October 10, 2004
BOGUS POLLS: MEANINGLESS FARCE
OR LOOMING TRAGEDY? - Arianna Huffington
Congress moves to close SUV-friendly
tax loophole
Not-So-Great Debates: Part 2
- The Nation
Kenyan Environmentalist Wangari
Maathai Wins Nobel Peace Prize
Bush's Crimes Against Nature
- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Rome cracks down on SUVs
Closed, For Business: Energy Bill
Special-Interests Triumph - t r u t h o u t
Hetch Hetchy report deserves serious
discussion
A Terror Attack, Coming Soon to
a Plant Near You - Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Earth to Bush - The Nation
Wildlife Protection Standards
Waived - t r u t h o u t
Bush revealed his true dependency
Thursday
George W. Bush & the "Mandate
of Heaven"
Shooting the Messenger Doesn't
Discredit the Message - Greg Palast
Lead Levels in Water Misrepresented
Across U.S.
Howard Dean | Environmental Policy
Affects Health, Economy, Security - t r u t h o u t
Disillusioned and angry American
soldiers serving in Iraq - Letters to Michael Moore
10 Questions for Dick Cheney
- John Nichols
WE THE PLANET FEST 2004 - HENRY J KAISER AUDITORIUM
Grand Finale: Bruce Springsteen
Wants You Next Monday! - Vote for Change tour
The Sweet Music of Activism -
Bill Bradley
Two held in French anti-nuclear
protest
It's Time for Fundamental
Changes in the Way We Derive and Use Energy - Ralph Nader
As Reservoirs Recede, Fears of
a Water Shortage Rise
Global Warming Is Expected to
Raise Hurricane Intensity - t r u t h o u t
U.S. Can Eliminate Oil Use in
a Few Decades
On a mission to save America's
natural majesty
Informed Dissent | Is it just
me, or is it getting warmer?
Kerry Keeps Hope Alive - The
Nation
Refinery Report Release Delayed
until after Election - t r u t h o u t
Navajo feel a long way from Washington
Climb every mountain -- on film
Sacramento Bee and SF Chronicle
editorials on Hetch Hetchy
Old Testament Vengeance?
Americans Pay High Cost for War
Cornel West's Democracy; Top 10
Reasons to Withdraw from Iraq - AlterNet
Kerry and Bush Sharply Divided
on Global Warming - t r u t h o u t
GEORGE W. BUSH AIN'T NO COWBOY
Bush is History's Top Terrorist
Backtracking on bullet train route
WANTED: Program Director, Brower
Youth Awards
Robert Redford Criticizes Bush
Environmental Record - t r u t h o u t
BROWER
POWER - A spotlight on young
enviro activists
2004 Brower Youth Awards Honor
Outstanding Student Environmental Leaders
The 2003 Brower Youth Award Winners
Speak Up
The Next Agenda
Julia Butterfly's Calendar - CIRCLE
of LIFE
Butterfly Gardener: Events Calendar
& Action Alerts
=====================================================+
From: "Arianna
Huffington" <arianna@ariannaonline.com>
Reply-To: <arianna@ariannaonline.com>
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2004 12:25:19 -0700
To: <browerpower@wildnesswithin.com>
Subject: Bogus Polls: Meaningless Farce Or Looming Tragedy?
BOGUS POLLS: MEANINGLESS FARCE OR LOOMING TRAGEDY?
By Arianna Huffington
I've been wanting to weigh in for a while now on the negative
- indeed, the downright dangerous - impact that public opinion
polls are having on our democracy, but have held off until the
numbers turned in John Kerry's favor lest I be accused of following
in the footsteps of my Greek ancestors by killing the messenger.
But now that the post-debate figures have swung Kerry's way,
let me jump on the chance to say: It's time to pull the plug
on the media's obsession with treating polling results as if
Moses had just brought them down from the mountaintop.
Over the last month, media coverage of the presidential race
has been driven by wildly vacillating poll numbers. For example,
Newsweek has Kerry going from 11 points down in its Sept. 4 poll
to 2 points up in this week's poll, while Gallup went from Kerry
trailing by 14 points on Sept. 16 to dead even on Oct. 4.
Of course, at the same time that Gallup had Bush 14 points
ahead, the Pew Center poll had the race all tied up; and now
that Gallup has Kerry pulling even with Bush, Pew has the president
holding a 7-point advantage.
But no one in the media says, "Hey, wait a minute. What's
going on here? Both of you can't be right!" They just dutifully
report the latest numbers and set out to explain what they "mean"
- without any attempt to account for the huge disparities.
