The legislative process for California
Senate Bill 96 was fixed so that no opposition, or even basis
for opposition, was appropriately reported or readily
accessible to the public before any vote, or prepared for
transparent discussion. If passed, this bill could make water
fluoridation mandatory for most of the state of California.
Any community in California that has 10,000 or more water
hook-ups will be mandatorily fluoridated if one-time capital
expenses are offered by an outside agency. Fluoridation
supporters pushed this bill through the Assembly and Senate in
three days and now it is in Governor Schwarzenegger's office
for review sometime this month.
However, even Legislators who opposed the "Gut and Amend"
tactics, the certainty of coercion to make ratepayers pay for
operation and maintenance, and the reverse indemnification
where the public water system bears the financial
responsibility for the liabilities and defense of all the
fluoridation promoters and State, joined in on the landslide
vote in the Assembly and Senate.
These numbers of votes are out of proportion for any respect
for local control. The trade-off, the fix, the backroom deal,
were all in play; and now it takes you and everyone you can
connect with to stop this multifold insanity.
Understand the subterfuge: The California Dental Association
newsletter bragged about how the original 1995 legislation was
purposely guided through the legislature so that opposition
would have no reasonable opportunity to respond.
Where do you start?`
Details of the measure's flaws below.
The California State Legislature used all of the tricks
available to prevent public participation and assure
information was not available to legislators in their decision
making that will likely, and is intended to, effect what 35
million Californians will eat and drink for the rest of their
lives, as well as who will pay for it, and who will defend the
coercive action.
As reported, on Friday, August 27, the Senate voted 31 to 3 to
support the Gut and Amend Senate Bill 96 that was just
railroaded through the Assembly with waivers of the required
30 days for public review, and waivers of public notice, so
that interested parties could not participate and respond .
The newspaper stories do not mention that opposition from
everyone but the Sierra Club went unreported in the analyses
on the official web sites provided by the Senate and Assembly,
until August 28, after the Bill had cleared both houses,
despite timely written submissions, and even oral testimony.
This makes it very convenient to avoid reporting on what basis
opposition was submitted, and as you will notice, not one of
the groups of citizens that enacted their own initiative
ordinances to protect the "bait and switch" from what the
general public believes is toothpaste grade substances to
untested, unapproved industrial grade substances that contain
significant concentrations of lead and arsenic, were contacted
by the media, or represented in the analyses presented to
legislators.
There was no intention for full disclosure, full review, or
full participation in this "Gut and Amend" and hide-and-seek,
waiver-of-all-public-notice, legislative process.
Despite the repetition of news articles that point to the
bill's effect on San Diego, the language is expressly created
to halt ALL local water quality control, even over local
regulations restricting contaminated products from being used
under the guise of "children's dental health."
A full-on statewide campaign to immediately inform Governor
Schwarzenegger of your disgust for this legislative process is
essential to not only preserving the quality of your water,
but preserving a semblance of the pursuit of transparent and
participative legislation.
I have repeated, below, some of the reasons for Governor
Schwarzenegger to veto this bill based on legislative flaws.
I request that you write, fax, email, and call; and ask every
other Californian to write, fax, email, and call until you get
through to the Governor's office;
However, you should be aware that the proponents of
fluoridation have touted this as a cleanup of the fluoridation
legislation enacted in 1995. We fully expect that any attempt
to persuade the Governor to act on the basis of your
opposition to fluoride will fall on deaf ears.
Please restrict your opposition to the actions of the bill.
Important aspects to remember in your
asking for Governor Schwarzenegger to veto SB96:
It is highly unlikely that the Governor will be reading many
or possibly any of the actual letters. It is more likely that
an aide will gather the requests and either lump them all
together (so no matter what you say it just counts as an
opposition and request for veto), or that they will be placed
as separate classifications defined by the substance of the
letter; and in any case someone on the staff will write a
synopsis or summary.
