Reuters reports: “President Barack Obama unexpectedly asked the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday to withdraw a plan to limit smog pollution, handing a big win to business and Republicans…”
BILL GALLEGOS, via Bobbi Murray, murratus at earthlink.net
Gallegos is executive director of Communities for a Better Environment, which “organizes in working class communities of color because those communities suffer the most from environmental pollution and toxics.”
MARSHA COLEMAN-ADEBAYO, NoFearCoalition at aol.com
Coleman-Adebayo, a former senior policy analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, is the author of the new book No Fear: A Whistleblower’s Triumph Over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA. She said today: “On August 31 EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson wrote an op-ed in the Huffington Post objecting to Republican demands to ‘shut the EPA down.’ Jackson, citing EPA’s commitment to protecting the public health, casts the agency as a transformative institution devoted to guarding its citizens. However, not two days later, President Obama orders the EPA to stand down on its smog regulations. His decision placed profit over the health of people and profoundly demonstrated the schizophrenic dimensions of environment policy under his administration. No wonder the American public is confused and looking for leadership in all the wrong places. …
Coleman-Adebayo calls the EPA an “environtocracy — an environmental institution that places corporate interest above environmental protection.” She states: “I encountered EPA’s schizophrenic commitment to global environmental protection when I served as the executive secretary of the Environment Working Group of the Gore-Mbeki Commission, a White House initiative to support the newly elected Nelson Mandela government. I reported, as required by my position, that a U.S. multinational corporation was endangering its African mine employees. I was told to ‘shut up’ and when I refused to ignore repeated requests for assistance, I was removed from my position. An independent investigation, authorized by the Commission was terminated and the body count continues to rise.” She also reports “outrageous racial and sex discrimination” at the EPA.
“Where the agency needs a complete overhaul is in its protection of whistleblowers and victims of managerial abuse. Incredibly, these are the issues administrator after administrator fails to resolve, regardless of which political party is in office.” Coleman-Adebayo’s victory in Coleman-Adebayo v. Carol M. Browner inspired the passage of the No FEAR Act of 2002 — the first whistleblower and civil rights law of the 21st century.