After all, for the big swings in the Newsweek and Gallup polls
to be true, close to 16 million voters would have had to change
their minds. In four weeks' time. Not even J-Lo is that fickle.
Sure, Kerry was strong in the first debate and Bush was shaky
- but for that many voters to switch sides that fast, Kerry would
have had to deliver Osama Been Forgotten's head on a silver platter
during his closing statement.
And, unless I really spaced out, that didn't happen.
The dirty little secret of the polling industry is that, all
too often, its findings are based on flawed methodology and dubious
assumptions.
Take that mid-September Gallup poll that found Kerry had plummeted
14 points behind Bush. It sure made it seem as if Kerry were
as good as done for, right? And that's the way it was widely
reported by everybody, especially Gallup's media partners, USA
Today and CNN. The problem is, the poll was absurdly weighted
in favor of GOP voters, assuming that on Election Day 40 percent
of those casting a ballot will be Republicans and only 33 percent
will be Democrats - a turnout breakdown that will only happen
in Karl Rove's dreams.
Democrats have accounted for 39 percent of those voting in
the last two presidential elections, while Republicans accounted
for no more than 35 percent in either 1996 or 2000.
It's like they say about computers: garbage in, garbage out.
With polls, it's faulty data in, faulty findings out.
Yet polls are now firmly entrenched as the lingua franca of
political analysis. Dissecting the latest numbers is so much
easier than actually, y'know, digging for the truth. Cable shows
love turning the campaign into a horse race. And it's so much
easier if you can parade fatuous numbers as hardcore facts to
prove Who's Hot and Who's Not.
Trouble is, these "snapshots of the electorate"
quickly harden into portraits, and, in the blink of an eye, guesstimates
become the conventional wisdom.
And in politics, as in sports, everybody loves a winner. Thus,
as soon as the pollsters delivered Bush his hyper-inflated post-convention
bounce, many of the Democratic faithful started seeing the ghosts
of Mike Dukakis and Fritz Mondale lurking around every corner.
By the same light, now that Bush has supposedly hit the polling
skids, the shadow of his Dad's one-and-done presidency has begun
to darken the GOP base's doorstep.
These kinds of poll-induced mood swings can have a profound
impact on a campaign. The sense that a candidate is tanking -
or on a roll - can make the difference between a potential donor
making a contribution or keeping his checkbook in his pocket.
It can also tip the scales for a would-be volunteer deciding
whether to give up more free time to go door-to-door registering
voters or work the phones to get out the vote.
I saw firsthand the effect that manufactured momentum has
as I traveled around the country speaking. Again and again last
month, I was told by Kerry supporters that the gloomy poll numbers
hanging over their man's campaign had made them less likely to
donate their time and money.
This is how polls morph from meaningless farce into potential
tragedy - self-fulfilling prophesies that end up making more
likely whatever results they predict while, at the same time,
undermining the democratic process.
But despite mounting evidence that poll results can't be trusted,
pundits and politicians continue to treat them with a reverence
ancient Romans reserved for chicken entrails, ignoring the fact
that pollsters are finding it increasingly difficult to get people
to talk to them. Thanks to answering machines, caller ID and
telemarketers, polling response rates have plunged to 30 percent
- and lower. It's pretty hard getting a good read on the public's
opinion when people keep hanging up on you.
Plus, pollsters never call cell phones - of which there are
now close to 170 million. And even though most cell phone users
also have a hard line, a growing number don't - especially young
people, an underpolled and hard-to-gauge demographic that could
easily turn out to be the margin of difference in this year's
race.
Most important, no pollsters, no matter how polished their
crystal balls, really know who are going to be the likely voters
this November and how many of the unlikely ones are going to
turn out at the polls.
Our media mavens obviously know all this, but choose to ignore
it. Coming clean about polls would mean taking them off the front
pages and sticking them where they belong - back among the horoscopes
and comic strips.
And then what would the chattering class chatter about?
© 2004 Arianna Huffington.
Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.
