posted on May 27, 2005 01:08:37 AM new
The Junk Science of George W. Bush
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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As Jesuit schoolboys studying world history we learned that Copernicus and Galileo self-censored for many decades their proofs that the earth revolved around the sun and that a less restrained heliocentrist, Giordano Bruno, was burned alive in 1600 for the crime of sound science. With the encouragement of our professor, Father Joyce, we marveled at the capacity of human leaders to corrupt noble institutions. Lust for power had caused the Catholic hierarchy to subvert the church's most central purpose--the search for existential truths.
Today, flat-earthers within the Bush Administration--aided by right-wing allies who have produced assorted hired guns and conservative think tanks to further their goals--are engaged in a campaign to suppress science that is arguably unmatched in the Western world since the Inquisition. Sometimes, rather than suppress good science, they simply order up their own. Meanwhile, the Bush White House is purging, censoring and blacklisting scientists and engineers whose work threatens the profits of the Administration's corporate paymasters or challenges the ideological underpinnings of their radical anti-environmental agenda. Indeed, so extreme is this campaign that more than sixty scientists, including Nobel laureates and medical experts, released a statement on February 18 that accuses the Bush Administration of deliberately distorting scientific fact "for partisan political ends."
"There’s a war going on—and not just the one in Iraq. This conflict may not get as much media play, but it could have just as great an impact on our safety, national prestige, and long-term economic health. It is a war over the integrity of science itself, and the casualties are everywhere: career scientists and enforcement officials are resigning en masse from government agencies, citing an inability to do their jobs due to what they see as the ruthless politicization of science by the Bush administration. Bruce Boler, Marianne Horinko, Rich Biondi, J. P. Suarez and Eric Schaeffer are among those who have resigned from the EPA alone. In a letter to The New York Times, former EPA administrator Russell Train, who worked for both Nixon and Ford, wrote, 'I can state categorically that there never was such White House intrusion into the business of the EPA during my tenure.' Government meddling has reached such a level that European scientists are voicing concerns that Bush may not merely be undermining U.S. dominance in sciences, but global research as well....
posted on May 27, 2005 07:03:59 AM new
One of the founding principles of Fascism is to attack the intellectuals ...teachers, scientists and so on.
To ignore science to suit your own ends , from Helen's post, "could have just as great an impact on our safety, national prestige, and long-term economic health. "
Does bush care ? No, power and wealth are his drivers..oh, and Rovey boy.
posted on May 27, 2005 02:46:47 PM new
Libra, Bear, et al, if you end up in a row with crow in this thread, you have nobody to blame but yourselves. How about you go read the article and make some halfway intelligent comments on IT, rather than childish insults directed at the poster?
____________________________________________
Dick Cheney: "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11..."
posted on May 27, 2005 03:14:17 PM new
Now the profe speaks out.
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junk science -
Well...we had to choice for President....one who takes a more realistic view of our environment....and then kerry who never read an environment policy he wouldn't sign.
I'm glad we elected a more reasonable man rather than an environmental junkie.
Both air and water quality HAVE improved under this President...as they have been doing for the past 30 years. It's the extremists who would like us to believe otherwise.
And I'm glad he didn't agree to radify the Kyoto treaty.
To MOST voters this isn't one of the issue that is a deciding factor in who they choose to elect.
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Four More Years....YES!!!
posted on May 27, 2005 03:25:50 PM new
From an interview with Robert Kennedy who, if you study his credentials you will see he knows more about the environment and what's happening to it than ANYONE in here:
You have three kids with asthma and focus much of your criticism of the Bush administration on clean-air rollbacks. Do you believe that the public asset of air has been stolen from your kids by polluting corporations?
We don't know why we're having this explosion of pediatric asthma -- whether it's hormones in food or antibiotics or whatever -- but asthma rates have doubled again over the last five years. We do know that one of the primary causes of asthma attacks are particulates in ozone in our air. I watch my kids gasping for breath on bad air days. We know that the source of half of that material in our air in New York, for example, are a handful of coal plants in the Ohio Valley that are burning coal illegally. They were supposed to install emissions-control equipment to protect the public right of the commons in our air. They didn't do it.
The Clinton administration was prosecuting 51 power plants on their violations of the Clean Air Act. But the coal industry and the coal-burning utilities gave $4.8 million to President Bush during the 2000 election. When Bush came in, he repaid the favor by ordering the Justice Department and the EPA to drop all those lawsuits. We've never seen anything like that in American history before -- where a president comes in having accepted political contributions from criminals and then orders the prosecutions dropped against them.
ennedy who, if you study his credentials knows more about the environment and what's ahppening to it than ANYONE in here:
posted on May 27, 2005 03:50:29 PM new
Posted on Tue, Oct. 12, 2004
Environment worsened under Bush in many key areas, data show
By Seth Borenstein
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - In the second presidential debate, President Bush said: "I'm a good steward of the land. The quality of the air's cleaner since I've been the president. Fewer water complaints since I've been the president."
Sen. John Kerry responded this way: "The president, I don't think, is living in a world of reality with respect to the environment. We're going backwards." He vows to reverse many of Bush's policies.
