IVINS: Emissions Omission

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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16267

 

IVINS: Emissions Omission

 

Molly Ivins, AlterNet

June 26, 2003Viewed on June 26, 2003

 

AUSTIN, Texas -- You've got to hand it to those clever little problem-solvers at

the White House. What a bunch of brainiacs. They have resolved the entire

problem of global warming: They cut it out of the report!

 

This is genius. Everybody else is maundering on about the oceans rising and the

polar icecaps melting and monster storms and hideous droughts, and these guys

just ... edit it out.

 

" The editing eliminated references to many studies concluding that warming is at

least partly caused by rising concentrations of smokestack and tailpipe

emissions, and could threaten health and ecosystems, " reports The New York

Times. Presto -- poof!

 

What do they care about health and ecosystems? Think of the possibilities

presented by this ingenious solution. Let's edit out AIDS and all problems with

drugs both legal and illegal. We could get rid of Libya and Syria this way --

take 'em off the maps. We can do away with unemployment, the uninsured, heart

disease, obesity and the coming Social Security crunch. We could try editing out

death and taxes, but I don't think we should overreach right away. Just start

with something simple, like years of scientific research on global warming, and

blue pencil that sucker out of existence. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

 

Inspiring as the remarkable Bush approach to resolving global warming is -- the

simplicity of it, the beauty of it, I cannot get over it -- does it not suggest

a certain cavalier je ne sais quoi about the future? What I mean is, is anybody

there concerned about what happens to people?

 

I realize the energy industry and auto industry and other major campaign

contributors would prefer to think global warming does not exist, but how long

do you think it will take before reality catches up with all of us? The White

House editors (hi, Karl) instead chose to insert a new study on global

non-warming funded by ... ta-da! ... the American Petroleum Institute.

 

Dear old API, author of innumerable ringing editorials on the desperate need to

leave the oil depletion allowance at 27 percent (certain Texas newspapers that

shall remain nameless used to run those editorials without changing a single

comma), is really swell at representing the oil bidness. Fond as I am of many of

API lobbyists I have known over the years, I am not quite sure I want those

bozos calling the shots on global warming. I have watched them buy law and bend

regulations for decades now, and while I admire their chutzpah, I am impelled to

warn you: They have no scruples, they have no decency, and they have no shame.

(See 50 years worth of reporting on the industry by The Texas Observer.) Also,

they lie.

 

Well now, danged if that doesn't bring us to the subject of lying and the White

House. Let us set aside the vexing case of the missing weapons of mass

destruction and focus on a few items closer to home. Anyone remember President

Bush's 2002 State of the Union Address? No, no, not the one where he said Iraq

had a nuclear weapons program. The one where he said he was going to expand

AmeriCorps by 50 percent, from 50,000 up to 75,000, because giving all those

young people a chance to work their way through college by doing good for the

community is so noble and effective.

 

" USA Freedom Corps will expand and improve the good efforts of AmeriCorps and

Senior Corps to recruit more than 200,000 new volunteers, " he said.

 

Last week, Bush and Republicans in Congress cut AmeriCorps by 80 percent.

According to Jonathan Alter in Newsweek, Congress, under pressure, restored some

of it, but it still leaves Americorps with a 58 percent cut and tens of

thousands of fewer participants out there teaching poor kids to read, helping

old folks in nursing homes, setting up community gardens, and a thousand other

good and useful tasks -- many of which get the young people started on careers

in that kind of work.

 

Alter notes that restoring AmeriCorps to its current level would take $185

million, about one-half of one percent of the president's latest tax cut for the

rich. The radical Republicans in Congress, apparently egged on by a Heritage

Foundation study from April 2003, have decided AmeriCorps is (gasp, shudder) a

jobs program.

 

What have these people got against national service?

 

Speaking of said same tax cut, too bad about the children of the working poor.

Congress just announced it's too busy to get around to the restoring the child

tax credit to 6.5 million low-income families (known to The Wall Street Journal

as " lucky duckies " because, you see, they pay little or no income tax. They only

pay 19 percent of their meager incomes in other taxes.).

 

FYI: If you put " George W. Bush " and " lies " into the Google search engine, you

get 250,000 references in nine-tenths of a second.

 

 

 

© 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

 

 

 

 

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