Pharrryngula: Without knowledge, Dennis Prager is insignificant

Pharryngula

We live on one planet orbiting one star, which is only one of about a hundred billion stars in our galaxy, which is only one of a few hundred billion galaxies in our universe. These all have no meaning because Dennis Prager does not appreciate them.

Our universe is about 14 billion years old, our planet is about 4.5 billion years old, complex animal life has thrived for about a half billion years, modern Homo sapiens arose about 150,000 years ago, and none of this had any meaning until a few clannish goat-herders started worshipping a single sky-god a few thousand years ago."

The sacred pieties of these "God-centered Jews and Christians" reduce the meaning of a human life to equivalence with a single cell or a mindless near-corpse, and then they bestow on it only that portion of grandeur they can borrow from an imaginary super-being. His irony is a fabrication; humanists don't regard human life as worthless. Rather, one life in the here and now is all we get, and it is infinitely valuable. Furthermore, we don't need to boost our fragile self-esteem by deprecating everything else—dolphins are great and beautiful creatures, as are spiders and sea anemones and scrub pines and E. coli. The universe is a wonderful place, huge and complex and diverse and largely independent of my existence, and I am greatly privileged to be one small but precious voice singing in a mighty cosmic choir. Embracing the majesty of existence does not make me a smaller man.

Dennis Prager exemplifies for me the cheap and petty spirit of the Religious Right, the kind of small mind that tries to puff up its importance by diminishing the significance of everything else around him. Some "Christian"; I'd heard rumors that humility and respect for the awesome creations of their god were alleged virtues in his faith, but I guess those were wrong. They are worshippers of ignorance, acolytes of the cult of "me first", vandals and rapers of the natural world.

Replies:

Whenever I'm informed that my life lacks value because it is not eternal, I think that it a strange kind of economy that assigns greater worth to what is in abundance while devaluing that which is precious and rare.

So this guy can pretty much blow me.

Bad theology

It's All Good...For Me To Crush

I won't even go into Prager's whole argument on secular vs. religious views of the environment, because it's basically the same thing that's gone on in the prior 15 installments of Us vs. Them: secular ideas strip everything of all meaning and turn you into a suicidal shell of your former self while Christianity makes the sun shine and the birds sing.

Replies:

1.

Ugh. To say nothing of the notion of the Covenant in Judeo-Christian tradition (not to the exclusion of similar notions in other traditions). Dolphins, like all nature, are good and beautiful because G-d created them. And we should preserve them, as Noah preserved the animals, because G-d created them. And to say that something is beautiful only if and to the extent that humans find it so isn't religiosity, it's solipsism and nihilism.

Whatta schmuck.

2.

In the words of the Talmud, every person should look at the world and say, "The world was created for me."

I'm reasonably familiar with this---the original telling is that the rabbi said something along the lines of: "There are two truths, and you should keep both of them in your pocket, to bring out from time to time as you need each of them. The first, that the whole world was created for you. The second, that you are but dust and ashes."

It's one of my favorite religious lessons, expressing duality and goodness, complexity and simplicity, all in one little story. Somehow, repeating only one of them? doesn't seem to me to be a faithful retelling.

3.

The key notion for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is stewardship. Humans have dominion only as G-d's local managers. The world isn't made for human consumption, but for temporary use in accord with G-d's plan. Since G-d made various creatures, environments, etc., humans are not entitled to capriciously destroy them.

On the science/history note, Prager is a moron. Newton was a Unitarian who was denied a position at Cambridge because he denied the doctrine of the Trinity (and implicitly the divinity of Jesus). Funny who Prager left that part out.

4.

I'm with paul: the description of scientists who are also religious is patronizing in the least, and a blatant mischaracterization. Part of both the study of God (theology) and the study of nature (science) is humility; reading the evidence in a way that conforms exclusively to a preconceived worldview and selectively ignoring the evidence that doesn't fit in is arrogant in the extreme. One has to assume some pretty awful things about the Creator to look at the universe and try to ram it into a form commensurate with the "literal" reading of Genesis. This "literal" reading is based on shoddy reasoning itself, turning two different creation stories (even the name used for God is different, if I remember my Hebrew class correctly) into one narrative.

The scientific evidence seems to say that biodiversity is a good thing for the planet, which is consistent with the religious view of stewardship.

5.

Jesse, I'm not seeing Prager fall victim to the central conceit of creationism-- namely that it is designed "just so." Rather, Prager seems to be making the argument that as rational beings, we can understand it. Now, his precise theological argument-- that we must use that understanding to dominate it-- is one that you can feel free to argue over on its theological merits, but I don't think he's falling victim to any of the standard creationist canards, and the starting point of his argument isn't anything that simply a generic belief in a god who created the universe would lead to.

The thing he misses, however, is the concept of humans as caretakers of the earth. He seems to be more concerned about the fact that abusing the earth is a personal sin than about the fact that abusing the earth also hurts others and shows a general disrespect for creation in general.

He also misses the truth of other parts of the old testament-- namely that nature will inevitably, inexorably wear us all down-- ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all that. His attitude to the world owes more to the conceits of the Englightenment and what classical writers of Greece called hubris. He's just dressing it up in "Judeo-Christian moral values," because he wants to claim that his personal opinions are somehow the same worldview of a millenia-old religious tradition.

For those not familiar with Jump the Shark's website, it is based on television commentors discussing exactly why the left when their favorite programs started to go down hill. It would seem to me Dennis Prager's column on the environments insignificance would be the appropriate time to move on.

