BUSH2

Friday, April 26, 2013

Bush Administration Responsible for No Oversight of West, Texas, or Other Fertilizer/Chemical Storage Facilities by EPA

“Perry reworked the language and helped to get it added to the spending bill in a conference committee. Under the new amendment, the DHS would have nominal authority to regulate the chemical industry but also have its hands tied where required.”

What Phillip Perry, VP Cheney's son-in-law, did was to add language the chemical industry wanted to an appropriations bill rider that moved the task of regulating and oversight of chemical plants from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Another day, another group that has bought and paid for Republican members of Congress. This time it is the chemical industry which is only being highlighted after the West, TX, fertilizer plant blew up last week while storing large amounts chemicals that should have set off red flags. EPA is no longer in charge of regulating these plants while the Texas Department of Health who had the authority seems pretty worthless as they took the owner's word with no inspections.

Seems chemical manufacturer's thought giving DHS authority for regulation and oversight with little money provided by Congress would allow them to operate as they chose without no regard to safety. As we saw in West, Texas, the lack of oversight blew up in their face with a plant storing chemicals that were way over the limit allowed in unsafe storage units with no markings so fire department officials didn't know what was in the storage tanks. Because of not knowing what was stored, the volunteer fire department used water instead of foam which is used to fight chemical fires. The owner of the facility has already been sued.

This picture is from the site of the West, Texas fertilizer storage facility the night of the explosion where 10 of the 13 killed were volunteer fire fighters, one was a paramedic, and one was from Dallas search and rescue -- all first responders who died because of lack of oversight and inspections of this plant:

[pix of rubble]

With Chris Hayes connecting the dots on MSNBC with this video, it shows what happened which eventually led to the West, Texas, fertilizer plant exploding.

Summary of the Chris Hayes video:

Let’s recap: The Bush administration’s own cabinet secretaries come up with a plan to regulate these chemical plants. It’s stymied byPhil Perry once. The Bush administration sides with the chemical industry when it’s brought before Congress. And then, basically in a backroom maneuver, Perry does the chemical industry’s bidding by moving the oversight of this from the EPA, which the chemical industry hates, to DHS, which the chemical industry thinks they can more easily manipulate.

Now, fast-forward six years. The West Fertilizer company is storing more than 13-hundred times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by DHS. And it does appear now, that not only did DHS literally have no idea that the West Fertilizer company was storing ammonium nitrate. But according to Congressman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, DHS did not even know the plant existed until it blew up.

Everyone in America should watch this video which connects the dots which all lead back to the Bush Administration, Phillip Perry, and the chemical industry:

Bush and the West explosion: The untold story of deregulating chemical plants

Collier Meyerson, @youngcollier11:26 PM on 04/25/2013

b2 epa went to B&G and crowell; note also b2 ceqa recruited from corp PR deniers

Edward D. Krenik – Edward D. Krenik was the associate administrator for congressional and

intergovernmental affairs at the EPA from 2001 to 2003. 123

The First Amendment right to free speech has been broadened by the courts to allow corporations to give campaign contributions, lobby legislators, run advertisements that support their interests, exercise the right not to speak, and paint their activities as "green."

When President George W. Bush ran for governor of Texas, he received more than $4 million in campaign donations from companies that have benefited greatly from the Texas Environmental, Health, and Safety Audit Privilege Act, which he signed soon after taking office.2 This law says that companies need not report their violations of environmental regulations to law enforcement officials or to the public. Nor can they be penalized for self-reported violations. Some 25 other states have passed similar audit privilege laws in the past decade.3

update; toll on twin twrs 1st responders mounts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_arising_from_the_September_11_attacks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_Protection_Agency_September_11_attacks_pollution_controversy

ctw says epa did not have authority to tell 1st r to wear respirators, that was NY call.

There has been growing concern over the health effects arising from theSeptember 11 attacks in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. Within seconds of the collapse of the World Trade Center, building materials, electronic equipment, and furniture were pulverized and spread over the area.

In the five months following the attacks, dust from the pulverized buildings continued to fill the air of the World Trade Center site. Increasing numbers of New York residents are reporting symptoms of Ground Zero respiratory illnesses.^[1]

Various health programs have arisen to deal with the ongoing health effects of the September 11 attacks. The World Trade Center Health Program, which provides testing and treatment to 9/11 responders and survivors, consolidated many of these after the James Zadroga Act became law in January 2011.^[2]

...

President George W. Bush has been faulted by the Sierra Club for allegedly interfering with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) interpretations and pronouncements regarding air quality.^[32]http://www.sierraclub.org/groundzero 404

https://web.archive.org/web/20130701215320/http://www.sierraclub.org/groundzero/

http://vault.sierraclub.org/planet/200407/ToxicFallout.asp ok

Ground Zero Report Documents Deception by the Bush Administration

by Caroline Kraus

Former EMT worker John Graham stood on the steps of New York’s City Hall in August, gripping an oxygen bottle like the one he used to help survivors on September 11, 2001. Now, he said, he carries the same kind of bottle every day to keep himself alive in what he calls "a living hell."

Like a growing number of people in the city, Graham suffers from the effects of toxic post-9/11 air, a condition he might have been able to avoid had he known how dangerous the air was. Instead, the EPA issued the following assurance only weeks after the attack: "There is no reason for concern…the public is not being exposed to excessive levels of asbestos or other harmful substances."

Graham stood as living evidence to the contrary when he joined Sierra Club representatives at City Hall to help announce the Club’s report, "Pollution and Deception at Ground Zero." The report documents the Bush administration’s alarming trail of post-9/11 missteps, lies, and cover-ups, which resulted in greater exposures of many hundreds of ground zero workers and residents to harmful chemicals released by the World Trade Center collapse.

Prominent in the report is the added fact that the Bush administration has institutionalized its mishandling of post-9/11 communication, making its system of misinformation, cover-ups, and failures official policy for future disaster responses. This promises future post-disaster protocol such as: the suppression of health warnings, the issuing of false assurances, the elimination of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s role to protect the safety of "first responders" in national emergencies, and possibly even the lowering of toxic clean-up standards.

Suzanne Mattei, author of the report and Sierra Club New York City organizer, cites documents that the Sierra Club acquired under the Freedom of Information Act, as well as first-person interviews with fire and rescue personnel, workers and people who live near ground zero. Her conclusion is grim––that widespread public exposure to toxic pollution from the September 11 attack could have been prevented had the EPA and other governmental agencies not lied, withheld information, or discouraged residents and workers from wearing protective masks.

Furthermore, Mattei notes, the federal government’s failures cannot be "excused by ignorance, surprise, or emergency conditions" because the EPA statements and records show that it was fully aware that dangerous pollutants were still present in the ground zero area.

During the Republican convention, Sierra Club volunteers, residents and workers in the ground zero area participated in a daily vigil near the site to hold President Bush accountable for failing to protect public health in the aftermath of 9/11. The group called upon the president to meet the needs of the people exposed to ground zero pollution. The Sierra Club and its ground zero allies continue to work to educate the nation about the need for proper protection of public health in the wake of national emergencies.

Early statement by Christine Todd Whitman

On September 18, 2001, EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman told the public, via a press release, "We are very encouraged that the results from our monitoring of air-quality and drinking-water conditions in both New York and near the Pentagon show that the public in these areas is not being exposed to excessive levels of asbestos or other harmful substances" and that "Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of New York … that their air is safe to breathe and the water is safe to drink."^[15]

Alleged EPA deceptions about Ground Zero air quality

An August 2003 report by the Office of the Inspector General of the EPA said the Bush administration pressured the EPA to remove cautionary information about the air quality at Ground Zero.^[33]

Numerous key differences between the draft versions and final versions of EPA statements were found. A recommendation that homes and businesses near ground zero be cleaned by professionals was replaced by a request that citizens follow orders from NYC officials. Another statement that showed concerns about "sensitive populations" was deleted altogether. Language used to describe excessive amounts ofasbestos in the area was altered drastically to minimize the dangers it posed.^[34]

In September 2006, the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security held a two-day hearing on illnesses caused by post-9/11 air quality. Former EPA head Christine Todd Whitman was a frequent target of criticism.^[35]

EPA scientist Dr. Cate Jenkins said on CBS television on September 8, 2006 that agency officials lied about the air quality in the weeks following September 11, 2001. She said that in her opinion the EPA knew about the toxicity of the air, and that WTC dust included asbestos and disturbingly high PH levels. She said that some of the dust was "as caustic and alkaline as Drano."^[36] Dr. Marjorie Clarke also warned of the consequences of breathing toxic dust and fumes. Yet, agencies did not heed her warnings.^[37]

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation conducted a study of the World Trade Center site, but refused to release the results of its study, saying they were part of a criminal investigation.^[38]

On September 13, 2006, Congressmen Jerrold Nadler (NY), Anthony Weiner (NY), Bill Pascrell Jr. (NJ) filed a request with US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to investigate whether criminal charges may be brought against Whitman for lying about air safety in the Ground Zero area.^[39]

Alleged government downplaying of health risks

Critics assert that government officials – notably Bush, Christine Todd Whitman (former head of the US EPA), and New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani – downplayed the health risks of the area and rushed to reopen the area around Ground Zero, although this posed a grave and immediate health risk to first responders.^[40] Many corporations were eager to hear the news of the New York Stock Exchange being reopened only a few days after the collapse.^[41] On June 25, 2007, Whitman testified before a House of Representatives committee chaired by Jerrold Nadler. She said that a White House official informed her that President Bush expected that the Financial District would reopen within three days, that is, by September 14. She said that she replied that this would be cumbersome, since the EPA was still judging the health situation in the area.^[41] Investigations after the attacks suggest that the Bush administration pressured Whitman and Giuliani to provide health reassurances in order to keep Wall Street operating.^[42][43][44]

Statements by Mayor Rudy Giuliani

Two days after the collapse of the World Trade Center, mayor Giuliani said, "The air is safe as far as we can tell, with respect to chemical and biological agents."^[45] Giuliani, in attempting to deflate New York Daily News journalist Juan Gonzalez' reportage of the 9/11 air issue,claimed that "the problems created… are not health-threatening."^[46] In the first month after the attacks, the mayor said, "The air quality is safe and acceptable."^[4]

In November 2001, Giuliani wrote to the city's Congressional delegation and urged that the city's liability for Ground Zero illnesses be limited, in total, at $350 million. Two years after Mayor Giuliani finished his term, FEMA appropriated $1 billion to a special insurance fund to protect the city against 9/11 lawsuits.^[47]

In a September 18, 2006 New York Daily News article titled, "Rudy's Black Cloud: WTC health risks may hurt Prez Bid", Sally Regenhard, mother of firefighter Christian Regenhard who died on September 11, is quoted, "There's a large and growing number of both FDNY families, FDNY members, former and current, and civilian families who want to expose the true failures of the Giuliani administration when it comes to 9/11." She told the New York Daily News that she intends to "Swift Boat" Giuliani.^[43]

Then senator Hillary Rodham Clinton contemplated calling Giuliani to testify before a Senate committee on whether the government failed to protect recovery workers from the effects of polluted Ground Zero air.^[48][49]

Congressman Nadler was quoted in a March 1, 2007 "New York Sun" article, "Potential Clinton-Giuliani Battle Brews Over 9/11 Health Issues." He said that he "absolutely" wishes to interview Giuliani administration officials regarding the environment in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. He asked, "Who made decisions, if any, that resulted unnecessarily in a lot of people getting sick?"^[50]

sierra mag

Whitewash at Ground Zero

How the White House covered up post–September 11 hazards

by Carl Pope

Why would our government lie to us about something this big? Immediately after the collapse of the World Trade Center, scientists at the EPA gathered as much data as they could on the health risks caused by the fires and airborne debris. Based on that research, the agency quickly drafted a press release warning of high asbestos levels in lower Manhattan, and of risks to "sensitive populations" such as the elderly and asthmatics. The EPA also intended to caution property owners that their homes and businesses would need professional cleanup to remove asbestos, heavy metals, and other contaminants.

But when the EPA ran its press release by the White House, it was rejected for fear it would hamper the "return to normalcy." Even while Bush expressed compassion for the victims and support for the rescue workers and residents of lower Manhattan, including a dramatic visit to Ground Zero, his White House spin doctors took their blue pencils to the agency’s announcement. Rather than the EPA, the White House–controlled National Security Council was put in charge of the final release, with the rationale that it had expertise in weapons of mass destruction.

"Our tests show that it is safe for New Yorkers to go back to work in New York’s financial district," announced the rewritten statement, released on September 16. The reference to sensitive populations was deleted. The asbestos warning was replaced with an assurance that "ambient air quality meets OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] standards and consequently is not a cause for public concern." OSHA standards, however, assume limited hours in a workplace, as well as appropriate protective equipment. The need for professional contractors to clean homes and offices was watered down to a general recommendation that people should follow instructions from city officials.

Two years later, in August 2003, the EPA’s Office of Inspector General concluded that the findings had been manipulated: "Competing considerations, such as national security concerns and the desire to reopen Wall Street . . . played a role in EPA’s air quality statements." (Another "competing interest," apparently, was the desire to downplay New York’s need for federal help and to protect the president’s cherished tax cuts. When New York officials complained that promised federal aid was slow in coming, White House budget director Mitch Daniels accused them of playing "money-grubbing games.")

