Community | October 31, 2008 | 10 comments

White House: Last Push To Deregulate -

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/30/AR2008103004749.html?hpid=to...

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he 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.

Once such rules take effect, they typically can be undone only through a laborious new regulatory proceeding, including lengthy periods of public comment, drafting and mandated reanalysis.

"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."
White House spokesman Tony Fratto said: "This administration has taken extraordinary measures to avoid rushing regulations at the end of the term. And yes, we'd prefer our regulations stand for a very long time -- they're well reasoned and are being considered with the best interests of the nation in mind."

As many as 90 new regulations are in the works, and at least nine of them are considered "economically significant" because they impose costs or promote societal benefits that exceed $100 million annually. They include new rules governing employees who take family- and medical-related leaves, new standards for preventing or containing oil spills, and a simplified process for settling real estate transactions.

While it remains unclear how much the administration will be able to accomplish in the coming weeks, the last-minute rush appears to involve fewer regulations than Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, approved at the end of his tenure.

In some cases, Bush's regulations reflect new interpretations of language in federal laws. In other cases, such as several new counterterrorism initiatives, they reflect new executive branch decisions in areas where Congress -- now out of session and focused on the elections -- left the president considerable discretion.

The burst of activity has made this a busy period for lobbyists who fear that industry views will hold less sway after the elections. The doors at the New Executive Office Building have been whirling with corporate officials and advisers pleading for relief or, in many cases, for hastened decision making.

According to the Office of Management and Budget's regulatory calendar, the commercial scallop-fishing industry came in two weeks ago to urge that proposed catch limits be eased, nearly bumping into National Mining Association officials making the case for easing rules meant to keep coal slurry waste out of Appalachian streams. A few days earlier, lawyers for kidney dialysis and biotechnology companies registered their complaints at the OMB about new Medicare reimbursement rules. Lobbyists for customs brokers complained about proposed counterterrorism rules that require the advance reporting of shipping data.

Bush's aides are acutely aware of the political risks of completing their regulatory work too late. On the afternoon of Bush's inauguration, Jan. 20, 2001, his chief of staff issued a government-wide memo that blocked the completion or implementation of regulations drafted in the waning days of the Clinton administration that had not yet taken legal effect.
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10 comments // White House: Last Push To Deregulate -

  • Scarabus
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  

    • EXECUTIVE RESUME

      It's all about Empire Building...

      Project for the New American Century
      http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples...

      Until this graphic novel is required high school knowledge nothing will change for the good old boys...

      A People's History of American Empire
      http://books.google.ca/books?id=dL0KHQAACAAJ&dq=ina...=

      Can you see, if not blinded by tele-trash and infotainment, by the propaganda we call news, by the lies and deceit and censorship of the corporate media, by the comforting glow of television, by the charade that is American democracy and by the myriad distractions of bread and circus, the approaching finality of American liberty and freedom, soon to be replaced by Big Brother, a surveillance society, a police state and full-fledged corporatism?

      Can you sense the growing momentum of militarism and imperialism rampaging across the nation, and the globe, leaving nothing but hatred and animosity in its wake? Can you sense that imperialism and empire abroad and freedom and democracy at home are mutually exclusive, that to attain the former the latter must be sacrificed, and that inevitably the people must, for imperialism to function, be immersed in tyranny? Do you realize that we are one major shock, one major event away from catapulting our lives into the headwaters of an altogether different America? - Manuel Valenzuela

      I’m sure the 1,273,378 Slaughtered Iraqis Since The U.S. Invaded Iraq felt the pressure too… http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html

      While the 4,189 U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In America's War On Iraq, must cheer on from the sky ! http://icasualties.org/oif/

      We think we are dying for our country but we are dying for industrials. – Anatole France

      The War And Occupation Of Iraq Costs
      $567,150,310,739
      See the cost in your community
      http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182

      The sovereign disgust our masters show for humanity is exemplified in this timeless little ditty, vomited by a well know 5 stars vermin…

      "Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." - Henry Kissinger

      "People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster." - James Baldwin

      EXECUTIVE RESUME
      http://whitenoise.webnode.com/

    • 3 years ago
  • 3oc
    • 0
      3oc  

    • For anyone interested in why the Pentagon gets the lions share of your money check out Gore Vidal's - History of the National Security State.

    • 3 years ago
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  

    • Yep ;)

      one selling the other's narrative all for $$$$$$

      We saw how Congress bowed to the demands of Wall Street, turning a deaf ear to the needs of the people. And while the nation was focused on the bailout, Congress quietly passed a $615 billion defense spending bill!

      PENTAGON SCORES A BIGGER RIP-OFF THAN BAILOUT
      http://current.com/items/89342370_pentagon_scores_a_bigger_rip_off_than_bailout

      Marxism we can believe in...

