July, 25 2011, 09:29am EDT
House Continues Assault on Key Health & Environmental Protections
Riders on an EPA spending bill will sacrifice thousands of lives, billions of dollars in savings
WASHINGTON
The U.S. House of Representatives will begin debate today on important legislation that sets spending requirements for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of the Interior, the Forest Service and other federal agencies. The bill currently contains dozens of "riders" that gut key environmental protections for air, water, endangered species and iconic places.
The following statement is from Marty Hayden, Vice President of Policy and Legislation at Earthjustice:
"The House of Representatives, led by anti-environmental Republicans, are sharpening their knives to gut key health and wildlife protections that could benefit millions of Americans. These are no small cuts; this is a complete butchering of environmental safeguards.
"Riders attached to the EPA spending bill decimate protections for air, water, lands and wildlife. Even before this bill reached the House floor for a full debate, Appropriations committee members attached 38 riders that shred our safety net for protecting against pollution in our air and water, saving imperiled wildlife, and protecting iconic places like the Grand Canyon from uranium mining. The White House rightfully highlighted these egregious policy riders as one reason for the veto threat it issued last week.
"This bill is larded up with giveaways to polluters and corporate donors. The same industries that filled the coffers of Tea Party candidates are finally seeing their investments paying dividends in the form of relaxed regulations for air and water pollution. Instead of paying taxes like the rest of us, these corporate polluters spend money buying off members of Congress. These same politicians are scurrying around right now, stuffing this budget bill chock full of favors for their corporate patrons.
"This bill is spreading death and disease across America as House Republicans massacre environmental safeguards meant to protect us all."
The following is a brief summary of some of the current environmental attacks in the federal spending bill:
Water
- Interrupting Agency Review of Coal Ash Standards -Seeks to defund any rulemaking that would regulate coal ash as a hazardous waste, thus foreclosing any regulatory scheme that provides for federally enforceable regulations for America's second largest waste stream.
- Water of the United States - Would halt the EPA's ongoing work to clarify which waters remain protected by the Clean Water Act in the wake of confusing court decisions.
- Preventing EPA's Ability to Regulate the Largest Water Users - This rider prevents the EPA from developing and proposing standards for the use of cooling water at power plants under the Clean Water Act.
- Weakening the Clean Water Act - Would amend the Clean Water Act to create a loophole for the timber industry, exempting it from pollutant discharge permit requirements for silvicultural activities.
- Stormwater Discharge - This rider essentially prevents the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from updating its stormwater discharge regulations or permits to manage runoff from post-construction sites.
- Letting More Pesticides In Our Waters By Axing Clean Water Act Protections -Would create a loophole for pesticide applicators to spray toxic chemicals directly into our waterways without complying with the only statute that was created to protect our water bodies and us.
- Allowing Toxic Slime in Our Waters From Manure, Fertilizer and Sewage - This rider stops the EPA from using its funding to implement, administer or enforce new water quality standards finalized in November for Florida's lakes and flowing waters. This amendment, supported by industry groups in Florida and nationwide, would even stop public education or enforcement of this rule to protect Florida's waters from excess nutrient pollution from sewage, manure and fertilizer.
Air
- Polluter Paradise- This rider would require EPA to stop all work to update clean air standards for dangerous smog, soot and other air pollution if so-called "background" levels of that pollution anywhere in the country are occasionally higher than the standards needed to protect public health.
- Spreading Death and Disease from Cement Pollution- This rider blocks EPA health protections that would control smog, soot, mercury and other toxic pollutants emitted by cement plants, some of the worst industrial polluters of any kind.
- More Soot Pollution, Anti-Science -This rider blocks the EPA from taking account the best scientific and medical information and updating clean air standards for "coarse particle pollution" or PM10, sometimes called soot.
- Spreading Mercury Poisoning, Death and Asthma Attacks - This rider denies EPA funding to carry out and enforce the Clean Air Act's forthcoming Mercury and Air Toxics standards for power plants and the recently finalized Cross-State Air Pollution Rule to cut smog and soot pollution from power plants.
- Regulation of Ammonia Emissions - This amendment would prevent the EPA from setting a Clean Air Act standard for ammonia. Several federal agencies, including EPA, have documented ammonia's acute and chronic adverse health effects.
Fish and Wildlife
- Extinction Rider - Prevents the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service from spending any money to implement some of the most crucial sections of the Endangered Species Act, such as listing new species; designating habitat critical to a species' survival; upgrading the status of any species from threatened to endangered; and assisting law enforcement by protecting species that resemble listed species.
- Shielding Gray Wolf Delistings from Judicial Review - This provision exempts from judicial review any final rule that delists gray wolves in Wyoming and any states within the range of the Western Great Lakes Distinct Population Segment of gray wolves, provided that FWS has entered into an agreement with the state for it to manage wolves. The provision undercuts one of the most important checks and balances built into the ESA - public participation through the ability of citizens to request judicial review of delistings.