The inspector general’s report came too late for thousands of people like Pat Moore, who cleaned up the three feet of dust and debris in her apartment herself because "no one told us about the possible risks." It was too late for the Ground Zero workers, 78 percent of whom, according to Mount Sinai Hospital, suffered from lung ailments. A private testing firm found asbestos levels of 850,000 fibers per square centimeter in the Woolworth Building, just across from city hall—more than eight times the level considered to be "high." Other tests found heavy asbestos loads in a stairwell used by employees of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Robert Gulack, senior counsel for the SEC, who developed bronchitis after the attack, charged that the stairwell had been recontaminated by the failure to clean the exterior of the building. "They rushed us back into contaminated playgrounds and schools and places of business," Gulack said. "They took it upon themselves to decide what we would be told, and what might be too upsetting for us to know." And when New York City firefighters asked to have their stations tested for toxic contamination, the administration refused.

The EPA responded to the furor over the inspector general’s report in the same way the Bush administration responds to all criticism: by refusing to admit that anything had ever gone awry. Even in retirement, former EPA administrator Christie Whitman continued to be a good soldier for the administration that had routinely ignored her and overridden her agency’s scientists. She blamed the rescue workers themselves for their failure to wear protective equipment: "If they had worn the devices," she told the New York Post, "we’d see a lot less problems."

"When she said that everything was OK, the firefighters believed those statements," shot back Steve Cassidy, the head of the firefighters’ union. "For her to say now that we are responsible is outrageous."

In his confirmation hearings to succeed Whitman as EPA administrator, Utah governor Mike Leavitt (R) was questioned about the scandal. Would the Bush administration provide funding to complete the cleanup of lower Manhattan? Would it provide long-term health monitoring and care for those who had been exposed to toxic pollutants because they had relied on the EPA’s doctored public statements? Leavitt’s nonresponsive answers led several senators to put his nomination on hold while they awaited an explanation of why the federal government deliberately misled those on the front line of the first battle in the war against terrorism. It never came.

If the EPA and the White House are willing to lie about something as visible, and emotionally uniting, as Ground Zero, how can we trust what they tell us about pollution in our own neighborhoods?

http://web.archive.org/web/20080320231857/http://www.bushgreenwatch.org/

archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20080509132545/http://www.bushgreenwatch.org/back_issues.php

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bush_regime_environmental_record

Bush regime environmental record

"This is the worst environmental president we’ve had in American history."--Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

If you look at NRDC’s (Natural Resources Defense Council) website you’ll see over 400 major environmental roll backs that are listed there that have been implemented or proposed by this administration over the past four years as part of a deliberate concerted effort to eviscerate 30 years of environmental law.

Bush Greenwatch is "dedicated to expanding media coverage and public awareness of the many vital environmental and public health issues affected by the administration's anti-environmental agenda, which consistently places the interests of corporate donors above the public good."

Recognizing their vulnerability on the environment, Bush and his senior appointees have launched a cynical effort to paper over the worst environmental record in history. --Environment2004

"It's the worst environmental record in American history," says Carl Pope, the Sierra Club's executive director. "The administration consistently favors polluting industries over health and safety."[1], [2]

Wildlands at Risk, report highlighting 25 places across the country where the Bush administration's unprecedented assault on our public lands could have lasting impacts.

The NYT Magazine's cover story 4 April 2004 details how the Bush Administration, through subtle regulatory changes, scuttled what would have been "one of the greatest advances in clean air in the nation's history. [3]

Spreading of depleted uranium waste throughout Afghanistan and Iraq.

"On mercury, the administration didn't just take industry views into account, it literally let the polluters write the regulations: much of the language of the administration's proposal came directly from lobbyists' memos. ... In other words, the administration proposal would perpetuate mercury pollution where it does the most harm. That probably means thousands of children born with preventable neurological problems." [4]

"New-source review, or N.S.R., involves an obscure and complex set of environmental rules and regulations that most Americans have never heard of, but to people who work in the power industry, few subjects are more crucial. ... The Monroe[, Michigan] plant, which is operated by Detroit Edison, is one of the nation's top polluters. Its coal-fired generators emit more mercury, a toxic chemical, than any other power plant in the state. Until recently, power plants like the one in Monroe were governed by N.S.R. regulations, which required the plant's owners to install new pollution-control devices if they made any significant improvements to the plant. Those regulations now exist in name only; they were effectively eliminated by a series of rule changes that the Bush administration made out of the public eye in 2002 and 2003. What the president was celebrating in Monroe [in remarks "delivered on Sept. 15, 2003, to a cheering crowd of power-plant workers and executives"] was the effective end of new-source review." [5]

(CBS) A government whistle-blower says the Bush administration covered up the reasons for a toxic coal slurry spill in Appalachia that ranks among the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.[6]

Jack Spadaro tells Correspondent Bob Simon that political appointees in the Department of Labor whitewashed a report that said an energy company that had contributed to the Republican Party was responsible for the 300-million gallon spill.Simon's report will be broadcast on60 Minutes, Sunday, April 4, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Spadaro was until recently the head of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy and played a key role in investigating the spill, which was 25 times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska."It polluted 100 miles of streams, killing everything in the streams, all the way to the Ohio River," says Spadaro of the October 2000 spill that affected West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky."The Bush administration came in and the scope of our investigation was considerably shortened. I had never seen something so corrupt and lawless in my entire career...interference with a federal investigation of the most serious environmental disaster in the history of the Eastern United States."Spadaro says his investigation found Massey Energy, the owner of the impoundment containing the viscous and toxic liquid, knew the containment was weak, and in fact, had leaked once before. The company was going to be cited for serious violations that could have resulted in large fines and criminal charges, Spadaro says.

To avoid answering questions posed by six U.S. Senators concerned with the records of President Bush and EPA nominee Michael Leavitt on environmental issues that affect the lives of millions of Americans, Senate Republicans Bill Frist (R-TN) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) last night filed a cloture petition ( write a petition ) to override "holds" placed on Leavitt's nomination and to cut off any floor debate--before any debate has even begun. --EarthJustice

"The Senators with holds on Mike Leavitt's confirmation vote have asked legitimate questions about this nomination. The Senators have questions that have yet to be answered about whether Governor Leavitt and President Bush will continue to weaken our nation's environmental safeguards. They are refusing to release information about their anti-environmental policies," said Joan Mulhern, senior legislative counsel for Earthjustice."This disrespectful disregard of traditional Senate processes is an effort to force a vote on the EPA nomination before many important questions can even be asked," said Mulhern. "The Bush administration and Senate Republican leadership apparently don't believe they have to answer to anyone about their policies to destroy federal environmental safeguards. These are life and death issues for many Americans - will our drinking water be clean? Is the air safe for our kids to breathe? The Bush White House and Governor Leavitt do not want to answer these questions.

While George W. Bush gets low marks on the environment from a majority of Americans, few fully appreciate the scope and fury of this administration's anti-environmental agenda. [7]

"What they're doing makes the Reagan administration look innocent," says Buck Parker, executive director of Earthjustice, a non-profit environmental law firm.The Bush administration has been

gutting key sections of the Clean Water and Clean Air acts, laws that have traditionally had bipartisan support and have done more to protect the health of Americans than any other environmental legislation.
It has crippled the Superfund program, which is charged with cleaning up millions of pounds of toxic industrial wastes such as arsenic, lead, mercury and vinyl chloride in more than 1,000 neighbourhoods in 48 states.
It has sought to cut the EPA's enforcement division by nearly one-fifth, to its lowest level on record; fines assessed for environmental violations dropped by nearly two-thirds in the administration's first two years; and criminal prosecutions -- the government's weapon of last resort against the worst polluters -- are down by nearly one-third.
The administration has abdicated the decades-old federal responsibility to protect native animals and plants from extinction, becoming the first not to voluntarily add a single species to the endangered species list.
It has also now endorsed commercial whaling, reversing a US ban in place since 1986 [8].
It has opened millions of acres of wilderness -- including some of the nation's most environmentally sensitive public lands -- to logging, mining, and oil and gas drilling. Under one plan, loggers could take 10% of the trees in California's Giant Sequoia National Monument; many of the Monument's old-growth sequoias, 200 years old and more, could be felled to make roof shingles.
Other national treasures that have been opened for development include the million-acre Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument in Arizona, the 2,000-foot red-rock spires at Fisher Towers, Utah, and dozens of others.

mountaintop removal involves blasting away entire mountaintops to get at coal seams below and dumping the resulting rubble, called "spoil," into adjacent valleys. ... which has buried at least 1,000 miles of Appalachian streams and destroyed tens of thousands of acres of woodland that the EPA describes as "unique in the world" for their biological diversity.

And then, of course, the White House has all but denied the existence of what may be the most serious environmental problem of our time, global warming.Few people know the magnitude of the administration's attacks on the environment because the administration has been working very hard to keep it that way. Like any successful commander in chief, Bush knows that putting the right person in the right place is the key to winning any war. This isn't just a matter of choosing business-friendly appointees for top positions. That's pretty much standard operating procedure for Republican administrations. What makes this administration different is the fact that it is filled with anti-regulatory supporters deep into its rank and file -- and these bureaucrats, unlike James Watt, are politically savvy and come from the very industries they're charged with regulating. The result is an administration uniquely effective at implementing its ambitious pro-industry agenda -- with a minimum of public notice.J. Steven Griles is one of industry's moles within the Bush administration. Before coming to work as deputy secretary of the Interior, Griles was one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington, with a long list of energy-industry clients, including the National Mining Association and several of the country's largest coal companies. [9]

"By using stealth tactics to pursue a corporate agenda, the Bush administration is undermining the very landscape of democracy. The White House has also been darkly brilliant at using the courts to do its dirty work -- through methods such as "sweetheart suits," the practice of encouraging states and private groups to file lawsuits against the federal government, and then agreeing to negotiated settlements that bypass environmental laws without any interference from Congress or the public. [10]

Update: Bush the sequel likely to be a crusade against the environment. Bush sets out plan to dismantle 30 years of environmental laws

SourceWatch Resources

External Resources

Christopher Drew & Richard A. Oppel Jr., How Industry Won the Battle of Pollution Control at E.P.A., New York Times, March 6, 2004.
U.S. PIRG, 12 April 2004, Industry-Biased Report Threatens Superfund Toxic Waste Cleanup and Public Health
Environment 2004 report Putting Polluters First: The Bush Administration's Environmental Record.

Recent articles from the BushGreenWatch.org newsfeed

It has also now endorsed commercial whaling, reversing a US ban in place since 1986 [8].

timeline green actions:

http://www.nrdc.org/bushrecord/2005.asp

stratignor

8/12/2012

gangs of america:

Consider the decision to go to war against Iraq. In its public statements

justifying the attack, the Bush Administration cited the heightening

of national security concerns since September 11, 2001. Yet ideas

such as “regime change” and “preemptive war” had actually been developed

by corporate-supported policy development groups even before

the 2000 election. The founders of one such think tank, the Project for a

New American Century (PNAC), included a number of men who would

later become top members of the Bush Administration: Donald Rumsfeld,

Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz. Indeed, former executives, consultants,

and shareholders of top defense contractors fairly peppered the

policy-making ranks. Eight came from Lockheed Martin, the largest

defense contractor; seven came from Northrop Grumman, the third largest

defense contractor. One investigator of the relationship between the

Bush Administration and the defense industry described it as a “seamless

web.” Yet, aside from a few allegations of conflict of interest, that

web did not appear to depend on any actual illegalities. In that regard,

the defense industry followed a pattern that can be seen in any number

of other areas where corporate influence has an overriding effect on

public policy: energy, finance, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications,

media, agriculture, tobacco, high tech, criminal justice, and many more.

Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration Is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress [Hardcover]

Carl Pope (Author), Paul Rauber (Author) 2004 sierra club books

b2 usually make new reg scams on friday afternoon of holiday weekend (or at 5:31, so too lake to network news)

NRC said no backup control for nuke plants, some guys will run thru fire; backup potass iodide pills p11 postpone merc clean 10 yrs, up ok level 4x

authors of the book say sheer number of examples oddly make the story harder to believe p12

nrdc.org/bushrecord

http://www.nrdc.org/bushrecord/

http://www.nrdc.org/bushrecord/2005.asp timeline

b2 trying to turn back clock pre TR "patron st of land grabs" 17

DC called himself a "pretty good environmentalist"

got rid of superfund (1 in 4 am live within bike ride from site that was blocked/orphaned?) p31, shift burden to us; cut value of human life by 1/3; cut protection of 1/10 by declaring not wetland and _

b1 called self eco prez

gov bush added no parkland, tho low, and had $; wanted to lease it; ok w/ paper chems dumped in lake

RR comb 2 strands (trad and libertar) sep from 3rd till 90's, then corp'ism

(any conservative who wishes to conserve will not be funded" 20

newt perfected wedge pol

john graham ~ nanny state; do not need to test chems before used 23 hypochondria

16K dirty plants of all types grandfathered p24 let jeb dump wastewater into drink aquifer; haz waste (sludge) ok for farms and playgrounds 24

if GW, too soon or too late to fix 24

luntz advice: safe clean, healthy; ppl techy on water

B2 forced states to dereg electicity even after ca ny problems

38$b tax breaks for old dirty industry

b2 opened 1/2 ESA land for dev 26; log 1 in 10 trees in Gt Sequioa monument; mtntop remov

up to 1K bison/yr killed to protect 2k cows from disease 26

Mx fishers follow dolphns to find tuna, b2 said was d safe pal of mx pres

g norton called 12 yr study on arctic "sci fi" actually asst? 27

Ashcroft said reject FOIA; public comments on eco issues cut/ignored 28

each wave of indust had wave of citzen reaction eg TR progressives

Lacey act alows pres to create nat'l monuments; muir cap sierra led to prrotection; congr tried to take away ability to make parks, so TR and gifford on belly on maps set aside 17mill acres right before deadline 36 rescued teddy bear on hunt trip; forest service guys called cossacks, gifford Czar Pinchot" 36

1st wave not up to deal with nuke and chemicals past wwII

NEPA brought ppl into checks and bal 38; post watergate reforms/post earth day revived trad FF dominance of legis; FOIA ups democ/ppl power since we have access to info/sci

~ CTT 39

BC got punked on logging salvage rider mark rey, but risked govt shutdown to save ANWR 41 (shutdown led to furloughs that allow monica to deliver pizza) 41 Dombeck aslo got aggressive/effective on forests roadless 58mil acres; EPA sued power plants (on track to get rid of 1/4 of all indust pollut) 42 BC up effic stds, rule no govt contract for polluters (or other lawbreakers) , lower arsenic and fact farm runoff 45, lower diesel emissions b2 put 371 rules on hold in 1st 90 min 46 b2 3rd wave of attack RR climsy, Newt 94 failed, but rove and luntz learned: look like you're doing no harm 47

b1 called gore ozone man, but that seen as biggest win of century? 41

1977 LA had 121 bad air days, 200 zero; 1st x since oil drill 1859 # of toxic sites going down; lead blood levels down 93% 88-96 toxins down 1/2, down 1.5b pounds 43 60% of water safe to swim (up 2x) 43

rove printed fake newspaper with story about clements opponent wrecked car drunk (planted bug); fired by b1 for leaking story to novak to screw mosbacher. ~ ann richards; prolly McC crazy as POW and blk dtr

LUNTZ advised 94 newt: top 10 bills prop rights, warned 62% ppl want green (54% gop)

b2 transformation: fox henhouse met 48

ashcroft perfect bad score green 1997-2000; Doe Run lead mining ~ BC 49 in confrim hearing said wd uphold (green) law but didn't 49

Card lobby USCoC, cars, GM

DC once sorta ok on green, but only 1 of 16 ~ ESA; 1 of 26 support RR ~ Clean water act; ~ superfund, safe drink act; ~ cit suit ~ chem 50

delay son of oil man; called EPA gestapo; ~ CAir AcT B/c MOUTHWASH MORE DANGEROUS THAN AIR POLLUTION 51 calimed to be a sci, BS in biology? CFC oNobel called Appeasement Proze" 51 world 6x yrs old

Graham: 17K$ to save life via mamogram, but 19m benzene, so regulatory murder of 60K ppl

extorted PM for 25K$; ~ dioxin reg; cell phone drive deaths ok b/c up productivity 52

john turner ceo conserv fund pal of DC dumped b/c of rw pressure, so JS Griles dep sec int; under watt gut strip mine laws, offshore oil CA fla; oil givaways

BC era Nat'l Env Strategies lobby coal utility oil; coal bed methane; promised not to meet w. old clients but did, kept getting 284K$/yr from his old firm

holmstead CSE

Norton: lead co lobbyist (superfund); prop rights maybe homesteader get right to pollute and make noise; slavery got bad rap; colo AG

Mark Rey "timber beast" forst and paper trade groups; murkowski sr and craig sen; salvage rider; spkone at wiser use conv: defender od ES = "radical env legal terrorism campagn...taking direct aim at private proprty rights" 55

clearcutting is compatible w/ forest ecology, like windstorm 56

Sansonetticorp law in Wyo for extraction ~ superfund then coal lobbyist peabody and arch etc; pal of DC; rep mining ind ~ Clean air act, promised to uphold in confim hearings but no 56

Lynn Scarlett ~ recycling, nutrit labels; pesticide, RTK; green rivals marxism in ~ indiv rights 57 on bd of Thropeau inst; ok fior rich ppl to have to pay for parks b/c free pks don't end poverty 57

CTW mixed rec'd supported ct order that allowed EPA set air st'ds w/o consult j graham 58

th dilorenzo at von mises inst: airbag murders of smaller cars; z28 305 camaro w/ cigar PO's petty tyrant and bizbody 62

MS gall 1st used nanny state consumer safety

OIRA JGraham ~ Joe Lieb; OIRA could ask agency to repeal laws; rejects 58 RR; 16 BC; 316 B2 2001 (CTT and trade gp input) 64 dioxin no safe level, but ok to spread on criops nad parks 64 nrdc found 34-56 mill ppl had arnsenic; BC browner went for 10 ppb (CTT said pvt well shd do something if 5 ppb) but ~ 1oppb at epa; Rvoe and Karen Hughes ~ arsenic b/c NMex close election, backed by CEI arsenic "an essential ingredient" and good for us 67 CEI angela logomasini NAS backed Browner and B2 caved, also on other BC rules allowed, based by CEI Jon Adler.

JG worked w/ ex OIRA Barb Kahlow now staff for delay hitlist of 57 regs (redux RR and NG) pesticides, coal mine dust, bloodborne pathogens 69 JG sent 13 env refs back to agencies (12 oposed by ind) sent "rpoompt letter" new and secret way to overturn regs? 69

ppl used to be worth 6m$, tghen 3.7 and 2.3 for old ppl 71 so cleaning up the air no longer cost effective? (better to look at how much rich ppl REALLY spend to prtect themselves from harm) new fig based on what UK ppl wd pay fro safer bus 70

US car ind gave up compet based on econ, effic, craft, style, just went for size and HP 72 ...

Luntz called env biggest vulnerability of gop Grover eant to go back to McKinlay era

2003 state of union had much green BS

h2 called "freedom car"

air pol 64K premat deaths/yr 20x 911 (30K poer plants) 83 So Co lead effort to block cleanup; no upgrade unless 20% of plant value 9never reached, always lower incremental approach) foot dragging paid off, by 1996 finally some action, but ind saves 3.6b/yr (853m$ for So co) 84

B2 seemed to follow b1 in election, but 180'd; vol effort 1 co of 800 grandfathered plants applied to clean up abandoned 84

DC asked ashcroft to look at EPA enforcement, done by DC soninlaw Philip Perry (he came from law co that rep 2 defendents) Cinergy and Am E Pwr

B2 claimed impressive # but BS; clear skies upped merc level (inhofe wanteed more, 26 to 34 tons/yr 1/03 epa admitted 8% of childbear yrs wo had potentially toxic level lead 86

Eric Schaeffer resigned in protest; carter plan much more effective for a little more $; 50 plant suits dropped, staff gagged under cover of ongoing prosec;

Healthy Forest paid co's to log as service (fire down) but left behind fire haz 93 cost 1600$/acre

2003 Cov Davis asked emerg fire $ 430m, then lost 20 ppl, 2400 houses 1/4 mil acres, denied after fires

ch 6

2004 election 1/2 bill to GOP, 80% corp $

westar memo said cost to buy delay; 31k and 25K 97 $ not evil but lifeblood of plo

2000-02 coal gave 7.4 m but got as much as 3.3billion$, which then competes w/ green

R reed hit up Enron $380K

DC gets 150K$/yr halliburton 2003 1.7B nobod 101; we can't conserve our way, but nat labs said 1/2 of 1300 new pwer plants not needed if conserv

ceo peabody gave 100K for inaug

secret taks force: don evans, larry lindsay, allbaugh

pg&e asked for CA dereg; envir pushed for more new plants in CA than enron[nat gas?] but FERC blocked 102

toledo nuke plant almost failed 103 firstenergy could not find leak, so moved monitors so alarms wd stop (total of 20 near misses US)

Delay House 2003 energy act 38b tax breaks for polluters (2Kx ROI on lobby) oil and gas 47.5b$, coal and utilities 9.3B; nuke 9b, 2.4b for renewable but mostly went to converting NAT"L GAs To COAL?! 107

est elim cost vinyl chlor 1b, actually 1/4 that 65

DC said wd go to scotus on energy TF secret, GAO caved; of 25 energy gop donor 18 admitted to TF incl exelon peabody (900K in yrs to gop)enron (oopsed grid upgrade b/c old one allowed manip) didn't want firstenergy to ins5tall digital swuitches big blackout 2003

farm bill? : green drink water pgm hijacked to expand feedlots; helped sugar too? jeb everglade plans shifted cleanup burden to us 112

energy bill 2003 tauzin, delay domenici, ethanol, mod gop got anwr out in return for new power plants and hummer 100K tax break, protected delay biggest donor lyondell chem from mtbe suits and keep pon mkt max p 113 "oinking mastodon" heritage and cato! did not pass, big defeat b2, but redone next yr

WISE USE west demos since new deal, chance to change, so blamed loss of jobs on green & DC RR and B1 gave lots away, but mechanization meant no new jobs (and stuff finite anyway) b2 got timber $ B2 gave gore bad time about supposedly neglecting parks as cover 117

tery anderson PERC , pvt parks; high bidder decides what best use is 118 eg arco or disney libertairian but most logged westrn tree is redwood, the most in pvt 119

NORTON read ftnhead

utah james hansen ~ BC: mines no restore, ~ eco integrity" roadless

95% public comments in favor of roadless

after salvage rider, 2 yrs rey later tried to amend nat for mgmt act based on forest/paper indu ideas 121 sales mandatory, 10K fine for anyone who sued to uphold a timber sale for "improper purposes" //dechris?) 121 also ~ NEPA

distr ct judge Clarence Brimmer wyo ~ roadless; ashcroft said he'd fight but didn't; just dept said gren had no stake/standing 122 repl by fedsoc guy?

connaughton ceq to head task force on energy project streamlining wishlist of places to drill bnp got padre nat'l seashore reb watson says, this isn't for sissies"

reinject salt water from methane (fracking?) wd cost 5-7c cu foot, even thst's too much says corp

wyo; any wolf outside yellow or grand teton predaot and can be shot on sight; idaho gov kempthore: massiveflesh-eating carnivores"

b2 admin said habitat not crit factor to ES 128 craig manson int dept

3k bison killed 129

1993 gop filibustered ca protect deserts (newt prevents any votes after that)

Norton agreed to never protect any land congress not set aside? also for future 130

b2 stripped more land of protection than any pres ever managed to protect incl TR 131

ANWR size of so carolina , set aside by ike; JC; saved by filibuster and 2 BC veto 134 touted as fix for CA, tho we don't burn oil for electr.

frank murk said attach anwr to defense bill bad taste and wrong, so next day ihnofe did b/c a nat'l sec issue 135 even cato says not gov that limits us oil, but 1.50 vs 5-7$/bbl vs saudi ; not enough for energy indep in anwr; better /= to up mpg by 3

norton cherrypicked data, some call to regins she promised not do again than did 139 ;asst said 12 yr USGS study "sci fi" orderd to redo 10 pp to 2 139

lysenko after stalin: ppl = policy

EPA lied on 911 air[connuaghton] 175, used OSHA st;d (linited in time and w/ gear); woman cleaned 3 feet of dust out of apt; 80% of groun zero workers had lung problems

Early B2 pulled sci off www eg mtbe

dr southern told to withold info on mex tuna 147

advis comm got sacked eg nat ctr env health, 15 of 18 p148 new becky dunlop, nor caro tox industry; lois swisky gold UC risk assess (pollut~ cancer) dennis paustenbach ca ~ erin brock; CDC got pro lead ppl ; regulatory paralysis is the goal

sansonetti: on b2 transition team for Int dept; prasied Norton: no biologists or botanist to pull the wool over her eyes strat ingnor 151

sci overruled on klamath, 33K salmon killed; 3 mos before ROVE did ppt for 50 top mgr at Int Dept [worried asbout reelect of sen gorgon smith in Ore] (most) low morale for sci 151; USGS says 30x better roi on fish than fram, but study hide.

b2 wanted to replace god squad w norton 153

tho citzen suits on ESA had high success rate thus not friv. pombo

norton asked 25 mil military acrs immune

dept energy spenser abraham FEDSOC reclass nuke as 'incidental waste"

yellowstone rangers wear gasmask to protect ~ snowmobile exhaust 154

Boler epa wetlands expert fired for rejecting ind study that wetlands make pollution worse 155 bruce EPA

luntz memo climate 160 "the scientific window is closing (against us) but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science" 160

1st B2 cab mtg treas sec Paul o'Neil distr ppr for manhattan scale resp to climate; no 2nd chance; 1st inaug was going to support; novack and indust upped pressure; day before inaug ctw affirmed a go; set off fight ; aides wrote 6pp to domestic pol gy john Bridgeland on effect on coal (6 sent on gw) O'N wrote f/u; ctw g8 sandbag; ebell said she was walking corpse but wanted to keep her so no one else worse cd get job 163

IPCC watson hit list

2002 epa proj 3-9 degree F c21, panicked WH who secret talk to CEI Ebell Cooney June 3 highest rank EPA for fall guy; b2 dismissed rept as bureaucracy; cei sued on basis of computer models; ashcroft asked by 2 state AG to look at cei, but no 164

b2 ~ kyoto, but promised alt plan that wd help economy, called for more res ~ uncertainty

sep o2 took gw out of epa air pollut trned rept 9~ 6 yrs) WH, OMB and CEQ censored gw repts 165 epa wrote note that changes bogus, so that got x'd too

