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 free market encourages efficiency
and the elimination of waste, and waste is pollution.
So free market capitalism does not
pollute our environment. It's always the suspension of free market
rule. In a true free market economy, you can't make yourself
rich without making your neighbors rich, without enriching your
community. So what polluters do is make themselves rich by making
everybody else poor. They raise standards of living for themselves
by lowering quality of life for everybody else, and they do that
by escaping the discipline of the free market, by forcing the
public to pay their production costs. You show me a polluter
and I'll show you a subsidy. I'll show you a fat cat who's using
political clout to escape the discipline of the free market.
When those coal companies and utilities
put their acid rain into the air and sterilize the lakes of the
Adirondacks and destroy the forests from Georgia to Quebec, they
put the mercury in the air which poisons our children, makes
them mentally retarded, gives them cognitive impairment and terrible
diseases, and it makes it so I can no longer go fishing and come
home and eat the fish. They have stolen that from me, and as
they are discharging the ozone and particulates that give our
children asthma and make our workers miss work - all of those
impacts impose costs on the rest of us that should, in a true
free market economy be reflected in the price of the companies'
products in the market. But what polluters do is they use political
clout to escape the discipline of the free market and pawn their
costs off on the public.
Corporations are externalizing machines.
They are always looking for ways to get the public to pay their
production costs, and what all the federal environmental laws
are meant to do is to restore free market capitalism in our country,
by forcing actors in the marketplace to pay the true costs of
bringing their product to market. What we do as an environmental
advocates is to go out into the marketplace - I don't even consider
myself an environmentalist any more, I'm a free marketeer. I
go out and catch the cheaters, the people who are polluting,
and I say to them we are going to force you to internalize your
costs the same way you internalize your profits, because when
somebody cheats the free market, it distorts the whole marketplace
and none of us gets the benefits of the efficiencies and the
democracy of our country.
Americans have to understand that
there is a huge difference between free market capitalism which
democratizes our country which makes us more efficient, more
democratic, and the kind of corporate crony capitalism which
has been embraced by this administration and which is as antithetical
to democracy in America as it is in Nigeria.
This is an administration that's about
plundering our air and our water, plundering our national treasure,
shifting our wealth, plundering the great relationships we had
with people all over the world, and shifting the wealth of those
assets to large corporations who are its donors, who are the
lowest bottom feeders who profiteer on the American people.
=====================================================+
To see this story with its related
links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to
http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,12576,1322313,00.html
Rome cracks down on SUVs
John Hooper in Rome
Friday October 08 2004
The Guardian
The councillor responsible for traffic, Mario Di Carlo, said
he intended making owners of sports utility vehicles (SUVs) pay
€1,000 (about £690) each year - more than triple
the normal rate for a permit to enter the historic centre.
His announcement was the latest move in a growing Europe-wide
backlash against four-wheel drives.
Governments in Sweden and France are considering punitive
taxes on SUV purchases. The Paris city council is hoping to ban
them from the centre and protected areas. And, in May, the mayor
of London, Ken Livingstone, called 4x4s "bad for London",
and their owners "complete idiots".
Four-wheel drives can be a nightmare in the narrow, winding
streets of old Rome, where pollution is damaging historic buildings.
Yet the city now has almost 10,000 registered SUVs.
Measures to curb them are also being drawn up by the authorities
in Florence. Three Italian ministries are considering a plea
from a centre-left MP for discriminatory tax measures in the
2005 budget.
As in other parts of Europe, demand for SUVs is soaring. The
latest figures show that 5.5% of new Italian plates are put on
4x4s, compared with less than half that figure six years ago.
According to an Italian environmental group, Legambiente,
the 10 top-selling SUVs generate on average 70% more pollution
in towns than the 10 most popular saloon cars.
But Wanni Zarpellon, of one group supporting SUV owners, the
Italian Off-road Federation, said: "If we really want to
find a culprit for the pollution of city centres, let's take
a look at the scooters - many of which are two-stroke with emissions
that are so far unchecked."
Fabrizio Pallocci, a representative of the federation's branch
in Lazio, the region surrounding Rome, called the proposed measures
"an injustice that above all limits personal freedom. People
should be entirely free to buy the car they want."
The centre of Rome is already limited to traffic. Car owners
who want to bring their vehicles in have to find €316
for an annual permit or risk a fine. Mr Di Carlo said he planned
to triple this for four-wheel drives. But he acknowledged that
the council could face a civil liberties challenge in court.
The measure is expected to figure in a comprehensive anti-pollution
plan to be unveiled by the council at the end of October. Similar
plans are being drawn up in several other parts of Italy.
In France, critics of the crackdown on SUVs say the curbs
are driven by the growing success of a type of vehicle not made
in France. This is no longer the case in Italy. Fiat now manufacturers
a Panda 4x4.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
=====================================================+
From: t r u t h o u t <messenger@truthout.org>
Date: Thursday, October 7, 2004 4:50 PM
Subject: The New York Times | The Verdict Is In
t r u t h o u t | 10.08
Closed, For Business: Energy Bill Special-Interests
Triumph
http://www.truthout.org/environment.shtml
The New York Times | The Verdict Is In
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100804A.shtml
Take Them Out, Dude: Pilots Toast Hit on Iraqi 'Civilians'
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100804B.shtml
At the U.N., Debate Rages over Taking More - or Less - Risk
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100804C.shtml
Sidney Blumenthal | The Day Dick Cheney Was Silenced
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100804D.shtml
Jonathan Alford | Looking for Votes, Finding America
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100804E.shtml
Newsweek | Rewriting History
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100804F.shtml
Jacques Julliard | The Two Americas
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100804H.shtml
White House to Retract Pentagon Nomination
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100804I.shtml
Saul Landau | Facts and Lies; Slogans and Truth
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100804J.shtml
DeLay Again Faulted by House Ethics Panel
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100804K.shtml
NOW with Bill Moyers | 3rd Party Candidates Speak Out
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100804L.shtml
Chief Arms Inspector: "Bush in Denial" over Iraq
WMD
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100804W.shtml
U.S. 'Green Zone' in Iraq Hit by Rocket Fire
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100804X.shtml
L.A. Times | Is Bush a Dope?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100804Y.shtml
U.S. 'Almost All Wrong' on WMD
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100804Z.shtml
The TO Overview
William Rivers Pitt: 'Sanctions Worked. Weapons Inspectors Worked.
That is the Bottom Line.'
http://www.truthout.org/overview.htm
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
=====================================================+
Ventura County Star -10/7/04
http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/opinion_columnists/article/0,1375,VCS_223_3236072,00.html
Comment: Dam study is a good start
Hetch Hetchy report deserves serious discussion
Ventura County Star
By John Krist, staff columnist
One of the nation's leading environmental advocacy groups issued
a report last week describing how to replace the water and power
supplied by the only major dam ever built in a national park,
the 312-foot wall of concrete that flooded Yosemite's scenic
Hetch Hetchy
Valley for the benefit of San Francisco. The response from
civic leaders in the city that built the dam was immediate, indignant
and thoughtless.
"These people are obviously looking for water in the
sand because that's where their heads are," Jim Wunderman,
president of the Bay Area Council, told the Sacramento Bee. "Our
organization is not willing to look at any study that involves
removing the O'Shaughnessy Dam."
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a former San Francisco mayor,
was equally dismissive.
"I am firmly opposed to the destruction of one of the
largest sources of clean drinking water in California,"
she said in a press release issued quickly by her office. "In
a state that has faced repeated droughts and is desperate for
water sources, I believe this would be a terrible mistake."
