pdq...I, personally, know someone VERY high up in the E.P.A. I recently asked him, "so, how's it going...doing any protecting of the environment these days?"

his answer..."Nope..." he then explained that HE, a 30 year employee, and director of a major area, had been given to understand that his 'input' on problems that needed to be addressed was not required. Decisions about environmental policy were being made 'elsewhere' and his job was to oversee their implementation and rubber-stamp the paper. This fellow sat thru the Reagan administration, where Ronnie's minions dismantled programs that had taken years to create....but he says now "I have never seen anything like it in my 30 years" (direct quote"

The Bush administration has almost totally reduced the EPA's mission to implementing policies that fulfill POLITICAL and economic agendas of the Republicans, and environmental concerns be damned!

(I, myself, worked briefly for EPA in the days of William Ruckleshaus, and have met him, and although he was a Republican, HE sincerely wanted progress on pollution and such....there is no evidence there is much beyond lip service to that ideal any longer.)