McC-liberman asked for info, denied b/c ~ Clear Skies 165 wanted bill weaker even than kyoto

after 911 sci info deleted from gov www tho req by RTK laws

fri before col day ashcroft ordered all FOIA ~ 169 so Int dept ignored req on anwr; epa allowed state to withold info on plans to clean up

nrdc asked for info on secret task f; 1st said only fed ppl there, but lie came out; nrdc got ct to give 7500pp but redacted so useless 171 by ashcroft; ted olson arg case (odd, DC lost, referred to scotus (shock they took, will be heard 2004 [lost? jud watch?]

no public input on 77k me wells wyo Mo, utah

under gov b2, tx had most Cl air act viol 179 b/c of vol

delay and inhofe (and now ala rep) called EPA gestapo

BC law that violators no get govt contracts ~

EPA went after 1 in 4 viol; fined 1 in 8 and avg fine only 6k$ 180; 1st budget cut 223 staff; 158 mil, 11m enforce cut 181

before ag ashcroft let developers challenge local ords as unConst 182 yet stopped states from stopping offshore drill b/c fed has jurisdict; // limited state use of class action lawsuits 182 13 of 16 ppl in cab from indus affected by cas 183 says Fdn fr taxpayer and consumer rights

wise use?//? elko cty nev Jarbridge Shovel Brigade; local DA said no sell food to forest serv; supervisor resigned b/c no backup; b2 gave road to cty b/c no fed judge wd back

Brimmer ~ roadless 2x, but 1/3 his invest in energy co that wd profit

b2 refused to defend roadless 3x when alaska chall, so gave up chugach and tongass (biggst part of bill) 187

cafo killed billion fish 1991 in NCaro; after Hurr Floyd kiled 30k hods and spread sludge, epa cleaning up, than b2 granted immun from CWA, CAA and superfund in ret for small # to vol mon

isolated wetlands and intermitt streams no longer under CWA

spray keosense on coal and get syn fuel tax subsidy 189 IRS cracked down, treas sec John Snow lobbied by coal (ira lawyer who said so was audited) 189Bill Henck

public land opened for log just by dropping req to talk to F&W in ES 190

griles 284K/yr

CTA lowered 100m$ to 7.2 for shattuck to be paid by citigroup; epa omsbidman Robt J Martin ~, he was tranferredand job ended 9had to reopen after pressure) 190

ctw --> gov utah mike leavitt in 96 fired state F&W who fined family fish farm; merc not rally pollition 191 stratigno

Rove stacked ct in TX Priscilla Owen

sentelle ~ ESA b/c stops us from building hosp?! or from driving to them if bug on windshield was ES 192

fed judge ~ earth day in school b/c religion 192

wm pryor nom 11th dist Ala ~ green

Victor Wolski nom, dereg for pacific legal fdn; will one less puddle have effect on mkt for migrating birds?

expand 5th amend on taking longtime goal: scalia 1992 arguend that developer shd be compensated b/c limited from build in sensitve area

SUPERFUND 2K LISTED, 840 CLEANED on track to be done in 15 yrs; 1993 broad consensus on streamline incl CoC, but gop filibuster scuttled b/c no wins before 94 election; then let funding src run out from co. so taxpayers had to pick up.

40-50's Hooker chem dumped 352 mill pounds of haz waste into Love canal [nb gmu guy referred to as mythical?]

DC as sen voted against cit right to sue chemical; haliburton Superund in MIssouri

partially treated sewage cd be blended and put in rivers; then untreated radioactive waste; 2003 1st time since CWA pollut worse 205

by 1980 mil and dept energy biggest polluters some of

rove turned coal states gop (penn, w va, va, so ohio)

oct 2000 250 mil gal coal sludge spill (total of 2.2b) 20x exxon v spill, after election ruled an act of god (neglience 5 yrs old, thus stat of limit) 209 Mine and health safe wantesd to sue massey, but fired, 26 yrs of great job

coal mine bonds don't need to prove solvency

parks pop, so B2 promised to fully fund Land and Water Conserv fund that buys land for US but Phil Gramm said dangerous to churches, schools and orphanages and distorts the mktplace !? ; prop rights wacko called a land grab 211

b2 divert $ for pk maintence to plan to pvtize 1700 jobs; norton wanted to pvtize 850K workers; make 1/4 park serv 20K pvt; in charge of that Jack Kalvritinos, co wanted to staff those jobs

blocked UN nairobi action on merc

b2 says ok to trade in ES b/c incentive to protect , and use proft to protect

CEI lost on arsenic but won on superfund 227

18B waste in farm bill cd be used to help sm farmers and clean up

req US co in Mex to use US green std [ENDIT]

demo report on b2: http://democrats.oversight.house.gov/images/stories/documents/20080130103545.pdf

Karl:{Rove:(style="position:static;font-weight:inherit !important"):}: and Alberto Gonzalez are attempting to replace John Carlin - the widely-respected Archivist of :{the United States:(style="position:static;font-weight:inherit !important"):}: who had been slated to retain the non-partisan position until summer of 2005 - with activist partisan Republican neoconservative shill/hack Allen Weinsein.

Despite the fact that the National Archives and Records Administration Act of 1984states the position is granted "without regard to political affiliations and solely on the basis of the professional qualifications required to perform the duties and responsibilities of the office of the Archivist."

When combined with last year's attempts to strongarm the National Bureau of Economic Research into back-dating the start of the Bush Recessionby three months so they could more credibly blame it on former :{President Bill Clinton:(style="position:static;font-weight:inherit !important"):}:, me thinks it's safe to add "crimes against history" to the long list of impeachable offenses being racked up by this abominable coterie of neo-fascists.

blog http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread44872/pg1

The left apparently believes it does, and that's why President Bush's nomination of Allen Weinstein -- author of the definitive biography of Alger Hiss, "Perjury" -- for the post of national archivist has triggered a furor.

"The American people need a better custodian of their history," The Nation magazine editorialized. The Society of American Archivists and the Organization of American Historians are questioning Weinstein's credentials. American University historian Anna Nelson told The Washington Post, "This is pretty sneaky."

Actually, it isn't. Far from being an unsuitable candidate, Weinstein is vastly more qualified for the job than the current archivist, former Kansas Gov. John Carlin. Weinstein brings a long record of first-rate scholarship and experience running Washington-based organizations, including the Center for Democracy, which helped push for election reform around the world.

But that's not sufficient for his enemies on the left. Instead, Weinstein has become a target for scholars who despise Bush and for those who continue to insist that Hiss was never a spy for the Soviet Union and want payback.

To undermine Weinstein's credentials, adversaries have confected a series of charges of sloppy scholarship. Beginning with Victor Navasky, publisher of The Nation, critics have cited Weinstein's reluctance to open his files on the Hiss case.

GMU site

RS bush tax policy

Republicans, abetted by conservative Democrats, passed the tax cuts with a veto-proof majority, and Clinton signed them into law. But for the remainder of his term, Clinton repeatedly blocked Republican demands for further cuts. "He vetoed one tax cut after another," says Robert McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice. In 1999, in a triumph for fiscal sanity, Clinton rejected a massive $792 billion cut to inheritance and investment taxes. The mood during the veto ceremony in the Rose Garden was festive. A five-piece band played "Summertime," and the living was easy. Unemployment stood at 4.2 percent, and stocks were booming. "Our hard-won prosperity gives us the chance to invest our surplus to meet the long-term challenges of America," Clinton declared. The Republican tax cuts, he warned with eerie prescience, would return America to a period of "deficit upon deficit" that culminated in "the worst recession since the Great Depression."

Then came the election of George W. Bush, the first president of the Party of the Rich.

Within months of taking office, Bush delivered a tax break to the rich that trumps anything he accomplished through the actual tax code. "The most important thing the Bush administration did in the whole area of taxes," says Johnston, "was to kill tax harmonization."

"Tax harmonization" was economic jargon for a joint project by the world's developed countries to shut down offshore tax havens in places like the Cayman Islands. At the time, such illicit havens were costing U.S. taxpayers $70 billion a year. For Republicans, going after big-time tax evaders should have been as American as apple pie. As Reagan once said of such cheats: "When they do not pay their taxes, someone else does – you and me."

But for Bush and other leaders of the Party of the Rich, blocking corporations from hiding their money overseas wasn't an act of patriotism – it was tyranny. Rep. Dick Armey, the GOP majority leader, railed against tax harmonization as an effort to create a "global network of tax police." One of Bush's biggest donors, Enron, was using a network of nearly 900 offshore tax hideaways to pay no corporate taxes – while reporting massive profits that later turned out to be fraudulent. In one of his first acts as president, Bush "basically vetoed the initiative," says Stiglitz.

The veto spurred a cavalcade of corporations – including stalwart American firms like Stanley Works – to pursue phony "headquarters" in Bermuda and other lax-tax nations. The move not only encouraged some of the world's richest companies to avoid paying any U.S. taxes, it let them book overseas-"expenses" that qualified them for lucrative tax deductions. In one of the most notorious cases, GE filed for a $3 billion tax rebate in 2009, despite boasting profits of more than $14 billion.

But Bush wasn't content to simply make the world safe for corporate tax evaders: He also pushed to deliver $1.6 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals. On paper, at least, the federal government looked like it would soon be rolling in cash. Assuming the economy continued to grow as it had under Clinton, the Congressional Budget Office forecast a federal surplus of $5.6 trillion by 2011. Nearly half that bounty was already spoken for – the government needed some $3 trillion to shore up Social Security and Medicare – but that still left $2 trillion to play with.

Still, those numbers were only a projection. "It's certainly not money in the bank," Fed chairman Alan Greenspan warned incoming Treasury Secretary O'Neill over breakfast at the Federal Reserve. Yet there was no such note of caution in the White House. The month after Bush took office, the president's then-budget director, Mitch Daniels, suggested in an internal memo that $5.6 trillion was likely too small a figure. Daniels concluded that Bush's plan was "so fiscally conservative" that even after cutting $1.6 trillion in taxes, fixing Social Security and setting aside $900 billion in a contingency fund, the government would still have enough money left over to retire $2 trillion in debt.

"Everybody for a good while accepted that the surpluses were real," insists Daniels, now the governor of Indiana. When pressed, however, he also concedes that by the time Bush took office, "the economy was already unraveling." Indeed, a wave of layoffs at the end of 2000 prompted Dick Cheney to warn, "We may well be on the front edge of a recession here."

The conflicting forecasts – one of sunshine and surplus, the other of gloom and contraction – should have set off alarm bells in the White House. But instead of rethinking the prudence of its massive giveaway to the rich, the Bush team dreamed up a new rationale for cutting taxes: to provide a needed jolt to the economy. "It's a fair thing to say that the stimulus argument was added in the spring of '01, when it had not been there before," Daniels says.

The stimulus argument was lousy economics. The previous two decades, after all, had demonstrated that "trickle-down" tax cuts don't juice the economy – they create bubbles and balloon deficits. Proponents pointed to Reagan's original tax cut in 1981, claiming it had spurred economic growth. But that is nothing more than "urban legend," Stockman says. The economy "did recover after 1982," he says, "but mainly because the Federal Reserve defeated inflation."

In fact, Stockman insists, Bush's tax cuts for the rich represent a bastardization of Reaganism. "The Republican Party originally said that prosperity comes from the private sector," he says. "But today's Republicans have become Chamber of Commerce Keynesians – using tax policy as a way of stimulating, boosting, prodding the economy." The Party of the Rich, in essence, was offering up a twisted version of New Deal policies that laissez-faire Republicans like Reagan had long opposed.

Spinning the tax giveaways as a stimulus plan did serve one useful function: It helped obscure the true purpose of the Bush tax plan. In an internal memo written just days after the inauguration, O'Neill advised Bush that he had a "great opportunity" for quick action on his tax cuts if he framed the choice for Congress as tax cut vs. recession. "We can get this argument on our ground," O'Neill wrote, "and stop the drumbeat about a tax cut for the rich."

With no patience for the specifics of tax policy, Bush deputized Vice President Dick Cheney to push through his tax cut for the rich. Once a deficit hawk who confessed that he was "not convinced that the Reagan tax cuts worked," Cheney had emerged from his tenure as CEO of Halliburton as a leading advocate for rewarding big corporations and their executives – even as GOP moderates warned that Bush's tax cut would foreclose needed investments in education and infrastructure. "The vice president had no interest in what I had to say," recalls Chafee. "He ran the show right from the beginning, and he suffered no compromise."

As the economy worsened, even the president's Treasury secretary grew concerned about the tax cuts. O'Neill pushed Bush to include a trigger mechanism that would rein in the cuts if the projected surpluses failed to materialize. "The trigger was a good idea – having the foresight that if things turned bad, we wouldn't have to reverse course in a difficult time," O'Neill says now. "But there was never any serious interest in it" from the Bush administration.

To Chafee, the opposition to a trigger mechanism seemed to offer a clue about the real goal of the tax cuts: They were designed not to boost the economy, but to force the kind of spending cuts championed by Grover Norquist and other small-government activists. His suspicion that the starve-the-beast crowd was driving the cuts was confirmed, he says, by a conversation he had while walking the Senate corridors with Trent Lott, then the GOP majority leader.