- Attacking protections for Endangered and Threatened Wild Bighorn Sheep - Eliminates nearly all protections for bighorn sheep in the western United States, forbidding federal agencies from protecting this key wild species.
- Anti-Wildlife, Pro-Poisons Rider - This amendment prohibits the EPA from implementing any measures recommended by federal wildlife experts to protect salmon and other endangered species from pesticides.
Mountaintop Removal Mining:
- Prohibiting Rules to Protect Streams from Surface Mining - Keeps the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement within the Department of the Interior from continuing work to revise regulations adopted in the waning days of the Bush administration that opened up streams to destructive and polluting practices associated with surface coal mining.
- Blocking EPA Oversight of Mountaintop Removal Mining - Shields mountaintop removal coal mining operations from EPA review by stopping EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers from continuing a process they put in place in April 2010, to scrutinize proposed mining permits.
Offshore Drilling
- Giving Oil Companies a Free Pass to Pollute - Limits the EPA's ability to regulate air emissions from offshore drilling in the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans, and the Eastern Gulf of Mexico.
Special Places
- Lifting the Grand Canyon Uranium Mining Moratorium - Allows for extensive uranium mining directly adjacent to the Grand Canyon, potentially endangering an iconic landmark as well as some of America's most important water resources.
- Sticking Taxpayers With Mine Cleanup Costs - Prohibits EPA from ensuring that the hard-rock mining industry, like uranium and gold mining companies, post adequate financial assurance to cover the costs of cleanup at mine sites potentially leaving taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars.
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.
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Corporate Prosecutions Up Under Biden, Says Watchdog, But Not Nearly Enough
"The increase in corporate prosecutions is a welcome shift from the previous decline, and the new policy of rewarding corporate crime whistleblowers could go further toward restoring enforcement."
Mar 25, 2024
While welcoming a "modest uptick" in corporate prosecutions by the U.S. Department of Justice last year, the watchdog Public Citizen on Monday called for the "bold ramp-up Biden DOJ leadership promised early in the administration."
Federal prosecutions of corporations over the past 25 years peaked in 2000, at 304, according to the organization's analysis of various datasets. After the turn of the century, figures trended down, with a low of 90 in 2021, the year that President Joe Biden was sworn in. Since then, the numbers have started to climb again—hitting 99 in 2022 and 113 in 2023.
However, the impact isn't felt equally across the corporate world. Last year, "about 76% of the corporations DOJ prosecuted had only 50 employees or less, while only about 12% had 1,000 employees or more," the report states. "This is the continuation of a long-standing trend—about 70% of the 4,946 corporations the federal government prosecuted between 1992 and 2021 were small businesses with fewer than 50 employees. Only about 6% employed 1,000 or more."
"Prosecutions remain far too few, and the ongoing overuse of leniency deals for big corporations that break the law continues to undermine deterrence."
Still, "the increase in corporate prosecutions is a welcome shift from the previous decline, and the new policy of rewarding corporate crime whistleblowers could go further toward restoring enforcement," said Rick Claypool, a Public Citizen research director who authored the report, in a statement Monday.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced the "DOJ-run whistleblower rewards program," through which an individual who helps the department discover "significant corporate or financial misconduct" could receive some of the forfeiture, in a speech to the American Bar Association's 39th National Institute on White Collar Crime earlier this month.
Although Claypool applauded the progress, he also emphasized that "prosecutions remain far too few, and the ongoing overuse of leniency deals for big corporations that break the law continues to undermine deterrence."
The report explains that "prosecutors use DOJ leniency agreements—deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) and nonprosecution agreements (NPAs)—to avoid filing criminal charges against corporate defendants. Originally developed to offer nonviolent first-time individual offenders a second chance, such agreements now help the most powerful businesses in the world dodge the legal consequences of their criminal misconduct."
Previous Public Citizen research shows that "about 15% of the agreements historically involve repeat offenders, casting doubt on their deterrent effect," the report notes. "Most corporate repeat offenders that receive leniency agreements from the Department of Justice are large multinationals. Of the 14 corporations that received leniency deals in 2023, the majority (10, or 71%) had at least 5,000 employees or more."
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While calling out the DOJ for creating "the appearance that some businesses are 'too big to jail'" with its leniency agreements, Public Citizen also lauded Monaco's recent remarks about "delivering consequences for corporate recidivists."
"A history of misconduct matters," she said during the early March address. "After all, penalties exist, in part, to deter future misconduct. They're not the cost of doing business. So when a company breaks the law again—and it's clear the message wasn't received—we need to ratchet up the sanctions."