Bush administration's environmental record

Government corruption

March 2003
Forest Service officials inform employees of the agency's Content Analysis Team (CAT) that the work they are doing will be outsourced to the private sector. The management team will remain, but the content analysis work will be farmed out to contract consultants. This decision is made despite the department's reputation for remarkable efficiency. In October 2002, a study commissioned by Yosemite National Park had praised CAT saying it had a “track record ... [un]equaled by any other organized process.” (see October 2002). A study three months later will conclude that outsourcing will actually cost the agency more (see June 2004). [Missoulian, 11/15/2003; Associated Press, 11/14/2003; High Country News, 4/26/2004

February 12, 2004
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) auctions off oil and gas leases for 14 parcels of federal land located near Dinosaur Monument in Colorado and Utah. The leases—totaling some 5,000 acres—include areas that were previously identified by the agency as having wilderness quality but which lost their protected status as part of a settlement between the state of Utah and the BLM (see April 11, 2003). A number of the leases—some selling for as little as $5 per acre—are purchased by contributors to President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign. [The Washington Post, 3/1/2004; Salt Lake Tribune, 2/14/2004; League of Conservation Voters, n.d.] According to the Environmental Working Group, the area includes seven Mexican spotted owl habitats, 12 golden eagle habitats and four peregrine falcon habitats. [The Washington Post, 3/1/2004; Environmental Working Group, n.d.]

Government appointments and resignations
February 27, 2002
Eric Schaeffer, 47, head of the EPA's Office of Regulatory Enforcement, sends his letter of resignation to EPA administrator Christine Whitman. In the letter he says that he and his colleagues have been “fighting a White House that seems determined to weaken the rules that [EPA employees] are trying to enforce.” He complains that the administration is crippling the EPA's enforcement divisions with budget cuts and that the White House is working with energy-industry lobbyists to weaken the New Source Review provision of the Clean Air Act which requires older coal power plants to install pollution controls when upgrading plant equipment (see August 27, 2003). [Philadelphia Inquirer, 3/1/2002; Washington Monthly, July/August 2002; New York Times, 1/5/2004; MSNBC, 4/20/2004 Sources: Eric Schaeffer's Letter of Resignation, February 27, 2002]

August 11, 2003
President George Bush names Utah Governor Mike Leavitt as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, replacing Christie Todd Whitman who resigned in June. [White House, 8/11/2003] Leavitt was at the center of a controversy a couple of months ago for a back-room deal he made with Interior Secretary Gale Norton to suspend wilderness studies on millions of acres of Utah lands (see April 11, 2003). He supports replacing mandatory pollution controls with voluntary compliance programs for polluting industries and is a strong backer of the administration's policy of shifting environmental regulation to the states. [League of Conservation Voters, n.d.; Washington Times, 8/12/2003] During his term as governor, US Magnesium, a magnesium-processing company on the western side of the Great Salt Lake, earned the place as the nation's worst polluter. Leavitt says that he and Bush “have a like mind and a like heart” on environmental policy. [Salt Lake City Tribune, 8/12/2003] Environmentalists condemn the nomination noting that aside from Leavitt's strong opposition to a plan to store nuclear waste on a Utah Indian reservation, the governor has a very poor environmental record. “Mike Leavitt has no credentials, no understanding and no political willpower to protect America's clean air, clean water and clean land,” Marc Clemens, chapter coordinator for the Utah Sierra Club, tells the Salt Lake Tribune. [Salt Lake City Tribune, 8/12/2003]

Politicization and deception
(Between 2001 and 2002)
Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey's office orders employees of the Forest Service's Content Analysis Team (CAT) to downplay the public's feelings towards the Roadless Rule in a report the team is preparing for policy decision-makers. The office also instructs them not to mention how many people have sent in comments on the issue. A memo is later distributed to the team's employees setting the limits on what they are permitted to say in the report. It instructs them to “avoid any emphasis on conflict or opposition and also avoid any appearance of measuring the ‘ote’ highlighting areas of conflict [because it] serves no good purpose in dealing with the issues or interests, and may only exacerbate the problems.” The memo even provides explicit instructions on what words the CAT team can and cannot use. Among the list of banned terms are: many, most, oppose, support, impacts and clear cuts. Words that the memo suggests using instead include: some, state, comment, effects and even-aged management. [High Country News, 4/26/2004]

July 16, 2001
A study conducted by the General Accounting Office (GAO) finds that the scientists and experts who sit on the Science Advisory Board panels which advise the EPA often have ties to the affected industries or other conflicts of interest. The study, requested by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), says that EPA officials regularly fail to identify potential conflicts of interest when panel members are chosen and do not adequately disclose the existence of such conflicts to the public. Though it is prohibited for a federal employee to participate in any “particular matter” that could affect their financial interests, there is an exemption that permits special government employees to serve on advisory panels when the topic being studied directly affects the financial interests of their employer—as long as the employer is not “singularly affected.” [The Washington Post, 7/16/01]

