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Some predictions

I can't say I'm expecting much of substance from Bush's speech tonight. Is anybody?

I am, however, expecting some soaring rhetoric and empty promises. Let's talk about those.

One issue that Republicans very much want to control is energy independence, which is looming larger and larger in the public mind. They need to preemptively frame it to their advantage. With that in mind -- and a few oblique hints from the interview -- I'm hazarding a prediction: Tonight, Bush will unveil a splashy energy program.

It will have one of his patented Orwellian names: The Energy Strength and Independence Small Farmer 9/11 Protect American Children Act, now with Extra Freedom^™!

It will have three parts:

For five years a ferry was dumping sewage directly into Long Island Sound, and no one noticed?

It's not every day that someone in America goes to jail for an environmental crime. But yesterday, Mark Easter, the operations manager of the Fishers Island (N.Y.) Ferry District got hit with 30 days, for dumping raw sewage into Long Island Sound and the Thames River, in New London, Connecticut. And the federal magistrate in Hartford who is overseeing the case hit him with a $10,000 fine for good measure.

It's hard for me to say whether the punishment fits the crime here. But I have a feeling that someone is being let off the hook, politically if not legally -- and I'm not saying it's Mark Easter.

The joke makes itself

Two Fox News employees have filed a lawsuit claiming they were sickened by air contaminated with toxic molds and pesticides while working in the building where "The O'Reilly Factor" and "At Large with Geraldo Rivera" are produced.

...

DeRosairo, a control booth graphics technician, and Clarke, a makeup artist, said they were made ill while working within the broadcasting complex that produces shows that also include "Hannity and Colmes" and "Dayside."

Book Your Guilt Trip Today!

British enviros curb flying to protest airplane emissions A growing number of British enviros are quitting or cutting back on air travel, resisting the siren song of low-fare, no-frills airlines. “I just realized that all my other efforts to be green — recycling, insulating the house, not driving a giant 4×4 — would be totally […]

Urethra Ranklin’

California plumbers union opposes water-conserving urinals If California plumbers have anything to do with it, you’ll be peeing in water ’til the day you die. (We feel that our whole careers have been leading up to that sentence.) Many public facilities in the water-strapped Golden State have installed no-flush urinals, which use gravity and replaceable […]

Fine and Randy

Bush admin deal exempts thousands of farms from pollution fines A Bush administration deal announced yesterday will allow thousands of factory farms to evade pollution fines. The U.S. EPA has signed consent agreements with nearly 2,700 companies in the egg, poultry, dairy, and hog industries, exempting them from paying major daily fines for toxic air […]

Exxon Lax

Exxon posts record-breaking profit, tries to evade Exxon Valdez penalty ExxonMobil has announced that it reaped $36 billion in profits for 2005 — the largest single-year profit ever by any American corporation. In related news, last week Exxon lawyers asked a federal court to effectively waive $5 billion in punitive damages related to the massive […]

Gosh, they just seemed like normal folk!

The CS Monitor's Brad Knickerbocker has a competent backgrounder on the recently arrested "eco-terrorists." There's not a whole lot new in it, particularly about ELF, which is what I'd most like to see some solid reporting on. He does point out that activists in this extremist community (centered in the Northwest, principally around Eugene, Ore.) deny that the feds have the right people, but I suppose that's to be expected.

This passage, however, jumped out at me:

New head of mine safety administration is a coal man from way back

Shortly after Bush became president, the head of the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, Dave Lauriski, stepped down. Lauriski had spent his entire career working for coal companies. As his interim replacement, Bush appointed David Dye, who'd only joined the MSHA six months earlier.

On Tuesday, Congress will hold confirmation hearings on Richard Stickler, Bush's nominee for new permanent MSHA head. Stickler too has been a coal-industry man his entire career, principally at Bethlehem Steel -- where, between 1980 and 1992, 13 miners died in coal operations. Three of those miners died at mines directly managed by Stickler.

Last week, the United Mine Workers asked Bush to withdraw Stickler's nomination. It didn't happen.

Looks like the Sago tragedy hasn't made the feds any tougher on the coal industry.

Makower hour

I'm getting stuck in a cycle. Joel Makower writes something, I say, "hey, that's interesting, I should link to it," forget for a few days, he writes something else, I say, "hey, I should link to that, but first I should link to that other one," and then forget again, and so on.

So anyhoo, to bust out of this cycle, see interesting Makower posts on:

• the 2006 Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations,
• new "nutritional labels" that Timberland will be putting on all its shoe boxes, and
• interesting uses of "web 2.0" widgets to track corporate chicanery.