Article says he did the same as Bush did in 2001.
Obama halts all regulations pending review. Order goes out Tuesday afternoon, shortly after inauguration. AP in MSNBC.
This is what folks hoped for. Of course, this will only stop Bush regulations which are at a certain stage. How far back the order is able to cut them is not known yet.
This is a happy day for Americans in many types of work and service.
Update. This might have halted the wolf delisting. Unsure for now.
Update 1-21-2009. Regulators Ordered to Leave Work Unfinished. By Amy Goldstein. Washington Post.
The headline above is very misleading, as though the agencies were doing some important work and had to stop, rather than that their “work ” was to carry out Bush directives to favor his political allies and cronies.
Comments
Ralph – It will be interesting to see if there is a next phase to this. From my understanding (which could be wrong) this does NOT apply to things like BLM Resource Management Plans (RMPs) or to that horrible Department of Energy Westwide Corridor EIS that Mark Rey signed a non-appealable Record of Decision for a week or so ago. There has not been yet though a BLM ROD signed for that huge transmission and who knows what else boondoggle.
I actually read a bunch of that Energy EIS. It’s “science” was a joke. Maybe Obama could exercise some kind of scientific review on all of the junk Kempthorne’s Interior, USDA and DOE spewed out in the latter days of the Bush Admin., and freeze actions until review was completed and an assessment made of which were junk and needed to be started over. The DOE EIS though has lots of huge nasty corridors carving up Nevada to serve Harry Reid’s friends Industrial Wind and Solar projects. Will Obama let junk like the DOE EIS, with its political plum Corridors, slide?
And speaking of Harry Reid. I didn’t see much of him on-screen yesterday. I wonder … Check this out (saw it a Firedoglake):
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/11/abramoff_report_1.html
I sure urge the Obama administration to take a good, hard look at all the federal agencies have been up to in Nevada to accommodate Harry, his sons, lobbyists, and their clients. Like Harvey Whittemore, who controls the grazing over a vast area of BLM lands in Nevada south of Ely. BLM rubberstamped the permit for Whittemore’s Geyser Ranch allotment – making it sound like it was a virtual paradise and paragon of land health. They forgot to look at the water, and what might happen to the Water Table here:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/dec/04/whittemore-wins-water-rights-ruling/
The Geyser Ranch base property is to be de-watered and piped south to Coyote Springs for development and sprawl. That is why Whittemore bought the ranch and grazing permit came along with it. In its recent grazing permit review EA, BLM never analyzed what such water export might due to water tables on public lands, wildlife populations, etc. in their flimsy analysis.
Ralph:
This will freeze the wolf delisting rule, as it has not yet been published in the Federal Register. See here for details:
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/awetzler/wolves_get_a_temporary_repriev.html
This does not, however, deal with the havoc the caused with Section 7 of the ESA, as those regs went into effect last Thursday.
I encourage everyone to contact their local US Representative(s) and urge him/her to co-sponsor the Congressional Review Act resolution (H.J. Res 18 ) that would disapprove the Bush Administration’s section 7 changes.
Here is good news on Freedom of Information Act Requests, too!
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/21/obama.business/index.html
I saw this on a Blog I had not known about:
http://desertbeacon.blogspot.com/2009/01/let-there-be-light-obama-reverses-bush.html
The Bushies applied this to grazing, too. You would not believe how top secret cow matters became under Bush. Guess that was because all his cronies had cows. In Nevada now, many of Harry Reid’s cronies – like the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) and hobby ranchers and water pirates – now have cows. It has been hard getting info about the SNWA cows, too. Hopefully that will ease up.