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| No One Can Say They Didn't See It Coming [message #57499] |
Thu, 01 September 2005 11:16  |
Time For a Revolution
Messages: 1
Registered: September 2005
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Junior Member |
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essentially
> dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush
> administration
> cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps
> of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more
> than
> 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total
> reduction
> in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of
> the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds
> for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.
>
> The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published
> a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now
> underwater,
> reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the
> wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked
> about
> the lack of preparation."
>
> The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers
> almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm
> surge.
> In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding
> New
> Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf
> reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of
> wetlands,
> a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by
> President
> Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers.
> The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then
> announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow
> related to interstate commerce.
>
> In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups
> conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands
> protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a
> Category
> 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that
> is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the report's
> authors.
> The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality
> dismissed
> the study as "highly questionable," and boasted, "Everybody loves what
> we're
> doing."
>
> "My administration's climate change policy will be science based,"
> President
> Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection
> Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations
> reflecting
> its expert research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a
> bureaucracy,"
> and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report.
> The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive "Report on the
> Environment," stating, "Climate change has global consequences for human
> health and the environment," the White House simply demanded removal of
> the
> line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this
> year,
> Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists,
> meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising
> temperature
> of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.
>
> In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20
> Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in
> Policymaking": "Successful application of science has played a large part
> in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's
> most
> powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ...
> Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and
> administrations
> of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration
> of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The
> distortion
> of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease." Bush
> completely
> ignored this statement.
>
> In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of
> science
> by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal
> Drug
> Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after
> contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety
> and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United
> Nations
> special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of
> responsibility
> for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's
> evangelical
> Christian agenda of "abstinence." When the chief of the Bureau of Justice
> Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to
> delete
> its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to
> racial
> profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was
> forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting
> oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for
> work
> in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was
> formerly
> CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the
> National
> Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking
> professional
> background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and
> prohibit
> any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials
> through
> the Park Service.
>
> On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in
> Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D.
> Roosevelt: "And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to
> the region was by bringing freedom to Japan." Bush had boarded his very
> own
> "Streetcar Named Desire."
>
>No disrespect intended DJ, but your response just reinforced the stereotype
of someone who works in the industry.
"DJ" <animix_spam-this-ahole_@animas.net> wrote:
>
>"gene lennon" <glennon@NOSPmyrealbox.com> wrote in message
>news:43171cbd$1@linux...
>>
>> Has anyone noticed that after working five years on the new White House
>sponsored
>> energy bill, the U.S. Congress passed a bill that fails to reduce
>America's
>> dependence on oil, fails to address the threat of global warming, fails
to
>> make any significant new investments in clean energy, and fails to help
>consum
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