Which presidential candidate is right? How has America's environment fared under Bush?
Over the past 30 years, the nation's air and water have become dramatically cleaner, but the steady improvement has stalled or gone into reverse in several areas since Bush took office, according to government statistics. On Bush's watch, America's environment deteriorated in many critical areas - including the quality of air in cities and the quality of water that people drink - and gained in very few.
Knight Ridder compiled 14 pollution-oriented indicators from government and university statistics. Nine of the 14 indicators showed a worsening trend, two showed improvements and three others zigzagged.
Statistics that have worsened:
-Superfund cleanups of toxic waste fell by 52 percent.
-Fish-consumption warnings for rivers doubled.
-Fish-consumption advisories for lakes increased 39 percent.
-The number of beach closings rose 26 percent.
-Civil citations issued to polluters fell 57 percent.
-There were small increases in global temperatures and unhealthy air days.
There were signs of pollution improvement, though. Major air-emissions from smokestacks and tailpipes dropped 9 percent, and greenhouse-gas emissions were reduced by 0.5 percent.
Statistics that have fluctuated are the number of people living in smoggy cities; the number of people drinking from tainted water supplies; and overall toxic pollution releases by industry.
In land-use policy under Bush, another 12 indicators reveal record-low additions to national parks, wilderness, wildlife refuges and the endangered species list. The Bush administration also approved 74 percent more permits to drill for oil and gas on public lands in its first three years than were granted in the previous three years.
Bush also has ordered dozens of sweeping changes to existing environmental policies, usually to benefit business interests. He reversed the government's course on global warming, power plant emissions, roadless areas of national forests, environmental law enforcement and agricultural run-off.
Two major Bush administration proposals still languish in Congress. One would change the way air pollution from power plants is regulated, with gradually shrinking limits on emissions and the first-ever limits for mercury pollution. Critics say Bush's approach would require fewer pollution reductions than current law.
The other pending Bush proposal is his energy bill, which calls for more drilling on public lands, including Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - which Kerry has been a leader in opposing.
Kerry vows to reverse Bush's efforts to make it easier for older power plants to expand without additional pollution controls. He promises to "plug loopholes" in industrial air-pollution regulations, limit suburban sprawl and mount a new program to protect America's waterways.
Over nearly two decades in the Senate, Kerry has gotten extremely high marks from environmental groups, including from the League of Conservation Voters. Henry Lee, Harvard University's environment and natural resources program director, said Kerry didn't initiate any environmental legislation that became landmark law, but he often was "out in front on the issue."
If Kerry is friendly with environmental activists, "the Bush administration is sympathetic to the concerns of business," said Eban Goodstein, the chairman of the environmental-studies program at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore. "They're bringing in people that are really hostile to the current regulatory framework."
The Bush environmental team says it concentrates more on results than regulations and that, even if enforcement numbers are down, the country is cleaner based on what comes out of industrial smokestacks and sewers. The Bush administration also took steps to reduce pollution from off-road diesel engines and slightly increased auto-mileage standards.
Last month, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Leavitt touted as "a national success story" statistics showing that major air emissions dropped 9 percent nationwide over the first three years of the Bush administration.
But at the same time, the number of times that air in U.S. cities was declared unhealthy increased from 1,535 in 2000 to 1,656 in 2001 and 2,035 in 2002. And the EPA's inspector general issued a report last month saying that national air-emission reductions don't accurately reflect the stagnating pollution levels in metropolitan areas.
At every Cabinet meeting, according to Leavitt, Bush asks the same four questions: "Is the air cleaner? Is the water more pure? Is the land better protected? And are we doing it in a way that keeps us competitive economically?"
The answers are yes, insists James Connaughton, the director of Bush's Council on Environmental Quality. "We are enjoying the cleanest air in half a century," he says.
But Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council who also advises John Kerry, says Bush's power-plant policies are causing more asthma attacks, deaths from lung disease and incidents of mercury contamination from people eating tainted fish.
"This administration is duplicitous," said Carol Browner, who ran the EPA under President Clinton and now advises Kerry. "They are saying, `We're strengthening environmental protections,' when in fact they are weakening protections."
On conservation issues, Bush has set records for presidential inactivity. He made the fewest additions to the national park system, created the least number of wildlife refuges, set aside the smallest amount of new wilderness acres and hasn't established any new national marine sanctuaries.
Connaughton says five new parks and more wilderness land are about to be established.
Bush pays less attention to environmental issues than did his father, who initiated landmark environmental laws, said Dan Esty, the director for the Yale University Center for Environmental Law & Policy who was a senior EPA official under the first President Bush.
The elder Bush protected seven times more endangered species than his son, set aside six times as much wilderness land, created four times as many national parks, established more than three times as many new national wildlife refuges and issued twice as many pollution law citations to companies.
On global warming, President Bush promised in 2000 that he would regulate emissions of carbon dioxide - the chief manmade cause of climate change - from older power plants. Months after taking office he ditched that idea. He withdrew the United States from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol treaty that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions from most industrial countries, saying it would hurt the U.S. economy. But Bush is spending record amounts of money on global-warming research.
