Bush's Clean Air Act is killing us! Christi Todd Whitman sold out the American people when she caved in to Bush's demand to allow the oil, gas and coal industries higher emissions standards - despite her vehement denials of same. Whitman, who resigned about a month ago, was at the vanguard of the Bush bait-and-switch game vis a' vis the environment that he's run on the public from day one.

The farce of sending Whitman to the Kyoto Protocol meeting in Trieste, Italy, was just that – a farce! Soon as Whitman found her chair word came from on high to vacate the place and discard previous rhetoric about the value of creating a worldwide coop designed to lower greenhouse gas emissions. Bush and his oil, gas and coal cronies don't want anything to do with Clean Air Acts or emission controls. The list of Bush appointees reads like a who's who compendium of energy czars, and those appointees hold pivotal positions of power, e.g. former Gov. Mike Leavitt, nominated by Bush to head the EPA after Whitman's departure. It's widely known that Leavitt is beholding to the oil, gas can coal industries because their money put him in office.

When, in 2002, the EPA was about to release a report card on the state of the nation's environment and suggestions to improve problems, pressure from the Bush administration caused her to delete paragraphs about greenhouse gases. Whitman caved in and gave Bush the editor's pen and he, in effect, omitted statements by the EPA, our scientific watchdogs for environmental safety, relative to global warming. The report stated unequivocally that global warming was real and that the consequences of ignoring the man-made problem would be catasrtrophic and far-reaching. Unfortunately, the only way Bush (and most Republicans) know how to kick-start the economy is to give free reign to big business and lower the standards that are meant to protect us from money-grubbing polluters.

Whitman was a lying, incompetent EPA director and her resignation is no great loss. In fact, it's just a logical step for the administration because now the Bushmeister has someone who shares his greedy, short-sighted views about environmental impact studies that get in the way of profits.

Bush is on record saying that he rejected Kyoto because of the economy, though he tried to sugarcoat his public back-stabbing of Whitman by saying it didn't make sense for America to participate based on the public's need for jobs.

Bull! And now we have a Clean Air Act that's a joke on its face. It actually increased the amount of poisonous emissions energy-based companies are allowed to fart into the atmosphere - the air we all breathe! But what the hell, eh? If Rush Limbaugh says it's OK it must be great, right?

Eliot Spitzer, attorney general of New York, said that Bush's undercutting the EPA's authority and regulations would allow companies to poison the atmosphere to such a degree that we can expect 20,000 more premature births annually, and millions more cases of pulmonary diseases and disorders such as asthma!

And here's a neat little tidbit. Under Whitman's (Bush's) leadership at the EPA, NOT ONE lawsuit was filed against any energy company, even in cases where flagrant rules-violations were provable.

Hooray for the red, white and GREEN!