      "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." - Groucho Marx

      "Plus on est ignorant, moins on s’en aperçoit." – Louis Pasteur

      VIVE LAFAYETTE ;)

    • 3 years ago
  • uppityprogressive
    • 0
      uppityprogressive  

    • You are right 3oc, we need a revolt against the media that has hung us and the world out to dry for the last 20 years, with the most unconscionable lies and distraction during the last 10 years.

      Without the corporate media complicity, there would have been no Iraq war, there would have been real investigation into 9/11, the Bush admin would not have gotten away with rendition and torture, the US people would have had a voice when the 1st and then 2nd elections were stolen...there may not have even been a 1st stolen election.

      I am more angry at the corporate media than I am at the Bush administration itself- they were evil and opportunist, but the cheer leading, distraction machine, entertainment news garbage machine is the real culprit.

      Those of us who bother to be aware, who understand how much danger the planet is facing, need to get really determined to make things happen.

      Tuesday will be a major cue as to which way to move first. Will we have to protest and fight another stolen election, or will be able to move right into fighting for our survival. Either way, its a fight, and we are all responsible for the outcome.

    • 3 years ago
  • 3oc
    • 0
      3oc  
    • uppityprogressive:

      It's not the individuals in the media who are to blame. They are stuck in the system just like the rest of us. Their jobs and livelihoods are in the balance. For them to stand up and be counted they need to know that the majority will stand together and support one another.

      When ideologies are exposed as just another weapon in the mind control arsenal the people will drop their beliefs like a hot potato. Until then we will all be fighting one another whilst our programmers watch with glee.

    • 3 years ago
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  
    • uppityprogressive:

      FOOD FOR THOUGHT ;)

      "In March 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interest, and their subsidiary organizations got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press ...They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers." - U.S. Congressman Oscar Callaway, 1917

      "There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the Journalist is to destroy truth; To lie outright; To pervert; To vilify; To fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals for rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." - John Swinton, the former chief of staff of the New York Times, called by his peers, "The Dean of his profession," in a speech at the New York Press Club.

      "Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have." – Richard Salant, former President of CBS News

      "The mass media is itself part of the same power structure that plunders the planet and inflicts human rights abuses on a massive scale" – David Cromwell

      "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes."
      - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

      "When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic." - Dresden James

      "Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught in falsehoods school. And the one man that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool" - Plato

      "The real mass media are basically trying to divert people." ... "Let everybody be crazed about professional sports or sex scandals"– Noam Chomsky

      "As long as each individual is facing the television tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege" – Noam Chomsky

    • 3 years ago
  • 3oc
    • 0
      3oc  

    • There are many excellent writers and commentators here on current attempting to spread the word on just how broken these systems have become, however, they're not getting heard by enough people. The same holds true for other Internet sites and the independent media at large. There is simply not enough real information getting the the masses for them to make any kind of informed decision.

      Whilst the majority of citizens are kept in the dark and believe in the broken systems of government the situation will not improve. The economy will continue to nose-dive, the environment will continue to be raped and generations to come will inherit a totally inhospitable planet. Time is running out.

      We need a miracle of communication.

    • 3 years ago
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  

    • They stole 2 elections… the first by perverting the supreme court…nothing happened…Then 9-11 & a war based on a 1000 lies & the treacherous hoisting of a CIA agent… nothing happened… they proceeded to shred the constitution, kidnapped imprisoned & tortured the world over, spied on us & fired the best US attorneys… nothing… conducted Katrina’s thinly veiled ethic cleansing …nada…now they are taking us to the cleaners… now what !

      What else ?

      Is there a limit to the damage this executive branch can inflict to the USA ?

      It seems not…

      Fear & Greed Corp reigns under the guise of Mindfuck Inc. !

      Get a third job ! Sell a vital organ ! Move in a card box by the river, but stop your whining buba ! You are but a victim of your own imagination, you suffer from a severe case of "mental recession"... Now get over it !

      * WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH *

    • 3 years ago
  • uppityprogressive
    • 0
      uppityprogressive  

    • This is the party of McCain and Palin. If the world is going to end anyway, why would they care about destruction of the planet? Perfect-you can exploit the environment, destroy the planet, abuse the animals and humans, make a gigantic profit AND go to heaven!!

      On November 5th Call for Impeachment so Bush and Cheney don't get away with their crimes and pardon all their criminal friends!

      When Clinton gained power, we all hoped he would hold the Bush administration accountable, he did not. We can't leave this up to politicians. Make a lot of noise and be relentless, kind of like Republicans, who always get everything they want...

    • 3 years ago
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