The Kerry campaign says that's not enough. Kerry promises that, if elected, he'd do "something" about climate change, but says he won't sign the Kyoto Protocol. He promised at the second presidential debate to work toward fixing the Kyoto Protocol, but didn't specify how.
As for the decrease in Superfund cleanups, Connaughton blames that on the remaining sites, saying they're tougher to clean. He said the Bush administration is spending more money on Superfund cleanups, but EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley notes that Superfund spending, when adjusted for inflation, fell 11 percent from 2000 to 2003.
Connaughton calls the rise in beach and fish-consumption warnings good news. It shows increased environmental monitoring, he says.
But others, including some prominent Republican environmentalists, disagree.
"The record is not good," said Russell Train, who ran the EPA under former Presidents Nixon and Ford and who was co-chairman of Conservationists for Bush in 1980. "The word is going out to go easy" on polluters.
Jonathan Adler, a professor of environmental law at Case Western Reserve University, calls such criticism "a terrible exaggeration."
Bush is also repealing a rule that set 58.5 million acres of national forests off limits to industry. And his administration has added the fewest new endangered species to the protection list of any in the last 30 years. Connaughton blames environmentalists' lawsuits and says more species are recovering.
While approvals soar for permits to drill for oil and gas on public lands, the administration has leased less public land to energy companies, concentrating drilling in the Rockies. The number of trees cut in national forests for commercial harvest is down. So is livestock grazing on public lands.
kennedy is a politician...from a political family. An extreme environmentalist....NOT A SCIENTIST. What he says is HIS OPINION....we all have them.
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Four More Years....YES!!!
[ edited by Linda_K on May 27, 2005 03:52 PM ]
posted on May 27, 2005 03:57:21 PM new
Linda, do you ever watch David Suzuki? On one of his specials, he said that air polution is so bad, that even if we stopped all emissions for 10 years, it wouldn't put a dent in things. Coral reefs are dying, fish are getting diseases, etc. and they are at the bottom of the food chain. We've all got to stop pretending everything's alright.
posted on May 27, 2005 04:01:59 PM new
Ignorance is showing .....
He has degrees from Harvard and the University of Virginia School of Law. Yet despite Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s sterling credentials, he's never run for public office, much less held one. That's fine with him, and with his many supporters, who contend that he's likely making more of a difference to American politics from outside the Beltway than he ever could from the inside.
Given his reputation as one of environmentalism's most powerful advocates, Kennedy's official titles seem rather unglamorous: clinical professor and supervising attorney at Pace Law School's Environmental Litigation Clinic; chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper, a New York-based environmental organization that has fought to protect the Hudson River and its tributaries; president of Waterkeeper Alliance, an umbrella group protecting waterways worldwide; and senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, where he has helped develop the organization's international program. More provocative, perhaps, are his license as a master falconer and role as a white-water paddling guide.""""
Ya, linduh , I know YOUR credentials are so much better but I think I'll stick with Bobby.
Kennedy has no reason to single out a particular political party...he is first and foremost an environmentalist....it is his passion. He didn't start a career in it to target bush and to think so is erroneous.
Sorry you show such crass indifference to the air your children and granchildren breathe and the water they drink just because you will defend bush at any cost.
posted on May 27, 2005 04:18:37 PM new
KD - Linda, do you ever watch David Suzuki?
No, I don't know who he is and what his credentials are.
On one of his specials, he said that air polution is so bad, that even if we stopped all emissions for 10 years, it wouldn't put a dent in things.
KD, anyone can SAY anything..doesn't make it true. Scientific FACTS have to be presented and evaluated. And even the scientists don't agree on what's causing a lot of things. They all have their theories....and many dispute what other theories call truth.
OUR EPA is where I read that our air and water quality has IMPROVED during the Bush administration. They one's who govern these 'tests' would, imo, know better than a leftie organization....or a rightie one for that matter.
[i]Coral reefs are dying, fish are getting diseases, etc. and they are at the bottom of the food chain. We've all got to stop pretending everything's alright[i].
I don't believe any one IS doing that, KD. I just believe that some people want to see that taxpayer dollars spent are going to get good results...not just be throwing our money in the wind....for either programs that have shown little or no ability to change anything.
We, as a Nation, as a world HAVE become more aware of what we do that effects our environment....our world. That doesn't mean that we can afford to reverse what we've done to it since time began...all in one President's administration.
I also don't agree with a ton of the environmentalists that think we HAVE to do certain things in certain areas. Life has evolved since it began...many don't believe humans have the power to change what would be happening anyway...even IF humans were doing nothing negative.
Just like with global warming...there are many scientists who don't beleive we humans have any impact at all on why it's changing. Some believe that while it is changing, humans have nothing to do with that change...it's the normal cycle.
etc.
If this were all cut and dried....we would all be in agreement of what needs to be done. Problem is we're not...
And, as I said in one of my posts....this issue/subject is not HIGH on most voters lists when choosing a leader of the free world.
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Four More Years....YES!!!
posted on May 27, 2005 04:38:05 PM new
""And, as I said in one of my posts....this issue/subject is not HIGH on most voters lists when choosing a leader of the free world.""