What's remarkable about those statements is the contempt they
display for fact-based discourse. Not only had both speakers
already made up their minds about whether it's feasible to remove
the dam blocking the Tuolumne River -- a decision they made without
reference to any reliable data, there having been no thorough
study of the proposal until now -- they clearly do not even want
to think about it.
The public deserves better from its leaders, Feinstein in
particular. Unlike most politicians, she has taken a serious
interest in California water issues. She has been a stalwart
supporter, for example, of the state-federal process known as
CALFED, which is intended to resolve ecological, supply and reliability
problems associated with the San Francisco Bay-Delta, the linchpin
of the state water system. (Less than two weeks before release
of the Hetch Hetchy study, Feinstein announced she had helped
secure Senate approval of $395 million to fund the federal government's
share of CALFED projects.)
Feinstein's work to advance CALFED, a thankless task that
involves trying to balance the interests of every combatant in
the state's long series of skirmishes over water, should have
made clear to her the value of creative, cooperative and bold
thinking. Yet, when it comes to the Hetch Hetchy proposal, she
apparently is clinging to a model of water supply and delivery
that's nearly a century old. Defending an outdated status quo
may pay short-term political dividends, but it cannot be characterized
as leadership.
Notwithstanding the glib characterization offered by Wunderman,
who leads a business lobbying group, the report released Sept.
27 by Environmental Defense is not the work of impractical dreamers.
It is based on a technical study of water and hydropower operations
by Schlumberger Water Services, a company known for its international
expertise; analysis of the legal and regulatory framework by
the Sacramento law firm Somach, Simmons & Dunn, which has
long experience in California water-rights litigation; and a
review of water-quality issues by Oakland-based EOA Inc., a consulting
firm that counts numerous public agencies among its clients (the
report is available at http://www.environmentaldefense.org/hetchhetchy/).
As might be expected, the issues associated with possible
removal of a major water and hydropower project are complex.
Contrary to Sen. Feinstein's assertion, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir
is not "one of the state's largest sources of clean drinking
water," but it is significant to San Francisco, providing
a quarter of the city's water storage capacity and playing a
key role in a network of dams and aqueducts operated by several
urban and agricultural water agencies.
The new report makes it clear that replacing the lost water
and power will not be easy if O'Shaughnessy Dam is removed. But
neither will it be impossible or prohibitively expensive. And
the potential benefit is significant: restoration of a long-submerged
component of California's signature national park, a twin to
beloved but congested Yosemite Valley.
Is that gain sufficient to justify removing the dam? Surely
that's a suitable subject for public debate, and now is a good
time to start: Not only does the Environmental Defense report
offer a thoughtful starting point, but San Francisco and its
suburban utility customers are beginning a $3.6 billion upgrade
of their aging water system.
That debate cannot begin, however, unless civic leaders are
willing to let facts inform their opinions. Sadly, that may be
the biggest hurdle advocates of Hetch Hetchy restoration must
overcome.
John Krist is a senior reporter and Opinion page columnist
for The Star.
=====================+++
RELATED
San Joaquin Record - 10/7/04
http://www.recordnet.com/daily/news/articles/letters.php#28253
Letter to Editor: Hetch Hetchy can be saved
By Spreck Rosekrans
Environmental Defense, Oakland
Thanks for acknowledging that Hetch Hetchy Valley was once a
pristine and majestic part of Yosemite National Park ("No
going back to paradise," The Record, Sept. 30).
We agree restoration might seem idealistic but contend it's
possible.
We've crunched the numbers to show it's feasible to store
the same Tuolumne River water now held in Hetch Hetchy in existing
reservoirs farther downstream, outside the national park.
We've identified ways to continue the water and power supply
to the Bay Area, even during shortages in critically dry years.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assemblyman Tim Leslie, R-Tahoe
City, demonstrated the type of environmental leadership needed
for Hetch Hetchy restoration when they created the Sierra Nevada
Conservancy in September.
Like Lake Tahoe and Yosemite Valley, Hetch Hetchy was once
a crown jewel in the Sierra Nevada. It can be again.
People can learn more about Hetch Hetchy and its potential
restoration from our report, available at www.discoverhetchhetchy.org
=====================================================+
Published on Thursday, October
7, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1007-22.htm
A Terror Attack, Coming Soon to a Plant Near You
by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
George W. Bush likes to boast of his record on homeland security,
but the truth is that
corporate and political favoritism by the White House has badly
compromised our capacity to
defend ourselves against a terrorist attack.
For example, even as we searched, apparently fruitlessly,
for weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq, thousands of potential WMD - our nation's chemical and
nuclear energy facilities -
have been left unguarded to please the president's corporate
friends and funders.
Of the nation's 15,000 chemical plants, the Environmental
Protection Agency has identified
123 where toxic gases released by a terrorist assault could kill
or injure more than 1 million
people, and 700 others where deaths and injuries would exceed
100,000. Yet a series of
recent investigations by news organizations has found that most
of these plants are
effectively unguarded, even though the risks are beyond dispute
and Al Qaeda's interest in
these targets is generously documented.
Seven weeks after 9/11, a GOP-controlled Senate committee
unanimously passed a bill to
require chemical plants to take steps to protect the public from
terrorist attacks. But the White
House, at the chemical industry's behest, derailed the bill and
then removed the EPA's
existing regulatory authority to require improvements in chemical
plant security. Why would
the Bush administration do this? All we know for sure is that
President Bush and his party
have accepted more than $22 million from the chemical industry
since 1998.
The nuclear power industry, which gave $15 million to Bush
and the GOP, also falls under
the White House umbrella. A 2003 General Accounting Office report
faulted the
administration for failing to bolster nuclear plant defenses
and found faulty security the rule
at nuclear plants nationwide, despite myriad evidence that U.S.
commercial nuclear reactors
are high-priority terrorist targets. Astonishingly, federal law
absolves nuclear power operators
from protecting themselves against attack by enemies of the United
States.
In order to be licensed, operators are required to protect
their facilities from vandals. But both
the GAO and industry reports acknowledge that the industry's
private security guards are
undertrained, underequipped and demoralized. When the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission
stages mock assaults, the attackers are able to penetrate plant
defenses in half their
attempts and trigger simulated catastrophic radiation releases
- even though the defenders
have advance notice of the exact time of the exercise and reinforce
their defenses in
anticipation. According to the GAO, the federal government deliberately
stages "softball"
mock attacks to give the impression of plant security and routinely
shields the industry by
burying significant security breaches.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's top aide, Al Martinez-Fonts,
a former executive of
JPMorgan Chase, recently explained why his department was reluctant
to force the industry
to adopt security reforms beyond voluntary programs, which Ridge
himself admits don't work.
"I was in the private sector all my life," explained
Martinez-Fonts. "Did I like it when the
government came in and stepped in and told [us] to do certain
things? The answer's no. I
think we're trying to avoid that."
Applying this philosophy broadly, the White House, at the
behest of the airline industry and
air cargo carriers, has opposed a bill by Rep. Edward J. Markey
(D-Mass.) to require that all
commercial cargo placed on passenger planes be physically screened,
just like luggage.
Only about 5% of air cargo is now screened. Airline passengers
are often sitting only inches
above cargo that has not been checked, despite a Transportation
Security Administration
estimate in 2002 that there is a 35% to 65% chance that terrorists
are planning to place a
bomb in the cargo of a U.S. passenger plane.
The administration's record on port security is equally dismal.
