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An Unprecedented Attack from Polluters
The House has passed a devastating budget plan that would destroy bedrock safeguards that have protected our health and environment for decades.
As a new mother, it breaks my heart when I hear stories from parents who are struggling with their kids' health problems. I know parents who live in fear of their child's next asthma attack. Some can't even let their kids play outside when local air pollution hits dangerous levels. We do everything we can to protect our kids, even before they're born.
When I was expecting my daughter, I was careful not to eat fish known to have high levels of toxic mercury. Now that I'm a mom I've started paying a lot more attention to alerts about bad air days. But sometimes, it's just not enough.
Unfortunately, the pollution that spews from coal-fired power plants and vehicle tailpipes makes no distinction between old and young or between healthy and weak. And although we're all affected, the youngest and most vulnerable end up paying the highest price.
I can't understand how anyone in a position of authority could fail to use that power to protect children, the elderly, and other vulnerable citizens from threats to their well–being. We have the technology and the know-how to clean up this pollution and save thousands of lives. But the coal and oil industries spend millions on lobbyists each year to maintain the status quo. When I hear about elected officials doing everything they can to undermine commonsense protections while helping polluters, I get mad.
Polls show that the majority of Americans agree with me when I say that it's absolutely unacceptable that some members of Congress are trying to cripple the Clean Air Act. Those lawmakers want to hobble the Environmental Protection Agency, so that the coal and oil industries can continue to pump soot, smog, mercury, arsenic, lead, and other toxins into our water and air.
During its first 20 years alone, the EPA saved more than 200,000 lives and prevented millions of asthma attacks, heart problems, and other serious illnesses--simply by enforcing the Clean Air Act.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is eager to keep saving lives and taxpayer money. But in spite of the proven benefits of clean-air standards, "polluters-before-people" members of Congress are trying to block the EPA from protecting communities from air pollutants that put thousands of children at risk of slowed brain development and asthma.
That, however, is just the beginning. The U.S. House of Representatives has now passed a devastating budget plan that would gut both the EPA's authority and its ability to protect our air and water. This radical approach would effectively destroy bedrock safeguards that have protected our health and environment for decades.
Amazingly, 235 members of the House voted for this budget plan, which kicks American families and workers while we're down and does nothing to create jobs or grow the economy. Adding insult to injury, their vote left government handouts to wealthy corporate polluters untouched--a move that will cost American taxpayers billions of dollars.
Our nation's first awakening to the serious problems created by unchecked industrial pollution prompted the creation of the EPA four decades ago. Since then, the agency has played a critical role in implementing and enforcing safeguards against polluters run amok. We all enjoy cleaner air and water than we did 40 years ago, but pollution levels are still dangerously high. Our work--and the EPA's job--isn't done.
As we confront the energy and resource challenges of the 21st century, we need the EPA more than ever. Just ask the millions of parents whose kids are suffering from asthma, or pregnant women who must worry about their exposure to mercury.
We need our congressional leaders to recognize that our nation's physical and economic well-being depends on strong health and safety standards, and a strong EPA to enforce them. Congress should get to work meeting the real challenges that face America--and let the EPA get on with its work of cracking down on polluters to protect every American's right to drink clean water and breathe clean air.
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10 Comments so far
Show All[I can't understand how anyone in a position of authority could fail to use that power to protect children, the elderly, and other vulnerable citizens from threats]
I can. There's profit to be made in treating your illnesses, there's profit to be made by ignoring those threats. Profits are the true god for the Republican, in spite of any false piety they express for the xtian god... I suppose it's also their political ideology as well, they want no regulation at all. I do wonder what regulations and laws they'd go after if they were able to succeed at removing all the regs at the fed level...
You say: " they want no regulation at all."
...I must take issue.
They want to regulate the crap out of US. Regulate us into cells or crypts, if needs be.
Oh the "Market" will solve all this.
See what can happen is some Corporation can sell a product called "Clean air ". They already do this to an extent in Japan and Asia.
Just set up vending machines selling "Rocky Mountain Clean Air" in plastic bottles in every neighborhood and parents can give their children 2 dollars to buy one of these bottles at 50 cents a bottle when they feel a need for clean air.
Regulations get in the way of innovation and job creation. The Invisible hand of the free market can solve any problem if the entrepreneurs of the world are freed of the same.