It may not be but to consider the quality of the air and water to be unimportant is just plain stupid.
"""OUR EPA is where I read that our air and water quality has IMPROVED during the Bush administration. They one's (?) who govern these 'tests' would, imo, know better than a leftie organization....or a rightie one for that matter. ""
EPA has been shown to twist the facts.
""That doesn't mean that we can afford to reverse what we've done to it since time began...all in one President's administration""
No, but in this president's administration it has gone backwards.
And we can't afford NOT to try everything in our power to stem the tide of gwoing pollution.....some of us CARE what the future holds for the next generations...not just for ourselves.
posted on May 27, 2005 05:28:12 PM newNow the profe speaks out.
Yes darlin', I do. Do you and your perverse smilies have a problem with that?
____________________________________________
Dick Cheney: "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11..."
[ edited by profe51 on May 27, 2005 05:28 PM ]
posted on May 27, 2005 05:33:00 PM new
Prof do you really expect a nonpartisian article about Pres Bush from one of the Kennedy klan?
Besides Crow really doesn't want anyone to read the ORIGINALarticle or she would have provided a link to it.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s sterling character???? What a laugh.
Biography
The way Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has assumed command of the Water Keeper Alliance, you’d almost think he started the environmental movement on his own. But he actually stumbled into it as a result of a 1984 criminal conviction for heroin possession. A judge sentenced him to 800 hours of community service, which he satisfied with volunteer work for the Hudson River Foundation. After his 800 hours were used up, the organization (now operating as the Hudson Riverkeepers) hired Kennedy as its “chief prosecuting attorney.”
In the years since his drug conviction, Kennedy has also gone to work for the Natural Resources Defense Council and assumed a professorship in the law school at Pace University. Kennedy also started Pace’s environmental law clinic specifically to sue governments and businesses on behalf of Riverkeeper.
Robert Kennedy approaches environmental law with a brash, take-no-prisoners approach that tends to alienate many who might otherwise be his allies. After working with him on a $10 million New York City watershed agreement, Putnam County (NY) legal counsel George Rodenhausen told reporters that “he separates himself from good science at times in order to aggressively pursue an issue and win.”
In July 2003, a major U.S. pork producer obtained an indictment against Kennedy in Poland for committing slander during an inflammatory rant against the company’s Polish subsidiary. The indictment charges that Kennedy spouted “untrue information” and “consciously manipulated the facts” with the intent to “discredit the company.”
Kennedy’s harshest public thrashing to date, however, came from one of his closest colleagues, Riverkeeper founder Robert Boyle. Along with seven other Riverkeeper board members, Boyle resigned in 2000 after Kennedy insisted upon hiring a convicted environmental felon as the group’s chief scientist. At the time, Boyle told the New York Post that Kennedy “is very reckless,” and added that “[h]e’s assumed an arrogance above his intellectual stature.”
Reflecting on the episode later, Boyle gave the New York Times an apt summary of Kennedy’s attitude regarding his environmental crusades: “I thought he was thinking of himself and not the cause of the river,” Boyle said. “It all became his own greater glory.”
posted on May 27, 2005 05:44:13 PM newProf do you really expect a nonpartisian article about Pres Bush from one of the Kennedy klan?
'course not bear, no more than I would expect one from NewsMax, Fox, or that Moonie newspaper, what's it called? The New York Post?....difference is, the piece crow posted was not a news report, it was an editorial. Editorials are opinions, not news. That's why they call them editorials.
You still haven't commented on any of it's salient points by the way. All you've done is insult crowfarm. No two ways about it. You started it this time.
____________________________________________
Dick Cheney: "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11..."
posted on May 27, 2005 05:47:26 PM new
FANTASYLAND
The latest, and perhaps most egregious, example of anti-Bush environmental fear-mongering is an essay by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the December 11 Rolling Stone, "Crimes Against Nature." In it, Kennedy accuses Bush of "a ferocious three-year attack" on environmental protection involving "more than 200 major rollbacks of America's environmental laws." These policies "are already bearing fruit," Kennedy alleges, "diminishing standards of living for millions of Americans." In Kennedy's world, a phalanx of former corporate lobbyists conspires to "eviscerate the infrastructure of laws and regulations that protect the environment" and "eliminate the nation's most important environmental laws by the end of the year," all for narrow corporate gain. In Kennedy's world, the Bush administration's "corporate cronyism" is comparable to the "rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s." If reality bore any relation to Kennedy's fantasy, there would be reason for concern. Yet as with so many recent environmental-activist attacks on the Bush-administration environmental record, Kennedy's screed is more fantasy than fact.
One would think that Kennedy, an environmental lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council and law professor at Pace University, is an expert in environmental law. No stranger to existing regulations, Kennedy regularly litigates on behalf of river communities to enforce state and federal standards in court. Yet his essay is riddled with misstatements, gross exaggerations, and outright falsehoods, combined with repeated ad hominem attacks on administration officials. Although Kennedy claims his article was "rigorously fact checked," it remains replete with errors. "Crimes Against Nature" paints a shocking — that is, shockingly inaccurate — picture of Bush environmental policy.
