Just breathe less
Why is it that the Bush administration spends so much time trying to get things done that the American people would oppose if they were told the truth about them? A good example of this is the new “Clear Skies Initiative” that is supposed to replace the Clean Air Act. As Frank O’Donnell of Clean Air Trust pointed out recently in a piece over at TomPaine.com:
Clear Skies would gut pieces of the Clean Air Act. That, of course, is what President Bush’s industry backers want. It’s why the Edison Electric Institute, the lobby of the electric power industry, is aggressively lobbying for its passage. And it’s why Tom Kuhn, EEI president and a Bush fundraising “pioneer,” recently told his member companies that “Clear Skies is an exciting opportunity for our industry.”
The only way to show that this farcical plan would make the air cleaner was to screw around with the parameters of the analysis put out by the EPA, so that’s what was done. It’s all part of Bush’s grand plan for the environment, which seems to consist of destroying it in any way that he thinks will be profitable for the large corporations who support him, while at the same time assuring the voters that he’s actually trying to clean things up.