=====================================================+
DAILY GRIST - 08 Oct 2004
Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE
<http://grist.org>
LIKE A CAMEL THROUGH THE EYE OF THE TAX CODE
Congress moves to close SUV-friendly tax loophole
It looks like Congress may soon close one of the U.S. tax
code's most
egregious provisions (and that's quite a distinction!). In 2003,
lawmakers raised the business-equipment tax deduction to $100,000,
clearing the way for a massive luxury SUV to be written off as
a
business expense -- if it was used "primarily" for
business purposes,
of course, wink, wink. The American International Automobile
Dealers, an industry group, claimed the tax break stimulated
the
economy, citing, uh, a 6 percent rise in SUV sales. Automakers,
deeply aware of the injustice of it all, advocated that all vehicles
be given the tax break. But consumer, tax-fairness, and enviro
groups suggested that perhaps the federal government shouldn't
be
subsidizing the purchase of polluting vehicles at all. In a
large
tax bill likely to be approved by the House and Senate by the
end of
the week, lawmakers reduced the deduction to $25,000. And rejected
a
provision that would have given tax breaks to buyers of hybrid
and
other clean cars. But hey: baby steps.
straight to the source: The Detroit News, Jeff Plungis, 07
Oct 2004
<http://grist.org/cgi-bin/forward.pl?forward_id=3287>
straight to the source: Detroit Free Press, Associated Press,
Dee-Ann Durbin, 07 Oct 2004
<http://grist.org/cgi-bin/forward.pl?forward_id=3288>
=====================================================+
From:
The Nation Magazine <emailnation@thenation.com>
Reply-To: emailnation@thenation.com
To: <browerpower@wildnesswithin.com>
Date: Saturday, October 9, 2004 2:13 PM
Not-So-Great Debates: Part 2
Last night's presidential debate was a true-to-form middle
episode of a yet-to-be-finished trilogy. In Episode I, the newcomer
bested the holder of the throne. In the sequel, the humiliated
leader fought back--but at the same time the challenger kept
alive the threat to the established order. This all sets up next
Wednesday's debate as a potentially dramatic finale.
For more, read David Corn's Capital Games:
http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=1891
And don't miss Corn's new Nation magazine piece highlighting
how that the cultural community in the US--and Bruce Springsteen
in particular--has taken on the present Administration in unprecedented
ways. http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041025&s=corn
Progressive musicians have been trying to rock the youth vote
at least since John Lennon organized a 1972 concert tour designed
to encourage young people to vote against Richard Nixon, as Jon
Wiener explains. http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041025&s=wiener
Finally, please make sure to check http://www.thenation.com
for new weblogs, the RadioNation AudioBlog, exclusive new online
reports, info on nationwide activist campaigns, Nation History
offerings, reader letters and special weekly selections from
The Nation magazine. (This week, we're featuring new magazine
articles by Katha Pollitt, Eric Alterman and William Greider!)
Best Regards,
Peter Rothberg, The Nation
P.S. If you like The Nation, please consider subscribing at
our discounted rate. It's the only way to read ALL of what's
in The Nation week after week--both in print and online.
http://www.thenation.com/ensubscribe
=====================================================+
From:
trudyw <trudyw@sierratel.com>
To: Robert brower <browerpower@wildnesswithin.com>
Date: Saturday, October 9, 2004 2:55 AM
Subject: Kenyan Environmentalist Wangari Maathai Wins
Nobel Peace Prize
Good people,
What follows is a partial transcript of today's Democracy Now!
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Wangari Maathai is the
best news I've heard in a very long time. Besides being an unquestionably
deserved honor for Dr. Maathai, it is also international recognition
that the peace and well being of the planet are intimately connected
to environmental responsibility and human rights. For far too
long, the enviro establishment, especially in the US, has isolated
itself from indigenous and human rights issues; environmentalists,
of all people, should understand the interconnectivity of all
life on this planet. Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox now and
pass this along.
democracynow.org - Friday, October 8th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/08/1530258
Kenyan Environmentalist Wangari Maathai Wins Nobel Peace
Prize
Kenyan environmentalist and zoology professor Wangari Maathai
bcame the first woman from Africa to win the Nobel Peace Prize
Friday. We hear Wangari Maathai speaking earlier about the violence
she faces in Kenya and we speak with her colleague Terry Tempest
Williams. [includes rush transcript]
Today the Chair of the Nobel Prize Committee announced this
year's winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.
Ole Danbolt Mjoes, Chair of the Nobel Prize Committee speaking
in Oslo, Norway on October 8, 2004.
Chair of the Nobel Prize Committee announcing Wangari Maathai
as the 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. She is an environmentalist
and zoology professor from Kenya and the first woman from Africa
to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She is 63 years old.
Wangari Maathai rose to international fame for campaigns against
government-backed forest clearances in Kenya in the late 1980s
and 1990s.
She once said of the forest clearances "It's a matter
of life and death for this country. The Kenyan forests are facing
extinction and it is a man-made problem."