Some of Kennedy's mistakes are rather minor. For instance, he claims the administration's "Clear Skies" program "repealed key provisions of the Clean Air Act" and "allows more emissions." Yet the "Clear Skies" initiative has done no such thing — "Clear Skies" has not been approved by a committee, let alone signed into law. Were "Clear Skies" to become law it would "repeal" some portions of the Clean Air Act, but only to replace them with new provisions to control utility emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury. More importantly, whether or not "Clear Skies" ever becomes law, air pollution will continue to decline as it has for the past few decades.
OUT OF THIN AIR
If Kennedy's errors were confined to such common misstatements, his article would be no big deal. Alas, many of Kennedy's crimes against fact are quite serious. Right off the bat, Kennedy charges that the Bush Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "excused" coal-burning power plants "from complying with the Clean Air Act." This is simply false. The administration revised federal regulations governing when older industrial facilities must install modern air-pollution equipment to allow for upgrades and repairs without increasing emissions above permitted levels. In practice, these changes will enable facilities to undertake efficiency improvements that in many cases, will produce a net decrease in polluting emissions. Yet even assuming these reforms to the "new source review" regulations effectively exempt power plants from the upgrade requirements, power plants, and other industrial facilities remain subject to numerous regulatory requirements under the Clean Air Act, including caps on emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides and provisions, controls to attain ambient air-quality standards, and mandates designed to prevent "upwind" facilities from causing air-pollution problems in "downwind" states, among others.
Kennedy claims the administration "redefine[d] carbon dioxide" to no longer be considered a pollutant subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. Yet carbon dioxide has never been regulated as an air pollutant under federal law. Clinton EPA officials suggested carbon dioxide could be so regulated under the act, yet took no action to regulate such greenhouse gases even when faced with potential litigation from environmental groups. Contrary to Kennedy's suggestion, Congress never authorized federal regulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, whether under the Clean Air Act or any other federal law. To the contrary, Congress has voted against such regulations time and again, including when the Senate voted 95-0 against the Kyoto Protocol.
Kennedy accuses the administration of proposing to "remov[e] federal protections for most American wetlands and streams." Here again Kennedy is all wet. In 2001, the Supreme Court struck down federal regulations that purported to regulate isolated wetlands and other waters not connected to the navigable waters of the United States. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA claimed they could regulate such lands due to the occasional presence of migratory birds. Such a regulation, the Supreme Court held, exceeded the scope of the Clean Water Act and may even be unconstitutionally broad. In response, the administration proposed revising federal regulations to ensure their consistency with the Court's ruling. Failure to do so would be irresponsible. After all, federal regulations cannot protect wetlands if they get struck down in court.
The proposed changes, which cannot become final until after a period of public comment and review, come nowhere close to "removing federal protections for most American wetlands and streams." To the contrary, if adopted they would only curtail federal authority on the margins. Isolated wetlands, for instance, represent a small fraction of the approximately 100 million acres of wetlands in the United States. Moreover, just because a wetland or stream is not regulated by the federal government does not mean it is unprotected. Most states have their own wetland regulations, and many states regulate wetlands more stringently — and more effectively — than the feds.
Although Kennedy accuses the Bush administration of "more than 200 major rollbacks," he identifies few significant changes to environmental law. More often, Kennedy labels as a "rollback" the Bush administration's refusal to embrace Clinton initiatives, many of which had yet to take effect when Bush entered office. Kennedy claims Bush "weakened efficiency standards" for air conditioners because the Bush administration rejected a proposed Clinton regulation to tighten energy use requirements for new ACs by 30 percent. Yet the Bush administration went ahead and tightened AC efficiency standards nonetheless — just not as much as the Clinton administration had proposed. Such a failure to adopt more stringent regulations can hardly be characterized a "major rollback."
Kennedy is upset about the administration's purported effort to "scuttle" automobile fuel-economy standards and to "allow SUVs to escape fuel-efficiency minimums." Yet the administration has done nothing to loosen automobile fuel-economy standards or exempt SUVs. To the contrary, as Kennedy's colleagues at the NRDC acknowledge, the Bush transportation department announced a modest tightening of fuel-economy rules for cars and light trucks (including SUVs) alike. The increase may be less than Kennedy would like — though why a family man like Kennedy would support federal regulations that reduce vehicle size and crashworthiness is beyond me — but it is hardly an environmental "rollback."
And the fact-checkers should not have stopped there either. He charges that the 104th Congress launched a "stealth attack" on environmental laws, "eschewing public debate," and adopting riders to appropriations bills. Yet not only have such "appropriations riders" been commonplace for years — many of the same provisions adopted by the 104th Congress were initially enacted by the Democratic-controlled 103rd — but they were extensively debated on the floor of the House. Kennedy is apoplectic that the Bush White House reviews environmental reports before they are issued, yet this has been the standard operating procedure for years.
