Iowa & The Environment:
Sludge Funds



AlterNet.org



In
mid-May, the propaganda machine at the Bush administration's
Environmental Protection Agency was like a diesel engine in overdrive,
breaking with its nonpartisan past to help [re-select] the
[pseudo-]president. After cutting deals with oil and diesel engine
companies on new standards for diesel heavy equipment, the EPA was
proclaiming, hyperbolically, that [Pseudo-]president Bush was taking
bold steps that would usher in a veritable Age of Aquarius for clean
air.



While
spin-doctors were plying their craft, White House political surgeons
were quietly carving up an EPA plan to clean up lethal emissions of
electric power plants. By the time they were through, the plan
resembled the hapless Trojans slashed apart by Brad Pitt's Achilles.



Progressive
staffers at the EPA had been promoting a plan to create incentives for
power companies to use energy more efficiently – an idea that could
reduce not only greenhouse gas emissions, but harmful pollutants as
well. Behind closed doors, however, the White House axed the idea. What
emerged was a plan that favored the oldest and dirtiest coal-fired
electric plants.



Though
the matter dealt with a seemingly esoteric and technical issue, the
stakes were enormous. The White House gambit not only constituted a
huge financial windfall for some of the biggest Bush campaign
contributors, it also rewarded companies in a number of battleground
states important in the November election, including Ohio, Michigan,
West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Iowa.



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