California Republican Darrell Issa declares war on Obama

It has been called everything from a ‘witch hunt’, to a waste of time, intended to do little more than distract the electorate, but California Congressman Darrell Issa has declared war on Barack Obama.

The New York Times called Issa, ‘Obama’s annoyer-in-chief,” adding, “Every Congress seems to produce a designated pest, adept at drawing attention to nuisance issues while making trouble for the other party when it controls the White House.”

The winner of this year’s Annoying Pest prize is Issa, whose sole mission appears to be unraveling as much of President Obama’s safety, environmental and banking regulations as he can.

“Now comes Mr. Issa, 57, who was charged with two long-ago auto thefts before eventually making a fortune selling car alarms,” according to the New York Times.

Issa may get support from a fellow republican, newly elected Florida Governor, Rick Scott, who “admitted to 14 counts of Medicare fraud and paid the federal government more than $600 million dollars in fines for his fraudulent billing practices.”

Issa is going to try to accuse the Obama Administration of being ‘corrupt.’ That sounds something like the ‘pot calling the kettle black.’

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Republican plans to roll back regulations raise risks to public safety

In their quest to take the White House in 2012, the GOP is laying the groundwork to unravel as much of the United States government as they can. But the consequences could spell an increase in illness and worker deaths through rollbacks of safety regulations.

Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) has announced  that his personal goal is to tie up the Obama Administration with excessive investigations. Additionally, Issa hopes to push through roll backs of government regulations, including those that include worker and public safety.

Among the GOP targets at public health and safety is the Environmental Protection Agency. Allowing industries to pollute at will, would raise risks to public health. Rollbacks of safety regulations could increase the likelihood of disasters, like the Deepwater Horizon, which killed eleven men, thousands of birds and marine mammals, and left a lingering scare on the environment.

Deadly accidents at mines have also been on the rise, due to safety violations. More are likely to die if safety regulations are removed.

The republican agenda is geared toward allowing corporations to maximize profits, by lowing the costs of environmental and human life protections.

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Obama hesitates to call polar bears endangered species

Pressure from corporate polluters may be causing the Obama Administration to keep from changing the protection status of polar bears form threatened to endangered.

“A change from threatened to endangered status “would have profound consequences,” said Richard Ranger, senior policy advisor for the American Petroleum Institute, a lead litigant on the industry side,” according to The Los Angeles Times.

Climate change is at the heart of the debate over the fate of the polar bear. The ice sheets they call home are rapidly shrinking, and with them go the polar bear’s ability to hunt and breed.

If polar bears were declared an endangered species, the companies responsible for polluting the environment and increasing greenhouse gases would be forced by law to comply with stiffer regulations. That would cost them money, which in turn, may cut their profits.

According to The LA Times, “There is a pronounced push-back from industry because they rightly see that they will have to modify or mitigate their activities to comply with the laws,” said Andrew Wetzler, director of the Land and Wildlife program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the groups suing to change the polar bear’s status to endangered.”

The battle over greenhouse gasses and climate change is about more than preserving animals like the polar bear; it’s about corporate profits versus anything that stands in their way. In this case, that includes the polar bear.

It’s difficult to image a world without polar bears. They have been an icon of the arctic and featured in children's stories for centuries. If they lose this battle, the next generation may only know them as another animal that went extinct. And when a child asks, ‘what happened to the polar bears?’ the only answer we will be able to give them is, we let them die because we didn’t have the political strength to save them.

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