Kennedy also repeats the myth that in the 1960s, "Cleveland's Cuyahoga river exploded in colossal infernos." In fact, there was a small fire under a bridge on the Cuyahoga in 1969. It was a minor event. The fire lasted for less than 30 minutes and was never caught on film. The event only became infamous several weeks later when Time magazine noted the fire alongside a shocking photo of a river ablaze from the early 1950s. By 1969, the problem of combustible industrial rivers — once a common environmental concern — was a thing of the past. No matter. The image of a burning river was seared on the nation's environmental consciousness, and the story gets retold — albeit wrongly — time and again.
When not polluting the facts, Kennedy spews ad hominem charges against Bush-administration officials. Kennedy is aghast that the administration would hire individuals who have worked for — gasp! — corporations, and suggests they remain beholden to their former corporate masters. Yet unless Kennedy wishes to claim that such employment should permanently disqualify individuals from holding public office, he must rest his case on what Bush officials are actually doing in office, and it is here that Kennedy's breathless accusations simply fall apart. In attacking the administration's energy plan (which is certainly worthy of criticism), Kennedy invokes the administration's relationship with Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, but then fails to mention that the administration rejected Ken Lay's most preferred policy: federal regulation of carbon dioxide.
WHERE'S THE BEEF?
Kennedy's attack on the Bush environmental record is not the first such fusillade to misfire, and it will not be the last. The administration's environmental critics have a relatively easy time misrepresenting the Bush record because there is little effort to set the record straight. Many journalists uncritically repeat environmentalist attacks, and the Bush administration's defense of its own environmental policies has been nothing short of pathetic. Over a week after Kennedy's Rolling Stone article first circulated, the administration still has no talking points or crib sheet, let alone a formal response for distribution. It is as if decision-makers in the administration believe that if they ignore their environmental critics, they will just go away. Fat chance.
One problem with defending the Bush environmental record, however, is that it is not so clear what there is to defend. While the administration has largely avoided calling for grand new federal programs and another round of federal regulations, it has made little visible effort to rethink and reform existing environmental laws. For all the talk of "market-based" reforms and a "new environmentalism," there has been little action. While it is relatively easy to poke holes in an error-filled screed like Kennedy's "Crimes of Nature," it is difficult to write a proactive defense of the administration's positive agenda, as it is not clear such an agenda exists. As a result, the administration's allies are permanently on the defensive, merely responding to groundless attacks. In the end, the administration's lack of a positive environmental agenda is not just bad policy, it's bad politics as well.
For months leading up to the 2004 election, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lambasted the Bush administration for despoiling the environment and lying to the American people. Now Kennedy is at it again, but the Bush administration is not his only target. He has cast his net more broadly this time, indicting the media for aiding and abetting the Bush administration’s supposed misdeeds and fostering a “gap . . . between America’s values and those of its government.” Yet, as before, his critique is not particularly compelling.
Kennedy’s earlier salvos against the Bush administration focused on environmental policy. In a series of magazine articles and a popular book, Crimes Against Nature, Kennedy indicted the administration for waging war on the environment, undoing decades of environmental protections, and laying the groundwork for a corporate fascist state. The problem with Kennedy’s charges, however, is that they were largely untrue. As I documented for National Review Online and NRODT, Kennedy’s attack was based on distortions, exaggerations, and outright falsehoods. In his effort to document the Bush administration’s “crimes against nature,” Kennedy repeatedly committed his own crimes against fact.
Kennedy’s new fusillade also misses its mark. In a Vanity Fair article, “The Disinformation Society,” excerpted from the paperback edition of his book, Kennedy again exhibits his penchant for distortions and inaccuracy.
He continues to maintain that the Bush team “launched a jihad against the American environment and public health to enrich his corporate sponsors.” Bush’s policies are not a legitimate outcome of democratic process, but cynical efforts to repay the “president’s corporate paymasters” facilitated by subterfuge and misinformation.
As Kennedy sees it, people didn’t vote for President Bush because they were more concerned about national security and moral values than environmental protection. Nor did they support the president because they found environmental critiques like Kennedy’s unimportant or unpersuasive. (The latter is more likely — although it seems not to dawn on Kennedy that large portions of the American public have grown weary of environmentalists crying wolf about apocalyptic scares and Republican politicians.) Instead Kennedy maintains that President Bush was reelected only “due to an information deficit caused by a breakdown in our national media.”
America is misinformed, Kennedy maintains, because “right-wing” pundits and conservative media outlets “twist the news and deliberately deceive the public to advance their radical agenda,” while major media outlets sit silently complacent. No part of the mainstream media exposed “President Bush’s calamitous lies about Iraq, the budget, Medicare, education, and the environment,” he complains. The major networks failed to cover “real issues” during the campaign and — horror of horrors — Bob Schieffer asked no questions about the environment in the final debate.
Kennedy laments the "post-election decision to retire Dan Rather,” yet makes no mention of the overzealous anti-Bush “investigations” that led to Rather’s demise. Presumably Kennedy found Rather’s coverage of Bush’s National Guard Service a model of objectivity and balance.
Kennedy complains of a dearth of “strong progressive voices” on radio and TV, even though he’s a regular of the talk-show circuit. Kennedy repeatedly attacked the Bush administration during the 2004 campaign on everything from NPR to Fox News, often without challenge, let alone a contrasting view. Ironically he also calls for reviving the “Fairness Doctrine” in broadcast media, without considering that this would end his own free ride in major media outlets.