(August 2003)
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, under the White House's Office of Management and Budget, drafts a proposal that would shift the authority for releasing emergency declarations concerning public health, safety and the environment from federal regulatory agencies to the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB). [St Louis Post-Dispatch, 1/12/2004; Baltimore Sun, 12/19/2004; The Washington Post, 1/15/2004; League of Conservation Voters, n.d.] “Under this proposal, the White House would decide what and when the public would be told about an outbreak of mad cow disease, an anthrax release, a nuclear plant accident or any other crisis,” an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch explains. [St Louis Post-Dispatch, 1/12/2004] Additionally, the White House office wants the OMB to reside over a centralized peer review process charged with vetting “any scientific or technical study relevant to regulatory policy” produced by the regulatory agencies. The OMB would have the power to reject or accept the outcome of such peer reviews. [St Louis Post-Dispatch, 1/12/2004; Baltimore Sun, 12/19/2004; The Washington Post, 1/15/2004; League of Conservation Voters, n.d.] Commercial permit applications, however, would not be subject to review. Alan Morrison, a lawyer for Public Citizen, commenting on the exception, notes, “If you want to build a dam, or dump a chemical ... you evidently don't need to have peer-reviewed science.” Academic experts who are recipients of grants from an agency whose work is being reviewed would be barred from serving on the review board. But there would be no restrictions against using experts from private industry. [Baltimore Sun, 12/19/2004] Though the administration claims that the proposed change reflects President Bush's commitment to “sound science,” critics say the measure would allow political interests to impede the creation of new regulations by subjecting them to a never-ending process of review and analysis. They also warn that the review process could easily become balanced in favor of industry. Backers of the administration's proposal include the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, Ford Motor Co., the American Chemistry Council, the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association (whose members include regulated mining concerns), and Syngenta, a pesticide company. Opponents of the plan include a number of former regulators from the administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton including former labor secretary Robert B. Reich, former EPA administrators Russell Train and Carol M. Browner, heads of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under Carter and the elder Bush; and Neal Lane, who was director of the National Science Foundation under Clinton and head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. [Baltimore Sun, 12/19/2004; The Washington Post, 1/15/2004]

Late January 2004
The US Forest Service distributes a pamphlet promoting the agency's amendment (see August 6, 2004) to the 2001 Nevada Forest Plan, which calls for more logging. In one section of the pamphlet, put together by a public relations firm, there is a series of six black-and-white photos taken at different times over a span of 80 years. The first picture, taken in 1909, shows a forested area with large trees spaced far apart. Each of the following pictures, taken at the same spot, show how the forest became denser over time. The photo-chronology suggests that the first picture represents how forests should appear in their natural state. But in Spring 2004, it is learned that the first picture had been taken after the area had been logged. Furthermore, the pictures were actually taken in Montana, not the Sierra Nevadas. It also turns out that the photos had similarly been used before by the agency to promote other forest-thinning initiatives. [Associated Press, 4/12/2004 Sources: USFS, Forests with a Future, 1/2004]

Because Americans have the right to drive SUV's

http://www.phaster.com/road_trips/suv_review_why_they_suck.html

FACT OR FICTION: SUVs are sexy and safe?

WTF is so sexy about a big box on wheels? Victoria Secret models are sexy, a Ferrari has sleek sexy styling but the styling of all SUVs is based on a box, just like a mini van! The only thing an SUV is suppose to have is 4x4 capability which is useless in urban settings and for the most part SUVs on the market lack a true low gearing ratio, solid axle and ladder frame, sliders, etc. necessary for true outback vehicles. The H2 has a number of features necessary for taking it into the bush, but it was built because marketers figured the tonka toy styling appealed to wanabe explorer soccer moms (or dads) who if really taken out into the bush would not last more than a day or two at most.

All too often I've seen SUVs on the interstate blast past me at 80+ MPH. If people want a fast, safe luxury ride there is nothing like a 700 series BMW blasting down the freeway at 100+ MPH (which is not even taxing the design), or for a more unpretentious ride try a Mercedes Benz station wagon. SUVs are not optimized for high speed cruising since they have barn door aerodynamics which results in poor fuel economy, a higher than average center of gravity which results in poor handling and on average blind spots behind an SUV is much larger than that of a car (which means there would result in a greater probability for an accident in an SUV).

As far as being safe, DOE researchers who performed a “risk analysis” using crash data from the Institute for Highway Safety, found that most passenger cars are safer than the average SUV or pickup truck when the risk posed to other drivers is taken into account, a figure the research call “combined risk.” Even the the safest SUV on the road the mammoth Chevy Suburban, is bested by much smaller Honda Accords and Toyota Camrys. The safest vehicles of them all? Minivan and import luxury cars. The worst: full-size Chevy, Ford and Dodge pickup trucks.

So much for convention wisdom about big cars being safer than small cars. It should be noted that there is a wide disparity among small cars like the front-of-the-pack Jetta and Civic and the relatively risky Ford Escort and Dodge Neon, the bottom line is good vehicle design is more important that sheer mass in terms of occupant safety. The full report can be found at:

http://www.aceee.org/pubs/t021full.pdf

As an american I think we have the right to drive what ever, however I also think it is our responsibility to buy and utilize the most efficient vehicle available. From what I have observed in a great majority of cases the general class of vehicles called SUVs are poorly designed, over priced and under utilized. If an SUV is suppose to be able to be used in the bush, then why build a unibody (I’ve been in south america, central asia, etc., where a typical SUV with a unibody sold in the states would fall apart). In the bush, a person does not want leather seats, an automatic transmission, a gas engine or unibody construction (guess what, a majority of SUVs sold in the USA have these features). The simple truth is a majority of SUVs in the USA are used in urban settings. Because SUVs have barn door aero dynamics, less responsive handling and larger parking footprints, they seem like the wrong type of vehicle for daily urban use.

Lots of people drive SUVs in urban areas, but it seems most are in denial that SUVs are boxy inefficient vehicles, which are expensive to operate and insure and are potential accidents waiting to happen. As for reasons why manufacturers produce and market so many SUVs is, first since SUVs are classified as light trucks they escape most of the federal fuel and pollution standards that apply to passenger vehicles, second SUVs are exempted from testing for crash-worthiness and roll-over resistance, and third the profit margin on SUVs is much higher than typical autos.

http://www.bridger.us/2002/12/16/CrashTestingMINICooperVsFordF150

"Are the best performers the biggest and heaviest vehicles on the road? Not at all. Among the safest cars are the midsize imports, like the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord. Or consider the extraordinary performance of some subcompacts, like the Volkswagen Jetta. Drivers of the tiny Jetta die at a rate of just forty-seven per million, which is in the same range as drivers of the five-thousand-pound Chevrolet Suburban and almost half that of popular S.U.V. models like the Ford Explorer or the GMC Jimmy. In a head-on crash, an Explorer or a Suburban would crush a Jetta or a Camry. But, clearly, the drivers of Camrys and Jettas are finding a way to avoid head-on crashes with Explorers and Suburbans. The benefits of being nimble--of being in an automobile that's capable of staying out of trouble--are in many cases greater than the benefits of being big."

