W. To US: "Drop Dead to You All, and to All a Good Night"

The spirit of Scrooge is alive and well. In a midnight raid on the nation's health, the Lame W. Duck administration, sneaks out regulations aimed at turning us back into a land of Dickensian smog and tattered children.

See if you can live with:

• EPA would not regulate a contaminant in drinking water (Kool-Aid from our government to us)
• Mining permits near Grand Canyon and other national parks (blasts from the past)
• Gut the Endangered Species Act (the hell with biodiversity or consideration for creation's creatures. Shoot 'em.)
• Power plants could be exempted from installing pollution controls, allowing an added 70 million tons to be released into our air (what's a little cough among friends and who needs to see anyway?)
• EPA narrows the definition of solid waste (now there is a regulation to savor)
• Less reporting on animal pollution proposed
• Rules for dumping mine debris erased
• EPA lowers air quality standards for lead
• Fisheries rule calls for less public input (the czars had a way with public input, too.)
• Loaded guns possible in National Parks( not if the Park rangers have anything to say about it)
• Public lands may be leased for the development of oil shale (public, not to be confused with proprietary)
• Interior Department rules could limit public environmental comments( so much for the First Amendment)
• EPA lets factory farms decide if they need a permit to discharge animal waste into waterways (or large concentrations of dung dumped into our rivers and streams. Even the Neiman Marcus catalogue cannot top that one for sheer Christmas gift inventiveness.)

These are just a few of the renegade regulation rewrites going on. They are aimed at our collective throats. Every outgoing administration writes a last minute Santa list, but for sheer nastiness and mean spiritedness, this wish list takes the prize. The damage to our rivers, oceans, open spaces, and blue skies will be devastating; the menace to our health will be palpable. It is hard to imagine the state of mind in our officials that produces this kind of malice.

Despite the objection of Governor Ritter and the Colorado congressional delegation, one of the rules published in the Federal Register greatly eases environmental constraints on oil shale carnage in the West. Colorado voted blue in November. So, "Stick it to the bums" is the message from a really sore loser to a state coping with its energy demands in forward looking new ways.

There are remedies. One, of course, is the will of the new administration to override this treachery and destructiveness. The other is the Congressional Review Act. Items published in the Federal Register before Nov 21st take effect 60 days from that date.
House and Senate leadership has already stipulated that they will use the Review Act in a similar way that a Bush administration action used it to undo a Clinton regulation in 2001. Reversal probably cannot take place without scrupulous effort, but we should all encourage the new administration and Congress to do everything they can to defeat these ruinous regulations.

Why can't we effect an efficient system for overturning radical last minute impositions on our country? Something to ponder and propose in an enlightened era. On one level, the President-elect seems to be taking charge because the old president has checked out. That is the good news. Obama has set the right tone of cooperation without undue eagerness; his quiet authority has been reassuring.

The bad news is that the old one has not checked out enough to keep from further decimating America the beautiful and bountiful and our traditions. To write midnight regulations that sabotage human health is to see Charles Dickens scribing away by candlelight, as one of his most rapacious and vile villains rises from the candle flame and defiles humanity and its landscape.

Deck the halls, indeed.

Comments

[Overd0g]

Yeah, I'm good with those.

[ignorantwillyharper]

Yeah, you got to give the guy an "A" on accomplishing what he set out to do...destroying America!

[TuFu]

A Christmas Carol: Scrooge visits Christmas past of Bush's disgraces, present of Bush's military graves, and future the graves of American children Bushified to death.

[acacia72]

Over the past 38 years or so I've always thought it was so cool when environmental legislation was passed and most everyone was for it, then mystifyed and saddened when this good legislation was gutted by the next president who was always republican. It always seemed to be an intentional spite to me.

These days I'm a realistic, middle-aged adult and I'm still mystifyed and saddened as to why anyone would want to gut laws that protect the environment.

Why haven't we figured out how to both serve man and protect the environment over the past 38 years?

[DrJohnS]

And, lest we blame it all on the republicans, businesses would/will just love all this. After all, it isn't about people, it's about profit.

[Overd0g]

If you don't like profit, you should try loss for awhile.

[Oldchef]

Most of us have been experiencing loss for quite a while. Are you in finance? You are obviously a Bushie. Most of us working class folks have been going backwards for the last 6 years or more.

[ChaoticGood]

Just like major surgery for Cancer, we need to remove all vestiges of the Bush creature from the American body politic. The diseased touch of the Bush creature has soiled us all, and we need to be cleansed. We need to remove all laws, edicts, regulations etc.. passed during the Bush regieme and wipe him from our history, except as a lesson that hopefully we have learned. I believe that the verb "to be Bushed" should enter the common language as a euphemism for fraud. Unfortunately for us, the creature is still able to harm us until the glorius day of January 20th, 2009.
I plan to have a celebration on that day. This is the day that I can exit the busride to hell that the last 8 years have forced upon me. I will be able to say byebye to the crazed bus driver and his merry band of corporate pirates, who I feared and loathed and I will be able to wave goodbye, spit on the ground, and wish him them ignominy that they deserve.

[Just4theHalibut]

One that wasn't mentioned--the rule that allows medical and pharmacy workers to deny women access to necessary medication (eg "morning-after" birth control pill) for "reasons of conscience".
Bush is paying off all his base supporters and the rest of us can just go to h*ll.