Only 1% of the 10 million cargo
containers entering American ports each year are ever checked,
yet the administration has
opposed bipartisan legislation creating a cargo-container profiling
plan that focuses on
inspections of high-risk cargo.
Tiptoeing around other big contributors, the White House has
done nothing to secure
railroad and transit networks or protect oil and gas pipelines.
Two billion dollars in annual
federal anti-terror grants to the states has been distributed
more on the basis of pork than on
need.
Martinez-Font's idea that industry will step up to the plate
on its own is pure folly. In July
2003, the Conference Board, a business research group, found
that American corporations
had hiked security expenditures less than 4% on average since
the Sept. 11 attacks.
While asking sacrifice of young soldiers and future generations
who will pay his giant deficits,
Bush has been reluctant to curtail corporate profits or prerogatives
or to ask sacrifice of
political pals or the large donors who helped put him in office.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the author of "Crimes Against
Nature: How George W. Bush and
His Corporate Pals Are Plundering Our Country and Hijacking Our
Democracy"
(HarperCollins, 2004).
© Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
=====================================================+
From: The Nation Magazine
<emailnation@thenation.com>
Reply-To: emailnation@thenation.com
To: <browerpower@wildnesswithin.com>
Date: Thursday, October 7, 2004 1:56 PM
Earth to Bush
This afternoon, President Bush reiterated his view that he
had been right to invade Iraq in the face of a new US report,
which found that Saddam Hussein did not have the banned weapons
cited as the main reason for the war and thus was a not a threat--immediate
or otherwise--to the United States.
For more on the new report, read David Corn's new Capital
Games. http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=1887
As Corn argues, on Planet Bush, facts don't matter. They are
weightless. And Election Day will determine whether he really
can defy the gravitational pull of the truth.
Ralph Nader has not been helping the anti-Bush cause. And,
as Ari Berman details in today's Daily Outrage, Nader is now
taking money from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/outrage?bid=13
One of the worst consequences of a second Bush term will be
his potential Supreme Court nominees. As Katha Pollitt warns
in her new Nation magazine column: Be afraid. Very afraid.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041025&s=pollitt
And check out ActNow, The Nation's activist weblog, for info
on how you can help out with voter registration and education
in the next few, crucial weeks. http://www.thenation.com/blogs/actnow?pid=1859
Election 1920, pitting Governor James Cox of Ohio against
Senator Harding, was another heated contest. Read The Nation's
advice that year to voters in our new Nation History section.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=19201027&s=vote
Finally, please make sure to check http://www.thenation.com
for coverage of tomorrow night's presidential debate, new weblogs,
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, William Greider and
Ana Louise Bardach!)
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: t r u t h o u t <messenger@truthout.org>
To: <rbrower4@mac.com>
Date: Wednesday, October 6, 2004 4:51 PM
Subject: Steve Weissman | Stop Thinking and See What You're
Told
t r u t h o u t | 10.07
Wildlife Protection Standards Waived
http://www.truthout.org/environment.shtml
Steve Weissman | Stop Thinking, and See What You're Told
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704A.shtml
Misleading Assertions Cover Iraq War and Voting Records
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704B.shtml
Bremer Critique on Iraq Raises Political Furor
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704C.shtml
C.I.A. Report Casts Doubt on Terrorist's Iraqi Ties
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704D.shtml
Probe into Iraq's Oil-for-Food Program to Reach White House
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704E.shtml
NATO Expects Rush of Taliban Attacks in Afghanistan
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704F.shtml
Under OSCE's Eye to Conjure Away 2000 "Nightmare"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704H.shtml
Michael Schwartz | The Opiate of the Electorate
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704I.shtml
Iraq Chief Gives a Sobering View about Security
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704J.shtml
U.S. Vetoes Resolution for Israel to Halt Gaza Operations
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704K.shtml
U.S. Airstrikes Build Iraqi Support for al-Zarqawi
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704L.shtml
Nicholas D. Kristof | Beaten Afghan Brides
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704V.shtml
Report to Say Iraq Posed Little Immediate Threat
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704W.shtml
Cheney v. Edwards: The Full Debate Transcript
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704X.shtml
Edwards Shoots And Scores
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704Y.shtml
William Rivers Pitt: Cheney's Avalanche of Lies
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704Z.shtml
The TO Overview
William Rivers Pitt: 'How Do We Score a War on Terror?'
http://www.truthout.org/overview.htm
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
=====================================================+
gadflyer.com - 10.05.04
http://gadflyer.com/articles/print.php?ArticleID=226
Drunken Rage
Bush revealed his true dependency Thursday
by Thomas F. Schaller, Executive Editor
We saw The Scowl, The Fidget, The Eye-Roll and The Grimace.
We heard the ten repetitions that fighting
terrorists and securing America's homeland is "hard work."
We heard another seven repetitions of "wrong war,
wrong place, wrong time" which only reinforced the
notion that Iraq was a mistake more than they debunked it.
And then, in a transparent attempt to pretend that the President
Bush wasn't incoherent, unsure and ill-prepared,
we heard conservatives desperately try to score last Thursday's
presidential debate a "tie."
The President revealed something far darker during those ninety
minutes in Miami. He proved that a man is never
totally cured of his addictions, and that his alcohol dependency
has transmuted into a public drunkenness with
his own power. Without the enabling of staffers at work and the
adoring audiences on the campaign trail who
shield and worship him, Bush stammered and stumbled through a
sobering debate in Coral Gables.
For all his talk about how humbling the awesome responsibilities
of the presidency are, beware anyone who
comes between Bush and the powerful tonic of his office. When
John Kerry dared to do so last week, the
President morphed into an angry, irascible drunk a man
not in full, but half-cocked with rage and seething
denial.
Bottled up
Last Thursday the President's endemic character flaws were
exposed plainly, for all to see. Absent his handlers
and note cards and teleprompters, we saw into his very core.
At least four truths about the President's
personality many of them long-suspected were confirmed
by his on-stage behavior in Miami:
He was too lazy and selfish to bother preparing. Bush was
a mediocre student at Andover who
nevertheless got into Yale; a mediocre Yalie who nevertheless
got into Harvard Business School; and,
despite scoring in the bottom quartile on the Air National Guard
exam, he got a coveted billet ahead of
hundreds above him on the list to fly in Texas rather than grab
a rifle and helmet to fight for his country in
Southeast Asia. Given how far he's gone without really trying,
why would we expect him to prepare for a
debate?
Bush's nonchalance disrespected all of those who donated money
to his campaign or volunteered to hand
out palm cards and register voters; the staffers who have worked
80-hour weeks on his behalf; and, heck,
even those "unaffiliated" Swift Boaters who engaged
in "uncoordinated" efforts to help get him re-elected.
Their collective investments in Bush during the past year or
two were erased in less than ninety minutes
because their president was too lazy to validate all their hard
work by doing a little homework of his own.
He is a pathological name-dropper. The single thread woven
throughout the entirety of Bush's life is
the access and invidious influence his family name has provided
him. A dropped name has often delivered
to Bush what others must work to achieve. And the names
from Ben Barnes back in his draft-dodging
days to James Baker during the Florida recount are too
numerous to list.
So when Bush began to stagger in Miami, he reached out for
the vicarious legitimacy that others have
always provided him: Betcha didn't know I talk with Director
Mueller every day, in fact. Tony Blair is a
strong ally of mine, and so is Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski.
