The CounterParts Crew does not rap about “popping caps” or “getting hyphy,” and they would likely question the eco-friendliness of anyone “rolling on dubs.” Instead, the hip-hop group is dropping rhymes in the name of today's election and California's Proposition 23.

The Crew’s new tune, “No on Prop 23,” takes aim at the Texas oil companies and allied politicians that are attempting to block implementation of California’s pioneering global warming legislation, commonly referred to as AB 32. Discussing everything from power plants spewing toxic chemicals to respiratory illness resulting from air pollution, the song is pretty sophisticated in its perspective on the proposition. A sample of the Crew’s lyrical deftness:

The California Jobs Initiative is what they title it / Assuming that we’re stupid and we cannot decipher it … Three quarters of the funding from two Texas oil businesses / $5 million spent, y’all can guess just what their interest is … 23 is a false dichotomy between jobs and health / So vote for big oil or vote for yourself.

Gov. Joe Manchin

Today, we learned that West Virginia's Governor, Gov. Joe Manchin, is suing the EPA for its policies to strengthen watch over the state's biggest polluter, the coal mining industry and to ensure that mining does not put the people of the state and their water supplies directly in harm's way, compeletely devalue their property and turn their communities into wrecking zones for coal corporations.

He's joined the National Mining Association in suing the EPA over its recent guidance on mountaintop removal mining and its permitting process for mountaintop removal operations. The guidance is based on two new scientific studies, both affirmed and validated by an independent science advisory board, which reveal new information about mountaintop removal mining's impacts on waterways in Appalachia.

The guidance is meant to provide EPA field staff with a better, more secure, more scientifically sound way of protecting waters from irreversible harm -- and with a more responsible way of permitting these mining operations.

The travesty is that as long as mountaintop removal mining is allowed -- which the EPA is still doing -- our waters are not being protected.

Appalachians call for an end to watershed poisoning caused by mountaintop removal coal mining

On the campaign trail, President Obama shared his thoughts about mountaintop removal mining:

We have to find more environmentally sound ways of mining coal than simply blowing the tops off mountains. We're tearing up the Appalachian Mountains because of our dependence on fossil fuels ... Strip-mining is an environmental disaster ... What I want to do is work with experts here in West Virginia to find out what we need to do to protect the waterways here. That's going to be a primary task of the head of my Environmental Protection Agency.

This, if it happens, would be a sea change from the previous administration's EPA, which effectively wrote loopholes and exemptions into that law that allowed mining companies to evade longstanding regulations, sidestep basic Clean Water Act protections and dump their mountaintop removal mining waste directly into Appalachia's waters, contaminating drinking water supplies for communities and burying important streams.

Nearly two years into President Obama's term, we've seen small steps toward reducing the destruction of mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia, but the fact is: President Obama and his administration are still allowing this devastation to continue. The Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA are still permitting mountaintop removal mining permits in Appalachia, despite the regulations of the Clean Water Act.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has fallen far behind in one of its most important responsibilities: to protect the American public from toxic air pollutants. The New York Times recently reported on a new study from the agency's Inspector General which found that the EPA is currently violating federal law by failing to put these protections in place. Because of the EPA's failures to set vital clean air standards, millions of Americans still face appallingly high risks of cancer, birth defects and other devastating illness—all because of exposure to toxic air pollution that can and should be controlled.

This grim news does not result from an oversight or an accident. As the EPA recognized in its response to the report, the Bush administration intentionally cut the agency's budget for controlling toxic air emissions by 70 percent. Time was spent instead on reducing protections: a federal court observed in 2006 that the EPA under Bush was "devot[ing] substantial resources to discretionary rulemakings, many of which make existing regulations more congenial to industry, and several of which since have been found unlawful."

It is hardly surprising that when the Bush administration cut the budget for reducing toxic air emissions by more than half, the staff could not do their job. As a result, health protections that Congress required the EPA to issue years ago have never been put in place, the toxic pollution continues unabated, and people go on suffering unnecessarily. One key statistic on that suffering: the Inspector General reports that "1 in every 28,000 people could develop cancer from air toxics exposure."