Congress and the President, fearful of a backlash from polluters, are forcing EPA to postpone needed rules to protect public health, leading to avoidable illnesses and deaths while also increasing the budget requirements for public health programs like Medicaid, SCHIP, and Medicare.

Yesterday PEER reported that President Obama asked a Bushie lawyer who spent years battling for mountain top destruction coal mining to run the Federal agency that regulates mountain top destruction mining. Change you can believe in? Yes – if you believe in hiring one of Steven Griles’ helpers and forever burying ancient streams and hollows under toxic coal mining waste in a mad rush to roast the planet.