Prime Minister Allawi told me
things are progressing in Iraq, and don't you dare denigrate
Mr. Allawi. And Vladurmur, Dear Vladurmur
he knows me, he can vouch for my soul like I did his.
He is a terrible listener. Countless conservative commentators
on television, radio, or on websites
lamented that Bush repeatedly fumbled easy opportunities to point
out contradictions in Kerry's
statements, or to rebut the Senator's statements with ready examples
or tip-of-the-finger facts. Belligerent
and scowling, the teetering president let himself be distracted
from doing what a good debater does,
namely, listen carefully to his opponent's answers, and prepare
the most relevant and proportional
response. Instead he swung wildly, missing his punches, leaving
himself open.
Again, the parallels here are obvious, and voluminous: Bush
didn't want to hear critics' warnings about
post-war complications in Iraq; he didn't want to hear the recommendations
about troop size; etc. On
most days, others pay the price for his petulance. On Thursday,
his tin ear and dulled senses cost him
dearly.
He is impatient to a fault. Bush could hardly wait for the
red-yellow-green light system to offer his
replies, and urged moderator Jim Lehrer to extend the discussion
another 30 seconds for each candidate.
(Once, Bush so lost his cool that he started to interject even
though he was entitled to an automatic,
90-second rebuttal.) Champing at the bit prevented Bush from
thinking carefully about how to deliver
appropriate replies. And so he blurted out dumb answers, like
his most embarrassing line of the night: "I
know Osama bin Laden attacked us I know that."
This was the most ironic of Bush's flaws on display, for he
was demonstrating impatience at the very
moment Kerry was criticizing him for it, such as in the hasty
re-allocation of troops from Afghanistan to
Iraq.
Deep Bloat
Bush has grown into the presidency, but there is an ugly side
to his comfort level in office which rises to the surface
when his authority is challenged. Despite his constant refrains
about how humbled he is by the awesome responsibility
of the job, Bush has developed a bloated sense of himself. To
substitute for the lifelong vice he gave up when he turned
forty, the President now intoxicates himself with power.
He blurted, blundered and blameshifted, even pointing the
finger at the Republican Congress for those record-setting
deficits. Is it any wonder that, when pressed to cite a single
mistake at his last press conference, he couldn't think of
anything?
Kerry was a one-man political intervention in Miami. When
the Senator challenged the President's facts, assertions and
decisions, Bush showed what kind of president and person
he really is: insular, immodest, irascible and intoxicated
with the idea of his own imperial presidency. He showed that
he is twelve steps away from reforming his presidency.
The American people will have to decide whether they can enable
him any more.
Copyright © 2004 New Progressive Institute Inc. All rights
reserved.
=====================================================+
Published on Tuesday, October 5,
2004 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1005-27.htm
George W. Bush & the "Mandate of Heaven"
by William Marina
Since at least the epic of Job described in the Bible, humans
have tried to understand why
their God has inflicted cruelties upon believers. Many years
ago, I recall my daughter of
almost four, after we had been in an auto accident which injured
my year-and-a-half-old son,
asking my mother what had he done wrong to deserve such punishment
from God?
Empires, such as that here in America, exalted by the neoconservative
faithful such as
William Kristol, are especially in need of rationalizations to
explain the awful things happening
abroad such as global "terrorism," as well as the quagmires
in Iraq and Afghanistan. Add to
that the most unusual hurricane season in decades, where such
entities as "Ivan" don't
easily die, but are reborn and circle back, and some may ask
what has America's
fundamentalist leadership under George W. Bush done to make God
so angry at this
nation?
The Chinese Empire, even as its elite outgrew primitive religion
millennia earlier, was still
faced with answering this same question. Since they had no intention
of doing away with the
institutions of empire, their only answer was to regularly replace
specific emperors. Thus was
developed the concept of the "Mandate of Heaven," which
linked nicely with the dominant
neo-Confucianism of the Empire.
The Chinese believed that good things happened to the people
and their Empire when the
leaders lived lives of "truth" and "virtue."
When they did not, they had lost the "Mandate of
Heaven" and needed to be replaced. Whether or not George
W. Bush ever had such a
"Mandate of Heaven," even if he believes that he has-perhaps
it was "bestowed" upon him
by the Supreme Court certifying his election in 2000-he certainly
seems to have lost it since
then.
Now blathering on by Bush in speeches about virtue, or writing
about it by the
sanctimonious, compulsive gambler, William Bennett, or praying
about it (or is it preying?) as
do other U.S. leaders, is not a substitute for virtuous behavior.
These Chinese ideas, having filtered back to Europe in the
18th century Enlightenment,
played a role in the discussions by American leaders in the founding
of the republic. Thomas
Jefferson was especially taken with them, talking about a "natural
aristocracy of talent and
virtue," and an educational system of government schools
which as the sinologist H.G. Creel
noted, was clearly borrowed from China.
As the great economist Lord Bauer once mentioned to me, Alexis
de Tocqueville, that
insightful observer of America, when he saw these developments
in early 19th century
France, called it, "le system chinois (the Chinese system),"
and the Japanese, in the late 19th
century, searching for Western models, adopted the French educational
system. What irony,
Confucianism by way of France! Nations may "clash,"
but civilizations tend to borrow from
each other.
It was the usually dour John Adams, who in their correspondence,
questioned Jefferson's
verbal constructs. He noted that there were all kinds of talents,
not just the
intellectual/academic ones favored by Jefferson, even a king's
mistress displayed certain
talents, but most importantly, "how do you teach virtue?"
There is only one answer to Adams, as Confucius understood.
Virtue is taught, or not taught,
by the young emulating the behavior of their parents and elders,
and by the people
observing the actions of their leaders.
In this regard, has the U.S. reached new depths of degradation
in pursuing an unprovoked
war in Iraq and the declaration of perpetual war globally? Certainly,
George
Bush has lost
the "Mandate" of most
of the rest of the world, outside of a few client states and
toadies; the
President's recent reception before the U.N. made that quite
evident.
At home Bush piles on more and more "bread and circuses",
combining huge farm,
education, Medicare and other pork and corporate welfare schemes
with tax breaks mostly
for the wealthier (but even a smidgen for the middle classes,
as did the Caesars of old) with a
paper money inflationary system (also borrowed from China). If
one counts Off-Budget
Expenditures (OBE) the U.S. government now owes over $72 trillion
to its own people and
the world, which the government will probably attempt to inflate
away in the future if the
system itself doesn't collapse in the short run.
Just as with those empires of old, which sought what the historian
Carroll Quigley (Bill
Clinton's guru at Georgetown University) called "Universal
Empire," that is, not just imperial
centralization, but hegemony over their existing "Core and
Periphery," which today literally
means the entire world, I believe that the U.S. has not only
failed, but is in decline.
The Chinese understood that imperial states come and go. The
great centralized,
bureaucratic empires of Rome, China, Spain, Britain, and Russia
have broken apart or
declined.
Whether in Quigley's terminology our social, political and
economic institutions can once
again be made into viable "instruments of expansion,"
is the real systemic question facing us.
George Bush did not create these tendencies that go well back
into our history, but he has
greatly accelerated and exacerbated them. In short, he has clearly
lost the "Mandate of
Heaven"!
But, who will tell him that he has no clothes? He rejected
his father's advice on Iraq.
Perhaps, others in his family, which protected and elevated a
mediocrity, his mother or his
wife, will tell him he has lost the "Mandate"; even
if, in a so-called Democracy, the voice of the
electorate is considered the "Voice of God"!