Dennis Prager on the Environment, part 2

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/dp20050628.shtml

The Judeo-Christian responses are clear: Nature has been created for man's use; and on its own, without man, it has no meaning. Dolphins are adorable because human beings find them adorable. Without people to appreciate them or the role they play in the earth's ecosystem to enable human life, they are no more adorable or meaningful than a rock on Pluto.

Yes, Nature was created for mans use. Like any resource though, the issue continues to be that the industrialized world wants unlimited potential to produce and consume as much of the natural resources without regard to future generations survival. And extremist environmental groups want literally no usage of those natural resources. The yin/yang principles define an excess of one leading to a negative of another. So if green groups had their way human progress would be halted. While if the industrialized world has their way the Earth would be burned up at a pace where future generations survival would become in question.

It becomes all the more unfortunate for me to hear advice from a talk show host who has no actual pro-environmental record, whose vision for the environment resides from the polluted metropolitan LA (as opposed to living and experiencing unfettered country), and simply derives the man/nature political issue from his Bible. The Bible has always been humanities guide in life, but it cannot satisfactorily answer all of the every day and uneasy man/nature political issues. The Bible can heal and has the intention of being the highest ideal in values, but it cannot answer for corruption and human imperfection.

Dennis has in the past talked about how President Bush is a great man because of his faith in God and religion. Statements that do not have any lasting worth given the Bush Administration's record on the environment is filled with the types of mispractices that are not considered goodness. Rather a record which measures up with the dirty name the law field has built upon itself over the decades.

As for the modern secular objection to the Judeo-Christian notion of man as the pinnacle and purpose of nature, one can only say woe unto mankind if that objection prevails. When man is reduced to being part of the natural world, his status is reduced to that of a dolphin. It is one of the great ironies of the contemporary world that humanists render human life largely worthless while God-centered Jews and Christians render human life infinitely sacred. Man's worth is entirely dependent on a God-based view of the world. Without God, man is another part of the ecosystem, and often a lousy one at that.

Absurd. Humanity, irregardless of religious affiliation, will always view itself as the top of the food chain. While acknowledging religion is more prone to viewing humanity as sacred, it is the intelligence and survival mechanism built in all humans that will always remain atop the food chain. Because there are greens who spend an inordinate amount of time saving extinct species doesn't mean they themselves believe they are equal to animals. They are devoted to their causes not because they believe humanity is equal or lesser than animal, but because they feel humanity is surviving just fine on its own.

This brings up another point: Who is more responsible? Those who actively pursue their environmental causes, or those who are presumably sitting idly by on their computer criticizing those activists? Some of Dennis's points are valid provided those who side with him are actively contributing to society.

Does this mean that the biblical view of nature gives man the right to pollute the earth or to abuse animals? Absolutely not. Abusing animals is forbidden in the Torah: The ban on eating the limb of a living animal, the ban on placing two animals of different sizes on the same yoke and the ban on working animals seven days a week are just a few examples. To cause gratuitous suffering to an animal is a grave sin. As for polluting the earth, this, too, is religiously prohibited. If the purpose of nature is to ennoble human life and to bear witness to God's magnificence, by what understanding of this concept can a religious person defend polluting nature?

The best paragraph I've seen from Dennis on the environment. Unfortunately if one doesn't actively want to pursue his own political party's record on the environment, that is his prerogative. The Right's green extremism agenda becomes muted when their own party is involved in corrupt and illegal environmental practices. As a review stated earlier, I'm not certain environmental protections can have significant impact in a world that is constantly producing and developing. I do know that when a party has a record of total disregard for the environment, they are not the answer for it.

Dennis Prager on the Environment

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/dp20050621.shtml

This was extremely difficult for men to assimilate then. And as society drifts from Judeo-Christian values, it is becoming difficult to assimilate again today. Major elements in secular Western society are returning to a form of nature worship. Animals are elevated to equality with people, and the natural environment is increasingly regarded as sacred. The most extreme expressions of nature worship actually view human beings as essentially blights on nature.
Then came Genesis, which announced that a supernatural God, i.e., a god who existed outside of nature, created nature. Nothing about nature was divine.

A majority of this comment is dead on. The problem is it is plausible that there are those who are religiously inclined who find the environment a lesser, but necessary worship to God. In essence, certain of God's natural creations are worth protecting from inappropriate politicing. Otherwise Prager is suggesting there are no acts onto the environment that could be construed as being wrongdoing to God's natural creations (aka "The Bush Record").

This was extremely difficult for men to assimilate then. And as society drifts from Judeo-Christian values, it is becoming difficult to assimilate again today. Major elements in secular Western society are returning to a form of nature worship. Animals are elevated to equality with people, and the natural environment is increasingly regarded as sacred. The most extreme expressions of nature worship actually view human beings as essentially blights on nature.

Again, correct as far as it will go. "Saving the Whales" will strike many as an unhealthy nature worship, but protecting National Parks for the sake of human appreciation can hardly be put in the same category. Simply black & whiting the environmental topic wholeheartedly is an unwise vision considering the spiritual benefits that are present in people in a human/nature symbiotic relationship. That may be a mouthful, but Dennis Prager lives and breathes in LA's metropolitan. The expression 'You only know what you see' is precise considering rural America leads happier lives due to simplicity (less congestion, pollution, and consumption). The urban world, also known by author Robert Devine as the 'Wise Use' culture, knows far less about the rural world than the rural world knows about urban life. It should also be noted that passionate conservationists/environmentalists are far more likely to fight for the survival of natural wonders even though living at times up to thousands upon thousands of miles away. Why? Because they know spiritually that these visual wonders are far more of a lifelong memory and life enhancer than any human-made recreational vacation.

