Bush administration: Screwing the earth to the very end

[GW in Ohio]

For the past eight years, we’ve watched—painfully—as the Bush administration mucked up the environment over and over again. From not endorsing the Kyoto Protocol to suppressing scientific evidence of global warming to reneging on a campaign promise to clean up coal-fired power plants to weakening the Endangered Species Act, the past several years have been a low point for green legislation and regulation. And now, when there finally may be a light at the end of the smog-filled tunnel, Dubya’s fixin’ to weaken environmental regulations even more before he leaves office in January.

According to today’s Washington Post, the administration has as many as 90 new regulations in the works, a good handful of which would adversely affect the environment. For one, a rule under final review by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would get rid of environmental impact statements required for fisheries management decisions. Another regulation aims to allow power plants to pollute more, while an additional rule would lower limits on emissions from coal-fired power plants near national parks.

The list goes on and on, and it’s sickening. What’s also sickening is the gaggle of industry lobbyists who are rushing up to the OMB’s door like trick-or-treating children on Halloween.

From the Post:

The burst of activity has made this a busy period for lobbyists who fear that industry views will hold less sway after the elections. The doors at the New Executive Office Building have been whirling with corporate officials and advisers pleading for relief or, in many cases, for hastened decision making.

According to the Office of Management and Budget’s regulatory calendar, the commercial scallop-fishing industry came in two weeks ago to urge that proposed catch limits be eased, nearly bumping into National Mining Association officials making the case for easing rules meant to keep coal slurry waste out of Appalachian streams.

What’s worse is once these regulations are put in place (even if they are during Bush’s eleventh hour), it will be very difficult for the new administration to overturn them.

Once such rules take effect, they typically can be undone only through a laborious new regulatory proceeding, including lengthy periods of public comment, drafting and mandating reanalysis.

“They want these rules to continue to have an impact long after they leave office,” said Matthew Madina, a regulatory expert at OMB Watch, a nonprofit group critical of what it calls the Bush administration’s penchant for deregulating in areas where industry wants more freedom. He called the coming deluge “a last-minute assault on the public…happening on multiple fronts.”

[GW in Ohio]

Can these people really be this evil? It boggles the mind.....

[stephanie]

What a strange cult this environmentalism has become..

the earth has been around for millions of years, yet in just a few short years, MAN IS GOING TO DESTROY IT...

that's so whacked out there...:cuckoo:

but I'm sure if we give them lots of MONEY, the environmentalist can save the earth for us..

[namvet]

Bush should leave it in the same mess he found it................:lol:

[hjmick]

I guess the Clinton administration was just as evil.

[namvet]

I guess the Clinton administration was just as evil.

he was impeached. then let off the hook. can you feature Gore taking over, ugh

[crin63]

I hope the President dismantles all the whacked-out environmental laws he can before leaving office. The laws are ridiculous and have cost many better paying jobs. Environmental whackos have killed jobs in California. We used to have most of the aerospace industry and several car manufacturing plants but they're gone now thanks to all the enviro regulations. Manufacturing just keeps on leaving California.

Stupid Liberals complain when jobs go overseas but they are the ones that drive them out of the country with taxes and regulations up the wazoo. Now they're gonna add more enviro regs, health care and even more taxes on the shoulders of businesses that are left and drive them out also. I forgot the dear leader is going to tax them or take what was it 40% of their assets if they try to leave.

Well at least in the short term enviro regs are good for the construction industry right up until the plants close their doors.

[stephanie]

he was impeached. then let off the hook. can you feature Gore taking over, ugh

well, don't look now, but the Gores, the Deans, the Kerrys, the Clintons, are all getting ready to take over, and it is going to get real ugly, real quick..

mark my words..

[avatar4321]

Can these people really be this evil? It boggles the mind.....

Yeah cant imagine why he isnt dismantaling the EPA completely. The Constitution has no authority to act in environmental matters and to be perfectly honest, the laws arent really protecting anything.

[namvet]

I think Omarxists claimed the constitution is outdated. what's that tell ya????

[GW in Ohio]

These environmental regulations the Bush people have rescinded or relaxed......

It's like a parting stink bomb thrown into the body politic.

It's like their final "fuck you" to the rest of the world.

This gang will rightly be reviled as long as history books are being written.

[stephanie]

we are all doomed...doomed I tell ya...

we are killing the earth...

give it some MONEY...

[April15]

If you are too blind to see then you deserve what you get! The only real drawback is it will be your grandchildren who get to die from your errors just as we are now facing an economic crisis started back in 1982.