There is no liberal media bias in Kennedy’s view, but rather “lockstep coordination among right-wing political operatives and the press.” The mainstream media is too concerned with the bottom line to finance investigative reporting while “radical ideologues, faced with Niagara-sized flows of money . . . bombard the media with carefully honed messages justifying corporate profit-taking." Relying on Media Matters’s David Brock, Kennedy’s tale turns somewhat conspiratorial. Kennedy writes of a “propaganda machine” that “orchestrate[d] Clinton’s impeachment” and largely dictates the public agenda. The Washington Times is not just a conservative newspaper, but a key element in a plot to “establish America as a Fascist theocracy.” At stake, Kennedy warns, is nothing less than “democracy’s survival.”
To support his claims, Kennedy cites polls finding that more Bush than Kerry voters believed Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction and supporting terrorist activity, and that many Bush voters support environmental positions the Bush administration opposes. This, Kennedy maintains, is proof that a majority of Americans cast their votes for Bush because they were misinformed. But it shows no such thing. Most intelligence agencies, foreign and domestic, believed Iraq had or sought WMDs; and, Kennedy’s rhetoric notwithstanding, there is no evidence that the Bush administration “lied” about Iraq. Relying upon faulty intelligence is not the same thing as deceiving the American public.
It is possible — indeed likely — that President Bush pursues some policies that are unpopular. That he nonetheless won reelection does not mean voters were ignorant of his plans. Rather it suggests that voters preferred Bush’s positions on the issues that mattered most to them. If, as Kennedy claims, most Bush voters disagree with the administration’s position on greenhouse-gas emission controls, it hardly means Bush’s election was an illegitimate con job — not when most voters were more concerned about terrorist threats from abroad and challenges to traditional moral values at home.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is tilting at windmills. That his arguments on media bias get such a wide airing — on major media outlets and in magazines like Vanity Fair — is proof itself that these claims lack any basis in reality. He clings to them nonetheless as the only way to make sense of the present political reality. Like so many on the angry Left, he cannot accept Bush’s reelection as a political loss on the merits. Instead it is a sign of voter ignorance, proof of the power of propaganda, and a harbinger of democracy’s decline. This approach makes it easier for Kennedy to dismiss the views of those with whom he disagrees — after all, they must be either dishonest or stupid. But it does not make his arguments any more convincing.
America's environmental-lobbying establishment has declared war on the Bush administration. With a series of reports, websites, and publicity campaigns, the nation's leading environmental-activist groups seek to tar President Bush as environmental-enemy number one, and pave the way for a Democratic victory in 2004. Earlier this fall, a group of former Clinton-administration environmental officials launched Environment2004, a new group that plans to raise funds to attack the Bush environmental record in key battleground states. This openly partisan effort will complement anti-Bush campaigns by the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, and other environmental-activist groups. In all these campaigns, environmental activists will continue to propagate the myth that the Bush administration is "waging war on the environment" and gutting federal environmental law.
A word to the wise ain't necessary, it's the stupid ones that need the advice."
- Bill Cosby
posted on May 27, 2005 05:59:56 PM new
Linda, it's surprising you've missed David Suzuki. "Many" are aware of him. Here is David Suzuki's curriculum vitae, should you doubt his veracity or expertise:
posted on May 27, 2005 07:50:16 PM new
"""Besides Crow really doesn't want anyone to read the ORIGINALarticle or she would have provided a link to it. ""
Totally illogical as usual.
Did you notice bear that everybody in here has ....a computer.
I assume they are free to search anything they'd like on the internet...don't ya think.
Was I preventing anyone from looking up anything ? No, I wasn't.
I am under NO obligation to provide anyone with a link. If there is a Vendio rule that says so please show it to me.
My point had to do with his work FOR the environment for which he is very well respected .
You could probably find a sight that rips Mother Theresa to shreds if you search long enough. It would in no way diminish her contributions to society.
posted on May 27, 2005 08:25:53 PM new
I want to bring your "atten-shun" to the "no-shun" that linduh still obsesses about me.
""Not at all. Just pointing out that the profe is once again calling others on their behavior when I've never seen you call crowfarm on her behavior.
And...now it appears you're defending her sources too. Good....she needs some help.""
Could you tell us all why any poster has to answer to YOU ?
And why you just can't post without an insult that you seem happy to give with a smiley.
linduh, just because I prove you wrong all the time is no reason to start with the insults.
posted on May 27, 2005 08:32:22 PM new
From bears article above....
Kennedy labels as a "rollback" the Bush administration's refusal to embrace Clinton initiatives, many of which had yet to take effect when Bush entered office.
Yes, and anyone reading the news at the time...the dems were SCREAMING about all these changes this President had stated he'd be making to clinton's LAST MINUTE..before leaving office...changes he made.
IF clinton SO believed in all the lowering of this and that...then HE should have initiated THEM ALL DURING HIS administration. This was done to have the political ramifications that it did at the time.
