Linkmeister

We are so green! Not!

Bobby Kennedy Jr., now an attorney representing the Natural Resources Defense Council, was on Fresh Air Thursday, discussing his recent article in Rolling Stone. Then Terry Gross had Charli Coon of the Heritage Foundation on to rebut Mr. Kennedy's assertion that "George W. Bush will go down in history as America's worst environmental president." Her rebuttal? Environmentalists are alarmists. "I'm a conservative. I breathe air. I drink water." Therefore, I guess, we're all on the same side, huh? Don't think so, Ms. Coon.

Kennedy cites chapter and verse (and history, going back to Reagan's appointments of James Watt at Interior and Anne Gorsuch at EPA), but he really gets exercised about the current Administration.

Bush's Environmental Protection Agency has halted work on sixty-two environmental standards, the Food and Drug Administration has stopped work on fifty-seven standards. The EPA completed just two major rules -- both under court order and both watered down at industry request -- compared to twenty-three completed by the Clinton administration and fourteen by the Bush Sr. administration in their first two years.

For a more complete analysis of what Bush has done (or, just as importantly, not done), go here. NRDC has compiled quite a list of quiet actions taken by various government agencies to curtail enforcement of existing laws and roll back others.

All of that activity is hotly denied by the likes of Ms. Coon and her employer, of course; said employer and others like it, unfortunately, seem to be losing whatever intellectual honesty they once had. Read this article about the American Enterprise Institute, for example, and you'll see just how far down the partisanship road it's drifted, far away from its earlier roots as an independent policy analysis shop.

Posted by Linkmeister at December 5, 2003 12:01 AM