From HuffPost:
Philip Perry, Treasonous Fucker (58 comments )
Five years after 9/11, you figure our government would have already solved the obvious security concerns, like protecting our chemical plants or keeping razors away from Britney. But we've failed miserably. Why?
Meet Philip Perry. Already, I can tell you don't like him. Because his name's Philip Perry, which sounds like the name of a guy who would screw the common interest on behalf of powerful corporations.
And if you guessed that's what he did for a living, you'd be right.
As documented in this incisive Washington Monthly article by Art Levine, after 9/11 the Environmental Protection Agency looked at chemical plants across the U.S. and concluded that at least 700 sites posed a potential threat to kill or injure over 100,000 people if attacked. In neocon math, that's over thirty 9/11s.
After nearly a year's worth of work led by Christie Todd Whitman and Tom Ridge, twelve senior Bush administration officials met in March of 2003 to finalize legislation granting Whitman's EPA the authority to oversee chemical plant security and require them to submit plans for lowering their risks. But then Philip Perry, at that time the general counsel for the White House Office of Management and Budget, waltzed in, said Congress would never go for it, and the deal was dead. Our chemical plants would have to go back to being protected by the same folks who protected them before: nobody. ....(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/philip-perry-treasonous-_b_42377.html