[hopefulinpa]

I can't believe that Republicans still are pushing for this "free market, deregulation" crap. They do not want or cannot see how this mindset totally distroyed our economy. These are people who ordinarily and in other areas are quite bright, but when it comes to common sense as to what works and what has not worked for this country it is like they have cement in their heads. They are even swooning over Sarah Palin. If they think she could ever be elected in this country as president after such a total disaster as Bush they are delusional. Every democrat bar none would be at the polls. We need free trade but with fair regulations and we do need regulation by outside entities and not energy regulating energy. That was ludicris from the start. We need logical, no nonsense legislation and that is democratic rule; fairness, knowledge, and common sense.

[JayInDallas]

This is perhaps the reason why "judgment" played such a significant role in Obama's campaign. Because it all boiled down to it. Where was judgment when it came to free market/der­egulation? 911? Iraq? Judgment was absent and replaced by a set of narrow, self-centered interests driven by money, power and white-hot greed. And after 911, the American people questioned nothing. The media was taken over by the neocons and now the effects of what they've done and continue to do is apparent.

[TurkerB]

Maybe we can see if Congress can do some budget cutting on his bennies and security coverage when he leaves the White House in January.

That would be a gift Bush would remember......

[LeLoup]

If Bush can write bad regulations, pray tell what prevents Obama to reverse them? It ain't written in stone, no?

So, it is a matter of keeping track of Bush's BS and issue Executive orders to rescind these regulations the first day he takes office.

That should send a clear message to all the pigs trying to feed at the trough by invading the farm by the backdoors.

[JayInDallas]

We can only hope that's true. If I were in Obama's shoes I would try my best to insure that I'm not stuck with irreversible surprises.

[ohioan73]

What is up with these "conservatives" that treat the environment like a toilet? Maybe they plan to colonize Mars and leave us down here to die but that's not right because they don't seem to care about the space program either.

Thanks for this article. I'm about to raise hell now. I'm contacting my most favorite direct action community organization on Monday. Brown, Kucinich and everybody else is gonna get an earful. I hope other people will do the same. Its time to be American now. If we sit around and let them keeping doing this to us, we definitely WILL be begging for gruel on the streets and we wont be taken in and bailed out by a wealthy Dickensian benefactor either.

[jan4insight]

Bush perfectly embodies the Banality of Evil, twenty-first -century style.

[salamanca1]

hear hear

[SiberianRat]

I've been reading about these regulations in the past weeks in helpless horror. In addition to getting Congress to do as much as they can to reverse all of this madness, we need to limit the power to do such damage in the first place!

[larry278]

As we hear of W's acts as a lame duck it will inspire us to say to W for the rest of his wretched, useless existance, Chuck U Farley, he's a now deceased relative a Democrat of FDR & HST's era, the Honorable James Farley. On innaguration day when we see W appear, say it loud & clear, Chuck U Farley. The same thing goes when W does his perp walk after being indicted for treason. CHUCK U FARLEY!

[Sundialsvc4]

If you permit the Executive Branch to do such things, and you allow them to have the force of Law, then I have only one thing to say for your country: "it's your own damn fault."

Read the Constitution: Congress writes the laws. There is no mention of "executive orders" having the force of law. You know perfectly well that if you do allow a single person to write whatever-he-wants on a piece of paper and inflict it upon 300 million people ... they're gonna get screwed.

So... don't.

Just say that the President can't do that. The Constitution never said that he could.

[salamanca1]

Unfortunately, Dubya with his "signing statements," exercised on a scale unheard of in American history, has essentially ignored the will of Congress and the force of law on dozens of bills. And the Congress was either in his corner, or, with a Democratic majority, spineless, or, with a Democratic majority, playing politics to let him look as evil as possible so as to sandbag a Republican successor. In any case, I am disgusted.

[boophus]

Since the executive is supposed to carry out or enforce laws, signing crappola in effect says "nanner nanner, I ain't gonna do it". He is such a fried brain Brat, spoiled rotten son of wealth he wants what he wants and everyone should smile, bend over and say yes thank you I will take more of that please. I have known jerks like this and they never ever get it. When the message that someone is gonna deny them breaks through they throw temper tantrums breaking priceless antiques and crippling servants. They are never wrong and any reading or study they do is to find more pieces to glue on to thier armor against a different reality then the lala land they live in.

I can not believe anyone voted for this jerk once much less twice. And who are these total losers who are still supporting him?

[Rogan]

The people who still support him, are totally immersed in the propaganda machine. If you talk to them about where they get their news, you'll find that it's Fox and talk radio; if you gently question them further, you'll find that they have the idea, that these news outlets are held to the same standards of honesty and integrity, that newspapers dimply remembered from a generation ago, once held themselves to. Often, if you can explain to them that they're being inundated by propaganda (you have to get past some filters), the very idea is novel - tell them Rupert Murdoch is actually a Subversive Foreigner, and they'll be genuinely concerned... it's hard to draw these folks out that far in rational conversation, though - the buzzwords and party-lines provide a bumper-car buffer, for their intellect(s).

But do try to remember: they've been fooled. They may be stupid and mean by nature, but they aren't seditious (that is, Republican) by nature - it's Fox, and the radio, that taught them that set of attitudes, and behaviors - building cruelly and cleverly, on the natural character flaws (the aforementioned stupidness and meanness) of the "marks."

[schatsie]

Typical Bush (father and son).... are you surprised... I am upset that this man will get a pension and healthcare for the rest of his life...