Lisa Jackson for EPA: a dissenting voice?
December 20, 2008
I haven’t commented yet on Steven Chu, Lisa Jackson and the rest of Obama’s energy & enviro team because I just can’t wrap my arms around what would make my hosannas that much more worthy of your limited eyeball time than anyone else’s. In all honesty, though, I do have some reservations about Ms. Jackson, based on my published study of New Jersey’s program designed to remediate brownfield sites. See vol. 34 of the Fordham Urban Law Journal from 2007 if you are curious. My principal source for some background info for that article, Bill Wolfe of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), strongly opposes her, for reasons some of which are described in my article. Note this as one example: “The state hazardous waste clean-up program under Ms. Jackson was so mismanaged that the Bush EPA had to step in and assume control of several Superfund sites.”
I’m going to go back and look a little more closely than I did at the time at specific persons and offices who bore responsibility for the mess in the NJ brownfields program (the quote above refers to the Superfund program, designed for the more contaminated sites). If anything, I might get some clues about a post-Bush EPA. My gut instinct, based on other appointments (Solis, Chu, Holdren, Lubchenco, etc.), is that the transition team is so focused on reversing eight years of climate change policy that other priorities may have been crowded out. I also think that Carol Browner had a lot to do with this nomination; Jackson worked in her EPA.
PEER argues that even in the area of climate change, New Jersey is not a shining beacon on the hill. As I told my Law of Global Warming class, and as PEER rightly observes, NJ missed out on the first RGGI greenhouse gas auction because it could not get its regulatory act together.
Maybe Mary Nichols of the California Air Resources Board would have been a better choice. I hope I am proven wrong.
A “must-read” on Obama and the inauguration controversy
December 20, 2008
I don’t use that term often. Heck, we read so much (Google Reader alone throws 100+ items my way each day, not to mention the NYT, new books, etc., etc.) that it’s really hard for anything to stand out from the pack.
But this jumped out at me. Don’t get me wrong: I am no more thrilled than my LGBT friends at the choice of Rick Warren, but let’s not trap Obama from day one with the political noose others have used on Democrats for my entire lifetime.
Obama and the “Team of Rivals”
November 15, 2008
I love the Hillary Clinton/”Team of Rivals” stuff. One of my favorite books, writ large on the public stage.
Let’s go the extra mile. I was asked “who’d be Chase?,” so I thought I would try my hand at filling out the entire team of rivals. Here goes:
Obama — Lincoln, natch. Not the first choice of his party at the start of the nominating process (that would be Seward, and how juicy is it that the “obvious choice” now is the one who may wind up filling the Seward role?) but the guy who was victorious at the end.
Clinton — Seward. But will she hang in the Prez’s digs with him in the evenings, sipping brandy and smoking cigars? Hmmm, doubt it.
Bates — I figure Joe Lieberman for this. Bates was the older, so-called “moderate” who really wasn’t a Republican and whose politics would have destroyed the party.
Chase — Al Gore, hands down. Brains, but with a brainy and not politically or socially adept view of the election borne in large part from being above/beyond the fray. But he still comes out OK with an important job (Supreme Court Justice), as I imagine Al Gore will, even if maybe it’s not this job. Not sure who’d play his charming first-lady-in-waiting daughter Kate. Evidence is not necessarily to the contrary , just not convincing that his daughters could run the country.
Yes, I know I am being historically inaccurate, as Lincoln’s rivals contended for the same nomination as him, but I hope you all will give me some license.
Stanton — McCain? I guess we’ll see on Monday.
