Don't be DISTRACTED by irrational tweetie rants!
That's not what matters!
25 September 17
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
FOCUS: Mort Rosenblum| America the Beautiful - While It Lasts
Mort Rosenblum, Mort Report Dispatches
Rosenblum writes: "Public outcry, pressure on legislators and support for conservationist groups that pledge to sue the government to a standstill can slow the Trump juggernaut. But that will take a long, sustained battle of attrition."
READ MORE
ust about every metro rider here knows the game. When a big-mouthed guy with weird hair distracts people's attention, someone is going to get his pocket picked. Americans back home ought to take heed.
Mort Rosenblum, Mort Report Dispatches
Rosenblum writes: "Public outcry, pressure on legislators and support for conservationist groups that pledge to sue the government to a standstill can slow the Trump juggernaut. But that will take a long, sustained battle of attrition."
READ MORE
ust about every metro rider here knows the game. When a big-mouthed guy with weird hair distracts people's attention, someone is going to get his pocket picked. Americans back home ought to take heed.
While our mutant P.T. Barnum hogs the Big-Top spotlight, little-noticed sideshows are savaging our schools, abusing civil rights, hamstringing the press, tampering with voter rolls and widening the abyss between rich and desperate.
Regime change can repair some of the damage. But Donald Trump's circus from hell is also plundering our national heritage -- from parks, wildlife habitats, forests, oceans, waterways and wilderness to sacred native-American ground.
Even if Trump leaves office before 2020, some depredation is already irreparable. And he is rushing to put new destructive policies in place for quick corporate profit before the rest of us he is sworn to serve finally wake up.
From the breathtaking Bears Ears National Monument in southern Utah to vast Pacific Ocean marine reserves, protected areas may soon be opened to mining, logging, grazing and commercial fishing.
Scott Pruitt, as Environmental Protection Agency chief, is supposed to protect the environment. He does the opposite in secrecy worthy of the NSA. His staff, isolated from his inner sanction, is obliged to take a course on stonewalling.
The course intro asserts: "Enemies of the United States are relentless in their pursuit of information which they can exploit to harm US interests." We know because it was leaked to Associated Press. And, of course, EPA did not comment.
There is no excuse for ignorance. Despite Trump's efforts to discredit the press and punish leakers, reporters are sounding alarms, even in Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal. The New Yorker, among others, digs into detail.
National dailies recently revealed a memo the White House tried to keep secret. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke proposes using the century-old Antiquities Act to open up 10 national monuments and slash the area of at least four of them.
The hit list includes Bears Ears, 1.2 million acres of mountain splendor with 100,000 significant Indian sites, which Barack Obama protected last December. No significant oil or minerals deposits have been reported within its boundaries.
Salt Lake City Tribune reporters unearthed documents and a map that Utah legislators submitted to the Interior Department showing how Bears Ears could be reduced in size by 90 percent.
The New York Times focused on a push to lift a ban on assessing deposits beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That, it said, is "a possible first step toward opening the pristine wilderness area to oil and gas drilling."
Thomas Pyle of the Institute for Energy Research told the Times: "The last thing enviros want is to get a more accurate picture...because it could be extensive. I don't think $50 a barrel oil is going to last forever. What are they afraid of? ...All of a sudden they're afraid of science?"
That is the crux. According to Trumpthink, only tree-hugging "enviros" care about ecology, the commons or future generations. More sensible people want profit now and big cars full of cheap gas that doesn't come from shifty Arabs.
This misses the larger picture. "Energy independence" stirs patriotic zeal, but it is about politics more than economics. Fossil fuels are fungible - available from eager sellers on four continents beyond the range of Middle East intrigues.
America must pump oil, tap natural gas and keep strategic stocks to ensure supply and to help stabilize world prices. The economy needs it. But ravaging land and polluting water for every last bit tests the limits of human cupidity.
Our boom, under Obama, cut world prices by more than half. Russia and OPEC, hardly "America First" fans, kept on producing. For all the damage done, many U.S. fracking and other costs have ended up as unprofitable tax write-off.
A global glut eases pressure to reduce carbon emissions. Coal and hard metal mining does yet more irreparable damage. Now Trump is pushing aside safeguards Obama left in place to open even more land for oilfields and orebeds.
"Energy independence" plays a large part in the turmoil and terrorism the United States faces beyond its own borders.
Look at Venezuela where I started a life of reporting in the early 60s. It was then a stable, prosperous democracy, rich from its oil with a solid middle class and not much crime. I was a yanqui, but no one told me to go home.
Hugo Chavez, a leftwing populist elected in 1999, dominated the legislature and packed the courts. Against strong opposition, he kept the lid on until he died in 2013. The new guy, an ex-bus driver named Nicolas Maduro, lacks his flair,
Chavez funded lavish social benefits with $100-a-barrel oil. Maduro tried to maintain them with half the income. Today, starving, lawless and hyper-violent, Venezuela would be a basket case if it could afford a basket.
Those 32 million neighbors need help from the United States. Trump threatens to invade. He lumps hapless Venezuela with North Korea and Iran on his personal axis of evil list. Now South Americans, like Mexicans, mostly hate us.
Oversupply destabilizes the Gulf. It adds complexities to Vladimir Putin's play for power; Russia exports more oil than Saudi Arabia. The impact on Nigeria feeds endemic war with Boko Haram and tension in the Niger Delta. And so on
In Europe, people see corporate avarice, narrow focus and public apathy as defining a new America. Many were stunned at Trump's infantile U.N. antics, pushing Kim Jong-un to hostility even China may not be able to calm down.
Europeans can trade elsewhere if necessary, but many are alarmed at an incredible shrinking America. They need help to confront climate calamity, growing demagogy, and rising human tides as millions flee poor countries.
Here in France, I hear more outrage about those threatened parks and monuments than I do back home in America. French friends gush especially about l'Oo-tah, l'Arizona and life on the rez.
At Bears Ears, the Navajo can use all the help they can get. Tribal attorney general Ethel Branch told Reuters, "We are prepared to challenge immediately whatever official action is taken to modify the monument."
That is just one dramatic case. From Maine to the South Pacific, civil servants on our payroll, in offices displaying our flag, are looting natural resources and national treasure in plain sight.
Public outcry, pressure on legislators and support for conservationist groups that pledge to sue the government to a standstill can slow the Trump juggernaut. But that will take a long, sustained battle of attrition.
Randi Spivak of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity put it simply enough in an appeal for support:
"Zinke and Trump only understand exploitation and greed. These irreplaceable public lands belong to all Americans, and we all lose if our natural inheritance is exploited for corporate gain."
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/45964-focus-america-the-beautiful-while-it-lasts
No comments:
Post a Comment