But, perhaps it is really the American people themselves who
have lost the "Mandate of
Heaven," since, after all, it is they who elect U.S. government
leaders. Whether the American
nation can be perhaps the first in history to eschew empire and
return to a decentralized
republic will be the great question facing
us in the 21st century. Can Americans find leaders
with virtue and vision who can restore the "Mandate
of Heaven"?
William Marina is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute
in Oakland, Calif., and
Professor Emeritus in History at Florida Atlantic University.
=====================================================+
From: palast@gregpalast.com
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2004 01:49:55 -0400
To: browerpower@wildnesswithin.com
Subject: Shooting the Messenger Doesn't Discredit the
Message
Shooting the Messenger Doesn't Discredit the Message
The Real Lt. Col. Burkett - in His Own Words to BBC Television
by Greg Palast
Tuesday October 5, 2004
When Dan Rather went down for airing a document he couldn't
source, he did the courageous thing: blamed someone else.
In this case, Rather and CBS loaded their corporate guilt
on a guy you've probably never heard of before, rancher Bill
Burkett of Abilene, a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the Texas
Air National Guard.
CBS did a no-no -- used a document on air without fully checking
out its source. No excuses. Shouldn't have done it. They got
the document from Burkett.
Once CBS hung out its source and painted a target on him,
Rove-ing gangs of media hit men finished him off. Burkett's an
evidence "fabricator," "Bush-hater," and
even, suggests William Safire in the New York Times as he fantasizes
a dark left-wing conspiracy, a felon ready for hard time.
Let me tell you about this Burkett "criminal." I
met him while filming for BBC's Television documentary, "Bush
Family Fortunes." Better than that, I'm posting a transcript
of our hour-and-a-half interview.
Burkett a 'Bush-hater'? "George W. Bush was an excellent
pilot," Burkett told me, "He had the right leadership
skills, he had the 'Top Gun' approach."
But I didn't go interview Burkett to chat about our President's
days when he flew high. He has an important story to tell which
has not one damn thing to do with a memo by some Lt. Col. Killian.
It has to do with a phone call and a shredder.
Burkett, a top advisor to Major General Daniel James at the
Air Guard, was working at Camp Mabry with Major General James
when a call came in from Joe Allbaugh, the Chief of Staff to
then-Governor George W. Bush. Bush was about to get a political
polishing up for his White House run, with a ghost-written autobiography,
which would include his heroic years during the war in Vietnam.
Allbaugh, according to Burkett, stated that Bush political operatives
Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett would be dropping by the Air Guard
offices to look at the war record and wanted to, "make sure
there's nothing in there that'll embarrass the Governor."
According to Burkett, the General and his minions who work
for the Governor, not the US Air Force, took this as an unsubtle
hint from the boss to purge the record. Lt. Col. Burkett, both
curious and disturbed by the call, wondered how his fellow comrades-in-arms
would respond. His answer was in the trash-to-be-shredded bin:
George Bush's military pay records. "I saw what are called
LES (Leave and Earnings Statements) which are pay documents.
I saw Retirement Points documents and other administrative information."
He did not see their content, only Bush's name, and therefore
cannot answer the 64 million dollar question: Did those records,
now "missing," indicate that our President went AWOL
while others ended up on the Black Wall?
That's Burkett's story and it's in the BBC film. Watch the
film, read the transcript, and judge for yourself. I think you'll
find in Burkett a straight shooter, telling a piece of the larger
draft-dodge story which mounting evidence corroborates.
So what about that "Killian" document? We don't
have it in the BBC film - we couldn't source it so we wouldn't
use it. Burkett passed it on from a third party, obviously someone
still in the Guard or fearful of Bush Family retribution. Now
why would they imagine that?
Under pressure, Burkett gave CBS a false name to cover for
the whistleblower. Burkett should not have done that. It is inexcusable.
Period. Yet, that does not tell us the document was fabricated.
It was the job of CBS to follow up -- they are the journalists.
And it is also the President's job. Safire in the Times, in
charging that Burkett faked the document, demanded the military
open a criminal investigation. Darn right they should. They haven't.
Why not? Maybe they don't want to check into this 'fake' document
because maybe it's not fake.
An investigation should begin with questions for the President.
After all, he can clear up the matter lickety-split.
"Mr. President, did you or did you not ask your commander
Lt. Col. Killian how you could shirk your duty to show up?"
"Mr. President, did you or did you not refuse a direct
order to take a medical exam and pee into a jar?" (The record
is solid on the evidence of refusing that order, Mr. Top Gun
-- you were stripped of your flight wings.)
"Mr. President, did Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes make
any calls to get you out of 'Nam and into the Air Guard? Yes
or no?"
See Dan, that's how it should be done. It wasn't Burkett's
job to verify the evidence, it was the job of Dan and the President.
It is for the President, not Bill Burkett, to answer the question,
"Did your daddy the congressman vote to send other men's
sons to Vietnam while pulling the strings to keep you cozy and
safe? Yes or no, Mr. President, yes or no?"
For a clip from the BBC Television investigative reports on
George Bush's military career, go to
http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm
Greg Palast's interview with Col. Burkett for BBC can be read
at
http://www.gregpalast.com/documents/BurkettTranscript.pdf
=====================================================+
Comment from Grist - 10/5/04
Lead Levels in Water Misrepresented Across U.S.
LEAD ASTRAY
Lead contamination in municipal water systems systematically
underreported
If you live in the U.S., the water you drink may contain unsafe
levels of lead, thanks to a water-safety enforcement system rife
with
manipulation and negligence. Water utilities across the U.S.
are
discarding unfavorable test results and ignoring safety regulations.
State regulators rarely enforce standards and in many cases assist
utilities in avoiding penalties. The U.S. EPA, charged with
overseeing state efforts and penalizing utilities that fail to
comply
with regulations, has drastically reduced enforcement in recent
years
and doesn't have the staff to do the job adequately even if it
wanted
to. In 2003, the number of EPA enforcements against water utilities
was less than a tenth of the number in 1997. Despite all this,
EPA
Acting Assistant Administrator Benjamin Grumbles told Congress
in
July that "we have not identified a systemic problem."
Perhaps he
should get in touch with the folks at The Washington Post. Seems
they have.
Straight to the source: The Washington Post, Carol D. Leonnig,
Jo
Becker, and David Nakamura, 05 Oct 2004
<http://grist.org/cgi-bin/forward.pl?forward_id=3254>
===========================+++
Lead Levels in Water Misrepresented Across U.S.
By Carol D. Leonnig, Jo Becker and David Nakamura
Cities across the country are manipulating the results of tests
used to detect lead in water, violating federal law and putting
millions of Americans at risk of drinking more of the contaminant
than their suppliers are reporting.
Some cities, including Philadelphia and Boston, have thrown out
tests that show high readings or have avoided testing homes most
likely to have lead, records show. In New York City, the nation's
largest water provider has for the past three years assured its
9.3 million customers that its water was safe because the lead
content fell below federal limits. But the city has withheld
from regulators hundreds of test results that would have raised
lead levels above the safety standard in two of those years,
according to records.
The result is that communities large and small may have a false
sense of security about the quality of their water and that utilities
can avoid spending money to correct the problem.
In some cases, state regulators have helped the utilities avoid
costly fixes. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which
is supposed to ensure that states are monitoring utilities, has
also let communities ignore requirements to reduce lead. In 2003,
records show, the EPA ordered utilities to remedy violations
in just 14 cases, less than one-tenth of the number ordered in
1997.
