- The Bush I administration perfected Stealth military
technology and deployed it to devastating effect as U.S. planes, invisible
to Saddam Hussein's radar, began Gulf War I by destroying Iraqi infrastructure.
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- Bush II has taken a giant leap further. It has extended
the reach of Stealth tactics into American domestic policy, delivering
lethal blows to environmental and health regulations while presenting only
the tiniest of targets.
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- The administration's new, political Stealth can be recognized
by the familiar set of initials TGIF: Thank God It's Friday.
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- The end of the workweek has come to be the time to announce
far-reaching regulatory changes.
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- "They do it on Friday afternoon because they know
that is when it will get buried in the news cycle, when it will get the
least attention," Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., explained earlier this
year.
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- The latest Friday fix came just a week ago. Interior
Secretary Gale Norton relaxed Clinton-era rules designed to halt overgrazing
by ranchers who pay a pittance to run their livestock on federal land.
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- In baseball lingo, Bush II has hit for the cycle on Fridays
this fall, weakening protections on four different fronts.
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- On Friday, Oct. 31, the Environmental Protection Agency
and Department of Agriculture let out a precedent-setting decision. The
feds will trust testing for water pollution from atrazine -- one of America's
most applied weed killers -- to the chemical's manufacturer.
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- Two weeks earlier, on Friday, Oct. 17, the EPA announced
that it would not be regulating dioxins in sewage sludge used in farm fertilizer,
on grounds there are no health or environmental risks.
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- The home run of Friday decisions was on Friday, Oct.
10, start of the Columbus Day weekend.
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- The Interior Department overturned a policy that had
strictly limited the amount of public land that can be used for dumping
mining waste, which is the largest volume of toxic material unleashed annually
in the United States. The limitation had blocked a large open-pit mine
in Okanogan County.
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- An environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense
Council, has tracked more than 100 environmental rollbacks implemented
under Bush II: 58 have been disclosed on Fridays, just before holidays
or during holiday weekends.
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- "It's not just the Friday timing," said Rob
Perks of NRDC. "Decisions are announced by low-level officials. They
are released in the late afternoon. On the grazing decision, we called
up the agency and it would give us no information. Details were made available
on Monday, when everyone had moved on."
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- With such tactics, TGIF-Stealth technology puts a "spin"
on stories, keeps flak to a minimum and discourages pursuit of stories.
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- For instance, the lineup for weekend capital talk shows
is usually set by early afternoon on Friday. The usual array of talking
heads has been apportioned among the networks. And network TV isn't that
interested in public health and the environment to begin with. Washington,
D.C., talks about and to itself.
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- The Feast of the Nativity and coming of the New Year
were, in 2002, occasions for additional demonstration of political Stealth
technology by Bush II.
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- On Christmas Eve, the administration changed rules to
make it easier for state, county and local governments to gain control
of long-abandoned mining roads on federal land -- a change that could bring
dirt bikes into backcountry of Grand Canyon, Denali, Death Valley and North
Cascades national parks.
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- New Year's Eve was occasion for Bush II to announce that
a fishing practice (favored by Mexican fishermen) that entails encircling
dolphins with nets would have no significant adverse impact on dolphin
populations in the Pacific Ocean.
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- Only a single national journalist -- Washington Post
columnist Mary McGrory -- caught the administration's fishy decision.
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- TGIF-Stealth technology is useful even when it comes
to suppressing good news -- in cases where upbeat findings are at odds
with the administration's agenda.
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- Friday, Sept. 26, saw the (very) quiet release of a new
Office of Management and Budget study. It found that environmental rules
are well worth the costs they impose on industry and consumers, resulting
in major public health benefits and other improvements.
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- Major strikes against pollution and health regulations
can require more than one Friday and/or holiday.
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- On Friday, Aug. 22, the Bush administration made final
its decision to let America's most polluting coal-fired power plants and
refineries upgrade facilities without installing state-of-the-art air quality
controls.
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- Original announcement of the plan came from an underling
just before Thanksgiving of last year. New rules formally easing requirements
on polluters were issued on New Year's Eve.
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- Bush II picked Friday, Jan. 10, to propose guidelines
"redefining" what constitutes a wetland entitled to preservation
under the Clean Water Act. The guidelines could result in loss of federal
protection for as many as 20 million acres of swamps and bogs across America.
A final announcement is expected this Christmas season.
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- The list goes on: The Interior Department picked Friday,
April 11, to announce "settlement" of a lawsuit with the state
of Utah.
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- Under the accord, Bush II removed millions of acres of
Bureau of Land Management property -- most in the Inland West and Alaska
-- from being evaluated for protection as wilderness. The settlement opened
the door to expanded oil and gas leasing in canyonlands of the Southwest.
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- It's all very skillful -- and cynical.
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- In the 1980s, loudmouth Interior Secretary James Watt
-- "I don't like to paddle and I don't like to walk" -- taught
the drillers, diggers and polluters that the public can get mad.
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- "Americans want clean air and clean water,"
said Perks. "You can't have a full frontal assault on environmental
protection. Soccer moms like to go to parks. NASCAR dads like to hunt and
fish and hike. If you want to weaken protection, you've got to go below
the radar screen."
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- - P-I columnist Joel Connelly can be reached at 206-448-8160
or joelconnelly@seattlepi.com
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- ©1996-2003 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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- http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/152120_joel12.html
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