"What's going on here?" Chafee asked. Why not safeguard the economy by adopting a trigger mechanism?

Lott turned to Chafee. "We're going to strangle the spending," he said. On the stump, Bush hyped the benefits of his plan by emphasizing how much in taxes it would save a single waitress. But the real action was at the top rung of the income ladder. Over 10 years, the bottom fifth of income earners could expect to pocket an extra $744. That waitress might be left with enough cash to change out the clutch on her Corolla. The top one percent, meanwhile, would receive more than $340,000 on average – enough to buy his and hers Bentleys.

To mask such glaring inequality, Republicans inaugurated the tax cut with an across-the-board rebate. The waitress would get a $300 check, along with everyone else from Warren Buffett on down. But in reality, the tax cuts were backloaded with benefits for the wealthy. In the first year of the deal, the top one percent would pocket just seven percent of the tax cuts – but by the time the cuts were set to expire in 2010, the rich would be reaping more than half of the windfall. What's more, the cuts were nefariously designed so that small-business owners and upper-middle-class professionals – primarily those earning between $200,000 and $500,000 a year – would see as much as three-quarters of their tax break eroded by the Alternative Minimum Tax, a levy Congress originally intended to keep rich people from cheating on their taxes.

Every year since the Bush tax cuts were approved, Congress has passed a multibillion "patch" to prevent this politically potent group of professionals from being denied their tax breaks. But at the time, Cheney used the money "saved" by the AMT claw-back to finance another favor exclusively for the rich: a series of cuts to the estate tax culminating in a one-year abolition, set to take effect in 2010. Rejecting a less costly bargain proposed by Democrats that would have provided a permanent escape from estate taxes for all but the richest of the rich, Republicans instead demanded a more expensive plan catering to the wealthiest 0.25 percent of all estates.

In May 2001, Republicans in the House voted in lock step to approve the Bush tax cuts, which cleared the Senate with the support of 45 Republicans and 12 conservative Democrats.

But then reality intervened. The bursting of the dot-com bubble, followed by the attacks of September 11th, tipped the economy headlong into recession. Rather than reversing course, however, Republicans rallied around another tax giveaway for the rich. That October, a bill passed by the House – and endorsed by Bush – not only called for eliminating a law requiring that tax-dodging corporations pay at least something in taxes, it ordered rebate checks to be cut to corporate giants for their past taxes. Under the bill, 16 companies of the Fortune 500 would have each received $100 million or more – including $1.4 billion for IBM, $671 million for GE and $254 million for Enron. Democrats in the Senate ultimately sank the bill, producing a stimulus package that extended unemployment benefits for the middle class and awarded tax incentives to corporations for new investments.

But Republicans kept their eyes on the prize. The following year, after the GOP regained control of the Senate and expanded its majority in the House, Cheney immediately pushed forward with an even deeper tax cut for the wealthy that O'Neill today describes as "an atrocity."

"We won the midterms," the vice president told O'Neill at the time. "This is our due."

By that point, any economic rationale for cutting taxes had vanished. September 11th, the recession and the 2001 tax cuts had plunged the nation $158 billion into the red. The mirage of the $5.6 trillion surplus had vanished – replaced with a forecast that America would rack up some $3 trillion in debt by 2012. But rather than put the brakes on tax cuts, as a trigger mechanism might have done, Cheney was determined to accelerate them, so the rich would get their money even sooner. To further reward the wealthiest, Cheney also wanted to slash taxes on capital gains and corporate dividends, with half of the money going to the top one percent.

To secure the new tax cuts, however, Cheney would first have to overcome opposition not only from Alan Greenspan, but from some of Bush's top advisers. The Fed chair had personally presented Cheney with a 20-page econometric analysis showing that soaring deficits caused by the tax cuts would sink long-term growth. Instead of communicating Greenspan's alarm to Bush, Cheney tasked a deputy named Cesar Conda to draft a memo disputing the study. Conda, a former tax lobbyist, blithely dismissed the projections of the Fed's senior economist as "completely wrong."

In November 2002, at a meeting in the White House, the president and his top economic advisers packed tightly around a mahogany table in the Roosevelt Room. With the administration's own forecasts showing that the economy had already regained its footing, one after another of Bush's deputies sounded the alarm about the dangers of a new tax cut. "This burns a big hole in the budget," deputy chief of staff Josh Bolten told the president. "The budget hole is getting deeper," added Daniels, "and we are projecting deficits all the way to the end of your second term." O'Neill warned the president that a "tax cut that benefits mostly wealthy investors" could imperil the budding prosperity. "With the economy already improving, this could cause an unnecessary boost," he said. "That's how you get a bubble." Entertaining the chorus of doubters, Bush himself voiced qualms about more cuts for the rich. "Won't the top-rate people benefit the most?" he asked. "Didn't we already give them a break at the top?"

But Cheney was having none of it. When O'Neill warned Bush that America was headed for a "fiscal crisis," the vice president, sitting at the Treasury secretary's right elbow, dismissed him midsentence by citing the ultimate champion of Republican tax cuts: "Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter, Paul."

A true student of Reagan would have understood that 2002 was the moment for a tax increase. When his 1981 tax cut overshot the mark, Reagan had put aside ideology and raised taxes, putting the needs of the country above the desires of the wealthy. Bush's father had also raised taxes to avoid passing massive deficits on to future generations. Moreover, the Bush administration had already committed the country to a costly war in Afghanistan, and was on the brink of invading Iraq. Historically, Republican and Democratic administrations alike had met the financial burdens of war by raising taxes. But this was a new Republican Party, one determined to aid the rich even as it sent the military budget soaring. As House Majority Leader Tom DeLay would soon declare, "Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes."

After the meeting, Cheney set out to remove anyone who stood in the way of the new tax giveaway. He phoned O'Neill and demanded the Treasury secretary's resignation. He also dispensed with economic adviser Larry Lindsey, whose frank assessment of the possible costs of the Iraq War had threatened to derail the tax cut.

Budget-conscious Republicans in Congress who opposed the tax cuts could not be disposed of – but they could be strong-armed. Voinovich and Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who refused to go along with cuts of more than $350 billion, were summoned to the White House for a meeting with Bush and Cheney. "The president wanted nearly a trillion dollars when he started with us," recalls Voinovich. "They were working on us: We need more, we need more." The senators held out for a smaller bill – though in hindsight, Voinovich says, there shouldn't have been any tax cuts. "Just think where we'd be if we'd gone along with what the president wanted," he says, laughing bitterly. "Where would we be today? Oh, my God."

In the end, Cheney's voice was the only one that mattered. In April 2003, when the bill reached the floor, the Senate deadlocked 50-50. The vice president cast the deciding "aye" that moved the tax cut into law. The benefits were even more tilted to the rich than the first Bush tax cuts. When fully phased in, 53 percent of the new cuts went to the top one percent. Those making $10 million or more pocketed an average of $1 million a year – twice the haul they made from the earlier cuts, and every cent of it borrowed. "It was a deficit-financed tax cut," concedes Hubbard, who chaired Bush's Council of Economic Advisers.

The deal privileged gambling on stocks over working for a living: The tax rate the richest pay on their long-term capital gains was slashed by 25 percent, while their rate on dividends fell by almost 60 percent. The move not only fueled speculation of Wall Street, it further widened the considerable gap between rich and poor. "It was a very destructive combination to have a national economic policy that stimulated debt-financed capital gains and then taxed the windfall at the lowest rate imaginable," says Stockman. "That contributed, clearly, to the growing imbalance in household income and wealth."

But Republicans didn't stop there. The following year, they passed the little-noticed American Jobs Creation Act. Named in the same Orwellian fashion as Bush's "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forests" initiatives, the 2004 law allowed corporations to bring home billions in profits they had stockpiled in offshore tax havens – the very flight of capital that Bush had blessed by torpedoing tax harmonization three years earlier. Under the tax amnesty, corporations repatriated $300 billion in profits they had stashed offshore. But instead of paying the nominal corporate tax rate of 35 percent, they were taxed at just 5.25 percent.

The title of the bill notwithstanding, corporations invested almost none of their windfall in new factories or other measures to create the 500,000 jobs that Republicans had promised. In fact, many companies that received the biggest tax break actually slashed jobs. Hewlett-Packard laid off 14,500 workers – one pink slip for every $1 million in profits it shipped back home from overseas. All told, according to an analysis by the National Bureau of Economic Research, up to 92 percent of the "jobs creation" money was handed out to top executives and shareholders in a frenzy of dividend payments and stock buybacks. And thanks to the GOP's cut on investment income the previous year, wealthy individuals who pocketed the offshore profits paid the same rate on their bonanza, 15 percent, that a waitress at a diner might pay on her tips.

When Democrats regained control of both the House and Senate in 2006, they temporarily halted the GOP's binge of borrowing from the Treasury to give tax cuts to the wealthy. But that didn't stop Republicans from finding other ways to aid the rich. As the economy collapsed in 2008, the Bush administration used the crisis to provide a stealth handout to the nation's banks – even those at no risk of failing. Under the TARP bailout, overseen by Treasury secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson, taxpayers were forced to give banks $254 billion for assets worth just $176 billion – a handout of $78 billion to the financial sector, including $2.5 billion for Paulson's cronies at Goldman. "Paulson pushed the money into the hands of the banks – no strings attached, no accountability, no transparency," Elizabeth Warren, then-chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, told Rolling Stone last year.

As with the offshore profits, the banks used the money to line the pockets of executives and investors – while doing little to speed the recovery of Main Street. "We gave an enormous subsidy to these financial institutions, and they have not returned it to the American people," said Warren. "The administration could have said, 'All right, take this and multiply it throughout the economy.' But Paulson never made that a condition of taking the money."

Taken together, the Bush years exposed the bankruptcy behind the theory that tax cuts for the rich will spur economic growth. "Let the rich get richer and everybody will benefit?" says Stiglitz. "That, empirically, is wrong. It's a philosophy of trickle-down economics that's belied by the facts." Bush and Cheney proved once and for all that tax cuts for the wealthy produce only two things: "lower growth and greater inequality."

The GOP's frenzied handouts to the rich during the Bush era coincided with the weakest economic expansion since World War II – and the only one in modern American history in which the wages of working families actually fell and poverty increased. And what little expansion there was under Bush culminated in the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression. "The wreckage was left by Dick Cheney, Grover Norquist and the gang," says Chafee. "This was their doing."

By driving the economy into the ditch, Republicans left the next president little choice but to drive up deficits in the short term by launching a massive campaign of federal spending to ward off a global depression. But even the $787 billion stimulus engineered by President Obama was hamstrung by his predecessor's ongoing giveaway to the wealthy: Republicans insisted that nearly 10 percent of every stimulus dollar be devoted to financing the annual "patch" to the Alternative Minimum Tax – the off-budget legacy of Bush's tax cuts for the rich. This was a $70 billion handout that inflated the cost of the stimulus package without stimulating anything – other than the paychecks of wealthy Americans.

From the outset of the Obama presidency, in fact, Republicans have engaged in a calculated, across-the-board campaign to protect the tax privileges of the wealthiest Americans. Their objective was made explicit by Rep. Eric Cantor during the height of the stimulus debate: "No Tax Increases to Pay for Spending" declared one bullet point on Cantor's website. "House Republicans are insisting that any stimulus package include a provision precluding any tax increases, now or in the future, to pay for this new spending." Having racked up the largest deficits in American history, Republicans suddenly found it expedient to return to their old-school rhetoric of deficit-bashing. "Under Bush, they had a story about deficits not mattering," says Michael Ettlinger, who directs economic policy at the Center for American Progress. "Then, all of a sudden Obama becomes president, and deficits matter again."

