hotfood.thumbnail.jpg

Yay! The US may finally have a leader who wants to avert global warming. Boo! Looks like we’ll be eating toxic swill while we do it. Um…President-Elect Obama, can we have a second helping of Change, please? Of course, PEO, we’ve every reason for gratitude on the energy and science picks. Change away from global mass death is change we really can believe in: survival rocks!

What a wonderful gift to find the Federal Climate Tree all decked out with Change. But the second half of the sustainablity recipie requires safe food, air, and water. Sadly, PEO, the Federal Yule banquet Chez Obama served up looks pretty rancid. You found brilliant talent for the science crowd: you know you could get some geniuses to stay down on the farms. So how you’re appointing Nobel Prize level talent in science, but you chose the Three Stooges to run land, farms, and the environment?

What’s on the menu at Interior? Better come with a big appetite: Interior controls one in five acres in America, including the vast Bureau of Land Management holdings. Interior supposedly regulates mining, energy leases, and royalties on oil and gas taken from Federal lands (including Native American lands). Some DOI lands are leased for farming; across the arid West ranchers and farmers lease BLM lands and/or irrigate cops with water from Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation dams. DOI’s land holdings are so vast that the chemicals used on them affect water supplies and private lands "downstream" from Interior lands. Thoug he’s not as bad as the Bushies, Obama’s Interior pick Senator Ken Salazar doesn’t appear at risk of waking up to a call from Stockholm. He also doesn’t seem likely to get the Right Livelihood Award.

Oil and mining interests praised Mr. Salazar’s performance as a state official and as a senator, saying that he was not doctrinaire about the use of public lands.

[snip]

He has also supported robust research on technology to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal-burning power plants, something the coal industry favors.

He also backed a compromise that would let oil companies drill for natural gas in limited parts of the Roan Plateau in northwestern Colorado, a plan that most environmental advocates opposed…

Pam Kiely, program director at Environment Colorado, said [snip] he had not spoken out forcefully against oil and gas development in millions of acres of national forests and roadless areas.

When even the NYT notices Obama’s Interior pick wasn’t keen to regulate what Interior regulates, that doesn’t look too tasty.

What’s on the menu at Agriculture? Farms and forests. Smokey Bear and Bessie the cow live here. USDA runs the Forest Service and the Farm Bill, and supposedly regulates various aspects of produce, dairy, and meat/poultry/fish safety. USDA also looks over large areas of farmland set aside in conservation programs funded by the Farm Bill. If you eat, Obama’s Ag choice affects you. That’s why Iowa Gov. Vilsack is such a rancid pick. Monsanto’s pet scientists told us Frankencrops wouldn’t pollute normal seeds; Monsanto’s lobbysists moonlighting as revolving door "regulators" at EPA and USDA made the whole scam happen. Now GM crops are shown to decrease fertility and life-span…after Frankenseeds contaminated US corn, soy and crops. Genetic pollution is forever. That’s why small farmers have started to pass local ordinances banning GMO seeds. Vilsack spiked that protection for Iowans

In the year 2005, Vilsack championed a law in Iowa that’s been introduced all over the country, backed by Monsanto and the Farm Bureau. This law, this preemption law, as they’re called, basically takes away the right of municipalities or counties to regulate genetically engineered crops. Vilsack rammed this through, even though it’s extremely unpopular with not only consumers, but small farmers.

Vilsack’s a loyal Frankengov for Monsanto and the rest of Mutant Ag. He supports "Pharma-crops": food crops genetically altered to make drugs. Luky us! Genetic contamination can give us drugs in our food, I guess.

Small surprise that

In 2001, the Biotechnology Industry Organization named him "governor of the year" for his "support of the industry’s economic growth and agricultural biotechnology research."

Yep, Obama’s pick for USDA chief: Franken Ag’s pet governor.

Vilsack’s a full service destroyer: he doesn’t just push toxic crops: he pushes lakes of shit. Oh, I’m sorry: the Big Ag term for "lakes of shit" is CAFO.

As a state senator, he voted for the infamous House File 519 in 1995, which stripped counties of the right to impose restrictions on CAFOs.

Gee. I wonder what he did for lakes of shit — er, CAFO’s – as Governor? Oh. He made Iowa safe: for lakes of shit.

Vilsack could have but did not draw up stricter state pollution regulations of CAFO’s than EPA regs. Vilsack sided with polluters against public health.

A 2002 study by the University of Iowa and Iowa State University said Iowa Dept of Natural Resources needed to act to approve protections of public health near confined animal factories (CAFO’s).

He lowered the recommended air quality standards allowing twice as much health-threatening levels of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, particulates and odors emitted from animal factory sewage lagoons, confinement houses and the fields manure is spread on.

