Bush to America: "Up Yours!"

A friend of mine who is a wetlands preservationist in Louisville, Kentucky makes a point of visiting contested land (i.e., lawsuit pending to stop commercial development) on Derby Day and Mothers’ Day… because that is when underhanded developers often show up to clear the land illegally, banking on the likelihood that everyone will be too busy to notice, and that once the wetlands have been destroyed, environmentalists will move on to contest other projects.

Sneaky? Yeah. Just like what President Bush is doing to America right now, while our attention is diverted by the election.

The White House is working as you read this to enact an array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January. (As many as 90 new regulations are in the works.) The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo.

Bush’s 11th hour deregulation goody-bag includes:

Gutting the Endangered Species Act
Enabling mountaintop removal coal mining
Reducing women’s access to reproductive health care
Increasing limits on GHGs and MTR, while decreasing drinking water quality
Revising rules governing family- and medical-related leaves for employees
Relaxing standards for preventing or containing oil spills
And so on…

Bill Clinton also made a last-minute effort to pass regulations before he left office. Most of these, however, were aimed at protecting the environment. Unfortunately, soon after the inauguration, Bush's team withdrew 254 of Clinton’s regulations that covered matters from drug and airline safety to immigration and indoor air pollutants. Many of the proposals were then modified to reflect Republican policy ideals or were scrapped altogether.

Seeking to avoid falling victim to the same partisan tactics, Bush White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten in May imposed a Nov. 1 government-wide deadline to finish major new Bush administration regulations, "except in extraordinary circumstances."

Hello, “extraordinary circumstances:” Officials have just days to meet an effective Nov. 20 deadline for the publication of economically significant rules, which take effect only after a 60-day congressional comment period. Less important rules take effect after a 30-day period, creating a second deadline of Dec. 20.

Not surprisingly, the last-minute activity has made this a busy period for lobbyists, who fear that industry views will hold less sway after the November elections.

As the deadlines near, the administration has begun to issue regulations of great interest to industry, including, in recent days, a rule that allows the nation's natural gas pipelines to operate at higher pressures and new Homeland Security rules that shift passenger security screening responsibilities from airlines to the federal government. The OMB also approved a new limit on airborne emissions of lead this month, acting under a court-imposed deadline.

The only conclusion one can draw from these circumstances is that the Bush administration will do what it wants, when it wants, regardless of what Americans want, up until the last possible moment to serve its own, historically unpopular agenda.

Is anyone surprised that Bush is, effectively, telling Americans, “Up Yours?”

Sources:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=49&entry_id=29393
http://www.ombwatch.org/article/blogs/entry/5479/38