Critics Resigning Over Bush's Green Rules Los Angeles Times (requires registration) | 06/03/2002 | Elizabeth Shogren; Posted on 6/3/02 9:43 AM Pacific by RFH
THE NATION A Natural Split With Bush, and Many Quit Environment: Longtime, key officials who favor conservation say they are frustrated by new rules. ELIZABETH SHOGREN 06/03/2002 Los Angeles Times Home Edition Page A-1 Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON --
James Furnish is hardly the kind of person you'd expect to quit his government job on principle during the Bush administration. A political conservative and an evangelical Christian, he voted for President Bush and plans to do the same in 2004.
As a deputy chief of the U.S. Forest Service, he was eager to give his new bosses the benefit of his more than 30 years of experience in the agency. He realized his conservationist ethic might not always prevail. But he was ready to say his piece and then accept the new administration's direction.
Instead, Furnish reluctantly left the government in the fall, at a substantial financial sacrifice, because he was frustrated by what he called the Bush team's strident pro-development philosophy and unwillingness to even listen to his perspective.
That makes him one of a number of senior career officials across several environmental agencies who have quit since the Bush administration took over. They include senior lawyers from the Environmental Protection Agency, a state director for the Bureau of Land Management, scientists with years of experience and top bureaucrats in Washington.
Earlier, I posted that I wondered if Rush and Drudge are going up against O'Reilly. Tonight's Factor Talking Points certainly supports that theory. Bill O'Reilly took a DIRECT SWIPE at Rush Limbaugh! It was wonderful. As soon as the talking points are posted on the Factor website, I'll post them. But the sorry thing is that it is becoming more and more clear that all of this- Rush, Drudge, and Bill- is nothing more than a bunch of bulls fighting for bragging rights. Some have said Dubya is a sellout. I now wonder if the real sellouts aren't Rush, Drudge, and Bill...