Up a Creek Near You

Many of us have felt for some time the urgency of the local environmental issue -- anything can basically happen at any time, especially in a rural county with desirable real estate, money to be made in great big buckets, and no effective land-use controls on basically anything. Anything can happen at any moment, and has ... three, now four asphalt plants threatening near neighbors ... outside private corporations buying up available water and sewer systems for profit ... warehouse districts springing up on former farmland to the detriment of neighboring homesteads, etc.

What comes tomorrow? God only knows. Your County Commissioners are too busy making sure that only "natives" get their ear, and most of the "natives" they listen to are filthy rich already and want to get richer, so don't look to the guys they'll keep in office for protection.

Now here's a pretty definitive scorecard that the federal environmental protectors are also not to be trusted with the future, especially under this new guy, Mike Leavitt, Bush's replacement for Christine Todd Whitman at the EPA.

We got a crisis, folks, from top to bottom, among the people who have been entrusted with our health, safety, and the very pursuit of happiness, both locally and nationally. They'll sell you out for money.