What is puzzling is that many people who claim to rely more on reason would do so. Nature is unworthy of worship. Nature, after all, is always amoral and usually cruel. Nature has no moral laws, only the amoral law of survival of the fittest.

Simply relying upon "it's a cruel world" isn't sufficient considering a wonder like the Grand Canyon is about the spectacle. A spectacle that was created by a God.

Why would people who value compassion, kindness or justice venerate nature? The notions of justice and caring for the weak are unique to humanity. In the rest of nature, the weak are to be killed. The individual means nothing in nature; the individual is everything to humans. A hospital, for example, is a profoundly unnatural, indeed antinatural, creation; to expend precious resources on keeping the most frail alive is simply against nature.

Because those same qualities are found in Nature just as Dennis says they are not. A pack of lions devouring a large prey is vicious and unforgiving. Yet when the meal is over, watching a mother lion clean her younger offspring of blood is "compassion" and "kindness" while creating "justice" in Nature by keeping a balance in the ecosystem for the survival of the fittest.

The romanticizing of nature, let alone the ascribing of divinity to it, involves ignoring what really happens in nature. I doubt that those American schoolchildren who conducted a campaign on behalf of freeing a killer whale (the whale in the film "Free Willy") ever saw films of actual killer whale behavior. There are National Geographic videos that show, among other things, killer whales tossing a terrified baby seal back and forth before finally killing it. Perhaps American schoolchildren should see those films and then petition killer whales not to treat baby seals sadistically.

While it is probable that most school children do not know a whales true predatory nature, do you think it is plausible that many others will just simply want whales to live a free, uninterrupted life in a violent yet beautiful natural world? Simply ascribing childrens naivity to an adult human and natural world doesn't convince.

If you care about good and evil, you cannot worship nature. And since that is what God most cares about, nature worship is antithetical to Judeo-Christian values.

Well, yes you can, but to a lesser extent. Because Nature is filled with good and evil as well.

This column by Dennis Prager, unfortunately like so many other 'conservative on the environment' columns, continues to show that the topic at hand (the environment) is merely a tug-of-war for the two-party battle. As the DNP will instigate the downfall of the current administrations war on terror, so will the RNP continue to demote the environmental topic not on the basis of what's right, but on whatever the Left is not. Once upon a time the words "conservative" and "conservationist" were one in the same as achieved by Teddy Roosevelt. Today the Left are in fact the "conservatives" on the environment, and the Right are the "liberals."

Like conservative sources, it is unfortunate that Dennis Prager's agenda on the environment revolves not around what is right, but what parallels his party. Like Rush, his program has no actual pro-environmental record in the form of taking the time to promote the "good" environmental efforts. Dennis has a record of talking about the negative or extremist green activities, but not one that focuses on any other avenues, as if green extremism has a singular definition on the environmental topic. In fact, Dennis's +/- ratio on the environment is overwhelmingly in the negative. And it becomes even more alarming to me to note that it has taken the same pattern off into conservative bloggers and local radio programs. The focus is uniformly on green extremism. I can only say from this it is the environment which loses in the end for politics, and one that is even more saddening considering I have respect for Dennis Prager on many other values. The bare truth must be told though that sources like Robert Devine's Bush Versus the Environment, Carl Pope's Strategic Ignorance, and The Bush Record are not pieces of information that will make it's way on to national conservative syndication with any consistency. Hence a sentence from my summary: "Each party believes in justice providing it benefits their agenda."

From "Bush Versus the Environment":

Of course, this is ridiculous--free-market capitalism and unbridled production and consumption are perhaps the most serious threat to the environment and the core issue underlying the regulatory aspects of environmental destruction.

It should also be noted that, as a heavey pro-consumer, Dennis Prager could never acknowledge that maybe America does consume too much as a general statement. His long standing liberal fiscal position doesn't have room for any thought process that challenges economists/marketers/producers to develop new ways of stimulating the ecomomy without producing quite the volume we are at. A near impossibility at this rate in our industrialized history given to do so would mean to increase prices to compensate for the what would be lower volume sales. As one of my favorite quotes states, "I can't change the world, but I sure can try."

Right Nation: Not representing the Right, not representing anyone

http://www.rightnation.us/forums/index.php?automodule=blog&blogid=14&cmd=showentry&eid=718
In a way only a traitor could manage it former President and destroyer of the economy of the the 70's Jimmy Carter told terrorists it's OK to kill Americans because you're justified.

This is an outright lie. Not only did Carter not say those words, but he also said these:

Carter said, however, that terrorist acts could not be justified, and that while Guantanamo "may be an aggravating factor ... it's not the basis of terrorism."

Then:

He praised British police and intelligence services for the swift arrests in connection with the July 21 failed bombing attempts on London's transit system.

I'm very proud to be in a nation that stands so stalwart against terrorism with us," he said. "The people of my country have united our hearts and sympathy for the tragedy that you have suffered from terrorism."

***

I lurked around here for about a week. Sure it is a specific site with a specific purpose, but considering the republicans are a "big tent" party, this site is more like a compact tent. Discussions either seem to be almost everyone basically agreeing and slapping each other on the back, or nasty arguments devoid of substance. The threads that are the exception to this, the ones not about political or moral issues, are perfectly fine, but they are more interesting, more humorous, and flat out better at other forums.
-Fred Johnson, on Right Nation's Forum

I read the spiel delivered in this website and wonder to myself, are these people pushing conservative propaganga for monetary gain directly or indirectly, or are they really this blind and ignorant.

