Thursday, June 19, 2003

What Am I Outraged By Today? The following two things are outrageous. First, a new report by the EPA reviews the state of the global environment.  However, it seems that the White House scrubbed most of the global warming section.  In what I can only assume is a nod to the energy interests that are in no small part responsible for Bush's presidency, the Administration is attempting to ensure that we don't hear what they don't want us to.  I'll snip in the New York Times today: The editing eliminated references to many studies concluding that warming is at least partly caused by rising concentrations of smokestack and tail-pipe emissions and could threaten health and ecosystems. Among the deletions were conclusions about the likely human contribution to warming from a 2001 report on climate by the National Research Council that the White House had commissioned and that President Bush had endorsed in speeches that year. White House officials also deleted a reference to a 1999 study showing that global temperatures had risen sharply in the previous decade compared with the last 1,000 years. In its place, administration officials added a reference to a new study, partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute, questioning that conclusion. Let me tell you--if your environmental reports are ever financed by the American Petroleum Institute, you've got a problem. Global warming is real, folks.   It's getting hot in here.  So take off all your clothes. Shameful.  Just shameful.  Second, there's been a lot of coverage lately about the Bush Administration and the GOP in general failing to support an expansion--or even maintenance of current levels--of Americorps volunteer service personnel.  Despite a State of the Union pledge by Bush to expand the program by 50%, the latest budget actually cuts funds.  Evidently, there is a substantial conservative group in the Congress that wants to end government-funded volunteerism.  Do you know what Americorps does?  I do.  I was an Americorps Promise Fellow.  The majority of Americorps volunteers get paid a minimal amount plus room and board and some loan help to spend a year building houses, painting homeless shelters, renovating old buildings, reading to kids, whatever.  Promise Fellows are a smaller group that work more at an administrative level associated with specific nonprofit organizations.  I was responsible for getting high school kids to find places to volunteer. I'm going to make the brashly partisan claim that all of that is good work.  Valuable work.  Work to be proud of.  I don't see how it helps terrorists or neglects traditional values or anything like that. So is it nothing more than the simple principle of "government bad" that drives this?  Is the government always bad, excluding the obvious goodness of preventing gays from having sex with each other willingly or the equally good prevention of women from choosing what to do with their own bodies?  Is paying a nominal amount to help a bunch of twentysomethings build houses really a bad thing?  And if you don't have a substitute, isn't just cutting off a bunch of volunteers from being able to volunteer just pure, simple mean-spiritedness? And why isn't Bush fighting for this, as he said he would in the goddamned State of the Union?  Why? These are dark times for America. 4:41:52 PM    Let's hear it. []