[stephanie]

If you are too blind to see then you deserve what you get! The only real drawback is it will be your grandchildren who get to die from your errors just as we are now facing an economic crisis started back in 1982.

well what do you suggest be done to fix it?? and where do you plan on getting the money to do it??

should we all start by giving up our cars..
turn our heat off in our homes.
cook outside over a woodfire.

[April15]

well what do you suggest be done to fix it?? and where do you plan on getting the money to do it??What an open question.With Bush eliminating most of the environmental protections with his pen it will be a long hard road to get back to just the same place we are now.
I think everyone is able to reduce their damage to the ecosystem in some way. Almost all industrialized nations have changed their ways, except China and they are on the way to be very eco friendly, and had no job losses. Granted greed is taken out of the picture in these countries and ethics are not just talked about.
Beyond that it would be a large essay and that I would HAVE TO CHARGE FOR.

[stephanie]

What an open question.With Bush eliminating most of the environmental protections with his pen it will be a long hard road to get back to just the same place we are now.
I think everyone is able to reduce their damage to the ecosystem in some way. Almost all industrialized nations have changed their ways, except China and they are on the way to be very eco friendly, and had no job losses. Granted greed is taken out of the picture in these countries and ethics are not just talked about.
Beyond that it would be a large essay and that I would HAVE TO CHARGE FOR.


well, there ya go..all the hysterics is just that...

[Sitarro]

What an open question.With Bush eliminating most of the environmental protections with his pen it will be a long hard road to get back to just the same place we are now.
I think everyone is able to reduce their damage to the ecosystem in some way. Almost all industrialized nations have changed their ways, except China and they are on the way to be very eco friendly, and had no job losses. Granted greed is taken out of the picture in these countries and ethics are not just talked about.
Beyond that it would be a large essay and that I would HAVE TO CHARGE FOR.

Sounds like China is perfect for you, take Gabodipshit and Joey Tin with you when you leave. What is handy is the way China controls the internet, we won't here from any of you once you get there.:laugh2::laugh2::laugh2:

[Sitarro]

For the past eight years, we’ve watched—painfully—as the Bush administration mucked up the environment over and over again. From not endorsing the Kyoto Protocol to suppressing scientific evidence of global warming to reneging on a campaign promise to clean up coal-fired power plants to weakening the Endangered Species Act, the past several years have been a low point for green legislation and regulation. And now, when there finally may be a light at the end of the smog-filled tunnel, Dubya’s fixin’ to weaken environmental regulations even more before he leaves office in January.

According to today’s Washington Post, the administration has as many as 90 new regulations in the works, a good handful of which would adversely affect the environment. For one, a rule under final review by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would get rid of environmental impact statements required for fisheries management decisions. Another regulation aims to allow power plants to pollute more, while an additional rule would lower limits on emissions from coal-fired power plants near national parks.

The list goes on and on, and it’s sickening. What’s also sickening is the gaggle of industry lobbyists who are rushing up to the OMB’s door like trick-or-treating children on Halloween.

From the Post:

The burst of activity has made this a busy period for lobbyists who fear that industry views will hold less sway after the elections. The doors at the New Executive Office Building have been whirling with corporate officials and advisers pleading for relief or, in many cases, for hastened decision making.

According to the Office of Management and Budget’s regulatory calendar, the commercial scallop-fishing industry came in two weeks ago to urge that proposed catch limits be eased, nearly bumping into National Mining Association officials making the case for easing rules meant to keep coal slurry waste out of Appalachian streams.

What’s worse is once these regulations are put in place (even if they are during Bush’s eleventh hour), it will be very difficult for the new administration to overturn them.

Once such rules take effect, they typically can be undone only through a laborious new regulatory proceeding, including lengthy periods of public comment, drafting and mandating reanalysis.

“They want these rules to continue to have an impact long after they leave office,” said Matthew Madina, a regulatory expert at OMB Watch, a nonprofit group critical of what it calls the Bush administration’s penchant for deregulating in areas where industry wants more freedom. He called the coming deluge “a last-minute assault on the public…happening on multiple fronts.”

The Kyoto bullshit, you are a dumb ass aren't you?

[April15]

Sounds like China is perfect for you, take Gabodipshit and Joey Tin with you when you leave. What is handy is the way China controls the internet, we won't here from any of you once you get there.:laugh2::laugh2::laugh2:I am to tall to be in a land of midgets. Once again you miss the information.