Taken together, the records point to a national problem just
months after disclosures that lead levels in the District's water
are among the highest in the country, a problem the city's utility
concealed for months. Documents from other cities show that many
have made similar efforts to hide high lead readings, taking
advantage of lax national and state oversight and regulations
riddled with loopholes.
The Washington Post examined 65 large water systems whose reported
lead levels have hovered near or exceeded federal standards.
Federal, state and utility records show that dozens of utilities
obscured the extent of lead contamination, ignored requirements
to correct problems and failed to turn over data to regulators.
Jim Elder, who headed the EPA's drinking water program from 1991
to 1995, said he fears that utilities are engaging in "widespread
fraud and manipulation."
"It's time to reconsider whether water utilities can be
trusted with this crucial responsibility of protecting the public.
I fear for the safety of our nation's drinking water," said
Elder, now a water consultant. "Apparently, it's a real
crapshoot as to what's going to come out of the tap and whether
it will be healthy or not."
Recent attention to the dangers of the District's drinking water
has prompted scientists and some members of Congress to call
for revamping the lead rules in the 30-year-old Safe Drinking
Water Act, which was aimed at limiting dangerous contaminants
flowing out of the tap. EPA Administrator Michael Leavitt declined
to be interviewed for this article, but his agency has said that
a major overhaul to its regulations is unnecessary.
"We have not identified a systemic problem," EPA Acting
Assistant Administrator Benjamin H. Grumbles told Congress in
July. In an interview, Grumbles said, "We are going full
throttle" to pinpoint lead levels across the country. "So
far," he said, "we have not seen anything that closely
resembles the District in the data we've received."
EPA data analyzed by The Post identified 274 utilities, which
together serve 11.5 million people, that have reported unsafe
lead levels since 2000. Those numbers do not include cities where
testing methods concealed true lead levels.
Utility officials defend their testing methods, saying that they
are not designed to deceive the government and that state regulators
approved their practices. Others argue that they should not have
to spend millions to remove lead that often leaches from their
customers' own fixtures.
Some suppliers have worked hard to avoid lead problems. The utility
in Kansas City, Mo., tested its water more frequently and treated
it more aggressively than the law required. And after the District's
problem surfaced, several other jurisdictions in the Washington
region voluntarily tested their water and found less contamination
than in the city.
Lynn Stovall, a Greenville, S.C., utility manager and member
of the American Water Works Association, said many utilities
are "hard-pressed" and need more public funding to
comply with mounting regulations and improve aging plants.
"The drinking water community faces a complex array of expensive
new federal requirements and new standards," Stovall told
Congress at this summer's hearing on lead.
Lead exposure can cause serious health problems, including lower
IQs in children and brain and kidney damage in adults. Although
health experts agree that no amount of lead in drinking water
is considered safe, there is some dispute about how much tainted
water has to be consumed to cause permanent damage. Because the
effect is cumulative, lead in water is particularly problematic
in older, urban areas where children are more likely to also
be exposed to lead paint, which utilities note is a more prevalent
threat.
Despite the health risk caused by lead in water, efforts to eliminate
it have run up against other realities, including the high cost
of replacing underground pipes that contain lead. Recognizing
that states lacked the resources to carefully monitor more than
90 contaminants covered by federal law, the EPA issued lists
of priorities starting in 1996. In both cases, its top concern
was microbes, which can sicken large populations overnight. Lead
did not make the list, and this year, the EPA dropped drinking
water altogether from its enforcement priority list, records
show.
Competing interests were also in play in 1991 when the EPA wrote
new rules on lead. The compromise that emerged requires that,
when lead levels exceed 15 parts per billion, utilities must
inform the public, treat the water to make it less corrosive
or, in some cases, replace pipes.
Because of the cost, many utilities are reluctant to act. In
the District, where the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority is under
an order to replace service lines, water customers are expected
to pay for most of the $350 million project over the rest of
the decade.
Withholding Results
Water suppliers are required by law to test for lead regularly
-- the largest utilities must check the water in at least 50
homes once every three years. They must follow a strict regimen,
trying consistently to test the same "high risk" homes
most likely to have lead problems. High-risk homes are defined
as those with lead service lines or built in the 1980s, before
lead solder in plumbing was banned.
Because so few homes are tested, the results of just one or two
can mean the difference between passing and failing. Utilities
are required to report to regulators all their test results --
good and bad.
The D.C. Water and Sewer Authority knew in the summer of 2001
that its water contained unsafe lead levels, but it withheld
six high test results and said the water was fine, records show.
When it tested over the next two years, records show, WASA dropped
half of the homes that had previously tested high for lead and
avoided high-risk homes.
The EPA, which cited WASA for violations in June, called the
utility's practices unprecedented and a "serious breach"
of the law.
Documents show that water systems across the country have used
similar practices.
In such cities as Boston and Detroit, records indicate that utilities
have failed to test the high-risk homes they were required to
check. State regulators and the EPA discovered in the spring
that at least one-fourth of the locations tested in the Boston
area were not high risk and ordered the utility to revamp its
program, records show.
After several years of above-the-limit test results, New York
water officials reported that tests in 2000 showed lead had fallen
to safe levels. But the city had not reported all of its results.
Records obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request revealed
more than 300 withheld test results that, if reported, would
have given New York water a failing grade for safety in 2001
and 2002. That would have required the city to alert the public
to the problem and take expensive steps to fix it.
Christopher O. Ward, commissioner of New York's Department of
Environmental Protection, said his agency is "highly confident"
the city's water is safe. He said extra tests were taken to ensure
that the city had a sufficient number to report to regulators,
though he said the agency did not formally notify state and city
regulators of this practice or seek their approval. Ward said
that he believed this complied with the rules and that it was
unfair now to count irrelevant results.
"In light of the issues that have recently been raised,
DEP is in the process of reviewing our lead and copper monitoring
to ensure that all requirements in the regulations are being
met," Ward said.
In a similar situation, when WASA said the six test results it
withheld were replacement or backup samples, the EPA cited the
utility and said it was a violation of the law.
In Philadelphia, state and utility officials said they could
produce none of the required documentation for their decision
to toss out a high test result in 2002. The federal law does
not allow utilities to discard high tests except under very limited
circumstances, and the utilities must carefully document their
reason.
Utility director Gary Burlingame said in an interview that the
high test result "didn't jibe" with past tests and
that the utility decided it should be discarded after learning
the house had undergone plumbing work. Had that test been counted,
records show, it would have put Philadelphia over the federal
safety limit and required corrective steps.
The law prohibits throwing out tests for the reasons given in
Lansing, Mich., in 2001 -- that homeowners did not follow directions
in collecting them. Four discarded tests would have put the water
over the federal lead limit, documents show. In one case, the
homeowner disputed the reason the utility gave for tossing her
sample -- that the occupants had been away overnight.
"That's a big, fat lie," said Jennie Horiszny, an 85-year-old
Lansing resident. She said she had not gone out of town and had
carefully followed the utility's instructions not to run the
water overnight. She remembers pouring glasses of water before
going to bed in case she or her husband became thirsty -- and
taking the sample first thing in the morning. "That's what
the directions said to do, and that's what I did," she said.
"It was a clean sample."
John Strickler, a spokesman for the Lansing water system, said,
"I find it hard to believe that any of our employees would
have made that up." He said the city has voluntarily embarked
on an aggressive plan to replace lead service lines, in part
because "we started seeing news stories" about the
District's problem.
Federal law also requires utilities to try to test the same homes
over time and prohibits dropping any merely because they have
tested high.
