You wouldn't deregulate Wall Street Investment Banks during the Financial Collapse of 2008, would you?
You wouldn't further de-regulate (and de-enforce what was left) of the environmental and safety regulations on deep-water oil and gas drilling while the Gulf Oil spill was still bubbling away, would you?
(Ok. Later maybe, when the heat had died down, sure. But in the middle of a catastrophe, politically speaking it is just not done.)
It would be like the EPA issuing new guidelines that loosened the standards of what was acceptable amounts of radiation in food, drinking water and the soil after a major incident at a nuclear power plant for goodness sake. It would be just, what's that word again, inconceivable.
Well. As we've heard: "Timing is everything." But as we've also heard now more than once, "never let a crisis go to waste".
What would you think if you found out that while we were all distracted by the events in Japan, our own EPA was planning to sneak one by on us to radically loosen the standards for acceptable levels of radiation in food, water and soil?
With the plumes (real or imaginary) of Fukushima radiation hanging over our heads, that's what appears to be on the menu.
UPDATE: Correcting link to naked capitalism guest post of George Washington.
UPDATE II: Corrected link to current 1992 Protective Action Guide per Deep Harm's clarifying comment below. Relocated previously referenced document to end of diary for reference.
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