Project Mercury

Forgive me, but the administration's tireless commitment to mendacity, malevolence, incompetence and simple disconnection from reality has driven me to be shrill. You may wish to avert your eyes.

One of the hidden motives alleged for Bush's Social Security privatization scheme, and the whole "ownership society", is that it would cement an entire rising generation as Republican voters. The theory is that, once they were all capitalists, the youth of America would forever vote for the capitalists' party, the GOP.

This morning, it occurred to me it could be a multi-pronged assault.

Washington - The Environmental Protection Agency distorted the analysis of its controversial proposal to regulate mercury pollution from power plants, making it appear that the Bush administration's market-based approach was superior to a competing scheme supported by environmentalists, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said yesterday.

Rebuking the agency for a lack of "transparency," the report said the EPA had failed to fully document the toxic impact of mercury on brain development, learning, and neurological functioning. The GAO urged that these problems be rectified before the EPA takes final action on the rule.

The analysis follows a critical report by the EPA's inspector general that suggested that agency scientists had been pressured to back the approach preferred by industry.

"The administration is showing a blatant disregard for the health of children, the health of women of childbearing age, but they are also showing a blatant disregard for the law," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who had asked for the analysis.

OK, so, maybe the EPA is cooking the books, but hey, how bad can it be, really?

One in six women of child bearing age in the United States carries enough accumulated mercury in her body to pose risks of adverse health effects to her children should she become pregnant. Forty-five states have fish advisories for mercury warning pregnant women and children to limit their consumption of many fish caught in freshwater.

How could this possibly serve the long-term generational interest of the GOP? Simple. Prenatal mercury exposure, among many other horrors, leads to decreased IQ. Just in case Rove's mastery of media manipulation fails, and stock ownership doesn't work, they're breeding themselves a crop of citizens with actual brain damage.

OK. I apologize. That's not intentionally what they are doing. But this story does go to show how heinous their manipulations are, and how short-sighted. Frankly, going on repeated multi-state tours to "protect" the hypothetical retirement security of children as-yet-unborn, while actively subverting measures to make sure they are born healthy in the first place, really drives mendacity and malevolence into whole new folded-space dimensions of venality.