tagged w/ empty promises
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Barack Obama's State of the Union address sure sounded good, didn't it? There were lots of solemn promises, lots of stuff about America's "bright future" and a line about how we are now facing this generation's "Sputnik moment" that will surely make headlines all over the globe. But we all knew that Barack Obama could give a good speech. That has never been the issue. What the American people really need are some very real answers to some very real problems. So were there any real answers in Barack Obama's State of the Union address? Well, Barack Obama promised that America will "out-innovate, out-educate and out-build" the rest of the world. He also pledged that America will become "the best place in the world to do business" and that the government must "take responsibility" for our deficit spending. But does all of this rhetoric mean anything or is all this just another batch of empty promises to add to the long list of empty promises that Barack Obama has already made and broken?Barack Obama's State of the Union address sure sounded good, didn't it?... more
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Where's the outrage? Hello, Mr. Gore?
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The Obama administration late last week quietly approved one of six major mountaintop removal permits that were said to be undergoing close scrutiny by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Without announcing the move publicly, EPA gave the nod for the federal Army Corps of Engineers to issue a Clean Water Act permit for CONSOL Energy Inc.'s Peg Fork Surface Mine near Chattaroy in Mingo County.
EPA approved all eight valley fill waste piles originally proposed by CONSOL, provided that additional water testing is done before six of those fills are constructed, agency officials said.
Corps officials in Huntington approved the permit on Friday. Copies of key permit documents were not yet being made public, despite a promise from the Obama White House of increased transparency in the permit review process.
"We are disappointed that the administration has approved a new mountaintop removal mine without making any commitment to adopt new regulations or policies that would end this destructive practice," said Ed Hopkins, director of the Sierra Club's environmental quality program. "While we appreciate that the Obama administration is taking a harder look at mountaintop removal coal mining, unless that results in decisions that end the irreversible destruction of streams, the harder look isn't going to do the job."
After announcing a crackdown on mountaintop removal in late March, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson less than two months later cleared dozens of valley fill permits for issuance by the corps. Under federal law, the corps directly reviews these "dredge-and-fill" permits, but EPA has veto authority and is supposed to make sure the corps is doing a good job.Where's the outrage? Hello, Mr. Gore?
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The Obama administration... more
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