Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

From the beginning of the administration, Bush has contrived to cut charges on corporations looting public land of fuel, timber, and other resources.  Environmental groups have tried several times to raise the alarm, but the Bush administration has done their best to entangle access to public lands with the specter of rising gas prices.  

It's become standard practice in the Bush administration to avoid public scrutiny by never taking these issues out into the sun where voters might get a closer look. The Wilderness Society spotlights just one of the ways Bush is giving away the country.

One modus operandi for the Bush administration is "sue and settle." An industry or other special interest files a lawsuit challenging a federal action (such as the snowmobile phase-out for Yellowstone), and then the administration settles the lawsuit on terms favorable to the plaintiff. Among other things, this m.o. enables the administration to bypass Congress.

 The administration makes a mock attempt at "enforcing" regulations, then settles these suits in ways that end up giving the plantiffs even more than they wanted going in.

So, how much of a gift is Bush giving the gas companies?  Here's what the Times reports.

If royalty payments in fiscal 2005 for natural gas had risen in step with market prices, the government would have received about $700 million more than it actually did, a three-month investigation by The New York Times has found.

 So, gas companies that already had record profits -- profits taken from people trying to warm their homes through winter -- now have an extra $700 million to hand over to the top execs.  That's going to build some keen new vacation homes.

In the meantime, the Bush administration continues to:

o Ignore science
o Underreport damage done to public lands
o Fail to enforce regulations
o Conceal documents from the public
o Provide your country on sale at a discount

With Bush in charge, you can just take down any idea that public lands means lands protected for the public good.  Instead, this is just another goodie Bush can hand over to his pals.  They've been doing it from day one, and so far neither congress or the courts have done anything to make them stop.

...with natural gas, the Bush administration recently loosened the rules and eased its audits intended to uncover cheating.