EPA: Enterprise Protection Agency

From the New York Times:

"E.P.A. Offers an Amnesty if Big Farms Are Monitored
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY Published: January 22, 2005

WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 - The Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday that it would shield operators of large livestock operations from prosecution from air pollution violations if they participated in a new program to collect emissions data from their farms.
The information gathered from the participants would be used to determine which of the thousands of factory farms, known as animal feeding operations or A.F.O.'s, violate the Clean Air Act or other environmental laws."

Under the direction or at least the influence of the White House the EPA has once again failed to do it's job, just as it has so many times before. The current White House is there to help and protect the large enterprise or so called big business. Well it continues to do that well.

Now it is again weakening the protection of our already poorly protected air. Just visit any medium or large city and you can cut the air into chewable blocks of gunk. Now we are going to expand that to the factories called livestock operations in rural America. Big business paid for this when they made their donations to the re-election campaign. Now they get the value for their payment.

We should not be surprised. The current dubja regime is not interested in protecting our land and our resources for now and the future, just exploiting it as quickly as they can for their own personal gain. The pattern is familiar.

Please speak out against this. Join a activist group and let your voice be heard:
http://www.savebiogems.org/redford/ is a good group to join. You will be able to be heard together with the growing groundswell of voices that are saying enough is enough. The exploitation has to stop. There are better ways to do this. We do not need to destroy the earth to feed our need for wealth.

I have seen this before...............

The New York Times recently reported (January 12, 2005) that the White House intervened in attempts to limit the methods used by US security agencies to get information from suspects. Apparently Condoleezza Rice argued that laws protecting prisoners already existed in international law and the US did not need to limit the powers. Our first reaction to this may be that giving the government power to do what it chooses in this situation is OK. It is being applied to terrorists and on foreign soil and to protect us. The catch is that once the laws are on the books they apply to all of us in the future.

I grew up in a country under siege and fighting a terrorist war. The government then used the same arguments we are hearing here now. The result was a set of laws over time that completely deprived the citizens of the country of basic freedoms and rights. Slowly eroding the rights of the individual in the name of national security.

Freedom is ours to protect

NY Times: Rehnquist Resumes His Call for Judicial IndependenceBy LINDA GREENHOUSE Published: January 1, 2005
ASHINGTON, Dec. 31 - Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, delivering his 19th and most likely his last year-end report on the federal judiciary, returned on Friday to one of his longtime themes: a need to safeguard the independence of federal judges from intrusive Congressional oversight.

This year he took account of more recent developments: "There have been suggestions to impeach federal judges who issue decisions regarded by some as out of the mainstream. And there were several bills introduced in the last Congress that would limit the jurisdiction of the federal courts to decide constitutional challenges to certain kinds of government action."
There have been calls in Congress to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear challenges to the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, to the display of the Ten Commandments on government property and to the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law that permits states to withhold recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states.

The US citizens must pay attention to what our elected representatives are doing. With the moves they seem to be pushing, together the Patriot Act the basic freedoms we are fighting for so bravely in the Middle East are being eroded away right under our noses.

Pay attention to what they are doing. Do not let the people we elected take away our basic rights. We elected them to serve us and protect us, not to betray us.

This is the USA. Many have died to give us our freedom. Do not let misguided politicians take them away.