Republicans Are Using an Arcane Oversight Rule to Permanently Dismantle Federal Land Protections

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Originally published at: Republicans Are Using an Arcane Oversight Rule to Permanently Dismantle Federal Land Protections - TPM – Talking Points Memo

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. In the spring of 1996, lawmakers quietly buried a rider in a humdrum bill meant to make life easier for small businesses. That addition, the Congressional Review Act, granted Congress the power to kill new federal regulations with a simple majority…

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Leave nothing for the next generation.

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So is there any reading on whether this has a snowball’s chance of overcoming a Senate filibuster?

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The “conservative” party has strayed so far from conserving anything that it would be laughable if it weren’t so horrifying.

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It would be interesting to pin them down on what the future looks like. And the prosperity and greatness for all line is not going to fly. When they are done, a few will own the land. That is it. Like Texas.

It is beginning to look like if they can pave this planet over with gaudy architecture, belching factories and a witch’s brew of toxic rivers, they will be happy. Reminds me a lot of the environment of a world ruled by the Borg.

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I’m interested in the line about invalidating everything permitted and built under the plans now being invalidated. Ideally a public interest law group would tee up suits demanding that each and every bit of construction enabled by invalidated plans be razed. Individual suits in individual jurisdictions, not to be combined.

(Similar to the tactics used by right-wing vote suppressers to blackmail cities and towns into taking people off their voting lists.)

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I’m curious about the underlying law that binds Congress’ hands into the future. I thought that was unconstitutional. Future Congesses need to be able to respond to future conditions.

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The US and China are quite different, but also outliers in terms of aggressive extraction of resources. I think Wang misses this a bit in his new book. Face it, if your president isn’t a hiker or a birdwatcher, species protection and respect for natural systems is likely not a priority. What we’re seeing is the final looting of the nation”s natural endowments in both countries and internationally.

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Rotten greedy bastids. They grew up with everything this country had to offer and now are bent on destroying it for everyone else.