Every Day Is Kristalnacht Since January 20, 2000!

f It Ain't Broke, Break It

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When it comes to sheer nerve, you’ve got to hand it to George W. Bush. Air pollution is called "clear skies." Wilderness logging is "healthy forests."

The newest Bush attack on the environment doesn’t have an Orwellian name yet, but it could be the most insidious of all—a dismembering of the regulatory process itself.

Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act into law in 1970, at a time when conservatives were still stewards of the environment. NEPA has been the foundation for many of the landmark environmental victories of the past 30 years. It’s the law that requires impact statements and public input on all government decisions that could harm the environment.

And it works. Just recently, George Bush’s own Office of Management and Budget confirmed that environmental protection is highly cost effective. Using the most conservative assumptions, OMB found that, on average, each dollar spent on environmental regulation over the past decade returned more than six dollars in health care savings and improved worker productivity.

So if it’s good for the environment and good for the economy, why is the administration proposing to eviscerate NEPA, by restricting the use of environmental impact reports and exempting projects from public scrutiny? That’s a question for James Connaughton. As head of Bush’s Council on Environmental Quality, which proposed the rollbacks, he’ll soon decide their fate.

Oh yes. Before he was Bush’s top advisor on the environment, Mr. Connaughton had an illustrious career as an oil industry lobbyist.

When it comes to sheer nerve, you’ve got to hand it to George Bush Tweet