These bozos got to go!

Last week, the Washington Post reported thirty-four Superfund projects in 19 states will go unfunded this year. The Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged that Superfund, which is the government's toxic waste cleanup program, is now nearly bankrupt. Why are these crucial sites being neglected? Carol Browner, the administrator of the EPA from 1993-2001, explains, "Because the fees that are used to pay for these cleanups are no longer being collected." In a sop to the oil industry, the Bush administration ended the tax on corporate polluters that funded the program by refusing to ask Congress to reinstate the fee oil and chemical companies paid that generated the money for cleanups. This is part of an overall pattern of a swift and steady sabotage of environmental safeguards.