Rachel Maddow reports on George Bush's last big wet kiss he's giving to industry lobbyists before he leaves office.
(Rough transcript)
And President Bush is making a last push to deregulate before he leaves office. The Washington Post reporting today that as many as ninety of the most controversial changes to industry regulations of the whole Bush era are in the works right now. Easing limits on polution from coal fired power plants near national parks, allowing increased polution from oil refineries and chemical factories, allowing for dirtier drinking water and more coal slurry waste from mountain top mines in the streams of Appalachia. Whoever the lobbyists are who were trying to get counter-terrorism rules relaxed for the benefit of the shipping companies, rest easy you country-first guys. The Bush administration is apparently planning on taking good care of you too before they leave.
The Republicans are well aware of the need of the need to get these changes done now. On the afternoon when President Bush was first inaugurated his chief of staff issued a government wide memo blocking the new regulations that were drafted in the last days of the Clinton administration. There's a thirty day or sixty day waiting period before regulatory changes become legal and since Clinton's changes were newer than that the Bush administration just blocked them. Learning from their own experience the Bush administration is getting their goodies in early this year so they'll all be actual law without debate and without Congress by the time the next President takes over.
And this apparently is how we make decisions as a country about whether American kids drink dirty or clean water and breathe dirty or clean air and whether or not the shipping containers in our ports are checked for bombs or not. Ta-da.