After exceeding the acceptable limits in 2000, the Ridgewood,
N.J., water system dumped "hot" houses that had tested
high, records show. Frank Moritz Sr., director of operations
for Ridgewood's water department, said that was not done by design.
"Each year, we take out the previous year's list and ask
if they want to participate," he said.
But five residents whose homes showed high lead readings said
in interviews that the utility never informed them of the results
or asked them to test again.
"It would have been nice if someone had looked out for us,"
said Matthew Criscenzo, whose son was 4 at the time. "Obviously,
this news is causing some alarm."
Bradley M. Campbell, New Jersey's commissioner of environmental
protection and an EPA official in the Clinton administration,
said that his agency is "actively investigating" testing
irregularities uncovered by The Post in Ridgewood and other communities
in northern New Jersey and that it could take action against
some utilities. "The public has a paramount right to know"
the true lead levels in those communities, he said.
Just as dropping tests can lower the official lead figures, so
can adding tests.
The utility in Providence, R.I., exceeded safe lead levels in
2002. Instead of informing the public, as required, records show
that the utility waited and, the next summer, sampled 30 more
homes, most of which showed very low lead and brought levels
below the federal standard. Utility officials said they believed
that their actions complied with the law. June Swallow, the Rhode
Island official charged with overseeing utilities, said Providence
did not comply and that the state will in the future ensure that
utilities test within the requisite four-month period.
Frequent Irregularities
Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, states must oversee utilities
to ensure that they follow the law and the EPA is required to
step in when states fail to correct problems.
For the most part, states take the word of utilities, doing little
to check whether they are testing properly. The EPA's most recent
audits point out that testing irregularities are common. Also,
states frequently miss the violations or fail to force utilities
to take required steps to reduce lead, according to the audits.
The latest EPA audit of Hawaii's program, for instance, found
in 2001 that regulators there "put an emphasis on 'helping'
" utilities "rather than enforcing the law."
Records show that regulators rarely force communities to replace
lead service lines, even in such cases as Yonkers, N.Y., where
the law required it because repeated tests showed excessive lead
levels.
In Seattle, the city missed a 1997 deadline to reduce lead by
making its water less corrosive. The state of Washington gave
it six extra years to correct the problem, allowing high lead
to persist until last year. Denise Clifford, director of the
state's office of drinking water, said the delay gave Seattle
time to build treatment facilities that will reduce lead and
other more serious contaminants.
"I know this doesn't look like a good decision to a lot
of people," she said, but "there are more acute public
health risks than lead."
In the interim, more than 43,000 Seattle residents -- including
Nimi Sandhu -- gave birth, according to vital records statistics.
Sandhu used unfiltered tap water to make her babies' formula,
unaware of the lead levels.
"It's outrageous -- the state is supposed to be protecting
us," said Sandhu, whose children are 5, 4 and 10 months
old. "I don't know how they can live with themselves knowing
that they were possibly endangering children."
State officials say they are forced to engage in a form of triage.
"It's tough, given all the other priorities out there for
drinking water, to oversee this rule at that level of detail,"
said Barker G. Hamill, chief of the New Jersey Bureau of Safe
Drinking Water.
If states fail to enforce the law, the EPA is the last line of
defense. But the agency devotes four times the staff to enforcing
the laws that govern sewage released into rivers and lakes as
it does to safeguarding the nation's drinking water supply, records
show. The agency has 72 enforcement employees to oversee the
nation's drinking water laws -- one employee for every 2,238
water systems.
"We can't afford to do these kind of checks everywhere,
and neither can the states," said Jon M. Capacasa, water
administrator in the EPA's mid-Atlantic office.
Officials at EPA headquarters say the need for intervention has
declined over the years, because more utilities understand and
comply with the law. But sometimes the EPA is without the information
it needs to act.
A March report by the agency's inspector general found that the
data the EPA uses to assess water quality are "flawed and
incomplete" because states are not reporting violations,
despite legal requirements.
But even when it is aware of a problem, the agency does not always
enforce the law, records show.
It didn't do so in Portland, Ore., for instance, where excessive
lead persisted through much of the past decade. The state approved
the city's decision to launch a public education campaign on
lead dangers rather than build an expensive treatment plant to
comply with the law.
Lead levels climbed, and in 2002 the EPA stepped in, but not
to discipline the city. Instead, the agency suggested testing
more homes in the suburbs. The utility dropped more than half
the homes with lead higher than the federal limit, replacing
them with suburban homes that had, on average, significantly
lower levels, records show.
"That change in the sampling population helped" the
city slip back under the federal limit, said Mark Knudson, the
Portland Water Bureau's director of operations. EPA officials
said that that was not their goal and that they had recommended
the changes to get a fuller picture across the area.
Although top EPA officials have contended that the law does a
good job of catching most problems, those charged with enforcing
it do not always agree. EPA regulators who met in the spring
in Newport, R.I., noted in a three-page memo a series of loopholes
that weaken the law. Among them: Nothing requires utilities to
notify individual homeowners that their water has high lead,
and the regulation does not allow the same stiff sanctions for
high lead that it does for other contaminants such as bacteria.
At headquarters, the EPA's Grumbles has said in recent weeks
that he will push to ensure that cities are complying with the
law when they test and that he will consider changes early next
year, such as stricter rules for notifying the public. But critics
fear that, without much tougher laws and enforcement, unsafe
water in other communities may not come to light.
"The problems we know about are just the tip of the iceberg,"
said Erik D. Olson of the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense
Council, "because utilities are gaming the system, states
have often been willing to ignore long-standing violations and
the EPA sits on the sidelines and refuses to crack down."
Database editor Sarah Cohen and staff researcher Bobbye Pratt
contributed to this report.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
=====================================================+
From: t r u t h o u t <messenger@truthout.org>
To: <rbrower4@mac.com>
Date: Monday, October 4, 2004 4:45 PM
Subject: Scott Galindez | Kerry Can Win Allies Bush Lost
t r u t h o u t | 10.05
Howard Dean | Environmental Policy Affects Health, Economy,
Security
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100504L.shtml
EPA Is Lax on Coal Power Rule, Report Says
http://www.truthout.org/environment.shtml
Francois-Xavier Gomez | Oil War Threatens Nigeria
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100504H.shtml
Scott Galindez | Kerry Can Win Allies Bush Lost
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100504A.shtml
Edwards-Cheney Debate Looks Crucial
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Appointment in Samarra: An Eyewitness Account
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The Draft Card: The Option Nobody's Pushing. Yet.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100504D.shtml
The New York Times | More Troubles for Diebold
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100504E.shtml
Bob Herbert | Bush and Reality
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100504F.shtml
As Afghan Vote Nears, Taliban Isn't Only Worry
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Lou Dubose | The Decay of DeLay
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Pat Robertson Warns GOP: 'Don't Touch Jerusalem'
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As Deadlines Hit, Rolls of Voters Show Big Surge
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Kerry Accuses GOP of Suppressing Voting
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Marc Ash | Edwards v. Halliburton
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The TO Overview
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http://www.truthout.org/overview.htm
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To see this story with its related
links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1319718,00.html
Disillusioned and angry American soldiers serving in
Iraq
Dear Mike, Iraq sucks
Michael Moore
Tuesday October 05 2004
The Guardian
Civilian contractors are fleecing taxpayers; US troops don't
have proper equipment; and supposedly liberated Iraqis hate them.