Either way. I feel sorry for you, and will try to forgive what you've done to this country and others. It's incredulous...it really is that there are people like you out there, scary almost. What happened to you as you were growing up? Who raised you? Who hurt you? What's wrong with you?
-hdlc

I found this site to be somewhat entertaining.

Though, I'm sure there is a left-wing equivalent of this, it seems rather pointless, no?

I find that there is little fun in debate among those who concur with your state of mind.

However, I read through some posts, and I read through some articles. And although I didn't exactly see eye to eye, I found that you have your knowledge spoon-fed to you in the same way the "left" are, just with opposite "facts".

I don't think the right is right, and I don't think the left is right.

I think we are still searching for what will make America great.

:salute: God bless.
-A Random Nobody

The Gipper continued

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=91096
"The public debt increased by 178 percent between fiscal 1981 and fiscal 1989 rising from $789.4 billion to $2190.7 billion. Stated differently, when Reagan left office his eight year administration was accountable for 64 percent of all the debt incurred by this government since the beginning of the republic. The interest payments required to finance the debt created under his administration has exceeded more than $100 billion a year every year since he left office. If one calculates the compounding effect of the debt and the interest payments on the debt the cost to the Treasury thus far has been more than $3 trillion."

"During the late 1980s one of the largest financial disasters of the 20th century erupted when it became apparent that hundreds of savings and loan institutions across the country had insufficient funds to allow depositors to withdraw money from their accounts. Before it was over, U.S. taxpayers were forced to pay more than $150 billion to close and consolidate the failed institutions. While the crisis was not the result of a single factor, it is clear that a number of Reagan administration policies contributed greatly to the disaster. These included: the 1982 legislation deregulating the S & L industry and encouraging the industry to diversify, the appointment of regulators to the Home Loan Bank Board who actively encouraged the industry to engage in high risk investing; promulgation of new regulations that allowed accounting practices that concealed the extent of S & L insolvency; 1981 tax legislation creating powerful tax incentives for purchasing commercial real estate and causing dramatic inflation in real estate values; 1986 tax legislation reversing the tax advantages for real estate ownership adopted five years earlier; delay in recognizing the true scope of the problem and shutting down failed institutions before they could borrow more money and increase taxpayer liability. All of these actions were either taken as a result of legislation signed into law by the president or by regulations or regulatory actions taken by people whom he appointed."

The amount of information here leaves me dumbfounded as to where to begin: http://liberalslikechrist.org/about/Reagan.html

http://prorev.com/reagan.htm
"All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk." --Ronald Reagan (Republican candidate for president), quoted in the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, February 15, 1980

"Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal." --Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time, May 17, 1976

"The Reagan admininstration was one of the most corrupt in American history, including by one estimate 31 Reagan era convictions, including 14 because of Iran-Contra and 16 in the Department of Housing & Urban Development scandal. By comparison 40 government officials were indicted or convicted in the wake of Watergate. 47 individuals and businesses associated with the Clinton machine were convicted of or pleaded guilty to crimes with 33 of these occurring during the Clinton administration itself. There were in addition 61 indictments or misdemeanor charges. 14 persons were imprisoned.

Using a looser standard that included resignations, David R. Simon and D. Stanley Eitzen in Elite Deviance, say that 138 appointees of the Reagan administration either resigned under an ethical cloud or were criminally indicted. Curiously Haynes Johnson uses the same figure but with a different standard in "Sleep-Walking Through History: America in the Reagan Years: "By the end of his term, 138 administration officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the subject of official investigations for official misconduct and/or criminal violations."

Four members of the Reagan cabinet came under criminal investiation, as compared with five in the Clinton cabinet. Three top officials of the Harding administration were in indicted in the Teapot Dome scandal."

"The claim that Reagan won the Cold War is pure rightwing propaganda. The Soviet Union had long been far weaker than many American leaders knew, or wished to acknowledge, thanks to CIA gross overestimates of its economy. The Soviet Union was brought down by a number of factors including the inherent weaknesses of dictatorship and ethnic divides that eventually forced its breakup."

William Blum: "[George Kennan], the former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, and father of the theory of 'containment' of the same country, asserts that 'the suggestion that any United States administration had the power to influence decisively the course of a tremendous domestic political upheaval in another great country on another side of the globe is simply childish.' He contends that the extreme militarization of American policy strengthened hard-liners in the Soviet Union. 'Thus the general effect of Cold War extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union.'"

http://archive.democrats.com/preview.cfm?term=Ronald%20Reagan

The Gipper was no friend of mine

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=896
"One political commentator recently commented that “whereas Richard Nixon was blamed for everything, Ronald Reagan was blamed for nothing”. Even after he was caught lying over the Iran Contra affair. He was actually allowed to get away with the following comment: “A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.” (He should have been removed from office for that line.--Bouncie)

"Re-elected with 52 per cent of the vote in 1970, Reagan introduced a series of welfare reforms during his second term in office. This included tightening eligibility requirements for welfare aid and requiring the able to seek work rather than receiving benefits. However, the tax cuts never came, in fact, he presided over the largest tax increase any state had ever demanded in American history."

"Reagan was elected to power with a promise to reduce public spending and to bring an end to “big government”. He did neither. He increased public spending so much that by the time he left office the United states had a national debt of $3 trillion."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1236211,00.html
"It is not surprising that the current international manoeuvring over Iraq is treated with suspicion grounded in that history. Iraqis regard their newly appointed government with scepticism. They see the difficulty France had at the United Nations in trying to persuade the Americans to allow Iraqis a veto over US offensives in places like Falluja. They note that Prime Minister Ayad Allawi did not even ask for a major Iraqi role until the French made it an issue. Iraqis remember that Allawi and his exile organisation, the Iraqi National Accord, were paid by the CIA.