Indeed we can have service stations selling it by the car full. Just pull up to a clean air pump, roll the windows up and fill the cab with nice clean air for a few dollars. You can then drive around the city isolated from all that pollution out there.
This will create Jobs in the bottled air industry and increase the GDP.
Republicans, congressional leaders or not, are incapable of recognizing anything other than a tiny BB that rattles between their ears. They are utterly insensitive to the harm they do and it is impossible to discuss anything other than how we will all bend over and take what they have to give. There is no no urge to seek actual solutions and an absolute antipathy to compromise for the common good. In fact, "common good" reeks of socialism (that tiny BB hit a stray synapse. Better keep government hands off of our Medicare.).
Asking congressional leaders to recognize "that our nation's physical and economic well-being depends on strong health and safety standards, and a strong EPA to enforce them" is useless. Republicans are not remotely interested in our nation's physical and economic well-being. They are deaf to everything but that BB. And democrats in congress will do what they always do best -- bend over and take it. The rest of us better get used to living in sh*t. That's all congress has to offer.
re: "Amazingly, 235 members of the House voted for this budget plan, which kicks American families and workers while we're down and does nothing to create jobs or grow the economy. Adding insult to injury, their vote left government handouts to wealthy corporate polluters untouched--a move that will cost American taxpayers billions of dollars."
What is amazing is that this is not amazing. Does anyone need more evidence that this government has not only lost its path entirely, it's gone completely insane? I'm no tea-bagger decrying government bloat. On the contrary, the notion that people can govern themselves through the private sector 'sorting out social priorities', is exposed here and everywhere to be a complete, and very dangerous lie.
Unbridled deregulation, and privatization is INSANE.
More, now than EVER before, we need strident, and stringent environmental guidelines and regulations. Is there no one of power and influence left today that understands that rampant, unmitigated pursuit of profit = mass death for everyone?
Impeach the entire government. We must wake up now or die.
REVOLUTION NOW
We need congressional leaders, period. Not the corporate toadies with disdain for the "commoner" we have. I've been watching this going on for at least twenty years, when will the rest of middle class Americans wake up and help me take back our country? UNITED WE STAND.
It's amazing how many people "can't understand how anyone in a position of authority could fail to use that power to protect children, the elderly, and other vulnerable citizens from threats to their well–being".
Trust me. The only way to get into a position of authority is to teach oneself how to turn off any empathy toward vulnerable citizens. Those who can't do that don't last long, in most professions. The helping professions, nursing, social work, things like think sometimes are able to allow people to continue to care, but even that becomes problematic once they get promoted to being a boss.
This is why making persuasive cases to get those in charge to see "the error of their ways" has thusfar been so ineffective. We need some kind of leverage and, unfortunately, there isn't much available to us right now.
Wait till things get worse.
Of course, if Real Cost Accounting were used in association with the Social Bottom Line, where the social costs (and not just the medical ones) of the negative consequences of pollution on us all), were counted (and actually published), NO ONE -- not even the wizards in Congress -- could claim they were saving us money by cutting back or eliminating programs such as the Clean Air Act. To the contrary.
There would be no way for them to justify it. The WHOLE of society pays the damages. We're talking MONEY here, not even getting into pain and heartbreak which authorities seem to ignore with ease...
This point is really pretty much of a no-brainer IF you really care about people, their health and social responsibility. It would be an EASY case to make on the floor of Congress and in the districts. Easy. If there was the will.
I guess that pretty much says it all. Those with access to Power don't care -- at least not enough to defy their Campaign Funders. Without Election Reform and REAL Campaign Finance Reform, the chance of getting a Congress that represents us (i.e., actual democracy, not the cosmetic one we have), is next to none.
If we had leadership(!), the case could be made to stop pollution at the root. IF only...
Republicans gang up to protect the corporate state they are implanting,...but I feel we are especially betrayed by the Democratic Party that doesn't even make the case made here: that stopping pollution saves money, health AND lives. They do not articulate, much less support the People's point of view.
Yet ev'ry two years they get all teary-eyed and practically demand that the "people" support them. And prevent election reform that would open up space for other parties. public financing, and free TV time. No wonder the People's Concerns cannot be heard, much less legislated...