I'm reading "****whacked" and now I just learned soemthing that we should all be afraid of, very afraid.
Until 1995 there was a tax on all chemical producing coporations called the "SuperFund Tax" - it filled the coffers of the "SuperFund" which is what the EPA pays for cleanup with. The SuperFund tax was killed by Newt Gingrich in 1995, Bill Clinton could not get the republican congress to reestablish it.
Once there was $3+ Billion in the SuperFund, now there is $23 million, and no new money coming it. They cannot even pay for cleaning up one of the superfund sites.
Add to this the following
Until recently there was an independant EPA Ombudsmen's office. The Ombudsmen answered to nobody but himself and could stick his foot up the EPA butt so hard that he could get them to do what needed to be done. This was the person you turned to if the EPA was going to do something galactically stupid like burn waste that they haven't properly analyzed and containers things like mercury.
Now under **** & Cheney the man who was Ombudsman for more than a decade, a native american who kicked a lot of but around the EPA and once said "I used to think that the government mistreaed only Indians. I now know they mistreat all Americans." (which he was ordered to retract and said: NO -- his name was Bob Martin)
The ombudsmen used to derive it's power from being a seperate entity, not anymore. The current administration made the office answerable to the director of the EPA - Bob Martin promptly resigned in protest.
they did it when he was travelling on EPA business - they raided his office like imperial stormtroopers, stole every document, computer, etc and changed the locks to prevent him from continuing to work off his cellphone and laptop.
Now we have an EPA that is bed with big business and answers to no-one but big business and their monkey man in the white house.
Say hello to cancer.