November 24, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-gop-became-the-party-of-the-rich-20111109?print=true

rfk2 see other book strategic ignorance

summary: with hot links

1/Sep/2011 edits 11:03 AM 9/5/2011

Crimes Against Nature Harper Collins 2004

c1 mess in Tx

1999 houston smoggiest city, #1 in childhood asthma bd air and water, drop to 49 on ecology spending p12

p13 sent most chemicals and toxins in air, co2 (10 % of US); most chem spills and made the most toxic waste

shortly after inaug tort reform emergency issue and appt's judges accordingly p13

1995 takings bill make taxpayers pay for cleanup (overturns longtime legal notion that X can't damage y's property/commons

property w/o compensation Lincoln freeing slaves ? 14

tx envro stocked w/ pesticide friendly anti union guy, ex monsanto lobbyist eXec

(chemical assoc), and another pro pest guy 14 TRNCC aka train wreck, eliminated

public input on permits and plant inspections, slashed budget by 20%, avg ozone

over larger areas 15

grandfathered many on air including TXI and cement capital, produced 1/3 of smog

clinton epa wn after, but big donors to bs; alcoa, exxon, shell, amoco, enron,

dow etc 1.5m$ 17

2 laws make all vol (chems found to be 6-15x higher than reported by mfg 18

almost 300 schools 2 mi from grandfathered; 9 gave at least 100K to be pioneers

(Baker and Botts law firm, also vinson and elkins (alcoa) ceo Paul Oneil (fired

b/c?)

energy dept transit team headed by DC incl 3 tx pioneers incl Lay 19

dep commerce don Evans, oil delay ("epa is the Gesapo of gov't")

ch2

always been illegal to pollute all the way back to Justinian Code: commons can't

be pvt property, including wandering animals, fisah, wetlands 20. Robin Hood

fought King John's reservation of deer etc for upper classes; tried to sell

fishery and enact tolls on Thames led to battle Runnymede loss led to Magna Carta

(free access to waters). c13 coal burners executed in London 21 until 1873

illegal to emit smoke onto pvt or public ; 1918 scotus said inconceivable that

public trust assets could slip into pvt hands " 21

eastern anatum falcon gone after earth day 1970 (20 mil in street, #1 in us hist),

28 mjr laws passed in 1?20 yrs 22; b2 is win of 30 yr stealth attack. 1976 coors

Mtn states Legal fdn to ctr eco law (one of colo biggest poluters) also philips

petrol, exoon, texaco, amoco , shell ford chevron; coors also heritage doc to news

dir, staffers, hate radio 23 heritage wants ot "strangle the envio movement...the

greatest single threat to the Am economy" hw etc "henny-pennyism" 24 #1 w/ top 5

fdn: olin, scaife, coors, koch, bradley (40Mil since 1985. exxon chev dupont etc

give 34m/yr

1980 coors etc spearheaded Sagebrush Rebellion (corp and rw) turned ctt into pol

power 25 RR: I am a S rebel" Heritage shadow cabinet, 2k pp Mandate for Change

became blueprint (Coors in kitchen cab). Coors picked assoc Anne Gorsuch for epa;

hubby cattle baron to head BLM, tho had declared to shut it 25

Watt dominion theology, "subdue" nature is duty; sold off pub;ic assets at fore

sale prices : GAO 26 "I do not know how many gneerations we can count on till the

Lord returns" grens are plot to delay energy development and "weaken Americ" , a

"left-wing cult which seeks to bring down the type of gov't i believe in" 26

Gorsch cut budget 30% so no new laws or enforcement; killed Superfund at start,

became a welfare pgm of corp lawyers 26 appt lobbyist to run depts CoS timber

lawyer, enforecenmt chief ex-exxon

by 81 1.1 mil signatures on petition to get rid of watt; after out, 25 counts felony,

perjury, concealment and obstr of justice. Gorsuch and 23 others forced to resign,

sweatheart deal w/ coors (her #2 Rita LaVelle jailed perj and obstr. 26

blow to sagebrush but regrouped at aug '88 nugget hotel reno and renamed Wise

Use" arnold; our goal is to destrroy, to erradicate the env move. we want you to be

able to exploit the env for pvt gain, absolutely" p 27 lobbyists guided

grassroots activists thru signals" some real but mostly greenwash , a 1/2

billion$/yr? industry 27. Cit for the Env has no cits (against clean air act etc)

Env Conservation Org, Evergreen fdn, Cits for Sensible Control of Acid Rain 27

hate radio bob grant

Wise Use plus Xian Moonie (arnold head of Wa State Am Freedon Coalition (moonie

pol arm) 28 also Pat Rob CC, 1991 cNew Wolrd Order best seller , fed gov alien

trying to wreck family and take guns. on green see mike Lind NY rev bks 2/2/95 env

evil pagan preists; opened door of militia, racist and other fringe to be anti

green (?) r reed his #2, gave seminars to corps on how electronic and grassroots

to ctr green; ant-gr staple of C B network 29 ind $ behind Xian 1st x, so its pols

got elected 29 by 94 got most ~ eco congress in hist, wise use helped gingrich

revo (Contr w/ A, ~ grn) assist by consigiore sp delay, w/ "biblical worldview"

30 TD: DDT as safe as aspirin", ~ESA; columbine b/c teach evol

1/95 Tom Delay invites 350 lobbyists to dismantle regs 30 learned from watt disaster PR,

so plant tree foto op and used free mkt rhet to hide; Luntz did PR (wrote Contract for

Am) snuck riders on key bills, "supermandate" regulatory reform, ~ unfunded

mandates etc but PIRG etc caught them, 1 mil signatures, so mod gop opposed; after

gov't shutdown newt lost public support. T Delay: we lost debate on envir"

b2 pick DC ensured Wise Use backing. go to guy for wise use and oil in 80's;

arranged /led 1st veto of wilderness bill in hist under RR, big win psychol. 1992

to 2000 "dist advisor" to Ctr for Def of Free Ent (WU) arnold exec VP. DC also on

bd of Nat'l Legal Ctr for Public Intrerst, WU CTT 31

inaug day, andy card froze all clinton pending regs

wu #1 Norton, 2 griles (mining lobby), mark rey (timber lobby); doj asst ag for

env and nat res WU leadr Sansonetti p 32

EPA fisher (dupont, monsanto) and horinko lobby.consult to Koch; Holmstead (lobbyist and WU front

gp)

Connaughton

quick permits waivers, cut$ for implement; dropped cases ~ oil and coal;

reinterpret law (eg used farmed salmon to remove from ES list so logging co did

not have to protecty wild ! 33

epa 3 rules, 2 ct ordered and one a rollback (vs 30 BC and 21 b1 33

9/23 tried to weaken #1 green law NEPA, which req public input June 2003 USForst S

tried to exclude EIS and hearings. Made it tough to get FOIA info 33 210

enforcement job wants cut, violation notices down 58%, fines 28% 34

2001 told epa no action on fac farms w/o top ok; eap a "country club for corp

polluters' 34

dropped cases ~ oil and coal Koch 97 felony counts on Koch, knowlingly dumped 90

tons benzene in Corp Cr Tx and hid from regulators; cd be $352 M fines, but dropped

to 9 counts and 20 mil$ p34-5 dropped investigation of coal, army corp req ok from top for

wetlands citations 34

12/27/2001. 86 bill to prevnt gov contract for co's w/ repeated safety and eco vio

(could mean up to 138B$) 35 BUT John Ashcroft used sailor mongering act ~

Greenpeace for 1st x in 132 yrs (fines and probation 5 yrs) fed judge threw out

(!?)

JDept gave ron arnold 325K to study eco-terror, JAshcroft says #1 terror threat krugman jn

22 nyt 2004

norton in charge of 450 m acres land, 3 bill acreds coastal waterways; year after

law school grad, MSLN under Watt; grazing limits, oil offshore and in wilderness

and wildlif refuges 36 (funders Burlington N, exxon, Indep Petrol ssoc and rocky

mtn oil and gas assoc 37. in 84 after 2 yrs at Hoover, got into dept of agric,

then int, then RR CEQ. at Pacific Res Inst ofr Public Pol, her takings rule would

end enforcement. did not win senate seat p37 advsor to TASSC, Defnders of prop

Rights WU, PERC, founded Council for Rep for Env protection (Newt on bd) $ from

Coors, arco, am forest and paper assoc, chem mfg assoc 37

at WU mtg, trashed wheelchair ramps, smog check, Fair labor St'd act, rid schools

of asbestos and Vio ~ Women Act 38

Griles ass't Cason vJmes E made #2 b/c no congr approval needed (ex #2 to Watt,

swetheart dals , strip mining in parks; dep soliciter Wm G Myers, dir of WU front

for cattelmen. H VCraig Hanson (ex gov Sison F&G, ~ ESA

Mining lobbyRececca Watson asst sec of land and Min magmt . WU bennet Raley assty

sec water and Sci (~ 1994 CW actreauthor)

Lynn Scarlett ex pres Reason Fdn (~ curbside rcycle and food labels) 39

Jeff D Jarrett dor office of surface mining reclam and enfoprce ex coal exec 39

(had been invest by that org for obstr of j in 90's)

Norton approved biggest pit mine near Az's Gila mtns saying 3,360 cu mine no

impact. reverse limits on mining waste; opened oil in AK and utah; redraw

monument lines for oil; 1st admin since ESA to list zero ( tried to make grey

wiolves easier to kill. petitoned UN to remove yellowstone as world heritage site

demands obedience and fired moved or demotes longterm employees 41

Sierra Framework 10 yrs in making; bs admin asked gocv arnold to drop, refused

unless sci say change; rove said ok, but FServ 3x cut vs plan; fantic calls never

ret. 43 watt said in 2001 that b2 was doing what he wanted to 44.

ch3

b2 said gw needed to be taken seriously in 2nd debate, tho ~kyoto; 3 mos into

office 180 on pledge (record?) 45

in McC-Liberman Climate Stew act JC held photos of artic sea melt 46

MIL: rep commissed by Andrew Marshall, fr of SW and eminence gris on strategy says

disater if climate shifts over a couple decades, as 1`2k yrs ago. 47 N Eur freeze

b/c of gulf stream, famine, drought refugees "elevated beyond sci debate to US

nat'l sec concern " cf Schwartz and Randall Encri Def oct 2003 ems.org

Rio climate treaty signed by b1 1992and ratified; co2 not covered in CA act b/c of

lobby, but the law allows reg of all, not just lised ones (eg pb, sulpfur etc not

listed but acted on

CTW sold as green, but NJ gov rec'd not good; NJ open for biz, but appoved 99-0

(looked good comp to WU) cf Ron Suskind Price of Loyalty. wanted to repair rep

on GW, which she saw as real; triest mtg pre kyoyo talk; talked w. O'N, good on gw

at alcoa; cvd not get mtg w/ b2, but rice and and card ok on co2 reg. after

crossfire,4 sen Hagel, pat roberts, idso, larry craig WU, helms sent ltr (may

have been prompted/written by DC; b2 met but held up ltr in reply. kyoto wd hurt us

economy

"clean kill" --> "wind dummy" (c powell) CTW tried to recover w/ arsenic, which

blew up (jeffords in part b/c of defected to dems, tiling power (epa wrong on

danger by 10x 911 ended issue 55-6

ch 4 Office of Info and Reg Affairs under OMB all powerful; job is to report on

fiscal impact of legis; John Graham head (fdr Harvard Ctr of Risk Analysis WU hack,

Mercatus Ctr ASSC, AEI; An Council on Sci and Health (tobacco tactics)"At Xmas,

let us be thankful for pesticides and safe food"; can kibosh law 6-7 yrs in making

w/ public input; est 1980

dark soothsayer" of cost -benefit analysis, which is easy to manip, esp w/ green

(eg massive fish kill measured by price of fillet of one of the few edible ones

60-1 got start w/ air bag study in 80's, got adjunct gig at harvard, then sold

its rep, which got more funding which got him tenure (dean pushed for , several

signed ltr ~) HCRA $ from monsanto, dupont, ge, union carbide, dow, boise cas,

api, am chem council 62-3 bd has dupont, exxon ecol lawyer, NAM, eastman cghem,

Am elec Pwr. JG worked for PM, on 2ndhand smoke (launder $ thru kraft subsid,

then worked w/ them on pesti in food 64). then his air bag report reviwed, not

400k$ for each year of life saved by 61K$. 1996 study said 60K lives could be

saved by change regs and resource alloc "statistical murdr' picked up by rwi.

during confirmation, 1st peer rev: 79 of the rules never enacted (only 11 of 90

had een); also "grossly understanted the value of hu life' p65 2 ltrs, 11 ppl from

harvard ~; rendered opinon on many complex issues, tho no hard sci degreee 66

routinely made deceptive comments to media; he has solcitied $ from indiusties

affected by his work w/o saying he did 67 (only got 37 no vties , 2nd to JA. GAO

found he hobbled health and eco rules incl epa 67 w/ Am Chem C, Mercatus and API

hit list of regs, 23 vpresented to Congr (inclarsenic, snowmoblies in parks,

roadless aras, coal plants 68

fac farms: pigs 10x ppl waste

pfiesteria piscicida cell from hell, lesions and brain damage to ppl too! 70

leopold ctr for family farm attended rfk2 talk on water, got funding cut 85%

small farmers build hog house to spc, own only the shit; Missouri and Illin

illegal to foto fac farml 13 states veggie libel lws 71

pork WU from goon followed rfk2, threatened

Am Farm Bur lobby front

Fed judge said animal fac needed water permit like any other fac; JG called mtg w/

ind and Mercatus bd member was partn in McGuire Woods LLP, in the suit. Merc

wrote plan, sent to epa ok'd by ex Farm Bur Adam Sharp --> build hog house to spc,

own only the shit; they make almost no $, so no one to sue when pollute w. shit;

write own shit mgmt plan w/ no public; even weak rules weakend more, shit

relgated to states; only tool for small farmers ~ int' corp gone 74 ~TJ vision.

Ch 5 Sci Fiction

1st suppress since Inquisition

Luntz infamous memo 2003 says envrio is gop weakness: doubt, recruit experts. ind

always had hacks, but gop got them in the gov 77 echo "more study" mantra, then

cut $ to do it 77 b2 proposed budget double digit cuts in epa, usgs, dept agr,

energy's Office of Sci etc 77 "biostitutes"

ctw hubby interests in Citigp, which owns Traveler's (also Port Authority) so

incentive to downgrade risk of air 79 moved robt martin omsbudsman(dep of labor

rules no cause), cancelled the position, on weekend sent agents to grab files and

padlock office. Kaufman Resigned. air said ok before all test results in. IG said

risk downplayed, raw data blocked 80-1 3x safe level asbstos Connaughton leaned

on Thernstrom (commun dir, now works for Norton) CEQ screamed at epa's Kreisher, T

81 ground zero levels were record 81. admon gagged epa on perc, mercury

toxicologist quits 83

GW reports altered, dismissed or hid 12 in 10 yrs 84: N Ac Sci, noaa, nasa and

2002 rept by combined agencies 84.

