Tax cuts, pollution and poverty stricken federal judges

[flamin lib]

The Republicans didn’t let the door hit them in the butt on the way out of congress but they did have a final fling. In the last hours of the last day of Republican control they passed 520 tax favors for corporations. Mostly in the form of tariff relief on individual items purchased offshore ranging from shoes to boiled oysters. That’s another couple of $ billion the middle class will have to make up or borrow from China. To add insult to that injury, the bill makes it even more profitable to buy offshore things that were once made here by Americans.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/13/AR2006121301850.html 520 tax cuts in last Repub bill

Just because the Republicans no longer control congress doesn’t mean the party of compassion can’t continue to do damage. The EPA, which under Bush has become the Environmental Pollution Agency, is considering lifting the ban on tetra-ethyl-lead as a pollutant. The single most successful cleanup of the environment and they want to reverse it. Lead was an additive to gasoline to cheaply increase the octane rating. When I was a child in S Texas cattle grazing next to busy highways produced milk so contaminated with lead that it was considered toxic to pregnant women and children. If one heavy metal isn’t enough, how about a helping of mercury to go with your lead? The EPA will exempt cement plants built in 2005 and earlier from mercury pollution standards. Heavy metals are particularly hard on children, which is why lead pigments were banned from paint in 1978. A baby can ingest enough lead chewing paint off the crib to be poisoned. That’s not a lot of lead folks.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-epa-lead-pollution,1,1091546.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines EPA considers eliminating lead from pollution standards
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cement12dec12,0,7688748.story EPA exempts cement plant’s mercury pollution.

In other news Justice Antonin Scalia says you can’t make ends meet on only $165,000 a year. My heart bleeds yellow water for him. I guess he’s jealous of the guys on Wall Street who will get bonuses totaling over $100 billion this year. To put that into perspective $100 billion would fund both the Department of Education and the Housing and Urban Development for 2007. How ‘bout that! Just the bonuses could fund two Federal Government Agencies. Yep, the economy is strong and getting stronger, at least for Bush’s base: the Haves and the Have Mores. Meanwhile middle class income has slipped again.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4399455.html Scalia can’t live on $165k
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/12/19/18338641.php Wallstreet bonuses
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/fpaa.html 2007 federal budget

And finally this:
Proverbs 6:16-19
16. There are six things the LORD hates,
seven that are detestable to him:
17. haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood,
18. a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil,
19. a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.

Where does George Bush fit in the list of seven things that God detests? To me it looks like he made all of them except the haughty eyes. Squinty eyes or beady eyes okay, but haughty? Note that homosexuality didn’t make the list . . .

[hashibabba]

1. Oh I definitely think he has haughty eyes, too!!

haugh·ty (hôt)
adj. haugh·ti·er, haugh·ti·est
Scornfully and condescendingly proud.

[elehhhhna]

2. IMPEACH SCALIA. When an employee tells you he doesn't want the job anymore, it's time to

LET HIM GO.