Obama moves to block Bush's "midnight" attempts to relax green rules

[kpete]

Source: Business Green

Obama moves to block Bush's "midnight" attempts to relax green rules

New administration moves quickly to undo "midnight regulations" designed to relax environmental rules
Danny Bradbury, BusinessGreen, 23 Jan 2009


In a traditional game of political whack-a-mole, the Obama White House has moved quickly to freeze all pending regulations proposed by the former president's administration, including president Bush's attempts to roll back large swathes of environmental legislation.

President Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel issued a memo on inauguration day warning federal agencies not to send proposed or final regulations to the Office of the Federal Register for publication. The Oval Office is to review each of them first.

The White House memo also gives the president's designates the chance to re-evaluate rules that have already been published in the federal register, but which agencies have not yet brought into effect.

Last-minute rules, known as midnight regulations, are common when one administration leaves office. The Bush administration was working on a swathe of regulations in the run-up to the transition, many of which carried an environmental impact.

Read more: http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2234916/obama-moves-quash-bush-midnight

[infidel dog]

1. Wonderful. Mr. Obama, all success in undoing the acts of the Great Criminal.

[onehandle]

2. What they should have said was "whack-a-chimp."

Smack down that bastard's crimes against nature, Mr. President.

[katandmoon]

4. Bwahahahahahahaha

[Autumn Colors]

3. Can we stop using right-wing framing terms, please?

Saying that Bush was "relaxing" green rules implies that Bush's action was something positive, when in fact it was not. Call it what it is .... He was GUTTING environmental protection rules. Not "relaxing" .... but abolishing .... destroying ... doing away with ....

You get the idea.

Same goes for the label of "tax RELIEF" or saying that certain regulations are being "eased".

We need to stop using their framing language because it implies that their actions were positive ones instead of negative.

EDIT: Kpete, I realize this is verbatim from an article. Just making a comment. Didn't mean to imply that YOU were doing this.

[road2000]

5. Great point.

I don't know if this really qualifies, but the stock market also "eases," and sometimes "corrects" itself when it plunges.

Companies "right-size" when they're ditching employees.

And so on.

[aquart]

7. Yes!

[aquart]

6. Hope George has a nice PB&J for lunch.

[Highway61]

8. I hope the

peanut butter is of the batch that, you know, the one that got past the consumer safety division that HE so blatently understaffed and relaxed the rules for.

p.s. If so, may he run out of toilet paper

[Donnachaidh]

9. actually, we should send him a couple of cases of Walmart Peanut Butter crackers

I'd say he deserves them, after all the damage he has done. :grr:

[kenfrequed]

10. This is one of the things

That I am giving Obama a lot of credit for. I was afraid with his corporate friendly cabinet that the Bush-SH!t would just slip and slime through. Obama is winning a lot of points back for this.