Good article, but there's just one error, and it's a whopper.

"The Greens made the election close enough to be stolen, . . ."

Wrong. Al Gore made the election close enough to be stolen. It's truly
sickening to see Democrats, with their massive power base and financial
resources, trying to blame a third party for their own failure.  Solve your
own problems, Democrats, don't try to find scapegoats.

Tom Mathews


In a message dated 01-01-09 09:37:42 EST, you write:

<< Here is an article by Iowa City Sierra Club group member and work
 colleague.  It is also posted on the following URL:
 http://www.Coprenicus.com/articles/norton.htm
 Rex Bavousett

 "Gentlemen, Start Your Chainsaws"
 by Winston Barclay
 Americans' concern about the environment has not been lost on the
 pro-corporate, anti-regulation wing of the Republican Party. In
 recent years, the consistent opponents of federal environmental
 protection, wilderness designation and species preservation have
 attempted to paint themselves a faint shade of polyester green,
 including creating faux-environmental organizations that the real,
 established defenders of the environment have dismissed with labels
 including "greenscam" and "greenwash."

 One of these fake environmental organizations is the Coalition of
 Republican Environmental Advocates (CREA), a PAC organized for the
 right-wing in 1998 by partisans like Grover Norquist, a registered
 lobbyist for British Petroleum, the president of Americans for Tax
 Reform and one of the Heritage Foundation's authors of the Newt
 Gingrich's "Contract With America." Norquist, you may recall, tried
 to leave his mark on the environment by leading the national campaign
 to add the face of Ronald "trees cause pollution" Reagan to Mt.
 Rushmore National Monument.

 Included in the founding CREA advisory committee was former Colorado
 Attorney General Gale Norton, once a member of the staff of infamous
 Interior Secretary James Watt, and now offered for confirmation as
 Bush's Secretary of the Interior. It was her Reagan Administration
 boss who drew contrasts between "environmentalists" and "Americans"
 in a speech to ranchers and developers, and argued that there was no
 reason to protect the environment because Jesus was coming back soon.
 Before he resigned under siege in 1983, Watt cut expenditures for
 protecting endangered species, proposed eliminating the fund used to
 enlarge national parks and forests, advocated opening wilderness
 areas to oil and gas leases, and proposed selling public lands for
 development at bargain prices.

 Even with the Watt association, Norton's ambiguous general record may
 blunt opposition to her confirmation. She defended Colorado's
 anti-gay-rights amendment before the US Supreme Court, supported the
 re-introduction of prison chain-gangs and advocated a constitutional
 convention to promote term-limit and balanced budget amendments, but
 she also is pro-choice and as Colorado's attorney general she
 vigorously joined the national anti-tobacco class-action suit. Some
 people's reservations may be assuaged when they learn that she wrote
 of the tobacco suit, " I do not consider myself an anti-tobacco
 activist. I am a free-market conservative and an advocate of judicial
 restraint. I am a proponent of personal responsibility for one's
 actions. Given these views, I was a tough sell on the idea that
 litigation against the tobacco industry was justified, or that new
 national legislation was a good idea. But I also believe in the rule
 of law. The facts that we've learned about the tobacco industry are
 extraordinary. They reveal behavior that cannot be ignored, behavior
 that must change. This is especially true when the price of this
 inappropriate behavior is public health."

 As open-minded as that excerpt sounds, Norton's history on
 environmental issues tells you all you need to know about what we can
 expect from an Interior Department under her leadership. The
 right-wing Federalist Society, which Washington Monthly recently
 labeled " The Conservative Cabal That's Transforming American Law"
 (Starr, Scalia and Clarence Thomas are members), lists her among
 their recommended environmental-law experts, and her first prominent
 job was in the Coors-funded Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF),
 of which Watt was the first president.

 MSLF describes its mission as providing "a strong and effective voice
 for freedom of enterprise, the rights of private property ownership,
 and the multiple use of federal and state resources." Any
 environmentalist immediately recognizes this language as code for the
 philosophy of "Wise Use," which claims to balance environment
 concerns with economic development needs, but routinely values
 development over protection. In the Wise Use doctrine, the potential
 for economic exploitation trumps other options for land use.