In 1992 riot police clubbed her and three other women unconscious
in central Nairobi during a demonstration. She has been tear
gassed, threatened with death by anonymous callers, and once
thrown into jail overnight for leading protests.
Wangari Maathai, speaking about the violence she faces
in Kenya.
Terry Tempest Williams, author, environmental activist
and professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Utah.
Her newest book is "The Open Space of Democracy".
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations
help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing
on our TV broadcast.
AMY GOODMAN: Today the chair of the Nobel Peace Prize
committee announced this year's winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace
Prize.
OLE DANBOLT MJOES: The Norwegian Nobel committee has decided
to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2004 to Wangari Maathai for
her contribution to sustainable development, democracy, and peace.
Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment.
Maathai stands at the front of the fight to promote ecologically
viable, social, economic, and cultural development in Kenya and
in Africa. She has taken a holistic approach to sustainable development
that embraces democracy, human rights, and women's rights in
particular. She thinks globally and acts locally. Maathai stood
up courageously against the former oppressive regime in Kenya.
Her unique forms of action have contributed to drawing attention
to political oppression, nationally and internationally. She
has served as inspiration for many in the fight for democratic
rights and has especially encouraged women to better their situation.
Maathai combines science, social commitment, and active politics,
more than simply protecting the existing environment, her strategy
is to secure and strengthen the very basis for ecologically sustainable
development.
JUAN GONZALEZ: That was the chair of the Nobel Prize Committee,
announcing Wangari Maathai as the 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace
Prize. She is an environmentalist, a zoology professor from Kenya,
and the first woman from Africa to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
She is 63 years old. Wangari Maathai rose to international fame
for campaigns against government-backed forest clearances in
Kenya in the late 1980's and 1990's. She once said of forest
clearances, "It's a matter of life and death for this country.
The Kenyan forests are facing extinction and it is a man-made
problem."
AMY GOODMAN: In 1992, riot police clubbed Wangari Maathai
and three other women unconscious in central Nairobi during a
demonstration. She's been tear gassed, threatened with death
by anonymous callers and once thrown in jail overnight for leading
protests. We're going to play now an excerpt of Wangari Maathai
speaking about the violence she faces in Kenya.
PROF. WANGARI MAATHAI: I do know that what I do hurts
some very powerful people in their own way. And because we live
in a very volatile continent and, as well, a volatile country,
you just never know when something may happen and you may be
at the wrong place.
AMY GOODMAN: Wangari Maathai speaking about her own experience.
As we turn now to the author Terry Tempest Williams, who is well
known for her environmental writings and has known Wangari Maathai
for many years. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Terry.
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS: Hello, Amy. It's wonderful
to talk to you.
AMY GOODMAN: It,s great to have you here with us. Can
you talk first about Wangari Maathai, how you know her, who she
is?
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS: I met her in 1985 at the U.N.
decade for women conference and the United Nations forum for
women in Nairobi. She was a passionate speaker on behalf of deforestation
and at that time, that was not a household word. She literally
was advocating peace for the planet through the collecting of
seeds--Women gathering seeds in the soles of their skirts and
planting them in the soils of their community. It was extremely
moving and I can tell you personally she changed my life.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of some of the work that
she has done subsequently?
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS: What she has done, literally,
is plant 10 million trees and she took the seedlings that were
planted by the women in the villages to the schools, the elementary
schools, where the children were then able to nurture hope. So,
it's been a communal process that she's been engaged in, it has
been a familial process and then she took that into the community
at large.
AMY GOODMAN: Terry Tempest Williams, she is the first
environmentalist to be awarded the prize, the first African woman.
Your response.
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS: I think this is extremely significant.
Wangari Maathai was the first of the global leaders to say the
health of our communities is the health of the planet. She said
that environmental responsibility is social responsibility. She
was one of the first global leaders decades ago to say that there
is no separation between how we treat the environment and how
we treat each other. I think it's important to note, Amy and
Juan, that she said so often those of us working on the margins
to create this open space of justice and democracy are not those
who then inhabit that space and she has always advocated that
we must not only create that space, but then step inside it and
I think it's significant to note that she ran for parliament
in 2002, won, and was named the Deputy Minister of the Ministry
of Environment and Natural Resources.
AMY GOODMAN: When you heard this morning, Terry Tempest
Williams, that it was Wangari Maathai, how did you respond?
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS: I cried. I just think this
is an enormous gesture on behalf of a woman who has risked everything
for the environment and who, her whole life, is a gesture of
deep bows to women and children in the earth. She's been recognized
as a peacemaker, and I think redefines what peace is.
