2 posts tagged “epa”
By the "standards" of the Bush administration, this is just another day at the office... but you really have to be amazed that they are doing this crap. It is almost like they know that there is no way that McCain is going to get elected, so they don't mind being completely oblivious to public outcry... I mean, let's face it, as long as the MegaCorp (tm) is happy, then the Bush people are happy. And as for average citizens? Who? As for any government worker who actually tries to do her job... well she clearly has not gotten the Bush & Co. memo which directs them to either do nothing, or actively try to sabotage any publicly beneficial functions.
SAGINAW, Mich. - The battle over dioxin contamination in this economically stressed region had been raging for years when a top Bush administration official turned up the pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up.
On Thursday, following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade's interactions with Dow, the administration forced her to quit as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Midwest office, based in Chicago.
Gade has been locked in a heated dispute with Dow about long-delayed plans to clean up dioxin-saturated soil and sediment that extends 50 miles beyond its Midland, Mich., plant into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron. The company dumped the highly toxic and persistent chemical into local rivers for most of the last century.
Gade, appointed by President Bush as regional EPA administrator in September 2006, invoked emergency powers last summer to order the company to remove three hotspots of dioxin near its Midland headquarters.
She demanded more dredging in November, when it was revealed that dioxin levels along a park in Saginaw were 1.6 million parts per trillion, the highest amount ever found in the U.S.
Dow then sought to cut a deal on a more comprehensive cleanup. But Gade ended the negotiations in January, saying Dow was refusing to take action necessary to protect public health and wildlife. Dow responded by appealing to officials in Washington, according to heavily redacted letters the Tribune obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Regional EPA administrators typically have wide latitude to enforce environmental laws, but in April Gade drew fire from officials in Washington after she sent contractors to test soil in a Saginaw neighborhood where Dow had found high dioxin levels. The levels in one Saginaw yard were nearly six times higher than the federal cleanup standard, and 65 times higher than what Michigan considers acceptable.
This post from Tapped highlights something that is important, but often gets lost in the shuffle. The republicans, and especially the Bushies have been adept at destroying many important national programs, not by abolishing them, but by quietly undermining them. They strip the guts out of OSHA, for instance, or tell their prosecutors in the DOJ's Civil Rights Division to focus on small bore cases, etc., etc. This quiet destruction of many New Deal, and 60's Civil Rights programs has been a hallmark of the Bushies. The republicans destroy quietly from the flank, what they cannot in a frontal assault by repealing very popular legislation. Think about that if you think that electing a Democratic Congress will stop these imbiciles...
From Tapped:
It's important to emphasize the extent to which regulatory and
judicial activity have become crucial to Republican undermining of
various New Deal and Great Society programs. A couple years ago, Brad DeLong and Matt Yglesias pointed out
that conservatives achieved power only by largely abjuring the rollback
of social welfare, civil rights, and environmental legislation they had
been their central goals. This is true, but also somewhat misleading. As Mike Tomasky, while discussing the (to put it charitably) historic misjudgment of Nader supporters, put it:
In every agency of government, at every level, there are political appointees who are interpreting federal rules and regulations and deciding how much effort will really be put into pursuing federal discrimination cases, for instance, or illegal toxic dumping. These are the people who are, in fact, the federal government. The kinds of people who fill those slots in a Democratic administration are of a very different stripe than the kinds who fill them during a Republican term, and the appointments of these people have a bigger effect on real life than whether Al Gore sighs too heavily or speaks too slowly.
Even when Republicans control all three
branches, they can't repeal the Clean Air Act or Civil Rights Act. But
the effectiveness of laws like these comes down to how they're applied
-- if the executive branch fails to pursue rights violators with any
vigor, and the courts make it difficult for litigants to bring suits,
the relevant legislation is greatly watered down without anyone having
to actually modify the legislation (and hence attract much more
political attention). Judicial conservatives on the Supreme Court have
done something similar, slowly stripping major liberal precedents of content rather
than directly overturning them, and increasingly reactionary federal
circuit courts will apply "minimalist" Supreme Court decisions that
permit wide judicial discretion. As Ezra says, Bush can do a lot more
damage even thought the Republicans have lost control of Congress.