9/2002 epa air report left out usual section on gw; same with june 2003; july

2003 epa sci leaked report that gw could be dealt w/ at small cost. b2 in

response spent 100m for 10 yr study to prove gw is natural 84

Princeton Oppenheimer said pres does not believe in evol, what kind of sci would

convince him on gw 85

epa report said fracking (Haliburton #1) wd exceed benzene, data revised so not 85

(waxman q never answered) 85

Norton said drill no harm caribou; she altered sci; 17 major changes; she

attributed them to typos 86

win/spr 2002norton and rove pressured nat'l martine Fisheries to alter salmon on

klamath; lack of water led to 33K salmon dead, biggest kill in West 86 biologist

resigned [note connaughton boasts of marine reserves]

norton ordered rewrite on artic wildlife b/c of drill; snowmobiles (fed judge

reprimanded)

epa sci govt reprisals for dioxin sludge fertilizer 87 dept of agr superbugs from

hog farms ordered not to publish or talk; resigned.

CDC replaced health advis panel w/ industry reps incl VP of Heritage , denounced

by 10 sci on Sci Jrnl apr 12 2002 p89 "regulatory paralysis appears to be the goal

here"

Dr kim thonpson HCRA picked for cdc

Gov Acct Pjt on whistleblowers says gag sci unprecedented (goldwater gop guy) p 90

2003 PEER found widespread demoralization of sci, feared reprisal in energy states

Co ut, mon, dakotas

OMB found 420K jobs outsourced to industry; risk of not being able to analyze

risks 91

atrazine #1 in US, tho problems found in 80's; frog deform at 1/30th eap level;

lawsuit forced gov to look into. Gov hired Syngenta, a mfger 92

July 2003 epa regional office approved study by developer funded study that

wetlands put out pollutants, then used to justify replace wetlands w golf courses

etc 92-3 biologist quit "bushwacked" 93

9/2003 Graham grabbed authority to review all, as opposed to usual for external

review 93 opposed by NAS, Nat Assoc for Adv of sci, fed am sci, regulators going

all the way o nixon 94 OIRA became law??

UCS rep 2/2004 60 sci,20 nobels, say scope and scale ... of manip, suppression, and

misrep of sci by bush admin unprecedented 95

Ch 6 blueprint for plunder

energy co 48.3m to b2 and gop 2000, 58m since inaug 96 31 of 48 trans team energy

ties; cab and staff 4 cab sec, 6 powerful WH and 20 high level apptees

rove owned 250K enron stock early 2001 while energy pol made; also BP, amoco,

royal dutch shell 97 but involved in all decisions (scooter sold a bunch early 2001

dept comm ceo of cabot chem; undersec chief econ for exxon

secret task force; Nat Energy Pol Dev gp right after inaug 97 but Fed Advisory

Comm Act says any mtgs of pvt and public be disclosed, so official members all gov

as end-run 98 DC #2 spenser abrams (2000 failed relect sen after one term MI 700K

from car industry) killed fuel effic; Joe Allbaugh dir F Energy Reg Comiss (tx

"iron triangle) wife lobby for reliant, entergy and txu); also Don evans tx,

norton (1/3 sen camp energy co's), amd Paul O'Neill SIC vowed to sell alcoa stock

but stalled till after rep out, stock went up 30% 99 thot he cd have good impact,

but realized not goal 101

may 17 01 rep released --> energy bill ; exxon record profits, 2x prev yr 99

for 1st x, GAO sued for info, redently appt judge denied, no appeal , but Sierra C

and Jud watch won. scotus delayed till after election; scalia had gone to oil co

duck hunt junket refused to recuse, tho many demands 100 docs heavy redeacted, and

nothing from CD mtgs 100

task force got input fromAPI, Am Gas assoc, nat mining assoc and edison 101 400

co's combined in Alliance for Energy and ec growth to lobby.

B2 campaign workers became lobbyists; mtgs w/ task force; am gas at least 8 480 K

cantrib 1999-02 etc, api, exelon, westinghouse,enron 10x, 6 w DC (who refused to

cap CA energy prices) 103 RELIANT engineered CA scam 103 Westar exec email said

$ to DeLay PAC was price for "seat at table" of the task force 103. DC says just

b/c someone gave $ to camp does not mean shd not have "express views " to gov 103

suskind bk says DC orchestrated idea of energy crisis, permitted no discuss and

said pres wd not read anyone's reports p 104 day before rep released, foto op w/

green energy

chevron big input, apilang on exec order verbatim 104-5

19 mtgs/contacts w/ nuke ind over $1/2 mil contrib

So Co 1.6 m 99-02 met 7x, hired haley barbour and current rnc Marc Racicot SIC to

lobby esp on co2, NSR rule key, req gpa plants to install control when upgrade or

expand 106 prosecuted by BC (8 of 51); dept Just forced to drop suits EPA cheif

enforcement officer quit 106 "if you have a good lobbyist, you can just buy your

way out of trouble" 106 joined by edison's Tom Kuhn, b pioneer college roommate

edison 600k to gop 99-02 and its members almost 20 mil since 98 106

rep rec'd exempt old power plants from CAA; barbour raised $ 250K at may 21 gala,

150k from So co.107

Haliburton gave 1 mil gop 97-02, and all soft money 1/2 mil to gop ; incentive to

polute added to rep.bill, tho O'N says does not cost more to do right.

conservation a private virtue, noy basis of pub;lic poliocy DC TO speech mo before

rep released 107 but 1 mpg increase = ANWR 2.6 = iraq and kuwait import, 8 all

of ME 108 JC cafge up 7.5, shorage --> glut 108, 86 rolled by RR; lovens says if

not, we need no persian gulf oil after 86; no need for wars; since 1990 80 mil car

$ , cancelled tax decd for green cars, less effic st'ds 100K tax break hummers etc.

result worst effic in 20 yrs 109 tax cuts to offset energy prices [basically

another subsidy !?] bill ~ Daschle but end-run, by june 02 3/4 of 105 recs in

place

oct 01 weakend regs on mining and air pollut

power plants kill a Trillion fish/yr 111

took pwer from states to limit offshore drill, b2 refused to support Superfund

(hid as reform) but 1:4 Us ppl live near one 112 10c bbl cheap b/c excluded from

liability under cost recovery 112 normally epa can clean site then charge 3x to

polluter, so big leverage ; w/o tax, no cleanup; oct 03 fund went bankrupt, so cost

shifted to public.

ch 7 king coal

mtntop 400k acres wasteland biorich temp forests; cutrrent rate 1 mil more in a

decade(size of delaware) 115 2,500 tons explisive in WV per day! 115

strip mine started in west in 40's to get shallow coal, but used in Appal to get

dep, reduce workers, bust unions (120K wVa to 15 ) 116

coal mine and pwer plants 20mil$ 2000 and another 21 since. unprec acces to task

force; peabody execs on trans team ; bill has 2b for r&d, 5 days later IPO got 60M

more than predicted. wanted to build biggest pwr plant upwind of mamoth cave

unesco site and biosphere res; 450K to gop in 3 mos, w Griles ok'd; pol appt w/ no

sci bkgd overtuned air study.

top lobby Quin Shea declared kyoto dead 119 undo all epa ability to reg co2 in

months

1972 buff ck coal slurry dam collapse lilled 120 ppl. 2000 Massey 300 m gallon,

biggest disaster in East US; 60 posions, 100 mi of river ; of 650, 1/2 dangerous ;

122 study thwarted by admin: chao her9tage, hubby got 100K from masey. chao appt

coal exec to head MSHA (#2 amax mine, dep ast amax and peabody. sludge study boss

fired on inaug day ; 8 crim cts -->2 weakest, one tossed by admin jusge so 5600$

fine for billions in damage 123. 8 member team peress ti sign off, one w/ wife w

cancer, Spadaro invstigator lured to DC for mtg, his office searched (frames pix

of family) changed locks"Gestope'd me" 123 OSC invest whtleblower; demotred and

reassigned

Jeff Holmstead EPA office of air and radiation, then pal got gig at Baker and

Hostetler, So Co lobby 124 after gpa, hold#2 took job at Bracewell and Paterson,

houston co lobby for So co on NSR . Sen Edwards called for holm resig supress sci

and lying 125. Oct 03 GAO rep said he's lied that elim NSR wd not affect ongpoing

invest and proec of corps that broke rules incl So co. but he had talked to epa

about it (3 quit)

Mike Leavitt of Ut repl CTW, 1st act waken merc rgs fom coal (40% or airborne

merc) most cd be elim for 1% of plant rev. lev and Holm scrapped BC reforms; much

reform" came from Latham and Watkins law firm (holm fmr co) 128

1/04 conf folowed gop fundraiser at Az Biltomore; solicited changes to ESA, Nat

Env Pol Act, CAA, access to publ land, tort reform organized by coal lobby/DC task

force spkesman Jim Sims 129 connaught and griles there

GRILES 1970-81 pernitted Va; Buff Ck --> SMCRA, ~, lost 9-0 scotus, but watt appt

him to Office of Surface Mining he's repoertdly vowed to "turn out the lights"

130 cut staff 1/3, morale down " we tore the agency to hell" Wa Post 130 Dept int

RR in 85, got rec'd for oil and gas leases ofshore 82K acres for 2.50 ea (17k

acres sold for 42.5K then flipped for 37 m 131. trtied to open ANWR CA and Fla

coast, hid risks. 89-95 sr vp United Caol ,supervised one of biggest mtntop, 95

formed lobby shop for 40 co's, merged with Nat Env Strats (barbour) : NMAssoc,

Dominon, EEI, shell, texcaco arch coal etc etc 131 2001 sold client list to NES

partner Himmelstein for 1.1 mil in 4 payments so in essence on payroll (dept of

Int refused req for info ;sen made him agree not to meet w/ former clients, but

met chevron while appt pending (paid 46mil not to drill off fla coast ?! (helped

jeb?) Griles press Fisher at epa to overrule pipeline study, coal-bed mehane, met

w/ nat'l mining assic to lax mtntop; himmel gave party w/ griles and bunch of b of

int ppl who reg mining 134 , liberman demanded ehtic invest: dept of int Insp Genl

said he "did not take ethics seriously" "train wreak waiting to happen" ; he paid

$180. to himmel for dinner. changed stories several times on shell and chevron;

rep went to Norton, who closed case.

Griles at least 30 WH mtgs, B2 2 w/ rove; met w/ indistry 37x on Clear Skies, New

Src Rev and CAA rollback, tho Int has no jurisdiction 136 (but he had lobbied on

air for 13 co's)

Since 1975 "fill" meant no waste, but Army corps allowed mtntop even tho no

authpority to 137 Griles pused EPA on this, tho violates CWA (intent, nit

explicit). Chf Judge Haden tossed, but rw 4th curcuit upheld change. Griles

rewrote EIS, 8 mil $ worth of studiesd relgated to appendix; 80K ppl weighed

in,but one day after comment period closed, stream buffer rule changed

ch 8

dascle held energy bill 18 mos till gop got both houses in 1/2003 Delay and

energy comm chair Billy Tauzin passed, but know it cd not pass, so bait

and switched: passed dem bill then rewrote it w/o dems 145, just energy lobby

;released the bill Sat night, 3 days to review 1200 pages 147 damage env and add

to debt (100B tax breaks McC: no lobbyist left behind" for Hooters and Poluters.

Halib tax break to frack ; worst bill for envir in 25 yrs (back to newt Reg reform"

More for oil, more ghg. ethanol subsid peeled off demos, incl daschle and harkin;

DC and lobbists worked hard; even WSJ deplored pork for votes 149

House passed Domenici onmibus? bill [same as energy bill?], but sen filibuster.

WSJ "cornucopia of special interst payoffs" 151 some gop sununu held out, big deby

and MTBE outrage (delay, tauzin and barton)"Major Threat to Beter Earnings' etc

shell jokes; used b/c lobby tho more $ than ethanol 155 cost to clean cd be 29-46

b, co try to dodge .

Ch 9 nat' sec

7 weeks after 911 NY Corzine proposed less dangerous chem inventory in stock and

use less harmful when cost ok passed env and public wks comm 19-0. ACC lawyers James

Conrad on trans team, fred webber ex pres Bush pio got 25 other chem co's to give

$ 38m to gop 95-2002, another 30m lobbying 158; while fighting bill, another 1/3m

PAC 159 bill called Stalinesque, heritage said real "goal of a chemical-free

world" CEI" radical env agenda" jihad 159 8 gop incl inhofe (chair) (8 got 750K

since 95 160 ctw tried to do x b/c of pressure, but authority taken away by

homeland. odd that Pitts Trib Rev reporter 2002 critical Carl Prine entered pants

unchallenged [thus proving?]

