Lisa Jackson, who was the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during Obama's first term, has been hired by Apple to manage the company's environmental problems.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/05/31/jack-m31.html)

One can only conclude that the enviro orgs are either very stupid or shameless hypocrites.

And when the administration approves the XL pipeline they will piss and moan and then yet again line up behind "the lesser of two evils". Well, they are a subset of progressives, small wonder they would prefer the more efficient evil than break with capitalism.

Had the Gulf Spill occurred during George II's watch and it had been handled in a similar fashion(a pretty sure bet) he would have been hung in effigy at demonstrations, but all we got was crickets. Whose side are they on?

Whose side are they on?

That has got to be rhetorical...

Ms Jackson and the Gulf Spill:


snip

It might come as a surprise to the public to learn that toxicity tests are required for the oil dispersants, washing agents, and other products that are submitted to the EPA in order to be listed on the Product Schedule, but that those tests are conducted, supposedly according to EPA’s methods to determine toxicity and effectiveness, and its results reported by the manufacturer, and that neither the EPA nor an independent lab verifies those test results. Furthermore, the toxicity tests required by the EPA are conducted over a period of 48 hours for Menidia (a genus of silverside fish) and 96 for Mysid shrimp.

The dispersant is considered “safe” if an organism doesn’t die by the end of the 48- or 96-hour toxicity test! “But what happens to those shrimp,” marine toxicologist Chris Pincetich asked rhetorically during a talk to a New Orleans group in July 2010, “after that 96 hours?” A test with such limitations is obviously not to determine the safety level of any solution, especially one such as Corexit. Clearly, the EPA’s lax toxicity tests are inadequate to determine the effects of Corexit on marine life or humans in the short term or the long term.

The lax regulation of EPA’s Product Schedule is apparently designed to give a corporation such as BP the leverage to do exactly as it has done: to have the liberty to choose the product or products that will be most beneficial and profitable to its executives and shareholders. In Aljazeera’s Inside Report “The ‘Mess’ That Oil Made,” host Shihab Rattansi suggests that there was “cost benefit evaluation” involved in the decisions made to use such a high volume of Corexit (over two million gallons). Chris Pincetich told us in 2010 that his doctoral professor was on a committee advising the Unified Command on the amount of Corexit applied, and he knew for a fact that the decisions were completely based on cost-benefit analysis (CBA), or benefit-cost analysis (BCA), as it’s also called. The Benefit-Cost Analysis Center of the Evans School of Public Affairs, University of Washington, describes benefit-coast analysis as aiming “to inform the decision-making process with specific types of information, namely measures in monetary terms of willingness to pay for a change by those who will benefit from it as well as of the willingness to accept the change by those who will not benefit.” The basis of the decisions being made behind the scenes about Corexit have been much more cynical than Lisa Jackson dared to publicly admit. But Hugh Kaufman, senior policy analyst at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, had no such qualms.

On June 20, 2010, five days after Administrator Jackson testified before the Senate Subcommittee chaired by Senator Mikulski, Hugh Kaufman of the EPA blew the whistle: the EPA Administrator had lied under oath during the hearing about what her agency knew about Corexit and about why it was being used; the EPA knew how dangerous the dispersant is, and its use had nothing to do with protecting the environment, a “tradeoff” to protect the Gulf coast, but rather everything to do with protecting BP’s bottom line. “It’s an economic protector of BP, not an environmental protector of the public.” And, just as “follow the money” was the mantra in the Watergate investigation, this should be the case in investigating why dispersants are being used that are so toxic that the average lifespan of the Valdez oil spill cleanup workers, most of whom are now dead, was 50 years old.

Who saves money by using these toxic dispersants? Well, it’s BP. But then the next question — I’ve only seen one article that describes it — who owns BP? And I think when you look and see who owns BP, you find that it’s the majority ownership, a billion shares, is a company called BlackRock that was created, owned, and run by a gentleman named Larry Fink. And Vanity Fair just did recently an article about Mr. Fink and his connections with Mr. [Timothy] Geithner, Mr. [Larry] Summers, and others in the administration. So I think what’s needed, we now know that there’s a coverup. Dispersants are being used. … And I think the media now has to follow the money, just as they did in Watergate, and tell the American people who’s getting money for poisoning the millions of people in the Gulf (see “Larry Fink’s $12 Trillion Shadow,“ Vanity Fair, April 2010).

The EPA had all the information it needed to know how dangerous it was, according to Kaufman, and for Administrator Jackson to say more information and more testing were needed, was but a “red herring.”

When you look at the label and you look at the toxicity sheets that come with it, the public knows enough to know that it’s very dangerous. The National Academy of Science has done work on it. Toxicologists from Exxon that developed it have published on it. So, we know enough to know that it’s very dangerous, and to say that we just have to know more about it is a red herring issue. We know plenty. It’s very dangerous (see video at right and Democracy Now! for full transcript.

Hugh Kaufman had been a fearless whistleblower during his entire EPA career, which began in 1971, a few months after the agency was founded. As chief investigator in the Ombudsman Office of the EPA, he exposed efforts by the agency and its then-Administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, to hide from first responders, cleanup workers, and the New York public information about the air quality and its health risks at 9/11 Ground Zero. Administrator Lisa Jackson played the same role as her predecessor in covering up the known health effects of Corexit, only the the ecological and human health consequences are thousands of times worse, in scope and severity.

more...

http://www.gcbarefootdocs.org/blog/2013/05/06/a-bargain-with-the-corexit-devil-bp-and-epa-administrator-lisa-jacksons-legacy/

Apple bought them a ringer.

Ms Jackson and the Gulf Spill:

Apple bought them a ringer.

Hey, how else can you get on the inside? You buy an insider.


Who saves money by using these toxic dispersants? Well, it’s BP. But then the next question — I’ve only seen one article that describes it — who owns BP? And I think when you look and see who owns BP, you find that it’s the majority ownership, a billion shares, is a company called BlackRock that was created, owned, and run by a gentleman named Larry Fink. And Vanity Fair just did recently an article about Mr. Fink and his connections with Mr. [Timothy] Geithner, Mr. [Larry] Summers, and others in the administration. So I think what’s needed, we now know that there’s a coverup. Dispersants are being used. … And I think the media now has to follow the money, just as they did in Watergate, and tell the American people who’s getting money for poisoning the millions of people in the Gulf (see “Larry Fink’s $12 Trillion Shadow,“ Vanity Fair, April 2010).

The EPA had all the information it needed to know how dangerous it was, according to Kaufman, and for Administrator Jackson to say more information and more testing were needed, was but a “red herring.”

No, I think that is called "a lie"; a "red herring" is a misdirection or an obfuscation. A lie, is a lie. And "the media now has to follow the money, just as they did in Watergate, and tell the American people who’s getting money for poisoning the millions of people in the Gulf." No the media doesn't; this is America, buddy, who do you think the media works for. hmm?

Hey, how else can you get on the inside? You buy an insider.



No, I think that is called "a lie"; a "red herring" is a misdirection or an obfuscation. A lie, is a lie. And "the media now has to follow the money, just as they did in Watergate, and tell the American people who’s getting money for poisoning the millions of people in the Gulf." No the media doesn't; this is America, buddy, who do you think the media works for. hmm?

Watergate was so 70's, man. Much tighter ship nowadays, Rachel Carson couldn't get her foot in the door.