Worst Ever

In another giant "Fuck you" to the American people, the Bush administration's Fish and Wildlife Service is planning to "read" 200,000 citizen comments on their plan to radically alter the endangered species rules in just 32 hours. Fish and Wildlife assembled a team of 15 people to read the legally mandated citizen comments. They started yesterday at 9 am and plan to work 8 hour days and finish up Friday afternoon. For those playing at home, that's 13,333 comments per person. That works out to 416 comments per hour. 7 comments per minute. These comments are written by citizens, including scientists and lawyers and often run to dozens of pages.

Law requires the administration to read and comment on public response to proposed rule changes, and this is an attempt to get this process done and the changes in place before a new administration takes office. If the rule change is still "proposed," then it is easily undone. If the the change is complete, then a new administration would have to go through the entire process again.

I guess it should come as absolutely no surprise, but jeebus. Democracy means absolutely nothing to these people, does it?