ASIDE FROM AGGRESSION, ARROGANCE, IGNORANCE, INTOLERANCE, TORTURE & BIGOTRY, THE BUSH REGIME ALSO STANDS FOR POLLUTION

Sometimes we lose track about why non-religionist fanatics and non-hate-obsessed racists join the Republican Party-- and there are plenty of Republicans who are neither obsessed with Buy Bull fairy tales nor with an incapacitating loathing for gays, immigrants, people of different colors, etc. (Yes there really are.) These people have an entirely different reason for choosing the GOP and their goals almost always revolve around the two most important principles of right-wing political parties: Greed and Selfishness. And, when it comes right down to it, a large number of Republicans care more about the Greed and Selfishness than about all the hatred, bigotry and primitivism. Really.

And what better example of Republican Greed and Selfishness exists than BushCo's push to let manufacturers pollute our environment in order to make bigger profits? This has been a hallmark of Bush's environmental policies ever since hard right extremists in the Bush Regime forced out EPA Director Christie Whitman in 2003. Today the Associated Press is reporting that Bush and the Republicans are once again trying tying to gut crucial environmental protects so a few companies-- which happen to be big GOP campaign contributors-- can make bigger margins. "If the Bush administration has its way, some factories won't have to report all the pollution spewed from their smokestacks, making it harder for government scientists to calculate the health risks of the air Americans breathe." Nice to have Republicans-- who ideologically are committed to this kind of thing and believe in it with all their hearts souls... accountants.

"The Environmental Protection Agency, responding to an AP analysis that found broad inequities in the racial and economic status of those who breathe the nation's most unhealthy air, says total annual emissions of 188 regulated air toxins have declined 36 percent in the past 15 years. But the EPA wants to ease some of the Clean Air Act regulations that have contributed to those results and proposes to exempt some companies from having to tell the government about what it considers to be small releases of toxic pollutants. The agency said in September it wants to reduce its 'regulatory burden' on companies by allowing some to use a 'short form' when they report their pollution to the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory. Those changes would exempt companies from disclosing their toxic pollution if they claim to release fewer than 5,000 pounds of a specific chemical — the current limit is 500 pounds — or if they store it onsite but claim to release 'zero' amounts of the worst pollutants. Those include mercury, DDT, PCBs and other chemicals that persist in the environment and work up the food chain."