After casting her ballot for Barack Obama, Amanda Jones said simply, "I feel good about voting for him." Ms. Jones, of Cedar Creek, Texas (a town just south of Austin), is African-American, and what gives her vote some historic punch is that she's 109 years old. Her father was a slave. Her mother was born right after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. She's been through it all--Jim Crow segregation, women's suffrage, the Great Depression, the poll tax, FDR, the civil-rights movement, desegregation, 13 years of George W (five as guv, eight as prez), and now: Barack Obama. This last change fills her with joy, she says.
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Bush makes a dirty deal
Those who play by the rules . . . are doomed to lose to those who don’t.”
You won’t find this embroidered in needlepoint on Granny’s wall, but it’s the cynical principle behind George W.’s latest assault on our nation’s environment.
Christie Whitman, the head of the EPA and Bush’s official environmental hit woman, has proposed a change in the Clean Air Act that would give a financial advantage to operators of dirty power plants.
Under present law, any new power plant has to have anti-pollution devices to prevent contaminants from poisoning our air. The law also says that if an old facility is expanded, its equipment must be upgraded to meet the same clean-air standards.
But operators of these old, dirty plants routinely claim that they are not “expanding” their facilities, but merely increasing their power production through “routine maintenance” not subject to the Clean Air Act.
This is like a thief redefining robbery as a “readjustment of assets” and, therefore, not against the law.
By whatever name, these dirty utilities are still ramping up production and profiting from the increased poisons we have to breathe.
The utilities invested heavily in George W.’s grab for the White House, and Whitman is delivering the return they expect. Her new proposal accepts the industry’s “routine maintenance” scam and allows them to increase toxic emissions without installing clean-air equipment.
To fight this dirty deal, contact Clean Air Trust at 202-785-9625.