REVOLVING DOOR between industry and Interior Dept. continues with this administration

[polichick]

Heard about this on NPR this morning:


"McKay also cited Sylvia Baca as someone who went from BP to Interior. She made the switch twice. In the Clinton administration, she served as the Interior Department's assistant secretary for land and minerals management and worked as the department's acting director of the Bureau of Land Management.

In 2001, Baca joined BP, where she worked in several senior management positions. Last June, Salazar brought her back to Interior, tapping her for the position of deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management.

He cited her "professionalism and detailed knowledge of Interior's land and energy responsibilities."

Asked about her hiring at a House hearing Wednesday, Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes said that Baca has recused herself from the oil spill because of her prior employment with BP.

"She has not been involved in offshore energy issues," he added."



http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127126854


The Interior Dept. is supposed to PROTECT our natural resources not facilitate industry. We need to push the prez to put someone like Bobby Kennedy Jr. in charge.

[xchrom]

1. Recommend. Nt

[Captain Hilts]

2. Prez Obama appointed GE's pollution defender in charge of DOJ's environmental enforcement:

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/15/ignacia-moreno-superfund/

President Barack Obama has nominated a lawyer for the nation’s largest toxic polluters to run the enforcement of the nation’s environmental laws. On Tuesday, Obama “announced his intent to nominate” Ignacia S. Moreno to be Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division in the Department of Justice. Moreno, general counsel for that department during the Clinton administration, is now the corporate environmental counsel for General Electric, “America’s #1 Superfund Polluter“:

Number five in the Fortune 500 with revenues of $89.3 billion and earnings of $8.2 billion in 1997, General Electric has been a leader in the effort to roll back the Superfund law and stave off any requirements for full cleanup and restoration of sites they helped create.

This February, General Electric lost an eight-year battle to “prove that parts of the Superfund law are unconstitutional.” One of the 600-person DOJ environmental division’s “primary responsibilities is to enforce federal civil and criminal environmental laws such as” the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Superfund.

Before General Electric, Moreno worked as a corporate attorney at Spriggs and Hollingsworth. Moreno’s name is found in the Westlaw database as an attorney defending General Motors in another Superfund case, the GM Powertrain facility in Bedford, Indiana:

Historical uses and management of PCB containing hydraulic oils and PCB impacted materials has contaminated on-site areas as well as the sediment and floodplain soil within Bailey’s Branch and the Pleasant Run Creek watershed.

[polichick]

5. This is absolutely disgusting! nt

[chill_wind]

3. Kicking

the unrecc patrol is running around on steroids right now.

[polichick]

6. They're about one thing - DENIAL. nt

[LakeSamish706]

4. Thats certainly a problem that I have with all of this. MMS is just to damn cozy with the Oil

and Gas industry.

[WeDidIt]

7. AttOd n/t

[polichick]

8. What does that mean? nt

[Teka]

9. They all need to be booted out

Obama - you FUCKED UP with your interior appoinments.

Time to man up and start over

[polichick]

10. Yeah - I still want to believe that Obama is on our side, but many of his...

...appointments really make you wonder - Interior should have someone with the credentials of RFK Jr.