While on the environmental betrayals and bogus green posturing of Clinton, Gore, Babbitt, and friends, we'd be remiss not to note the latest hypocrisy of our state's very own Clinton-with-training-wheels, Gov. Gary Locke.

In pure Clinton style, last week Locke issued a blistering media attack on the Department of Energy for its slow, sloppy work in cleaning up the environmental catastrophe that is the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Locke said the state would not tolerate any more delays. Locke said the state might even sue the feds. Locke was indignant.

Locke also had hypocritometers on overload. Every aspect of Hanford's clean-up is legally overseen by a document called the Tri-Party Agreement (TPA). Any changes (e.g., delays and relaxation of standards) in the legally mandated timetable for Hanford cleanup efforts must be approved by all three parties to the TPA: the Dept. of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the state's Dept. of Ecology--a department that has for the last year chafed under pressure directly from Locke to sign off on every delay, missed standard, and misappropriation of money connected to the money suck that is Hanford cleanup.

The state's Dept. of Ecology is itself an open joke, never more so than under Locke. Both Locke and enforcement budget cutbacks from a reactionary state legislature (whose anti-regulatory zeal Locke has largely embraced) have pushed the agency into a policy of open accommodation with corporate megapolluters across the state. Even by these standards, Locke's Hanford policy has been horrific. And, as regular ETS! readers know, Locke has been a prime force, along with Sen. Patty Murray, on the restart and privatization of nuclear weapon production work at Hanford's Fast Flux Test Reactor (FFTF). That includes Locke's signoff on the illegal diversion of $31 million a year in 1997 and 1998 from cleanup funds to prepare FFTF for its proposed mission of generating more plutonium waste.

At this rate, Locke will be Vice President one day. He really likes the free trips to Asia.