Obama picks friend of development lobbyists for Environmental Protection Agency head

Stephen Lendman wrote:

[Lisa] Jackson will be the new EPA administrator... The public deserves better...

Before becoming governor Jon Corzine's chief of staff on December 1, Jackson was New Jersey's top environmental official as head of the state's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). [b]At best, her record was mixed, but for critics it was poor to dismal.[/b]

According to the Washington-based Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), it "should disqualify her from serving as the next head of the US Environmental Protection Agency. In many instances, [b]Jackson embraced policies at DEP echoing the very practices at the Bush EPA which Senator Barack Obama condemned during the presidential campaign."[/b]

DEP employees called her "politicized" and accused her of suppressing scientific information, issuing gag orders and threats against professional staff members who objected, and acting against the environment, not for it. "Little of what occurred during her 31-month tenure" qualifies her to be Obama's EPA administrator. [b]"Under her watch, New Jersey's environment only got dirtier, incredible as that may seem."[/b] Other criticisms of her stewardship included:

-- DEP malfeasance endangering public health;

-- rising water pollution levels;

-- the contamination of drinking water supplies and poisoning of wildlife with no cogent state response;

-- the gross mismanagement of the state's hazardous waste clean-up program; and

-- [b]one of her first administrative acts [in New Jersey] was to appoint the lobbyist for the New Jersey Builders Association as her assistant commissioner to oversee water quality and land use permits[/b]; Jackson later convened an industry-dominated task force to rewrite DEP policies and relax pollution enforcement; her entire tenure was marked by closed-door deal-making with polluters and lobbyists; she can now do nationally what she did to New Jersey.

[url=http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2008/12/obamas-new-appointments.html]Sourc...

Whatever happened to the theory, often repeated on babble, that Obama will be right-wing on foreign policy and left-wing on domestic issues?