After the release of Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore received
a flood of letters and emails from disillusioned and angry American
soldiers serving in Iraq. Here, in an exclusive extract from
his new book, we print a selection:
From: RH
To: mike@michaelmoore.com
Sent: Monday, July 12, 2003 4:57 PM
Subject: Iraqi freedom veteran supports you
Dear Mr Moore,
I went to Iraq with thoughts of killing people who I thought
were horrible. I was like, "Fuck Iraq, fuck these people,
I hope we kill thousands." I believed my president. He was
taking care of business and wasn't going to let al Qaeda push
us around. I was with the 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, 3rd Infantry
division out of Fort Stewart, Georgia. My unit was one of the
first to Baghdad. I was so scared. Didn't know what to think.
Seeing dead bodies for the first time. People blown in half.
Little kids with no legs. It was overwhelming, the sights, sounds,
fear. I was over there from Jan'03 to Aug'03. I hated every minute.
It was a daily battle to keep my spirits up. I hate the army
and my job. I am supposed to get out next February but will now
be unable to because the asshole in the White House decided that
now would be a great time to put a stop-loss in effect for the
army. So I get to do a second tour in Iraq and be away from those
I love again because some guy has the audaci!
ty to put others' lives on the line for his personal war. I thought
we were the good guys.
From: Michael W
Sent: Tuesday July 13 2004 12.28pm
Subject: Dude, Iraq sucks
My name is Michael W and I am a 30-year-old National Guard infantryman
serving in southeast Baghdad. I have been in Iraq since March
of 04 and will continue to serve here until March of 05.
In the few short months my unit has been in Iraq, we have
already lost one man and have had many injured (including me)
in combat operations. And for what? At the very least, the government
could have made sure that each of our vehicles had the proper
armament to protect us soldiers.
In the early morning hours of May 10, one month to the day
from my 30th birthday, I and 12 other men were attacked in a
well-executed roadside ambush in south-east Baghdad. We were
attacked with small-arms fire, a rocket-propelled grenade, and
two well-placed roadside bombs. These roadside bombs nearly destroyed
one of our Hummers and riddled my friends with shrapnel, almost
killing them. They would not have had a scratch if they had the
"Up Armour" kits on them. So where was George W. Bush
on that one?
It's just so ridiculous, which leads me to my next point.
A Blackwater contractor makes $15,000 a month for doing the same
job as my pals and me. I make about $4,000 a month over here.
What's up with that?
Beyond that, the government is calling up more and more troops
from the reserves. For what? Man, there is a huge fucking scam
going on here! There are civilian contractors crawling all over
this country. Blackwater, Kellogg Brown & Root, Halliburton,
on and on. These contractors are doing everything you can think
of from security to catering lunch!
We are spending money out the ass for this shit, and very
few of the projects are going to the Iraqi people. Someone's
back is getting scratched here, and it ain't the Iraqis'!
My life is left to chance at this point. I just hope I come
home alive.
From: Specialist Willy
Sent: Tuesday March 9 2004 1.23pm
Subject: Thank you
Mike, I'd like to thank you for all of the support you're
showing for the soldiers here in Iraq. I am in Baghdad right
now, and it's such a relief to know that people still care about
the lemmings who are forced to fight in this conflict.
It's hard listening to my platoon sergeant saying, "If
you decide you want to kill a civilian that looks threatening,
shoot him. I'd rather fill out paperwork than get one of my soldiers
killed by some raghead." We are taught that if someone even
looks threatening we should do something before they do something
to us. I wasn't brought up in fear like that, and it's going
to take some getting used to.
It's also very hard talking to people here about this war.
They don't like to hear that the reason they are being torn away
from their families is bullshit, or that their "president"
doesn't care about them. A few people here have become quite
upset with me, and at one point I was going to be discharged
for constantly inciting arguments and disrespect to my commander-in-chief
(Dubya). It's very hard to be silenced about this when I see
the same 150 people every day just going through the motions,
not sure why they are doing it.
Willy sent an update in early August:
People's perceptions of this war have done a complete 180
since we got here. We had someone die in a mortar attack the
first week, and ever since then, things have changed completely.
Soldiers are calling their families urging them to support John
Kerry. If this is happening elsewhere, it looks as if the overseas
military vote that Bush is used to won't be there this time around.
From: Kyle Waldman
Sent: Friday February 27 2004 2.35am
Subject: None
As we can all obviously see, Iraq was not and is not an imminent
threat to the United States or the rest of the world. My time
in Iraq has taught me a little about the Iraqi people and the
state of this war-torn, poverty-stricken country.
The illiteracy rate in this country is phenomenal. There were
some farmers who didn't even know there was an Operation Iraqi
Freedom. This was when I realised that this war was initiated
by the few who would profit from it and not for its people. We,
as the coalition forces, did not liberate these people; we drove
them even deeper into poverty. I don't foresee any economic relief
coming soon to these people by the way Bush has already diverted
its oil revenues to make sure there will be enough oil for our
SUVs.
We are here trying to keep peace when all we have been trained
for is to destroy. How are 200,000 soldiers supposed to take
control of this country? Why didn't we have an effective plan
to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure? Why aren't the American people
more aware of these atrocities?
My fiancee and I have seriously looked into moving to Canada
as political refugees.
From: Anonymous
Sent: Thursday April 15 2004 12.41am
Subject: From KBR truck driver now in Iraq
Mike, I am a truck driver right now in Iraq. Let me give you
this one small fact because I am right here at the heart of it:
since I started this job several months ago, 100% (that's right,
not 99%) of the workers I am aware of are inflating the hours
they claim on their time sheets. There is so much more I could
tell you. But the fact is that MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of dollars
are being raped from both the American taxpayers and the Iraqi
people because of the unbelievable amount of greed and abuse
over here. And yes, my conscience does bother me because I am
participating in this rip-off.
From: Andrew Balthazor
Sent: Friday August 27 2004 1.53pm
Subject: Iraqi war vet - makes me sound so old
Mr Moore, I am an ex-military intelligence officer who served
10 months in Baghdad; I was the senior intelligence officer for
the area of Baghdad that included the UN HQ and Sadr City.
Since Bush exposed my person and my friends, peers, and subordinates
to unnecessary danger in a war apparently designed to generate
income for a select few in the upper echelon of America, I have
become wholeheartedly anti-Bush, to the chagrin of much of my
pro-Republican family.
As a "foot soldier" in the "war on terror"
I can personally testify that Bush's administration has failed
to effectively fight terrorists or the root causes of terror.
The White House and the DoD failed to plan for reconstruction
of Iraq. Contracts weren't tendered until Feb-Mar of 2003, and
the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (the
original CPA) didn't even come into existence until January 2003.
This failure to plan for the "peace" is a direct cause
for the insecurity of Iraq today.
Immediately after the "war" portion of the fighting
(which really ended around April 9 2003), we should have been
prepared to send in a massive reconstruction effort. Right away
we needed engineers to diagnose problems, we needed contractors
repairing problems, we needed immediate food, water, shelter,
and fuel for the Iraqi people, and we needed more security for
all of this to work - which we did not have because we did not
have enough troops on the ground, and CPA decided to disband
the Iraqi army. The former Iraqi police were engaged far too
late; a plan should have existed to bring them into the fold
right away.
I've left the military. If there is anything I can do to help
get Bush out of office, let me know.
From: Anthony Pietsch
Sent: Thursday August 5 2004 6.13pm
Subject: Soldier for sale
Dear Mr Moore, my name is Tony Pietsch, and I am a National
Guardsman who has been stationed in Kuwait and Iraq for the past
15 months. Along with so many other guar