Steve's Cabinet Games

"Governor" Beshear is still struggling to grasp the concept of cabinet-level agencies and who should run them.

Today he announced that he's releasing Environmental Protection from the commercial grip of the insurance and banking execs in Public Protection. Great move. Until the other shoe drops, and he throws a defenseless Environmental Protection into the voracious maw of Energy.

Steve, Steve, Steve. I should not have to explain to you that the purpose of Environmental Protection is to protect the environment FROM the strip miners, gas extractors, coal-burners, nuke-lovers and other nature-destroying freaks of the Energy industry.

Adding insult to injury, the new Secretary of the new Energy and Environmental Cabinet is a veteran of the most polluting, most destructive, most secretive, most uncooperative agency in the entire federal government. On pollution, on environmental destruction, on unConstitutional secrecy, this agency is even worse than the Department of Defense.

It's the Department of Energy. To make a very long story very short, DOE is the agency that wants to collect high-level radioactive waste from nuclear plants all over the country and transport them over our oh-so-safe highways and railroads to a cave in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The highways and railroads on which that exceedingly dangerous material will travel include I-64 in Kentucky (where a tractor-trailer accident just shut down a 20-mile section for a full day) and the railroad tracks that run through downtown Frankfort.

Nothing personal against Dr. Peters, but a U.S. DOE veteran would be a poor choice even for just the Kentucky Energy Cabinet. To give a coal apologist Environmental Protection, too, is just a crime.

And Steve? The phrases "coal industry" and "renewable energy sources" belong in the same sentence only when they are connected by the phrase "... will finally die off when we adopt genuine ..."

It's not yet clear what's going to happen to the Department of Natural Resources, which used to be paired with Environmental Protection. Steve will probably combine it with Economic Development and put the Webb brothers in charge.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.