Eradicating an ugly Bush stain: Obama EPA will investigate coal ash sites

By GottaLaff

I've posted twice about these sludgy messes. Finally, we'll have a president that actually addresses them directly and quickly:

The Obama administration will immediately begin to assess the hundreds of coal ash disposal sites at power plants across the country in the wake of two spills in Alabama and Tennessee.

Lisa Jackson, President-elect Barack Obama's pick to run the Environmental Protection Agency, said the agency will also reconsider federal regulation. [...]

In 2000, the EPA recommended setting a national standard for the hundreds of coal ash disposal sites nationwide. But the EPA never acted on that recommendation during the Bush administration.

BushCo needs a swift kick in the ash.

Hypocrite watch: Bush v. U.S.A.

By GottaLaff

Through the looking glass:

President Bush, urging the Republican Party to become more “open-minded,” said the GOP is down but not out after getting “whipped” in 2008.

Bush, in a wide-ranging interview on “Fox News Sunday,” argued that the party would recover, just as it had following other setbacks. However, he cautioned Republicans that they must become more open-minded.

“It’s very important for our party not to narrow its focus, not to become so inward looking that we drive people away from a philosophy that is compassionate and decent,” Bush said, adding, “We shouldn’t have litmus tests as to whether or not you can be a Republican.”

How nostalgic. Remember when he was a compassionate conservative? Neither do I.

"We’ve got to be a party for a better future and for hope.”

Did some washed-up excuse for a president just steal a line from a far superior, future president? Why yes. Yes he did:

When asked what he would do after leaving office, the president said he wants to write a book, possibly on the toughest decisions he had to make while in the White House.

May I make a suggestion? Learn how to read first. Moving on...

Bush stressed that his own presidency was defined by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Criticized often for extending his presidential powers to execute the war on terrorism, Bush said that the constitution remained intact.

He is referring, of course, to that one little remnant of aging parchment that he saved and framed for posterity. The rest of the document was shredded by BushCo years ago.*

He also defended the often criticized interrogation techniques used to get information from military detainees and terrorism suspects, which have been described by critics as torture.

“I firmly reject the word torture,” said Bush. “Everything this administration did had a legal basis.”

See Constitution reference* above. And blog title.

A particularly ugly Bush stain: BushCo to bar autoworkers from striking against GM

By GottaLaff

When Thom Hartmann rants, I listen. Right now, he's ranting... loudly. He's quoting from this Raw Story piece, and when you're done reading, feel free to rant with Thom and me in Comments. The gist: GM says give us the loan money, but make it illegal to strike. A strike would give the government permission to rescind their loan and allow GM to declare bankruptcy:

A little-noticed provision buried in the Bush Administration's $13.4 billion loan package to General Motors will prohibit the United Auto Workers from launching a strike as long as the company receives funds from the federal government.

Not only that, but a strike would give the federal government the power to call in their loan -- putting the loan in default and forcing GM into bankruptcy. The government now has the power to force a bankruptcy if “any labor union or collective bargaining unit shall engage in a strike or other work stoppage.”

Why would he do this? Here's one reason: Break the unions, break the Democratic party.

The terms of GM's loan package were reported last night in the Detroit Free Press. They did not become public until GM filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

So the big fat corporate rich guys get their bonuses, but the workers get... screwed.
The US auto workers union is also saddled by another requirement of the loan: the UAW must now accept a plan to lower wages and benefits for GM to match those of other foreign-owned US automakers' plants.

Feel that rant coming on yet?

The ugly Bush stain: OSHA's "dismal inaction" edition

By GottaLaff

Once again, Bush leaves behind a malodorous, toxic stainy mess that has resulted in even more lost lives and further erosion of formerly high standards:

Current and former career officials at OSHA say that such sagas were a recurrent feature during the Bush administration, as political appointees ordered the withdrawal of dozens of workplace health regulations, slow-rolled others, and altered the reach of its warnings and rules in response to industry pressure.

The result is a legacy of unregulation common to several health-protection agencies under Bush: From 2001 to the end of 2007, OSHA officials issued 86 percent fewer rules or regulations termed economically significant by the Office of Management and Budget than their counterparts did during a similar period in President Bill Clinton's tenure, according to White House lists.

White House officials have dismissed such tallies, emphasizing in recent regulatory overviews that their "objective is quality, not quantity," and that heavy restrictions on corporations harm economic performance. [...]

"The legacy of the Bush administration has been one of dismal inaction," said Robert Harrison, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco and chairman of the occupational health section of the American Public Health Association. It has been "like turning a ketchup bottle upside down, banging the bottom of the container, and nothing comes out. You shake and shake and nothing comes out," Harrison said.

More than two dozen current and former senior career officials further said in interviews that the agency's strategic choices were frequently made without input from its experienced hands. Political appointees "shut us out," a longtime senior career official said.

Among the regulations proposed by OSHA's staff but scuttled by political appointees was one meant to protect health workers from tuberculosis. Although OSHA concluded in 1997 that the regulation could avert as many as 32,700 infections and 190 deaths annually and save $115 million, it was blocked by opposition from large hospitals.

In the summer, the agency decided against moving further toward the regulation of crystalline silica, the tiny fibrous material in cement and stone dust that causes lung disease or cancer. OSHA promised a scientific peer review of the health risks by early 2005 and then by early 2007, but it never acted. Regulating silica exposures would have prevented an estimated 41 silicosis deaths and 20 to 40 lung cancers annually, according to OSHA.

In the spring, political appointees quietly scrapped work on another long-pending regulation of hazardous exposure to ionizing radiation in mailrooms, food warehouses, and hospitals and airports. It cited "resource constraints and other priorities" -- the same reason officials gave for withdrawing more than a dozen regulatory proposals in 2001.

With BushCo, economic considerations (their own and their cronies') always trump the physical well-being of the U.S. population (actually, that of the entire planet), the health of the U.S. economy, morale, and/or the environment.

What's so disturbing is that their filthy, self-serving, homicidal policies will have exponential repercussions, but of course, none of those will be legal ones. Those responsible will skate.

Many more details can be found here, if you can stomach them.

Bush is a saint

By GottaLaff

I'm watching Larry King Live right now, and the panel consists of Dana Perino, Ari Fleischer, Josh Bolten, and Andy Card. Gosharootie, they're polite, conscientious, and respectful. And they smile as if they mean it. They're the bestest!

Why, had it not been for these fine, unimpeachable* standard-bearers of Republican values, I might have continued to believe that Bush is a despicable, lying, cowardly, drunken, imbecilic, shallow, murderous, delusional, sadistic piece of excrement.

But after soaking in the lavish praise and reverence of this lustrous team of devotees, and even learning that Bush is someone who "never stifles debate", I'll have to do some serious rethinking. How could I have been so wrong?

*Literally.

Confirmation hearings for A.G. nominee Holder in early January

By GottaLaff

Oh, just hurry up and confirm. We can't take any more ugly Bush stains!

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vermont) said today he would hold confirmation hearings for Attorney General nominee Eric Holder Jr. the week of January 5.

Holder, a former second in command at the Justice Department during the Clinton administration, appeared on Capitol Hill today for traditional, closed door meetings with Senate leaders. If he is confirmed, Holder would become the nation’s first African American attorney general.

Confirmation hearings could begin Jan. 5. Obama will not be sworn in until Jan. 20.

Gee, do you get the impression that Senate Democrats are eager to get the Bush administration out the door as quickly as possible?

Out the door, door bolted shut, 20-foot-high cement wall built, moat dug and filled, invisible shock barrier installed... so yeah, I do get that impression. Snerk.