 One the recent initiatives of the MSLF was litigation to oppose
 President Clinton's designation of 540,000 acres of land in
 Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and Arizona as national monuments. In
 another case, MSLF worked for the Independent Petroleum Association
 of America in challenging the Forest Service's decision not to offer
 oil and gas leases in the Lewis and Clark National Forest. The MSLF
 also supported Wyoming Sawmills, Inc. in a challenge to Forest
 Service decisions to remove an area in the Bighorn National Forest,
 visible from Medicine Wheel Historic Landmark, from logging plans as
 a gesture of respect for Native American religious groups.

 MSLF lists as one of its focuses "takings." "Takings" is a gambit
 that seeks to discourage environmental protection by promoting the
 legal logic that the government should compensate landowners for the
 land-value costs of complying with environmental laws and other
 land-use regulations. "Takings" legislation has become a favorite
 strategy of environmental opponents: The National Wildlife Federation
 reports that "takings" proposals have been introduced in 43 states in
 the last decade.

 As a Colorado state official, Norton was a strong advocate of
 Colorado's "self- audit" law, which allows companies to conduct
 voluntary self-policing to determine whether they are complying with
 environmental requirements. Promoted as an incentive for companies to
 self-report and correct violations, "self-audit" schemes are
 condemned by the EPA and environmentalists as a cover for lax
 enforcement of environmental laws. (Bush helped push corporate
 self-regulation in Texas, with the result that, during his tenure as
 governor, Texas became the most polluted state in the country, and
 Houston supplanted Los Angeles as the American city with the most
 polluted air.)

 Norton's prominent role in CREA is also revealing. With more classic
 Wise Use obfuscation, CREA claims to "foster constructive discussion,
 not divisive debate" and promote "local solutions over Washington
 mandates, sound science over emotionalism, and common sense over
 extremism." That sounds moderate enough to the casual reader, but
 look who has funded CREA: The list includes the National Mining
 Association, American Forest Paper Association, the Chemical
 Manufacturers Association, the Chlorine Chemical Council, the
 National Coal Council, Amoco, ARCO, Texaco, Ford Motors, Coors
 Brewing Co. and Edison Electric.

 The CREA Steering Committee has included lobbyists for Amoco, Texaco,
 Shell Oil, Total Petroleum, Lion Oil, General Motors, the
 International Council of Shopping Centers, Smith & Wesson, Inland
 Steel, and Hydrocarbon Trading and Transport.

 The prominent politicians in its founding membership -- including not
 only founding board member Newt Gingrich but also Trent Lott, Don
 Young, Larry Craig, Helen Chenoweth, Dirk Kempthorne, Richard Pombo,
 Bill Archer and Tom DeLay -- are among the those whose voting records
 have consistently scored at the bottom in the League of Conservation
 Voters' ratings. In fact, no Republicans with good environmental
 voting records have been involved with CREA. When the Atlanta Journal
 Constitution asked Republicans for Environmental Protection member
 Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) if he is associated with CREA, he replied,
 "Oh gosh, no. I belong to a respectable environmental organization."

 Boehlert's comment is a reminder that there ARE pro-environment,
 pro-conservation Republicans from which Bush could have chosen. As
 Ronald Reagan was surprised to learn when he tried to broad-brush
 environmentalists as leftist radicals, the conservation movement has
 deep roots in the Republican Party -- after all, conservation is a
 conservative principle. Chuck McGrady, who became president of the
 Sierra Club in 1999, is a Christian Republican from North Carolina.

 The fact that Bush by-passed available conservationist conservatives
 in favor of Wise Use rapacity signals, no less than the appointment
 of John Ashcroft as Attorney General, that the Bush regime will act
 as if it has a mandate to pursue a far-right, pro-corporate agenda.
 The Greens made the election close enough to be stolen, and Bush is
 going to rub their noses in it. As one environmentalist responded
 when learning of the Norton appointment, "Gentleman, start your
 chainsaws."
 -------------------- >>

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