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Ref. : Local Newsbriefs
Ref. : Letters to the editor
03.05 Open Letter to Congressman Bart Stupak
Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries
03.20 The Death of American Populism
03.18 Pressure Drop: Brave Sir Dennis Ran Away
03.12 Slick Barry and the $100-Billion Medicaid/Medicare Fraud Claim
03.09 Kill Bill: Death to Obamacare!
03.09 Obama’s Rhetoric May Be “Fiery,” But His Health Care Reform Is Still Lukewarm
03.17 CNN Scrapes Bottom of Right-Wing Barrel With Erickson Hire
03.16 WPost Blames Obama First, on Israel
03.16 Letter to the New York Times' Editor: Stovepiping To Persia
03.12 Cud and Complicity: Burying the Alternatives to Empire's Dominion
03.11 NYT and the ACORN Hoax
03.05 Sorry, Rove, Bush Did Lie About Iraq
03.03 It's Snow News
03.03 The Woeful Washington Post
Ref. : The Daily Howler
02.26 America's Supremes: Court Over Constitution
03.11 Power Rangers: Policing the System With the "Fightin' Progressives"
03.09 Thinking About Countings
03.07 Unnatural Acts: Breaking the Fever of Militarism
02.25 Future Shock: A Better World Beyond the Imperium
03.19 Israel's Troubling Tilt Toward Apartheid
03.18 The Lawfare Project's Anti-Democratic Agenda
03.16 America's Secret Prisons
03.13 Palestinian Dispossession in East Jerusalem
03.12 Israeli Settlement Expansions Continue
03.11 Brutalizing Palestinian Children
03.08 The Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Barcelona Session
03.05 Targeting Israeli Apartheid
03.01 America's Permanent War Agenda
02.25 Global Sweatshop Wage Slavery
03.19 The Growing Movement For Publicly-Owned Banks
03.19 America's "Houdini Recovery" under IMF-Type Austerity
03.14 The Crisis in America's Telecommunications Network
03.09 The Business of Water: Privatizing An Essential Resource
03.05 Is the Recovery Real?
03.04 IMF-Style Austerity Measures come to America: What “Fiscal Responsibility” Means To You
03.04 Barry C. Lynn's "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and Economics of Destruction"
03.01 Thinking About Fees
03.15 Peace Process Hypocrisy: Stillborn from Inception
03.03 Muslim Disunity
03.02 Funding Israeli Militarism, Belligerence and Occupation
02.26 Iran Captures a 'Good' Terrorist
ENVIRONMENT:
Trashing the Environment
A third of Bush's appointments to federal courts have worked as lobbyists for polluting industries, such as oil, gas, timber and mining. By May 2004, Bush had appointed over 100 former lobbyists and company lawyers to head agencies that regulate industry and the environment. These former lobbyists redefine policies to shift regulations in favor of their former clients, most often polluting industries.
Far-right Congressmen consider environmental protection bad for business profits and are attempting to repeal or seriously weaken the Wilderness Preservation Act, the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Endangered Species Act, as well as regulations that conflict with special treatment for private property and commercial development.
In February 2006, Karl Rove bragged that President Bush has transformed conservatism from "reactionary" to "forward looking" by incorporating liberal ideas into foreign policy. The GOP highlights Bush's environmental saving efforts such as increasing mileage requirements for SUVs by .03 miles per gallon and cutting taxes so people can buy larger cars.
In April 2006, studies revealed that the US was the world's biggest polluter in 2004, emitting more greenhouse gases—the major cause of global warming—than any time in history, a record 7.1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. These increases are the result of greater consumption of electricity, increased industrial output and more traffic, which collectively accounted for 94 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. There are higher carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere now than at any time in the last 10 million years.
Carbon dioxide emissions lead to global warming, which continue to create new weather records. In May, the National Climatic Data Center announced that April in the US was the hottest since record keeping began in 1895. Dry conditions and severe drought persisted across 31 percent of the country, from the western high plains to the Missouri Valley. Phoenix recorded 143 days without rain, breaking the previous drought record of 101 consecutive days, set in 2000. Last year, parts of the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers filled with sandbars as the drainages experienced the worse drought since 1988.
Evidence from numerous sources reveals that Bush and the Republicans have been a complete disaster in preserving the environment. They reward polluters and blissfully trust unregulated "free enterprise" to curb oil consumption and voluntary regulation to halt pollution. These policies arouse little public outcry as long as easy credit and massive Chinese imports make life abundant, if pressured, for the average person, but the effects of the nation's gluttony for oil, automobiles, energy and an exorbitant standard of living has serious repercussions.
With only 5 percent of the world's population, the US consumes about 30 percent of the world's resources and faces increased disruption from hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, drought, and other climate changes that will increasingly impinge on our lifestyle. Global warming is irreversible, but the longer we wait to reverse policies and begin protecting the environment, the greater the climatic shifts and human dislocations will be and the more arbitrary and restrictive the changes necessary to curb the resulting damage.
In the meantime, the nation will continue to suffer man-made disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina. It's time to place environmental protection at the top of the priority list for national action.
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This story was published on June 2, 2006.
