here's an oxymoron for you:
Environmental Protection Agency
Quote:
Just six weeks into the Bush administration, Haley Barbour, a former Republican party chairman who was a lobbyist for electric power companies, sent a memorandum to Vice President Dick Cheney laying down a challenge.
"The question is whether environmental policy still prevails over energy policy with Bush-Cheney, as it did with Clinton-Gore," Mr. Barbour wrote, and called for measures to show that environmental concerns would no longer "trump good energy policy."
Mr. Barbour's memo was an opening shot in a two-year fight inside the Bush administration for dominance between environmental protection and energy production on clean air policy. One camp included officials, like Mr. Cheney, who came from the energy industry. In another were enforcers of environmental policy, led by Christie Whitman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey.
The battle engaged some of the nation's largest power companies, which were also among the largest donors to President Bush and other Republicans. They were represented by Mr. Barbour and another influential lobbyist, Marc Racicot, who also would later become chairman of the Republican National Committee.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/06/po...&partner=MYWAY
this is a story is a neat little example of industry officials (who just happen to be large Bush campaign donors) helping to rewrite the rules that regulate them - akin to the fox guarding a the henhouse. the shame of it is (besides the obvious that we all get to breathe more crap) is that they basically whacked Christie Todd Whitman along they way. a principled Republican, Whitman did a good job as governor of New Jersey and by all accounts was a rising star, ultimately quit to fade away into the warm folds of her own disillusionment.