Straight out opposition to fluoridation is what the proponents
of fluoridation hope you address. This bill openly admits it
intends to force those opposed to fluoridation to acquiesce.
Unless the Governor or the staff is already predisposed to
reverse the original bill, the focus of opposition to
fluoridation will probably dilute the practical reasons for
vetoing this bill no matter what the subject matter.
Is this a request that you not identify the insanity of
fluoridation? No, it is not.
What we ARE requesting is that you recognize your audience and
tailor your message, first of all to the Bill and its manner
of passage, and second of all to what would have been
revealed.
"The reason the "Gut and Amend," waivers of public notice, and
hide-and-seek committee assignments and hearings in the
Legislature, was so important to proponents of fluoridation is
because ...
1) Tell
them how the details of the bill are intended to coerce public
water systems and citizens rights into unjustifiable
positions. I have copied from an earlier email and pasted
below.
and/or
2) Then tell them what an
unbiased review of the fluoridation status, the Congressional
investigation, the shifts in professional recommendations and
scientific determination of effectiveness, exposure levels
from all sources, identification and contamination of
fluoridation chemicals, and INFORMATION AND EVENTS SINCE THE
LEGISLATURE'S DECISION IN 1995 would have revealed.
Choose one or two and say it effectively:
"Given the choice, voters rarely say yes to fluoridation.
It is only in back room wheeling and dealing where a 3 to 5
persons majority of a City Council, or an abusive legislative
process where the decision makers can't answer the simplest of
questions, do we see public water systems becoming
fluoridated. This "Gut and Amend" is the epitome of the behind
the scenes deal that disgusts the average citizen."
Events that have happened, or
findings since 1995 legislation:
After 9 years of state legislation no one in any city, to be
fluoridated, or already fluoridating, has answered the
question, "How much fluoride are consumers already receiving
from all other sources other than water?" "In 2004, where is
there any deficiency in ready-access to daily consumption of
fluoride?"
No one has been able to adequately answer how an indigent
family is supposed to afford to follow the professional health
recommendations that baby formula NOT be prepared with
fluoridated water, and children below 6 years of age are
restricted in the prescription amounts of fluoride in non
fluoridated communities to less than our public drinking
water. Where is this money supposed to come from?
The cost to consumers that for health reasons, or desire to
have contaminant-free water, will have to pay $3000 to $10,000
for whole house removal of the fluoride, lead, arsenic and
other contaminants because the free-fluoride ion is smaller
than the water molecule and can not be "filtered" out. Reverse
osmosis and distillation are not affordable to the indigent,
and a huge expense to the average-income family, with even
just drinking water R.O. systems needing replacement of
membranes several times per year.
July 2000 cover story of the Journal of the American Dental
Association and August 17, 2001 Centers for Disease
Control clarifying that ingested fluoride plays no significant
role in reducing tooth decay.
No EPA oversight since 1988 for water additives.
Bait-and-switch. No long-term toxicological studies of the
fluoridation chemicals to be used. EPA has never approved any
fluoride-containing substance for safety and effectiveness for
the purpose of reducing tooth decay.
Admissions that the fluoridation chemicals are the largest
source of arsenic of all water additives.
Escondido peer review of the California Oral Health Needs
Assessment that was used to convince Legislators in 1995 has
shown that the conclusions were not supported by the data.
In a lawsuit with water consumers against the City of
Escondido and our own State Department of Health Services,
both the City and DHS have stipulated to the fact that they
are using and permitting products that have never been studied
and are contaminated with lead and arsenic.
Citizens have had to resort to the time consuming and costly
citizens initiative to gain assurances that their water
districts would adhere to the claims made when water
fluoridation was sold to their evidently too-overworked-to
perform-due-diligence representatives. Some of these enacted
ordinances never mention the word fluoride, but do require
that the health claims made for mass medication with a
substance be approved and that there is no excessive
contamination of the products used. ALL proponents of
fluoridation know this stops fluoridation. As it should.