Not just in Iraq but around the world, the hallmark of Reagan's presidency was anti-communist cynicism, masked by phoney rhetoric about freedom. In his first press conference as president he used quasi-biblical language to claim that Soviet leaders "reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat". It was one of the most extraordinary cases of the pot calling the kettle black. What could Saddam, let alone other Iraqis, have thought when it became known two years after Rumsfeld's first visit to Baghdad that Washington had secretly sold arms to the mullahs Iraq was fighting. Who had been lying and cheating?

In the name of anti-communism everything was possible. Reagan invaded Grenada on the false premise that US students who had been there safely for months were suddenly in danger. Reagan armed thugs to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, even after it won internationally certified free elections in 1984. He made the US an outlaw by rejecting the world court judgments against its blockade of Nicaragua's coast.

Reagan armed and trained Osama bin Laden and his followers in their Afghan jihad, and authorised the CIA to help to pay for the construction of the very tunnels in Tora Bora in which his one-time ally later successfully hid from US planes. On the grounds that Nelson Mandela's African National Congress was pro-communist, Reagan vetoed US congress bills putting sanctions on the apartheid regime the ANC was fighting."

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/22/4757
Ronald Reagan actively supported the regimes of the worst people ever to walk the earth. Names like Marcos, Duarte, Rios Mont and Duvalier reek of blood and corruption, yet were embraced by the Reagan administration with passionate intensity. The ground of many nations is salted with the bones of those murdered by brutal rulers who called Reagan a friend. Who can forget his support of those in South Africa who believed apartheid was the proper way to run a civilized society?

One dictator in particular looms large across our landscape. Saddam Hussein was a creation of Ronald Reagan. The Reagan administration supported the Hussein regime despite his incredible record of atrocity. The Reagan administration gave Hussein intelligence information which helped the Iraqi military use their chemical weapons on the battlefield against Iran to great effect. The deadly bacterial agents sent to Iraq during the Reagan administration are a laundry list of horrors.

The Reagan administration sent an emissary named Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq to shake Saddam Hussein's hand and assure him that, despite public American condemnation of the use of those chemical weapons, the Reagan administration still considered him a welcome friend and ally. This happened while the Reagan administration was selling weapons to Iran, a nation notorious for its support of international terrorism, in secret and in violation of scores of laws.

Another name on Ronald Reagan's roll call is that of Osama bin Laden. The Reagan administration believed it a bully idea to organize an army of Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. bin Laden became the spiritual leader of this action. Throughout the entirety of Reagan's term, bin Laden and his people were armed, funded and trained by the United States. Reagan helped teach Osama bin Laden the lesson he lives by today, that it is possible to bring a superpower to its knees. bin Laden believes this because he has done it once before, thanks to the dedicated help of Ronald Reagan.

In 1998, two American embassies in Africa were blasted into rubble by Osama bin Laden, who used the Semtex sent to Afghanistan by the Reagan administration to do the job. In 2001, Osama bin Laden thrust a dagger into the heart of the United States, using men who became skilled at the art of terrorism with the help of Ronald Reagan. Today, there are 827 American soldiers and over 10,000 civilians who have died in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a war that came to be because Reagan helped manufacture both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

How much of this can be truthfully laid at the feet of Ronald Reagan? It depends on who you ask. Those who worship Reagan see him as the man in charge, the man who defeated Soviet communism, the man whose vision and charisma made Americans feel good about themselves after Vietnam and the malaise of the 1970s. Those who despise Reagan see him as nothing more than a pitch-man for corporate raiders, the man who allowed greed to become a virtue, the man who smiled vapidly while allowing his officials to run the government for him.

Turns out the farmer is screwing the farmer

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa135.html
The huge financial gap between farmers and nonfarmers becomes even more stark when net worth is considered. The Census Bureau concluded in 1986 that the average net worth of American households was $78,734 and that the median net worth of American households was $32,677 (meaning that equal numbers of households were worth less than and more than $32,677).[21]

In contrast, the average full-time farmer is a millionaire, with a net worth of $1,016,000 as of December 31, 1988.[22] (The net worth figure is after debts have been subtracted.) The average full-time farmer has a net worth almost 13 times greater than that of the average American family and more than 30 times greater than that of half the households of America.

Some liberals advocate continuing government aid to small farmers only, but even part-time farmers are far wealthier than the average American family. Farmers in the $40,000 to $99,999 sales class have a net worth of $426,487--more than five times that of the average American family.[23]

Although farm programs are defended as preserving the small family farmer, farm aid is distributed not according to farmers' needs but according to their net worth: to him who hath, shall be given. In 1988 the most wealthy farmers received over 100 times more in direct federal handouts than did the smallest farmers.[24] By handing big farmers $50,000, $100,000, or more each year, the federal government has provided a war chest that allows big operators to "cannibalize" little operators.

Farm programs are entitlement programs based on the idea that farmers are entitled to higher prices than their customers will pay voluntarily. If the same means test that is applied to other federal handout recipients were applied to farmers, virtually no farmer would qualify for federal aid. In the 1988 drought bill, Congress imposed a "means test," declaring that farmers with gross sales of over $2 million a year were not eligible for drought relief. A farmer with gross revenue of $2 million a year probably has a net worth far above $2 million. That is an interesting cutoff point for neediness--equivalent to a welfare department announcing that any unwed mother who owns more than 37 Cadillacs can no longer qualify for a monthly check.

Decline of the farmer

http://www.tfp.org/TFPForum/TFPCommentary/cows.htm
In face of such a huge crisis, animal health specialists cannot agree on a common strategy and look on helplessly while the army carries out the culling. After six weeks, the Ministry of Agriculture put the number of confirmed cases at 875, and livestock marked for slaughter in the preventive cull stands at 940,000. The lowly farmer can but look on as his perfectly healthy herd is sent away and destroyed.

