Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Crimes Against Nature

[seemslikeadream]

By: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Published: Oct 7, 2004
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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.

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[nofurylike]

1. RFK Jr is so brilliant! off to get his book, thanks, seemslikeadream n/t

[seemslikeadream]

4. nofurylike have you seen this video?

http://www.bushflash.com/sp.html


Smothered Hope

withered rope you hang what's empty can't remain to put it simply
in time cry the hollow words to sing with false disguise
smothered hope fly from sorrow for a new divine tomorrow
i just don't want to know anymore
life shifts up and down everybody knows it's wrong
why don't you care? now do it seem fair?
it's not in the rhyme or reason
so it goes with every season crawl to top fall through bottom
first hand love is really rotten
slice of life find what's plenty inch towards a sanctuary
light with me inside the womb
i know everyone everybody knows it's me
it's my voice, my voice cries out obscenity
sightless eye regard my past sometimes it should
i just don't want to know anymore.

SKINNY PUPPY

[joanski01]

2. Thanks for this.

I already have the book, but haven't read it yet. I saw Bobby, Jr. on Book TV and hurried and ordered the book. Just listening to Bobby talk about what bush* was doing to the environment made me very depressed.

[seemslikeadream]

5. Check out the video

above joanski01
ERIC BLUMRICH is great.

[xxqqqzme]

3. he was on Tavis Smiley

last week. His passion was was easily transmitted thru the tube.


http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200409/20040928_transcript.html#1
"...Kennedy: Well, I've always been a huge advocate of the free market, and I think they're intertwined. I think democracy, the environment, and the free market are intertwined. The best thing that could happen to the environment is if we had a true free-market economy. We don't. In fact, I talked to Jim Hightower the other day about, you know, how great the free market would be for the environment because it promotes efficiency, and efficiency means you eliminate waste, which means you'll eliminate pollution. Pollution is waste, and he said, “Yeah, the free market is a great thing. We should try it sometime....

This government, this White House claims to love the free market. But really what they like is corporate welfare, you know? They want socialism. They want capitalism for the poor, but socialism for the rich, and, you know, what I show in my book is that there's a huge difference. In a true free-market economy, you can't make yourself rich without making your neighbors rich and without enriching your community.

What polluters do is they 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. You show me a polluter, 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 and force the public to pay his production costs...."