Santa George WPE Bush has had, we all agree, too long a run at ‘gifting’ the nation with disaster after disaster, bad policy after bad policy.
And, on the eve of the holidays (Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza, New Year’s, Obama’s Inauguration),
Santa Bush is working to put coal into as many lumps into coal into our stockings, our rivers, our lungs, our lives as he can.
“I’m dreaming of a polluted Christmas …”
Despite voters’ overwhelming rejection of Republican ideology in the 2008 election, the GOP is using the waning days of the Bush administration to ram a host of harmful regulations down our throats. These last-minute regulations are not subject to any oversight — they will be completely legal once Bush signs off on them — and will have lasting detrimental effects upon our health care, environment, civil liberties, and labor practices.
Yes, George the WPE (WORST President Ever) has had his team working over time to figure out what lumps of coal that they can force out in the waning days of the Administration.
The only (ONLY) potential sweet spot is the potential that the Bush Administration misjudged the timing, that they have mistimed the clock on regulatory changes such that the incoming 111th Congress and the Obama Administration might … might be able to turn back the clock (at least on some of these).
The best option for overturning the rules, ironically, may be a gift bestowed on Obama by Newt Gingrich. Known as the Congressional Review Act, it was passed in 1996 to give Congress the option of overriding what GOP leaders viewed at the time as excessive regulation by Bill Clinton. The CRA allows Congress to not only kill a new rule within 60 days, but to do so with a simple, filibuster-immune majority. De Rugy, the George Mason scholar, expects Democrats in the House and Senate to make “very active use of the Congressional Review Act.”
But even this option, it turns out, is fraught with obstacles. First, the CRA requires a separate vote on each individual regulation. Second, the act prohibits reviving any part of a rule that has been squelched. Since Bush’s rules sometimes contain useful reforms – the move to limit the Family and Medical Leave Act also extends benefits for military families – spiking the rules under the CRA would leave Obama unable to restore or augment those benefits in the future
But, the possibility the Congress might act hasn’t kept the WPE from pushing through a lot of coal.
When given the opportunity to be “naughty or nice” this holiday season, Bush has clearly opted to go down as one of the naughtiest, most sinister presidents in our nation’s history.
Considering the rush of regulatory nightmares that BushCo is seeking to inflict on us (the U.S.), Brave New Films has some questions to ask of BushCo fellow travelers such as the following two:
Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (MN: 06) claims to be a champion of family values and a staunch supporter of women in need. Yet she remains mum regarding a GOP regulation that would limit aid for families benefiting from Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF). As we weather the economic storm, people in Bachmann’s district will depend upon government assistance to care for their families. Will Michelle Bachmann continue to fight for Minnesota’s families, or is it Party before values.
Well, best not to ask Michele to speak up on anything having to do with Global Warming since, as she remind you that it isn’t real and has nothing to do with humanity.
Sigh, how about the man that Darcy Burner should have already replaced and will replace come two years from now:
Congressman David Reichert (WA: 08) “Dave is committed to improving our health care system to provide affordable, better quality health care for children, families, seniors, and individuals.” Note that this quote from Congressman Reichert’s website omits ‘women.’ A proposed regulation would drastically expand the ill-conceived ‘conscience objection’ for health care workers. If it goes into effect, the regulation would have disastrous effects upon women’s health care, and in many cases would leave low-income women with nowhere to turn. Rep. Reichert’s silence on this issue reveals his extreme position on women’s health.
To give just a taste of what is going on, how about these ‘few’ environmental and energy last-minute regulations, as described by Rolling Stone: Bush’s Final FU
BIG COAL In early December, the administration
finalized a rule that allows the industry to dump waste from mountaintop mining into neighboring streams and valleys, a practice opposed by the governors of both Tennessee and Kentucky. “This makes it legal to use the most harmful coal-mining technology available,” says Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Let’s be clear: Mountain Top Removal (MTR) is beyond travesty, it is rape of the earth, warfare on America, and a highly destructive practice on multiple levels. If you missed them, check out last year’s 30 Days to Save the Mountains series here at Dkos.
A separate rule also relaxes air-pollution standards near national parks, allowing Big Coal to build plants next to some of America’s most spectacular vistas – even though nine of 10 EPA regional administrators dissented from the rule or criticized it in writing. “They’re willing to sacrifice the laws that protect our national parks in order to build as many new coal plants as possible,” says Mark Wenzler, director of clean-air programs for the National Parks Conservation Association. “This is the last gasp of Bush and Cheney’s disastrous policy, and they’ve proven there’s no line they won’t cross.”
So who cares if you can actual see anything from a National Park? And, who are you to complain about any air pollution there, after all, it isn’t like you rode your bike there, is it?
BIG OIL In a rule that becomes effective just three days before Obama takes office, the administration has opened up nearly 2 million acres of mountainous lands in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming for the mining of oil shale – an energy-intensive process that also drains precious water resources. “The administration has admitted that it has no idea how much of Colorado’s water supply would be required to develop oil shale, no idea where the power would come from and no idea whether the technology is even viable,” says Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado. What’s more, Bush is slashing the royalties that Big Oil pays for oil-shale mining from 12.5 percent to five percent. “A pittance,” says Salazar.
That Ken Salazar, by the way, who will be Secretary of the Interior. Hmmm … wonder whether he’ll have this regulation in the bulls-eye come entry into office.
BIG AGRICULTURE Factory farms are getting two major Christmas presents from Bush this year. Circumventing the Clean Water Act, the administration has approved last-minute regulations that will allow animal waste from factory farms to seep, unmonitored, into America’s waterways. The regulation leaves it up to the farms themselves to decide whether their pollution is dangerous enough to require them to apply for a permit. “It’s the fox guarding the henhouse – all too literally,” says Pope. The water rule goes into effect December 22nd, and a related rule in the works would exempt factory farms from reporting air pollution from animal waste.
When you go swimming in the river, make sure that you don’t pee … even though a couple hundred thousand hogs and other farm animals have already done so upriver.
BIG CHEMICAL In October, two weeks after consulting with industry lobbyists, the White House exempted more than 100 major polluters from monitoring their emissions of lead, a deadly neurotoxin.
Who cares about a little lead in the air? As if we don’t have millions of brain cells to burn. Why inconvenience industry over just a few of them?
Seemingly hellbent on a more toxic future, the administration will also allow industry to treat 3 billion pounds of hazardous waste as “recycling” each year, and to burn another 200 million pounds of hazardous waste reclassified as “fuel,” increasing cancer-causing air pollution. The rule change is a reward to unrepentant polluters: Nearly 90 percent of the factories that will be permitted to burn toxic waste have already been cited for violating existing environmental protections.
Let’s be honest, that really is an effort to save the taxpayers money. After all, it costs us lots of money to pay people to inspect and evaluate pollution levels, to write citations that Santa Bush has now ripped up and put in the stockings of polluting industry executives. The WPE simply intended to reduce the government costs … right.
For more on the sad race to the finish, see:
3 comments
Bush is hell bent to undermine Obama in any way that he can, the MF!!!
I honestly believe that Bush, given enough time, would destroy the planet if he had a chance, or at least this country. It’s not stupidity, it’s evil, just plain evil!