As governor, Vilsack set a weaker standard than the surrounding states.

What’s on the menu at EPA? Mostly stuff you don’t want to eat. Broadly speaking, the EPA is repsonsible for keeping the stuff we want to breathe and eat and drink free of the toxic stuff that make a few of us a lot of money, and all the rest of us sick. The Bushies sabotaged EPA with a bunch of revolving-door picks from industry, who just ignored or buried science info that hurt their masters’ bottom lines. That’s how under both Poppy Bush and Clinton Monsanto and other MegaAg corps forced GMO Frankencrops onto US farms using a "revolving door" Monsanto lobbyists doing temporary goverment service. After eight years of Bushie destruction and decades of assualt under Reagan/Poppy/Clinton, EPA requires a strong leader who can revive the agency and stand up to industry. That’s why – except for those who like to eat and drink poison – Obama’s EPA pick is downright toxic. The best even Lisa Jackson’s defenders can find to say of her tenure at New Jersey’s equivalent of the EPA runs along the lines of:

Jackson is "a skilled administrator who’s willing to listen" and the "best DEP commissioner that New Jersey had for a long time." Jackson’s agency "has suffered from a slate of budget cuts by Democratic and Republican governors alike, and thousands of staff positions have been lost over the years."

Glad to read Jackson’s a good listener. What does Scientific American have to say about her administering?

In a report released this summer, the EPA’s inspector general slammed New Jersey’s failure to clean up several toxic waste sites in a timely manner, and accused the state’s environmental agency of going easy on polluters and failing to seek necessary support from the EPA. The report said the department bore at least partial responsibility for "not implement[ing] agreements on cleanup milestones, Agency responsibilities, and enforcement actions."

The report even recommended that the EPA take over as the lead cleanup agency at seven sites — a surprising recommendation, since the inspector general has consistently bashed the Bush administration’s handling of Superfund sites.

"If the EPA is saying that New Jersey’s enforcement is bad, you know there is a serious problem," says Robert Spiegel, executive director of the Edison Wetlands Association, a New Jersey based non-profit that closely monitors several Superfund sites throughout the state. Spiegel says he had urged Jackson to take more immediate action on some sites, and that Jackson’s field staff had done the same, but their pleas had been ignored.

New Jersey, long a center for the chemical manufacturing industry, has gained notoriety in the environmental community for its widespread pollution.

Gee. Doesn’t look a big steaming helping of adminsitrative competence. But hey – it’s just keeping poision out of our food and water and air. Why not bring in the person who ran New Jersey’s environment agency so poorly it made the Bushie EPA look good to clean up the Bushie EPA? She’s got nowhere to go but up, right?

Why, she’s even signed onto Corzine’s sleazy way to outsource enforcement: to industry.

Jackson has also supported a controversial Corzine-backed proposal to outsource the department’s cleanup efforts to consultants, which would potentially mean cleanups conducted by groups that also work for the companies responsible for the contaminated sites.

Hey, at least Lisa Jackson’s good at Shock Doctrine. Too bad about our land, air, water, and food. And too bad about that whole Change thing: looks like Jackson’s happy to keep the revolving door well-greased.

In one of her first acts, Jackson appointed the lobbyist for the New Jersey Builders Association as her Assistant Commissioner to oversee critical water quality and land use permits. Jackson later convened an industry-dominated task force to rewrite DEP policies and relaxed pollution enforcement through policies more business-friendly than those under Gov. Christie Whitman

Well, maybe she’s a people person, right? According to PEER, not so much:

DEP employees describe Ms. Jackson as employing a highly politicized approach to decision-making that resulted in suppression of scientific information, issuance of gag orders and threats against professional staff members who dared to voice concerns. These reports raise troubling questions about her fitness to run an agency of much greater size and complexity.

I dunno if it’s part of the invisible global three-dimensional chess game or just cause I’m so dense, but I don’t get it. For a smart guy who can pick smart people, how did Obama end up choosing such a bunch of Stooges for Interior, USDA, and EPA? Doesn’t a smart community organizer know that industry cronies at regulatory agencies are what got us into this mess? I mean, isn’t that what the Hamilton Project is all about, right?

Guess I’ll never understand; I’m just too crass to see the subtle treasures in the CAFO’s.

Bon appetit – and Happy Yule.

Related posts:

  1. FDL Movie Night: Food Inc.
  2. Record-setting Business at Food Banks
  3. FDL Movie Night Welcomes Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin, Good Food
  4. Come Saturday Morning: Right-Wing Corporate Lies about Water
  5. Kraft Says We Can Haz A Food Safety Bill