=====================================================+
truthout.org
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100904G.shtml
Bush's Crimes Against Nature
By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Eugene Weekly
Thursday 07 October 2004
Editor's Note: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is arguably
the nation's most prominent environmental attorney. His new book
is "Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate
Pals are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy."
On Sept. 23, he made an impromptu appearance in Eugene, Oregon.
Below is an edited transcript of his talk.
I've written a book about Bush's environmental
record, but it's not so much about the environment as it is about
an excess of corporate power and the corrosive impact of that
on our democracy. And it's not about a Democrat attacking a Republican.
I've been disciplined for 20 years as an environmental advocate
about being non-partisan and bi-partisan in my approach to these
issues. I don't think there's any such thing as Republican children
or Democratic children, and the worst thing that can happen to
the environment is if it becomes the province of a single political
party. But you can't talk honestly about the environment today
in any context without speaking critically about this president.
This is the worst environmental president we've had in American
history.
If you look at Natural Resource Defense
Council's website, you'll see over 400 major environmental roll-backs
that have been promoted by this administration during the last
three and a half years, and I tell you it's part of a concerted
deliberate attempt to eviscerate 30 years of environmental law.
It's a stealth attack. They have concealed
their radical agenda from the American public using Orwellian
rhetoric. When they destroy the forest, they call it the Healthy
Forest Law; when they destroy the air they call it the Clear
Skies Bill. And most insidiously they have put polluters in charge
of virtually all the agencies that are supposed to protect Americans
from pollution. The head of the Forest Service is a timber industry
lobbyist. The head of public lands is a mining industry lobbyist
who believes that public lands are unconstitutional. The head
of the air division at EPA is a utility lobbyist who has represented
the worst air polluters in America. The second in command at
EPA is a Monsanto lobbyist. The head of Superfunds, an agency
critical to quality of life here in Oregon, is a lobbyist whose
last job was teaching corporate polluters how to evade Superfunds.
If you go through all the agency heads,
sub-heads and secretaries in the Department of Agriculture, Department
of the Interior, Department of Energy and EPA, you'll find the
same thing: The polluters are running regulatory agencies that
are supposed to regulate them. And these are not individuals
who have entered government service for the sake of the public
interest, but rather specifically to subvert the very laws that
they are in charge of enforcing. This is impacting our quality
of life in America in so many ways that we don't know about because
the press simply isn't doing its job of informing the American
public, scrutinizing these policies, connecting the dots between
the corporate contributors and the dramatic decline in American
quality of life that we are now experiencing.
This year for the first time since
the passage of the Clean Water Act, EPA announced that America's
waterways are actually getting dirtier. The New York Times ran
a story that the levels of sulfur dioxide (that causes acid rain)
have grown 4 percent over the last year. I have three children
who have asthma and one out of every four black children in this
country in our municipalities now has asthma.
Asthma rates have doubled among our
children over the last five years. Whether it's hormones in our
food or antibiotics, something is causing our children to have
these kinds of haywire immune systems. We do know that asthma
attacks are triggered primarily by two components of air pollution:
ozone and particulates. About 60 percent of those materials in
our atmosphere are coming from 1,100 coal-burning power plants
that are burning coal illegally. They were supposed to have cleaned
up 15 years ago. The Clinton administration was prosecuting the
worst 70 of these plants for criminal violations. But this is
an industry that donated $48 million to President Bush and the
Republican Party in the 2000 cycle and have given $58 million
since. And one of the first things that President Bush did when
he came into office was to order the Justice Department to drop
those lawsuits against those utilities
According to the EPA, just the criminal
excedences from these 70 plants kill 5,500 Americans every year.
And then the Bush administration tore the heart out of the Clean
Air Act abolishing the New Source Reviews section that require
these companies to clean up their pollution. That decision is
killing 30,000 Americans every single year, according to EPA,
including 165 people in the state of Oregon.
Last week the federal EPA announced
that in 19 states it's now unsafe to eat any freshwater fish
because of mercury contamination. In 48 states it's now unsafe
to eat at least some of the fish or most of the fish, and Oregon
is one of those.