Please put your opposition to fluoride in the context of
opposition to the enactment of the measure and the manner in
which it was passed through the Legislature with the intent to
discard the rules in favor of special interests.
"This bill intends to do to the initiative process exactly
what it did in the process of passage through the Legislature:
it intends to snuff all legitimate public discussion and
dictate what all Californians will eat and drink for the rest
of our lives with no reference to the reality of what is going
to show up in the truck, or who will pay the price, in money
and in health."
Contacting Governor Schwarzenegger: The Governor's Sacramento Fax number, 916-445-4633,
is always busy. Please try to get through on that number, but
you can also use the other 5 fax #s for the Governor:
951-680-6863; 415-703-2803; 619-525-4640; 213-897-0319,
559-445-5328. His telephone number (He does not answer):
(916) 445-2841
For some reason these links do not open in Netscape from an
email program, and only work from a cut and paste into you
browser:
Reasons why Governor Schwarzenegger
should veto SB96:
California Senate Bill 96, authored by Senator Dede Alpert,
now with co-authors Senator Aanestad, and Assembly Members
Chan, Cavez and Wolk, attempts
1) to
make fluoridation, rather than dental care, a statewide
concern, even beyond the scope of the actions required by the
bill, and without a discussion or showing that the legal
requirements of statewide concern have been fulfilled, nor any
deficiency in access to the dosage goals of fluoridation
through normally available foods and beverages;
2) to establish that this
statute supercedes all initiatives or local regulations that
prohibit or restrict fluoridation, implying that this would
include overriding all local legislation that would restrict
the use of unapproved contaminated products with excess levels
of arsenic and lead;
3) to remove priority of
funding as the purpose of the fluoridation funding priority
list, giving free reign for unelected and non-representative
proponents of fluoridation to pick and choose which public
water system will be coerced into fluoridation without regard
for local circumstance or local responsibility and authority;
4) to force public water
systems to partially fluoridate their systems when not enough
funds are offered to fully comply with Title 22 requirements
of monitoring and maintaining a certain fluoride concentration
throughout at least 80% of the system; and in some cases to
add even more chemicals to compensate for the addition of the
industrial waste products used;
5) to force public water
systems to begin fluoridation on an OFFER of a contract by a
third party (without regard to contractual conditions), which
has been used to extort public water systems to agree to the
use of ratepayer and taxpayer funds for 10 years of operation
and maintenance in order to be reimbursed for the cost of
capital equipment, with no plan for replacing capital
equipment as it deteriorates or depreciates, or paying for
other chemicals or processes necessary to compensate for the
addition of the industrial grade fluorides;
6) to deny public water
systems the costs of loss of opportunity for the use of public
funds while waiting for reimbursement, which for communities
in financial stress may likely force them to compromise
essential services;
7) to deny costs for
indemnification (assuming the liabilities of the actions the
public water systems are forced into), when in fact the author
admits that there is legal action against the public water
systems anticipated;
8) to make the
determination of reasonable cost reliant on a civil engineer
recognized or employed by the State, which translates to
forcing water product quality control based on the minimal
standards of the State instead of the possibly elevated
quality control standards of the public water system;
amounting to another unfunded mandate;
9) to allow extortion of
public water systems by establishing compliance with "offers"
that have included requirements that the public water system
reverse-indemnify the California Dental Association, the
California Dental Association Foundation, the Fluoridation
Task Force, The Dental Health Foundation, and the DEPARTMENT
OF HEALTH SERVICES, and all of their employees and friends __
making the public water systems pay for all liabilities
including defense of all the entities that forced them to act,
including the California Department of Health Services!!!
