The Weakener-in-Chief (a/k/a, “W”) and his zany sidekick Weakentroopers are up to their old tricks of … you guessed it, further weakening the nation while bolstering next quarter’s results for the giant industry du jour. Now, they have come up with a creative and terrific new approach to regulating harmful industries: have the government literally stop enforcing the laws for an extended period, such as four years, and ask the companies in exchange to keep track of how much and to what extent they are breaking the law. The rationale is that this benefits the public good by giving the government an opportunity at the end of the study period to really quantify and get a handle on the scope of the problem, at which point, the government will be in the best position to crack down.
Here’s the first use of this great new enforcement tool: end all environmental enforcement at massive and massively polluting hog and poultry farms for four years. The Weakentroopers at W’s EPA as part of the deal also are letting slide any past violations by these massive farms. In exchange, the farms don’t have to do anything except measure and report how much they are polluting. Am I kidding? Sadly, no:
The Environmental Protection Agency has signed agreements with 2,681 animal feeding operations in the egg, chicken, turkey, dairy and hog industries. They would be exempt from having to pay potential fines of up to $27,500 a day for violations either in the past or over the next four years.On Monday, the agency said its Environmental Appeals Board had approved the first 20 of those agreements…
The Weakentroopers claim that the public will benefit because at the end of the so-called “study period,” the government will have all the information it needs to start enforcing the law. Others — that is, those whose primary aim is to keep our country strong, rather than boosting next quarter’s profits — say:
The fact is that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) already has the ability under the Clean Air Act to get this information from the polluters and doesn’t need to give them a special “get out of jail free” card in order to find out about their emissions.What is most disturbing is that the deal was created by the polluters and for the polluters. Industry lobbyists approached the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the fall of 2001 with their own proposal, and the administration’s final deal closely mirrors the polluters’ wish list.
Please note that the four-year study period takes us out past January 20, 2009.