We know a lot about mercury now that
we didn't know 10 years ago. We know that one out of every six
American women now has so much mercury in her womb that her children
are at risk for autism, blindness, mental retardation, cognitive
impairment, heart, liver and kidney disease. I have so much mercury
in my body - I got levels tested recently - that I was told by
Dr. David Carpenter, who's a national authority on mercury contamination,
that a woman with my levels, which are three times the safe levels,
would have a child with cognitive impairment. He estimated a
permanent IQ loss of 5 to 7 points in her children. He said the
science is very certain. Today there are 630,000 children born
in this country every year who've been exposed to dangerous levels
of mercury in the womb.
Clinton, recognizing this catastrophic
national epidemic, reclassified mercury as a hazardous pollutant
under the Clean Air Act, which triggered a requirement that those
plants remove 90 percent of the mercury within three and a half
years. It would have cost them less than 1 percent of revenues
and it would have solved the problem. Well, this is the same
industry that's given that $100 million to the president, and
eight weeks ago President Bush announced that he was scrapping
the Clinton-era regs, substituting instead regulations that the
industry never has to clean up their mercury contamination.
So we are living today in a science
fiction nightmare where my children and the children of millions
of other Americans who have asthma are being brought into a world
where the air is too poisonous to breathe - because somebody
gave money to a politician. And where my children and the children
of most Americans can no longer go fishing with their father
and come home and eat the fish - because somebody gave money
to a politician. And the mercury in the waters here in Oregon,
the fish are too dangerous, particularly for children and women.
Some of that mercury is coming the power plants, most of it's
coming from old mining tailings and from Superfund sites. On
the Willamette River, that's where the mercury's coming from.
Well, guess what? The Bush administration has allowed the Superfund
to go bankrupt, which means that those sites will probably never
get cleaned up.
Superfund (money) is raised through
a tax on polluting industries, and it's a very, very small tax.
But they don't like it. They don't mind the tax, what they mind
is that that fund is used as a leverage to force them to spend
billions of dollars to clean up their mess. And this is how it
works. The Superfund doesn't just clean up orphan sites, but
it can also be used by EPA to clean up the sites of recalcitrant
polluters. So the EPA - there's a provision in Superfund that
says that if a polluter refuses to clean up its Superfund site,
the EPA can go to them and say, OK, fine, we're tired of dealing
with the lawyers and enriching your lawyers. What we're going
to do instead is clean it up ourselves and charge you triple.
It's called the Treble Damages Provision.
At virtually every Superfund site
that's been cleaned up by industry over the past 20 years, since
1981, it's been cleaned up because of the threat of the Treble
Damages Provision. It's the only thing that makes them clean
up. Well, guess what? That threat no longer exists. The teeth
have been ripped out of EPA so that they will no longer be able
to force polluters to clean up their sites. As a result of that,
most of these sites along the Willamette will never get cleaned
up, and if they do get cleaned up, guess who's paying for it?
You and I and the American public. How ridiculous is that?
It's always been illegal to pollute
the Willamette - the 1888 Rivers and Harbors Act said you can't
pollute any waterway in the U.S. Even before that it was illegal
to pollute. They were able to get away with it. They thought
they could make more money by polluting. Now we've got an administration
that rather than telling polluters they have to clean up their
mess, they're saying that the public instead is going to foot
the bill.
All of these issues, and there are
many, many others, examples of how corporations are controlling
our government and plundering the common, stealing what belongs
to the American people, our air and water, the commonwealth,
the shared resources, the public land, the wandering animals
- the things that give us a sense of community, the source of
our values, our virtues, our character as a people. And we're
plundering those. And if you ask people at the White House, why
are you doing this? What they'll say when they're not lying to
conceal this radical agenda and mask it from the American people,
they'll say well, we have to choose between economic prosperity
and environmental protection. And that is a false choice.
In 100 percent of the situations,
good environmental policy is identical to good economic policy
- if we want to measure the economy based upon how it produces
jobs and the dignity of jobs over the generations, over the long
term, and how it preserves the value of the assets of our community.
If on the other hand, we want to do what they've been urging
us to do with this White House, which is to treat the planet
as if it were a business in liquidation, convert our natural
resources to cash as quickly as possible, have a few years of
pollution-based prosperity, we can generate an instantaneous
cash flow and the illusion of a prosperous economy, but our children
are going to pay for our joy ride. And they will pay for it with
denuded landscapes, poorer health and huge clean up costs that
will be amplified over time, and that they'll never be able to
pay.
Environmental injury is deficit spending.
It's a way of loading the costs of our generation's prosperity
onto the backs of our children. There is no stronger advocate
for free-market capitalism than myself. I believe that the free
market is the most efficient and democratic way to distribute
the goods of the land. It's also the best thing that can happen
to the environment because a true fre