Jeremy Jacquot: Salvaging the EPA: Can Jackson Do It?

It is a testament to the Bush administration's remarkable capacity for deceit and willful incompetence that, over the span of just eight years, it has transformed the EPA, once the gatekeeper of the nation's environmental policies, into a shadow of its former self--an agency better known for undermining the environment than for protecting it. As John Laumer, a fellow writer at TreeHugger , recently quipped, only in half-jest, the Environmental Protection Agency has turned into the Environmental Destruction Agency under the president's watch (or lack thereof, I should say). Indeed, few agencies under the Bush administration have seen their authority and professionalism erode at such an alarming rate. Even when compared to other Republicans--yes, Reagan included--what President Bush and his cronies have done to the EPA is nothing short of sabotage: the complete unraveling of years' worth of hard work and the neutering of its staff. These heinous acts were overseen by a team of pliant ... (link)