[Psychoblues]

Lewis Black, the comedian, is correct. There are a good number of you idiots that think that "the Flintstones" is a documentary!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Any indication that mankind is not contributing to the overall demise or otherwise well being of our environment whether in air and water quality, wild life considerations, chemical poisoning to our citizens, global warming, product safety, on and on and on by any supposedly thinking person automatically excludes them my list of humans with credibility that I desire additional information from. From that point forward, it becomes entertainment only!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's a tough life, but I do the best I can with it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

God Bless America!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I Just Want To Celebrate!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:salute::beer::clap::laugh2::beer::salute:

[Sitarro]

I am to tall to be in a land of midgets. Once again you miss the information.

Yao Ming might disagree with you April.

[avatar4321]

Isnt it an amazing coincidence that the solutions to all these so called environmental problems is the same socialist bullcrap that hasnt worked for the past 100 years?

[gabosaurus]

Whatever is done can be undone. And most likely will be.

Wait until Obama takes office. Tree hugging breaks will be mandatory in all elementary schools.

[GW in Ohio]

Isnt it an amazing coincidence that the solutions to all these so called environmental problems is the same socialist bullcrap that hasnt worked for the past 100 years?

Conservatives have traditionally maintained a "fuck you" attitude toward the environment, and you guys are maintaining that tradition, proudly. (That's always fascinated me...the way some right wingers not only flip the bird to any environmental concerns...they do it proudly.)

Fortunately, the people who'll be in charge come January 20th do give a shit about the environment we all have to live in (not to mention, our children).

So step aside, while the people who aren't mentally mired back in the 1950s go to work.

And try not to litter the roadside with your Budweiser cans and McDonalds wrappers.

[Psychoblues]

You got that ri,,,,,,rig,,,,,,,,righ,,,,,,,,,,correct, GW!!!!!!!!!



Conservatives have traditionally maintained a "fuck you" attitude toward the environment, and you guys are maintaining that tradition, proudly. (That's always fascinated me...the way some right wingers not only flip the bird to any environmental concerns...they do it proudly.)

Fortunately, the people who'll be in charge come January 20th do give a shit about the environment we all have to live in (not to mention, our children).

So step aside, while the people who aren't mentally mired back in the 1950s go to work.

And try not to litter the roadside with your Budweiser cans and McDonalds wrappers.

Don't expect any idiots here to understand.

God Bless America!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I Just Want To Celebrate!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:salute::beer::clap::laugh2::beer::salute:

Psychoblues

[MtnBiker]

Don't worry GW, Obama can institute your wet dream of forced abortions in an effort to reduce the population on the planet for the sake of the environment. And then all will be right with the world.


All of our environmental problems have their origin in overpopulation. There are just too many people for the earth to sustain. All of our problems, from pollution to global warming, have their roots in overpopulation.

But unless all the nations of the world come together and agree to impose draconian limits on reproduction, we will continue to produce more humans than the earth can sustain.

[GW in Ohio]

Don't worry GW, Obama can institute your wet dream of forced abortions in an effort to reduce the population on the planet for the sake of the environment. And then all will be right with the world.

How about education and birth control to limit populations?

Nobody's forcing anybody else to have an abortion, except in your overwrought imagination.

[MtnBiker]

China has population limits, do you believe no forced abortions happens there?

[stephanie]

maybe the little Marxist will put in place the ONE CHILD ONLY policy...

gw would love that, I bet..it would save the earth for people like him, who thinks he was put here to control it..:thumb:

[MtnBiker]

maybe the little Marxist will put in place the ONE CHILD ONLY policy...

gw would love that, I bet..it would save the earth for people like him, who thinks he was put here to control it..:thumb:


Perhaps he will, a one child only policy. Ah oh, Tom and Sally's birth control didn't work, they are going to have another kid, what to do? Obama could move toward forced sterilization. All of this will be good for the environment.

[crin63]

Forced abortions, sterilization, euthanasia of the elderly and infirm as well as limiting the number of children people can have will obviously have to be mandated eventually to save the planet and its resources. After all, landscaping is more important than people right.

[GW in Ohio]

Nov. 11, 2008 | SAN ANTONIO -- This may sound like just another Erin Brockovich-style tear-jerker. Enter stage right: Poor people exposed to toxic chemicals who worry that the government is ignoring their plight.

But the story of the hundreds of sick people who live near the former Kelly Air Force Base illuminates an entirely new manner in which the Bush administration has diluted science and put public health at risk. This year, largely in obeisance to the Pentagon, the nation's biggest polluter, the White House diminished a little-known but critical process at the Environmental Protection Agency for assessing toxic chemicals that impacts thousands of Americans.

As a coalition of more than 40 national and local environmental organizations put it in a letter to EPA administrators this past April: "EPA, under pressure from the Bush White House, has given the foxes the keys to the environmental protection henhouse."

