There are only 77 days left in the Bush administration. Hallelujah. Finally an end to the carnage, right? Not so fast! Unless you think it's not doing any damage to: remove animals from the endangered species list without adequate public participation, putting power plants near national parks, making it easier to blow the tops of mountains off so coal operators can get to dirty coal or loosening regulations on disposal of factory farm wastes. If that's your idea of good environmental stewardship and "no more carnage," you'll be delighted to hear that the Bushies are making haste to ramrod through a pile of environmental regulations in the days before their sinewy, cold hands are pried loose from the levers of power. It's so bad that even the Far Right anti-government whack jobs like the Competitive Enterprise Institute are disgusted:
"The Bush administration has had eight years in office and has issued more regulations than any administration in history," said Eli Lehrer of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "At this point, in the current economic climate, it would be especially harmful to push through ill-considered regulations in the final days of the administration."John Kostyack of the National Wildlife Federation, which joined Lehrer's group to call for a ban on these last-minute rules, said citizens are cut out of the process, allowing changes in U.S. law that the public opposes, such as rolling back protections under the Endangered Species Act.
The Bush team has urged that these regulations be issued no later than Saturday, so they can be put in effect by the time President George W. Bush leaves office on January 20.
If they are in effect then, it will be hard for the next administration to undo them, and in any case, this may not be the top priority for a new president, said Matt Madia of OMB Watch, which monitors the White House Office of Management and Budget, through which these proposed regulations must pass. (Reuters via New York Times)
In almost every instance these are changes meant to favor some industry special interest or other. And it is being done with indecent speed. An Interior Department pro-mining interest proposal involving provisions of the endangered species list got in excess of 300,000 public comments. Interior Department officials have said they will review them all -- in one week. Right. That's 43,000 a day or more than 1700 an hour for 24 hours each day, or 30 a minute.
So if you made a comment rest assured the Interior Department will review it. Maybe for as long as 2 seconds.
If you want to consider this for more than 2 seconds, you can read more from Liz and Celeste over at The Pump Handle.
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We're a bit dozy in the UK but we get this small part right! In our general elections, the vote takes place on a Thursday and the results are counted and known in almost all constituencies by the wee small hours of Friday morning.
If the sitting government loses the election, the (old) Prime Minister is kicked out of 10 Downing Street (the official residence) on Friday morning, yes, actual furniture removal vans and everything. By lunchtime on Friday, the new government gets going. Tony Blair's take-over in 1997 was the first change of government in the era of rolling news and it was interesting to see it happen, limos whizzing around London. As one pundit said "take a moment and consider how good this is in that you are seeing a complete change of government by the people's will with no bloodshed". Within 24 hours of the polls closing, the government has changed. So it can be done - so why doesn't the US President change within a couple of days too?
The real pity is that we don't have proper democracy in our sad little country. We can't kick our lazy useless parasitic queen out, and our House of Lords (a sort of Senate) is wholly appointed placemen and is a disgrace.
I love the British election system!
Meanwhile, on CEI:
"The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government. We believe that individuals are best helped not by government intervention, but by making their own choices in a free marketplace." http://cei.org/about
Did you get that? They think the market will protect the environment! Put the fox in charge of the henhouse?
Easy on the Lords Sam.
They are the ballast that stops our lower house sloshing from one ill thought out bit of legislation to the next. Not having to run for office does wonders for common sense.
Well our Democratic Congress can come to the rescue.
The Congressional Review Act (CRA) allows Congress 60 in-session days to review and possibly reject new federal regulations issued by the regulatory agencies.
Under the CRA, the regulatory agencies are required to submit all new rules the leaders of both the House and Senate.
Should any member of Congress object to a new regulation, he or she can introduce a "Resolution of Disapproval" to have the regulation rejected. Should the resolution pass both House and Senate by simple majority votes, and the president signs it, the regulation basically vanishes.
Since going into effect in 1996, the Congressional Review Act has been successfully invoked exactly once. I doubt anyone in Congress bothers to even read these regulations, most of whom are written by the Industries that venefit from them. Regulation in our Orwellian world means legalizing theft by Industry and Commerce.
Lets see how many of these new regulations actually get contested by the Democrats. My bet is none. Sixty in session days should take us into the Obama Presidency, unless they count weekends and holidays which would seem unlikely. And anyways, just because they can not succeed does not mean it should not be contested and congressmen be called on to vote yay or nay.