As the report details:
The first example Monaco provides of the Justice Department holding corporate repeat offenders accountable is Ericsson. Ericsson breached its 2019 leniency agreement with the DOJ to resolve allegations of criminal violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in Djibouti, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Kuwait. Following the breach—failing to meet cooperation and disclosure requirements—the DOJ subsequently prosecuted the corporation for its misconduct.
Other major corporations that have been prosecuted after breaching leniency agreements include the multinational agrichemical corporation Monsanto and the financial corporation formerly known as Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest Group, which reportedly rebranded in part to dissociate itself from its past misconduct.
"The DOJ's fresh willingness to hold corporate offenders accountable for leniency agreement breaches is among the strongest and most necessary corporate accountability reforms implemented by the Biden administration," the report says. "It's also one that is currently facing its greatest test: Boeing."
Boeing entered into DPA in 2021, after a pair of deadly 737 MAX 8 jet crashes in 2018 and 2019. In January, a door plug flew off a 737 MAX 9 during a flight, resulting in an emergency landing and fresh scrutiny—including a DOJ criminal investigation.
In a February letter to DOJ leaders including Monaco and Attorney General Merrick Garland, Weissman wrote that "if the DOJ finds that Boeing again violated the law, Boeing should be prosecuted both for its original and its subsequent misconduct."
As Common Dreamsreported earlier Monday, Boeing announced that its commercial airplanes division leader will leave immediately, the chairman of the board will resign after the annual meeting in May, and the CEO will step down at the end of this year.
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Calhoun, who said he decided on his own to resign, took charge at Boeing in the midst of the company's previous high-profile crisis—the grounding of the 737 MAX jet following a pair of crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed more than 340 people.
Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in response to the news of Calhoun's coming departure that "if Boeing had been held criminally accountable after the... 737 MAX disasters, the more recent quality debacles quite likely could have been averted."
Earlier this year, a door plug of a Boeing 737 MAX 9 flew off the aircraft as it ascended, causing minor injuries and forcing the pilots to conduct an emergency landing. More than MAX 9s were subsequently grounded to undergo inspections.
The incident prompted federal regulators, airlines, and journalists to—once again—closely scrutinize Boeing's manufacturing process, cost-cutting efforts, lobbying against safety regulations, and executive and shareholder payouts.
The Leverreported days after the January 5 incident that "less than a month before a catastrophic aircraft failure prompted the grounding of more than 150 of Boeing's commercial aircraft, documents were filed in federal court alleging that former employees at the company's subcontractor repeatedly warned corporate officials about safety problems and were told to falsify records."
The outlet also found that "operators of Boeing's troubled 737 MAX planes have filed more than 1,800 service difficulty reports—more than one per day—warning government regulators about safety problems with the aircraft since the fleet was allowed to resume flying after two fatal crashes."
Alaska Airlines, the operator of the January 5 flight, said in late January that it found loose bolts on "many" of Boeing's 737 MAX 9s.
"The FAA identified noncompliance issues in Boeing's manufacturing process control, parts handling and storage, and product control."
In an update published on March 4, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said its six-week audit of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems—a major Boeing contractor—uncovered "multiple instances where the companies allegedly failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements."
"The FAA identified noncompliance issues in Boeing's manufacturing process control, parts handling and storage, and product control," the agency said. "To hold Boeing accountable for its production quality issues, the FAA has halted production expansion of the Boeing 737 MAX, is exploring the use of a third party to conduct independent reviews of quality systems, and will continue its increased onsite presence at Boeing's facility in Renton, Washington, and Spirit AeroSystems' facility in Wichita, Kansas."
Earlier this month, days after the FAA update was published, a Boeing whistleblower who raised concerns about the company's quality control practices was found dead of what local officials said appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Weissman of Public Citizen said Monday that "of course CEO Dave Calhoun should be dismissed" over the company's latest safety crisis.
"But for real and lasting change to occur," he argued, "Boeing must now be held criminally accountable both for the recent safety failures and the... crashes that took 346 lives."
In 2021, Boeing entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to avoid a criminal charge over an alleged conspiracy to defraud the FAA in the wake of the 2018 and 2019 crashes.
Public Citizen noted in a report published Monday that "such agreements now help the most powerful businesses in the world dodge the legal consequences of their criminal misconduct."
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New York Attorney General Letitia James indicated earlier this month that she could begin seizing Trump's assets as soon as Monday if he was unable to pay the $454 million judgment.
Trump was hit with the fine as the result of James' civil fraud case against the former president and his real estate company, the Trump Organization. Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump and the firm had committed "repeated and persistent fraud," including by falsifying financial statements by as much as $2.2 billion.
The former president is appealing the ruling and had looked for companies to guarantee the full amount of the bond in the event that he lost the appeal, but with much of his fortune tied up in his properties, he was unable to come up with the collateral demanded by the institutions.
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