10) to cover up that:
a)
there has been a Congressional investigation on fluoride that
reveals that there are no long term toxicological studies on
the substances used in 90% of the fluoridation programs, nor
FDA approval of any ingested fluoride for the purpose of
reducing tooth decay;
b) the American Dental
Association and American Academy of Pediatrics revised their
recommendations for fluoride dosages in non fluoridated
communities for children under 6 years of age that show that
the public policy of fluoridation at 1 part per million
exceeds what doctors can prescribe;
c) the July 2000 cover
story of the Journal of the American Dental Association and
the August 17, 2001 Centers for Disease Control report
declares that ingested fluoride plays no significant role in
reducing tooth decay, that any fluoride benefit is topical;
d) samples of certified
fluoridation chemicals reveal arsenic contamination in
concentrations that equate to as high as 1 additional person
per 1000 in a community suffering lung or bladder cancer as a
result of the use of fluoridation chemicals derived from the
phosphate fertilizer industry;
e) the cost of abandoning
the public water system is enormous, and unaffordable for
those with low income, as the free-fluoride ion is smaller
than the water molecule and can not be simply filtered. Costs
for residential consumers, for whole-house recovery to
pre-fluoridation water quality, range from $3000 to $10,000 in
capital equipment and $400+ in annual maintenance.
f) In December 2003 the
Supreme Court ruled in Doe v. Rumsfeld that the use of a
substance to enforce medication on people that has not been
specifically approved for safety and effectiveness for both
the disease it attempts to treat or prevent, or the manner in
which it was to be delivered, is "arbitrary," thus
unconstitutional, if not specifically approved by the FDA,
even if the FDA has not acted to enforce.
The record will show that the legislature
made every attempt to eliminate all participation by the
public and interested parties. In the vernacular, this "Gut
and Amend" is a wholesale sellout of all municipal, citizens'
and public water systems' rights and authorities to the
proponents of fluoridation, and an invitation to "Have at it!
The public water systems are all yours now."
Dear Governor, we fully expect that your recognition of this
ugly, sneaky attempt to run roughshod over all rational
discussion on an issue that concerns 35 million Californians
deserves your veto.
SAMPLE REQUEST FOR VETO
This Request for Veto is prepared for
circulation with patients and customers who participated in
the Redding vote and enactment of their protective ordinance,
who will be signing on with this request in a group format
**********************
I oppose Senate Bill 96
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger,
Contaminant-free and medication-free drinking water is the
most essential preventive health aid in the world.
In November of 2002 the citizens of Redding, CA voted to keep
their drinking water safe for all people of any age and with
any health concern, to drink in any quantity they desire. We
believe this is our right, and the duty of anyone managing
public drinking water.
The ordinance we enacted by citizens initiative does not
prohibit fluoridation. It establishes criteria that assures
that the substance added to the water for the purpose of
medicating us, rather than the water, be fully approved for
safety and effectiveness, and that contaminants such as lead
and arsenic are restricted to levels already established as
our California Public Health Goals.
The fact that these restrictions would stop all fluoridation
without ever using the word "fluoride" should make each and
every individual that gave their knee-jerk support to
fluoridation without investigating the issue beyond the
"endorsement of endorsements" take a whole new look.
Senate Bill 96 is intended to quash the initiative process
that was first incorporated by a California Governor so that
citizens could correct legislative abuse, similar to the
referendum process that initiated your access to office.
SB96 would override all actions for citizens to assure that
contaminated products are not added to our water under the
guise of "helping the children."
The "Gut and Amend," and waiver-of-public-notice tactics used
to pass this through the legislature without ever addressing
opposition are evidence of the same heavy handed abuses in
connection with the quality of our water.
Citizens of Redding had to spend an inordinate amount of time
and money to establish our right to safe drinking water. The
State Department of Health Services told us, and the rest of
the world, that it is none of our business, and opposed our
setting water product quality criteria.
Please veto this bill that would take away the right for local
communities and public water districts to set their own higher
standards for safe and healthful drinking water.
Protect the rights of 35 million Californians to high quality,
contaminant-free, safe drinking water.
