To enlarge the picture, click on it.Molly Ivins
June 26, 2003
To enlarge the picture, click on it.
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.
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