people who would die were expendable, because a good margin of profit could still be accrued by releasing the car.

And, isn’t this what we are seeing in our nation and state? For whatever dark and unspeakable reason, the profit being made off the illegal spraying of human beings makes sense to a few criminals. When infants like little Jack Wilcox go into respiratory failure, when infants die after 2, 3, 100, 450 exposures to this deadly pesticide, perhaps a few dollars will be paid out in lawsuits if anyone is committed enough to actually get a ruling against the perpetrators. The money that will have to go out, however, cannot compare to the billions coming in for CDFA and Stewart Resnick, manufacturer of this poison.

They need only bide their time. Keep mum. Spray the people. Scrape away their piles of money. Deal with some small consequences later. In this life, silence is serving them well.