The past week has been one of stark contrasts. The deaths of
two remarkable Americans — George Kennan, who urged the country to seek
diplomacy rather than war, and former Rochesterian Sol Linowitz, who applied
his wisdom and judgment to better the world — were reminders of what this
country once stood for. And the Bush administration and its supporters in
Congress continued to remind us of the country’s new values.
           Laurence
Britt details the problems of the latest Bush appointments in this issue. To
these travesties are added… where should we start?
           With the Republicans’
grandstanding over the tragic case of Terri Schiavo? With the continued
pressure to cut taxes for the wealthy? The news that Halliburton overcharged
the government by more than $108 million for fuel it bought for Iraq?
Senate Republicans saying that we don’t need to know whether the Bush
administration misused and distorted intelligence reports in the lead-up to the
Iraq war?
           Or how
about Donald Rumsfeld’s deciding that we should send more than half of the
prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to other countries — where, the New York Times reports, they’ll be
beyond US court jurisdiction and could be tortured?
           Or the
president’s “town meetings” on Social Security, staged events that masquerade
as conversations with ordinary Americans? These average citizens, the Washington Post reported, are Bush
supporters who are not only screened but are rehearsed.
           How about
the Environmental Protection Agency’s new rules governing the emission of
mercury into the air from US coal-burning power plants? Mercury, a highly toxic
substance, can damage children’s brains — and the brains of pregnant women’s
fetuses. Under the new rules, it’ll be years before safe levels of mercury
emissions are reached.
           Then
there’s the assault on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the latest
indication of the Bush administration’s loyalty to the energy industry. In his
book “American Dynasty,” author Kevin Phillips has documented the long, long
history of the Bush family’s association with energy companies. And Republican
loyalists in the House and Senate seem happy to help the president help his
friends. Never mind that ANWR will provide little in the way of new oil — when it provides new oil (an estimated
10 years from now) — if it provides
it. (Even some of the big oil companies have become less enchanted: “I don’t
know if there’s anything in ANWR or not,” the Times quotes an ExxonMobil executive as saying.)
           And
certainly never mind that the country has abandoned any pretense at seeking the
real path to energy independence: conservation. The most we could hope for from
ANWR, according to news reports, is 1 million barrels of oil a day. We could
save that much, the Times said last
week, by “closing the so-called SUV loophole — making light trucks as
efficient over all as ordinary cars.”
           “Increasing
fuel-economy standards for cars by about 50 percent, to 40 miles per gallon…
would save 2.5 million barrels a day,” said the Times.
           It has
taken little time for the Bush administration to wreak havoc. And sadly, it
will take generations to clean it up.
This article appears in Mar 23-29, 2005.
