In 2002, a Texas oilman and longtime Republican activist, Ernest Angelo, wrote a letter to Rove complaining that an early version of the rule was causing many in the oil industry to "openly express doubt as to the merit of electing Republicans when we wind up with this type of stupidity."
Rove responded by forwarding the letter to top White House environmental advisors and scrawling a handwritten note directing an aide to talk to those advisors and "get a response ASAP."
Right out in the open. There it is. Big Oil asks what what are the merits of electing Republicans when they don't do our bidding.
Then there is this little tidbit, tucked away in the press.
More than $500 million in wind farm developments in Minnesota face potential delays because of a federal directive to study the effects of wind turbines on military radar installations.
At least four wind projects in the state -- and more than a dozen elsewhere in the Upper Midwest -- have been temporarily denied safety permits from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Instead, the FAA has sent notices of "presumed hazard" that effectively prohibit construction until the wind farm proposals are reviewed further, or until the Department of Defense completes a study ordered by Congress earlier this year.
Oh, that's a good one. How many things, projects and otherwise, are still "pending" waiting for some government review and/or study that will never be forthcoming? This is the administration's favorite story ... we're waiting for review.
And how about this one.
During the cleanup after Hurricane Katrina, local officials and the Environmental Protection Agency depended on one source to find hotspots of toxic chemicals: a database known as the Toxic Release Inventory.
"This was the only information they had to identify toxic chemicals of any kind in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina," says Clayton Northouse, an information policy analyst at OMB Watch, a nonprofit government accountability group.
Until a few weeks ago, the inventory was to be slashed to comply with the Federal Paperwork Reduction Act. The EPA said they were gutting the 20-year-old database to save paper. What they didn't say was that the decision would dramatically reduce pressure on polluters.
Under the plan, companies would report biannually instead of annually and would only have to report toxic releases of more than 5,000 pounds. Currently, the EPA requires reporting of any releases greater than 500 pounds.
Welcome to America, what's left of it.
1 comment:
Just as the EPA lied & covered up on New York air quality after 9/11, we don't really know the truth about the toxic soup stirred up by Katrina.
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