Have a problem with that? Then get your guy elected. That's the way our government works. The guy who wins gets to call the shots on what HIS policies will be....not be forced to follow policies that the previous administration didn't chose to deal with themselves.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Four More Years....YES!!!
posted on May 27, 2005 08:46:59 PM new
Clinton had several pollution violaters under indictment when he left office....bushy let them go.
Published by the December 11, 2003 issue of Rolling Stone
Crimes Against Nature
by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
George W. Bush will go down in history as America's worst environmental president. In a ferocious three-year attack, the Bush administration has initiated more than 200 major rollbacks of America's environmental laws, weakening the protection of our country's air, water, public lands and wildlife. Cloaked in meticulously crafted language designed to deceive the public, the administration intends to eliminate the nation's most important environmental laws by the end of the year. Under the guidance of Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the Bush White House has actively hidden its anti-environmental program behind deceptive rhetoric, telegenic spokespeople, secrecy and the intimidation of scientists and bureaucrats. The Bush attack was not entirely unexpected. George W. Bush had the grimmest environmental record of any governor during his tenure in Texas. Texas became number one in air and water pollution and in the release of toxic chemicals. In his six years in Austin, he championed a short-term pollution-based prosperity, which enriched his political contributors and corporate cronies by lowering the quality of life for everyone else. Now President Bush is set to do the same to America. After three years, his policies are already bearing fruit, diminishing standards of living for millions of Americans.
I am angry both as a citizen and a father. Three of my sons have asthma, and I watch them struggle to breathe on bad-air days. And they're comparatively lucky: One in four African-American children in New York shares this affliction; their suffering is often unrelieved because they lack the insurance and high-quality health care that keep my sons alive. My kids are among the millions of Americans who cannot enjoy the seminal American experience of fishing locally with their dad and eating their catch. Most freshwater fish in New York and all in Connecticut are now under consumption advisories. A main source of mercury pollution in America, as well as asthma-provoking ozone and particulates, is the coal-burning power plants that President Bush recently excused from complying with the Clean Air Act.
Furthermore, the deadly addiction to fossil fuels that White House policies encourage has squandered our treasury, entangled us in foreign wars, diminished our international prestige, made us a target for terrorist attacks and increased our reliance on petty Middle Eastern dictators who despise democracy and are hated by their own people.
When the Republican right managed to install George W. Bush as president in 2000, movement leaders once again set about doing what they had attempted to do since the Reagan years: eviscerate the infrastructure of laws and regulations that protect the environment. For twenty-five years it has been like the zombie that keeps coming back from the grave.
The attacks began on Inauguration Day, when President Bush's chief of staff and former General Motors lobbyist Andrew Card quietly initiated a moratorium on all recently adopted regulations. Since then, the White House has enlisted every federal agency that oversees environmental programs in a coordinated effort to relax rules aimed at the oil, coal, logging, mining and chemical industries as well as automakers, real estate developers, corporate agribusiness and other industries.
Bush's Environmental Protection Agency has halted work on sixty-two environmental standards, the federal Department of Agriculture has stopped work on fifty-seven standards, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has halted twenty-one new standards. The EPA completed just two major rules -- both under court order and both watered down at industry request -- compared to twenty-three completed by the Clinton administration and fourteen by the Bush Sr. administration in their first two years.
This onslaught is being coordinated through the White House Office of Management and Budget -- or, more precisely, OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, under the direction of John Graham, the engine-room mechanic of the Bush stealth strategy. Graham's specialty is promoting changes in scientific and economic assumptions that underlie government regulations -- such as recalculating cost-benefit analyses to favor polluters. Before coming to the White House, Graham was the founding director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, where he received funding from America's champion corporate polluters: Dow Chemical, DuPont, Monsanto, Alcoa, Exxon, General Electric and General Motors.
Under the White House's guidance, the very agencies entrusted to protect Americans from polluters are laboring to destroy environmental laws. Or they've simply stopped enforcing them. Penalties imposed for environmental violations have plummeted under Bush. The EPA has proposed eliminating 270 enforcement staffers, which would drop staff levels to the lowest level ever. Inspections of polluting businesses have dipped fifteen percent. Criminal cases referred for federal prosecution have dropped forty percent. The EPA measures its success by the amount of pollution reduced or prevented as a result of its own actions. Last year, the EPA's two most senior career enforcement officials resigned after decades of service. They cited the administration's refusal to carry out environmental laws.
The White House has masked its attacks with euphemisms that would have embarrassed George Orwell. George W. Bush's "Healthy Forests" initiative promotes destructive logging of old-growth forests. His "Clear Skies" program, which repealed key provisions of the Clean Air Act, allows more emissions. The administration uses misleading code words such as streamlining or reforming instead of weakening, and thinning instead of logging.
In a March 2003 memo to Republican leadership, pollster Frank Luntz frankly outlined the White House strategy on energy and the environment: "The environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in general and President Bush in particular are most vulnerable," he wrote, cautioning that the public views Republicans as being "in the pockets of corporate fat cats who rub their hands together and chuckle maniacally as they plot to pollute America for fun and profit." Luntz warned, "Not only do we risk losing the swing vote, but our suburban female base could abandon us as well." He recommended that Republicans don the sheep's clothing of environmental rhetoric while dismantling environmental laws.