Entergy gets 1m/day from Indian Pt (NYC within 50 mi, evac plan a joke NRC did not

cite for sleeping guards b/c not same one within 6 mos) entergy big funder of

NEI, big donor lobby

ch 10 what lib media

63 gaylord nelson made xcross cttry trip w/ jfk on enviro, but pres asked about

defense and power politics; inspired Earth day. crisis predicted now happeneding:

ashtma, fish pooison, agw, end species at same rate as dinos 175

fed radio act 1927 "public interest' kids and community pgm, divrse ownership; in

60;s FCC used Fair Doctr to make cigs co incl surgeon warning in ads; car co ads

hadto be balanced by those promong fuel effec!?) Moyers; clear intent was to keep

commerical values from overwhelming demoicratic values" so fiicial view (corp or

gov) would not be the only view of rality 176-7

88 RR 86 FDoct as favor to studio donors. NY sttion that aired 9 pro nuke ads

rfused = time; 3 FCC appts who ran FCC said b/c of cable, FD obsolete. chair Mark

Fowler said tv "just another appliance--it's a toaster with pictures" 177.

Congress tried to reinstate, but vetoed.

Clear Channel SIC 1995 40 radio stations now 1200, 11%. News corp #1 in world, one

of 7 in us own or control all 2k tv, 11k radio, 1100 papers and mag [now?];

stations no longer run by city, news no longer by jrnlists 178. few or none

reporters at statehouse; none at B of Int.

Ailes says no eco news b/c not fast-breaking

GE owns nbc, world's #1 polluter w/ 86 superfind sites (westinghouse cbs 39

biggest maker of nuke plants and 3rd in weapns 180

fox fla jane akre and steve wilson 9 mos 83 drafts on bgh; fired, sued 425K damges

whistleblow overtined b/c rule created by judges not legis/ 182 5 networks amicus

briefs, makes it ok to lie; jeb judge will rule? on whether reports must pay 1.7m

in legal fees!? 182

cbs pulled RR docudrama . msnbc fired donohue for michael savage

Disney 86's Fahr 9/11 rek2 got grodin fired too. Bill o interv rfk, but not live;

nbc bumped for jackson

last vetige of free media is ownership, but b2 changed. clear ch and cumulus

(dixie chicks) Micael Powell gave waivers to overages. corp get up to 45% of

nation viewers and can have paper, tv and radio in same city 187

rules done in secrt w/ only 1 pub;ic mtg led to protest (2.4 mil ltrs) . sen votd

to halt, house about to but delay and lobbyists blocked vite; fed ct rejected b/c

of lack of "reasoned analysis"

ch 11

corps don't want free mkt but to use govt to quash compet. biggest subsid go to

extractive indust. subsid make millionaires who fund pols. abe: confed in front

and bankers behind me and fear them most

dict def of fascism fits now; Muss called it corptaism

Goering said all you have to do is say attack, denounce peacemakers as

unpatriotic; works anywhere 194

hist alex carey; 3 c20 trends; growth demic, corp pwr and corp propaganda as a

means of protecting corp pwr ~ democ" 195

John Winthrop City on Hill cooprtative

Lincoln Steffens 1904 The Shame of the Cities all problems rooted in

self-interested ologarchy 198

b2 fan of crichton book state of fear, had him over

pentagon killed satellite pgm thast would cripple climate sci (RS)

House GOP killed new polar satellite 4/11? SEE SCI MAG

rfk's http://motherjones.com/environment/2004/10/crimes-against-nature is about perfidy

video talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU7fhIO7DG0&feature=player_embedded

MotherJones.com: How has the U.S. government historically changed its approach to public "commons" such as the air and water?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: One of the successes of the right-wing propaganda campaign has been to convince the American people that the environmental laws were new innovations passed after Earth Day. But in fact, it’s always been illegal to pollute. The pollution was restricted by two ancient doctrines. One’s called the Public Trust Doctrine, which says that those assets that are by their nature shared assets -- the commonwealth, the air and water, the wildlife, public lands -- are owned by the public. Everybody has a right to use them, and nobody has a right to treat them in a way that will diminish their use and enjoyment by others. The other law is Nuisance Law, which protects private property from intrusion by polluters. Nuisance law has been turned on its head by the right wing, who claim to be on the side of property rights, but really only favor property rights when they’re talking about the right of a polluter to use his property to destroy his neighbor’s property or the public property. The law in the United States, in every jurisdiction until about 1876, was that if a factory put smoke into the air, even one day a year, and it got onto a neighbor’s property, the neighbor had the right to enjoin to close down the factory, and the courts had no choice but to do that.

Those strong, ancient laws were dismantled through corruption and the political power of industry, as well as a general recognition that industrialization would be beneficial to the American public. But the pendulum swung too far, and by the early 1960s the polluters had basically displaced the public out of public trust assets. Then you had the reaction; you had Rachel Carson’s book "Silent Spring," which was the clarion call, and then you had Earth Day, 1970, when 20 million Americans came out onto the street to demand the return of their ancient environmental rights. The result of that was the passage of 28 major environmental laws over the next decade that made an effort to restore those rights to the public.

MJ.com: From there, what tactics did industry use to regain its position?

RFK: The "Gang of Five" foundations that are huge repositories of industrial polluter money [the John.M Olin Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Castle Rock Foundation, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and the Bradley Foundation] have been used to create think tanks, to recruit phony scientists that we call “biostitutes” and to fund politicians in order to undermine and subvert those environmental laws that were passed after Earth Day: the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act. Industry was kind of caught off-guard by Earth Day and the legislative barrage that followed. But since then, they’ve mobilized to regain control of the public trust assets. And really, the best measure of how a democracy is functioning is how it allocates the goods of the land, the public trust assets. Does it maintain the air and water under control of the people for the benefit of the public, or does it allow those assets to be privatized by politically powerful entities?

MJ.com: How surprising has George Bush’s environmental policy been in light of his track record as governor?

RFK: We weren’t surprised by the federal environmental record, because we saw that he’d been the worst environmental governor in America. Under his leadership, Texas became the most polluted state in the country, with the highest levels of air pollution, the highest levels of water pollution, and the highest level of toxic waste and toxic releases. And it was 49th among 50 states in per-capita environmental spending. He was only worsted by Gov. Mike Leavitt of Utah, who he has named his EPA administrator and who is now in charge of stewarding all of America’s environmental assets.

MJ.com: And yet, as a candidate in 2000, he talked about regulating emissions and combating global warming.

RFK: The problem for the president is that the environment and our environmental laws are very popular with both Republicans and Democrats among the rank-and-file. So, from the beginning, he’s had to conceal his radical anti-environmental agenda from the American public. He did it on the campaign trail by simply saying that he was going to support initiatives to control global warming. But once he got into office, he immediately reversed that and abandoned that promise, and began dismantling our environmental infrastructure.

In keeping with that, his attack has been a stealth attack. They use Orwellian rhetoric to conceal this extreme agenda from the public. When they want to destroy the forests, they call it the Healthy Forest Act; when they want to destroy the air, they call it the Clear Skies bill. Most insidiously, as part of this stealth attack, they’ve put polluters in charge of the agencies that are supposed to protect Americans from pollution. The head of the Forest Service is Mark Rey, probably the most rapacious timber industry lobbyist in American history. The head of public lands is Steven Griles, a mining industry lobbyist who believes public lands are unconstitutional. The head of the air division of the EPA was Marianne Horinko, whose former job had been advising corporate polluters on how to evade Superfund. The second in command of EPA was a Monsanto lobbyist. If you look at virtually all of the sub-secretariats and agency heads in the Departments of Agriculture, Energy and Interior and EPA, the same pattern holds. Polluters have been put in charge of the agencies that are supposed to protect Americans from pollution. As I show in my book, these individuals have not entered government service for the public interest, but rather to subvert the very laws they’re now charged with enforcing.

MJ.com: One lesser-known example of that pattern is John Graham at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. What role does he play?

RFK: He’s been an anti-environmental activist for many, many years. He founded an anti-environmental think tank at Harvard, which is funded by polluting industries that pay Graham to produce reports [essentially] defending their corporate profits. He’s developed these phony algorithms that always end in the same result, which is that industry wins and the public loses.

He runs the most powerful agency in the government today, which is the OIRA, part of the Office of Management and Budget. It’s a secretive agency inside the White House that is not subject to many of the laws that require open government. The other agencies that are charged with protecting the American environment from time to time develop new regulations in keeping with that mission. Usually it takes about eight years for a regulation to go through the regulatory process, which involves a lot of public debate, public notice and comment, hearings and review by attorneys and scientists. At the end of this painstaking and extremely democratic process, those regulations now disappear into a black hole at OIRA, which is supposed to review the regulations prior to passage. And at OIRA, the industry meets privately with John Graham and rewrites the regulations in private. When the regulations come out of his office, generally they are no longer designed to protect the public, but rather to protect industry prerogatives and profits.

MJ.com: What's the worst example of how that collaboration between industry and government has played out?

RFK: One of the worst examples is the rewriting of New Source Review. I have three sons with asthma; one out of every four black kids in New York City now has asthma. Asthma attacks are triggered primarily by ozone and particulates, and the major sources of those materials in our atmosphere are 1,100 coal-burning power plants that are burning coal illegally. The Clinton administration had initiated investigations and prosecutions against 70 of the worst of those. But this is an industry that donated $48 million to President Bush and the Republican Party in the 2000 cycle and has given $58 million since. One of the first things that Bush did when he came into office was to order the Justice Department to drop those lawsuits. The Justice Department lawyer said that this had never happened before in American history, where a president accepts money from industries targeted for investigation and prosecution, and then orders the Justice Department to drop those investigations once he gets into office. There were 70 utilities involved here and, according to EPA, just the criminal exceedences from those 70 plants killed 5,500 Americans every year. Then the administration went and rewrote the Clean Air Act, gutting the New Source rule, which means those plants will be able to discharge ozone and particulates forever.

MJ.com: How has the situation changed now that Michael O. Leavitt has replaced Christine Todd Whitman at the EPA?

RFK: It went from bad to worse. Leavitt has giant social skills and charm, but his record is one of the most anti-environmental of any governor except for George W. Bush. The first thing that he did when he came into office was to dismantle President Clinton’s mercury rule. The same utilities that are discharging ozone and particulates, those same coal-burning power plants are also discharging huge amounts of mercury into our air, and the mercury ends up in the fish. Just a few weeks ago, the EPA announced its decision that, as a result of that, all fish in 19 states are now unsafe to eat because of mercury contamination. At least some of the fish in 48 states are now unsafe to eat. In fact, the only two states where they’re “safe” are Alaska and Wyoming, where the Republican-controlled legislatures refused to allocate the funds for their agencies to test the fish.

Today, one out of every six American women has so much mercury in her womb that her children are at risk for a grim inventory of diseases, including autism, blindness, mental retardation and heart, liver and kidney disease. My own levels of mercury are so high -- I had them tested recently -- that a woman with the same levels would have a child with cognitive impairment. The Clinton administration had classified mercury as a hazardous pollutant under the Clean Air Act, which triggered a requirement that those utilities remove 90 percent of the mercury within three and a half years. It would have cost less than 1 percent of plant revenue, and the great thing about it is that it works; we now know that when the utilities stop discharging mercury, that the fish downstream clean up almost immediately.

But this is an industry that gave all that money, over $100 million, to the president. A few months ago, the Bush administration announced that it was scrapping the Clinton-era regulations and substituting instead regulations that were written by utility lawyers, from the law firm of Latham and Watkins. Under the new rules, the utilities will effectively never have to clean up their mercury. And the chief lobbyist for Latham and Watkins was Jeffrey Holmstead, who is now the head of the air division of EPA. This is an example of how corporations have infiltrated our government and are dismantling it in order to privatize the commons.

MJ.com: In "Crimes Against Nature" you explain how the administration has cut funding to laws already on the books, such as Superfund cleanup.

RFK: Superfund has gone bankrupt. The Superfund itself, which was raised through a small tax on the chemical and oil industry, was used to clean up orphaned sites -- sites where the responsible party could not be found. But more importantly, it was used to leverage recalcitrant polluters to clean up their own sites, because Superfund includes a triple-damages provision. That gives the EPA power, when a polluter drags its feet, to say to the polluter, “Okay, we’re going to clean up the site ourselves, and then we’re going to charge you triple.” And 90 percent of the Superfund sites that have been cleaned up in America have been cleaned up as a result of that threat. Without that threat, Superfund just becomes a welfare program for corporate lawyers, who can argue forever and ever about who’s responsible and what kind of cleanup should result. So today, with Superfund bankrupt, you’re not going to see many Superfund sites really cleaned up. And if they are cleaned up, it’ll be with taxpayer money, which is absurdly unjust.

MJ.com: If John Kerry wins the election, to what extent can he undo the environmental damage this administration has done?

RFK: Some of the damage can be patched up. Some of it is going to be irreparable, but for the rest it will need congressional help and cooperation. So a lot would depend on who controls Congress. At this point, Congress is controlled by anti-environmental Republicans like Tom DeLay. Tom DeLay is a former Houston bug killer who entered politics because he was angry that his extermination business had been impacted by the ban on DDT and other pesticides, and he’s out to destroy America’s environmental laws.

MJ.com: What consequences do you see for the environment if Bush is re-elected?

RFK: I can’t imagine! What he’s done already would have been unimaginable five years ago. He is the number-one threat to the global environment. And the disastrous impacts of this administration don’t just go to the environment, but also to our democracy. My book is really not just about the environment, but more about the excess of corporate power and the corrosive impacts of excessive corporate power on our democracy.

gasland; b2 exempted fracking from clean water act

A Cabinet That Looks Like (Corporate) America