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So meet lifelong San Antonio residents Robert and Lupe Alvarado. For decades, the Alvarados, whose modest home sits around two miles from Kelly, have lived with toxic chemicals underfoot. This is the poor part of town, adorned with chain-link fences and black metal bars concealing the windows. Many houses lack a proper foundation and rest on simple concrete slabs.

Beneath the Alvarados' house and those of their neighbors are shallow pools of groundwater that are polluted with tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, a chemical associated with cancer, liver and kidney disease. Before the Kelly base closed in 2001, mechanics used PCE to degrease parts on airplanes and fighter jets. For decades, they chronically dumped the solvent into poorly sealed or unsealed waste pits on the base, where it seeped underground, forming a plume that sprawls over four square miles under 23,000 homes and businesses. Locals refer to the area as "the toxic triangle."

On cool or rainy days, when the Alvarados close the windows and shut off the air conditioning, a sweet chemical smell floods the house. When they eat dinner during these times, says Robert, 66, it's like tasting something acrid. "We drink bottled water but there's nothing we can do about the air except go outside and wait," says Lupe, 64.

Robert, a handsome man with almond skin, limps across his cramped living room with a black metal cane. He shows me a letter that recently arrived from the local hospital, congratulating him; he'd qualified for a kidney transplant. A few years ago he suffered a brain aneurysm, causing him to become nearly blind. His wife and one of his daughters both have battled thyroid cancer. "We know at least 15 people on this street alone who have some sort of cancer," says Robert, a former labor relations employee at Delta Air Lines. "We call ourselves the living dead."

In the Alvarados' front yard, a purple cross sticks out of a cluster of banana trees. The crosses, distributed by a local community group, punctuate front yards throughout the neighborhood. They mark homes where people are battling cancer or other illnesses, an estimated 25 percent of households, according to local activists.

Surveys conducted by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry have found elevated levels of kidney, liver and cervical cancer, leukemia and low birth weights in the neighborhoods that surround Kelly Air Force Base. A survey by the University of Texas found that 91 percent of adults in the area experienced multiple illnesses, including chronic sinus infections, nausea, heart and lung disease. Based on these studies, the area qualifies as a cancer cluster (with a higher rate of terminal illness, per capita, than areas of a similar size), says Wilma Subra, a chemist and environmental health activist based in Louisiana, who has consulted with Kelly community activists.

Although it has conducted limited testing, the EPA acknowledges that it's possible for PCE vapor to rise from groundwater into people's living rooms and kitchens. Yet it says the Alvarados and their neighbors have nothing to fear. Based on EPA air quality tests inside five area homes, the nation's environmental guardian claims that it's safe for residents to live above the plume for the next 40 to 100 years, or the amount of time it will take for the chemicals to naturally dissipate.

The fact is, EPA scientists haven't completed an updated scientific assessment of PCE, including its health risks, for a decade. Worse, a comprehensive review of the carcinogenic chemical may never be coming. Anti-regulatory crusaders inside the Bush White House have peopled the EPA with top officials apparently more concerned with limiting government spending than public health. According to critics within and outside the EPA, the agency has stifled independent research and compromised scientific assessments of all manner of toxins and carcinogens that Americans breathe, drink and touch.

"It feels like Stalin-era Russia, like the administration set themselves up to decide what's allowable science and what isn't," says a high-ranking staff scientist at the EPA, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Until the recent economic crash, this has been such an anti-regulatory administration. One of the ways to undermine regulations is to undermine the science behind them. It's absolutely shocking what's going on."

Public health officials say this attempt to derail the scientific evaluation of toxins is one of the most damning legacies of the Bush administration. In late September, the Government Accountability Office issued a scathing critique of the EPA's new toxic-assessment procedures. It concluded that the secretive procedures compromise scientific credibility and sacrifice the public's trust in government. Despite such hefty criticism, public officials fear that because the new procedures have been instituted at the EPA so far below the public radar, their harmful impact will survive long after Bush leaves office. It will take a bold and expedient move by Barack Obama or the next Congress to curtail the influence of the Pentagon and other government agencies on the EPA.



Come January 20, when we're rid of this Bush crowd, they will live in infamy for all time.

[stephanie]

Just because you can spell "INFAMY", doesn't make it so....:laugh2:

[stephanie]

It will take a bold and expedient move by Barack Obama or the next Congress to curtail the influence of the Pentagon and other government agencies on the EPA.

scratch a liberal, find a fascist..

[MtnBiker]

China has population limits, do you believe no forced abortions happens there?

GW never bothered to answer this question, hmmm.