Republicans and the conventional wisdom crew inside the DC bubble will say that it is not fair for Democrats to blame Bush for anything because President Obama has been in office for a whopping 16 months. I vehemently disagree because the Bush Administration has left behind a devastating legacy that continues to cut the American people off at the knees.
W. and Cheney may have moved out of Washington D.C. a year and a half ago and they took some Republicans with them but all left the American people broke and strangled by their Administration's successful efforts to deregulate every regulated industry they could. For the eight years it held the White House, the Bush Administration embarked on a mission to pull back as many restraints as possible that had been placed upon the various industries. Their dogged efforts on behalf of the corporate sector was done at the expense of the American people.
The list is long, sobering and infuriating.
Cross posted at Texas Kaos.
According to an article in the Washington Post published on October 31, 2008:
The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January.
The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms.
Those and other regulations would help clear obstacles to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking-water standards and lift a key restriction on mountaintop coal mining.
The Bush Administration crusade to unshackle industry is a long term assault on the best interests and well-being of the American people.
"They want these rules to continue to have an impact long after they leave office," said Matthew Madia, a regulatory expert at OMB Watch, a nonprofit group critical of what it calls the Bush administration's penchant for deregulating in areas where industry wants more freedom. He called the coming deluge "a last-minute assault on the public . . . happening on multiple fronts."
In the waning days of the Bush Administration, officials continued to work furiously 24/7 on behalf of the national gas industry, the airlines and against the environment.
As the deadlines near, the administration has begun to issue regulations of great interest to industry, including, in recent days, a rule that allows natural gas pipelines to operate at higher pressures and new Homeland Security rules that shift passenger security screening responsibilities from airlines to the federal government. The OMB also approved a new limit on airborne emissions of lead this month, acting under a court-imposed deadline.
The Bush assault continues.
Many of the rules that could be issued over the next few weeks would ease environmental regulations, according to sources familiar with administration deliberations.
Let the people choke.
Two other rules nearing completion would ease limits on pollution from power plants, a major energy industry goal for the past eight years that is strenuously opposed by Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups.
The Bush Administration worked tirelessly to effectively undo as many of the Clinton Administration imposed regulations as it could. Please read the entire two page article cited above to fully appreciate the sobering ramifications of the Bush/Cheney doctrine.
We are presently living the nightmare of the financial melt down with unfettered banks and the Wall St. crash. As we well know millions of jobs, homes and life long retirement savings are gone.
And now we also live in a new and more dangerous era with a Spill, Baby, Spill ethos.
Less than two years after the oil boys Bush and Cheney left office an unrestrained oil company, BP, has wreaked an environmental and economic catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.
And it seems that the Interior Dept. had a hand in letting BP get away with bloody hell.
Today an article in the Washington Post reveals that the U.S. exempted BP from an environmental impact study.
The decision by the department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) to give BP's lease at Deepwater Horizon a "categorical exclusion" from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on April 6, 2009 -- and BP's lobbying efforts just 11 days before the explosion to expand those exemptions -- show that neither federal regulators nor the company anticipated an accident of the scale of the one unfolding in the gulf.
The regulators have had a history of looking the other way.
While the MMS assessed the environmental impact of drilling in the central and western Gulf of Mexico on three occasions in 2007 -- including a specific evaluation of BP's Lease 206 at Deepwater Horizon -- in each case it played down the prospect of a major blowout.
A rubber stamping agency.
Kierán Suckling, executive director of the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, said the federal waiver "put BP entirely in control" of the way it conducted its drilling.
"The agency's oversight role has devolved to little more than rubber-stamping British Petroleum's self-serving drilling plans," Suckling said.
I'd say it is well past the time for these boys and girls to be shown to the door. All should be forced to jump into the oily Gulf and help clean it up.
And Congress needs to roll up its sleeves and get into the business of regulation again. It should start with Wall St., and oil and gas first. The regulations should have teeth and next to impossible to undo if God forbid there is another Republican majority.
The American people have been through far too much. We have paid too harsh a price. It is high time that the Congress works much, much harder on behalf of we the people while throwing corporate interests under the bus for a change.
Throwing out the lobbyists would be a great place to start. That and a thorough house cleaning of all regulatory agencies that are run by Bush hires or appointees would certainly be in order.
Finally, without transformational campaign finance reform, the pattern above will continue.