The Hightower Report

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POLLUTERS WRITE ANTI-POLLUTION RULES

Instead of following America's environmental rules, polluters have found a better deal: Bush & Co. lets polluters write the rules for their own fun and profit!

At issue are long-delayed EPA rules to regulate the amount of toxic mercury spewing out of the smokestacks of some 1,100 coal-fired power plants across America. This airborne mercury is grotesque – it's a neurotoxin that causes brain damage in unborn children and infants. Power plants produce 41% of all industrial mercury contamination – 48 tons a year – and they're presently the only unregulated source of this pollution.

So the Bushites have boldly stepped into the breach with new regs that they say will eliminate 70% of mercury emissions by 2018. Progress, right? Hardly. Why 2018? That's 12 years and untold numbers of brain-damaged children down the road. The technology exists today to eliminate 90% of these emissions.

But utility lobbyists balked at a more stringent rule, saying that the companies didn't want to incur the expense of the more effective technology. Bush's EPA not only went along, but actually let a top industry lobbying firm, Latham & Watkins, write much of the language used in the agency's proposed rule, lifting many of the paragraphs verbatim from Latham & Watkins memos.

The head of the EPA's air policy office, Jeffrey Holmstead, said the use of the lobbying firm's language was merely the result of an interagency mix-up. "That's not typically the way we do things, borrowing language from other people," Holmstead said.

What Holmstead didn't say is that he came to the EPA from – guess where? – Latham & Watkins. There's more – the chief counsel of the air policy office also came from Latham & Watkins.

To fight this corrupt rule-making process, call the Clean the Rain campaign: 202/797-6692 or contact www.nwf.org/cleantherain.

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WHOSE TOWN IS IT?

I'm biased.

I'm biased for small, independent, homegrown business, as opposed to spending my money at some cookie-cutter outlet of GreatBigGlobalChainStore Inc.

Not that I adamantly refuse to step into any chain, but let's admit it, these places are sterile, uniform, boring, soulless, and ... well, corporate. They have no pulse. If I have a choice, I go for the color, flavor, zest, and attitude of the hometown businesses that shout uniqueness, giving us a sense of place and human spirit. There are plenty of examples in Austin:

Why stay at the anywhere-and-nowhere Holiday Inn when we've got the funkily refurbished Austin Motel right downtown, boasting this reassuring slogan on its marquee: "No additives, No preservatives, Corporate-free since 1938."

Why turn your cash over to Starbucks No. 2,417 when there's better coffee and a spiritual uplift at our own Bouldin Creek Coffee-house & Cafe, complete with a cheeky neon sign saying: "Caffeine Dealer."

Why go to the Home Depot, when the independent Harrell's Supply & Service has the gizmo you need, knows how it operates, will lend you a tool to install it, and offers hands-on help with this comforting slogan: "Together, we can do it yourself."

Food, books, beer, clothing, records – you name it, there is an abundance of local choices wherever you live that'll take you beyond crass corporate consumerism and help define your city as its own special place, rather than just another Anyplace, USA. Plus, the money you spend locally stays local, instead of being hauled off in a Brinks truck to corporate central.

I'm not talking about supporting local businesses as some sort of do-good charitable act to help them, but about helping ourselves by voting with our consumer dollars to make our towns the one-of-a-kind, vibrant places we want them to be.

It's a question of "whose town is it?" Ours ... or GreatBigGlobalChainStore Inc.? It's up to us.