Strangely enough, England's outspoken animal rights activists who scream when a single fox is hunted down are not so vocal when a million head of livestock are slaughter wholesale.

Equally strange is the fact that regions that do not export meat tend to take the disease in stride. In Hong Kong, Mainland China and Taiwan where foot-and-mouth is deeply rooted, no animals have been slaughtered. No restrictions have been placed on the sale of meat or ban on importing meat or dairy products from other countries with the disease, though a mere 574 pigs have died of foot-and-mouth since April 2000.

Canada's decline: http://www.opinion-canada.ca/en/articles/article_64.html

St. Charles Heritage Center: http://www.stcmuseum.org/historic14.html
During the middle 19th century, over 90% of the country’s men were farmers.

British agriculture: http://www.ecifm.rdg.ac.uk/agdecline.htm

Farm Incomes

Total income from farming (TIFF) has fallen to its lowest level since entering the Common Agricultural Policy.

In the short-term, financial pressure on farms is the result of a combination of events which have led to the very steep decline in farm incomes since 1996. Farm incomes in the UK are now as low (in real terms) as at any time in the last thirty years . Incomes have fallen by 60% since 1995 (after doubling between 1990 and 1995).

The steep fall in incomes reflects a combination of adverse factors:

An exchange rate which is high by historical standards
Weak world markets in a range of commodities
The effects of the BSE crisis, foot & mouth disease and other food scares

Great Depression decline: http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_21.html
In the 1930s on the Great Plains and in Nebraska, tremendous forces came together to begin a decline in the number of farms that continues today. In 1934, Nebraska recorded 135,000 farms in the state, the highest number since European farmers began moving onto the plains. By 2001, the state had fewer than 58,000 farmers.

Census shows continuing decline in farm numbers: http://southwestfarmpress.com/mag/farming_census_shows_continuing/

Mar 4, 2004 12:00 PM
By Hembree Brandon Farm Press Editorial Staff

Preliminary data from the 2002 Census of Agriculture indicate a drop of 86,650 total farms, or 3.9 percent, from 1997 to 2002. All but eight states had fewer farms in 2002.

California had a decline of more than 8,000 farms during the period, says Rich Allen, deputy administrator of programs and products for USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service, while Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa each had losses of more than 6,000.

A slight increase in Texas, with 10.7 percent of the total farms in the nation, helped to minimize the percent loss in total U.S. farms, he says. Other states that held steady or increased farm numbers were Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Oregon, and Wyoming.

Going back to 1978, the census figures show a drop of nearly 350,000 farms, Allen says, with the biggest declines in the periods 1982-1987 and 1987-1992.

The number of farms with $10,000 and above in sales, which represented nearly 50 percent of the census-adjusted numbers in 1978, has shown “a steady decline” in each subsequent census. Between 1978 and 2002, the number of farms in this sales class declined by 337,132, or 28 percent, with more than a third of that occurring between 1997 and 2002.

Farms in the $10,000 to $99,999 category declined by nearly 425,000, or 43.3 percent, during the 1978-2002 period, while farms with $100,000 or more in sales increased by 86,254, o0r 38.5 percent.

Over the past five years, the number of farms in the top sales class, $500,000 or more, increased by 404, while the $100,000 to $499,999 category declined by 41,276, or 14.8 percent.

The census showed that 20.6 percent of the reporting farms, 427,289, had two or more families sharing net farm income from an operation.

Data tables in the final census for 2002, expected to be released June 3, will include detailed summary information on farm size, types of crops grown, economic sales classes, and many other comparisons, Allen says.

“These data will present the most complete picture of American agriculture at the local level that has been possible in many years.”

A number of changes were made in the 2002 census, compared to previous years, chief among them electronic processing of all the returned forms.

The Census of Agriculture is conducted every five years to collect uniform information on all U.S. farming operations and those involved in production agriculture. It helps, Allen says, to measure changes in production areas and farming practices, as well as trends in the number and size of operations and characteristics of those involved in farming.

“It is not designed to present detailed analyses of production practices or any other aspect of agriculture,” he says. “It will never answer all inquiries about agriculture and the people in agriculture.”

http://www.epals.com/20thcentury/centstories/091899farm.tpl
The number of farms like the one begun by Johnson is shrinking, from 5.75 million in 1900 to 1.91 million today (column written in 1999). It is no longer a certainty that farm children will succeed their parents in the fields.

At the turn of the last century, most farms in this country encompassed less than 175 acres; today a typical farm is 487 acres. Meanwhile, farm employment dropped from 9.9 million in 1950 to 2.9 million in 1997. Farm population slipped below 5 million in 1990, census figures show.

His wife, LaDeen, now works off the farm as a school teacher _ a move the family was forced to make after the farm crisis of the 1980s, when some 200,000 to 300,000 farmers went bankrupt, were foreclosed or had their operations financially restructured. High-interest debt on upgraded machinery and expanded acreage overwhelmed farmers hit by falling land values and low commodity prices.

http://www.hpn.org/beyond/ref311.html
Problem and Components
Policy issue area: Economics
Policy issue: Agriculture
Description: Careless policies of the Federal government are depressing many parts of rural America, causing the loss of large numbers of family farms and associated jobs.
Symptoms: Since 1981 750,000 farms went out of business; 1 million jobs in the rural economy are lost; many more small farmers are threatened with the loss of their farms; extensive psychological damage is caused to many by stress and worry; agribusiness conglomerates damage the soil and groundwater by excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides.

Causes: Government subsidies are being cut, while costs of production are rising; administration policies favor agribusiness and food processor conglomerates; Department of Agriculture policies are no longer supportive of small farmers.
Cost of problem: -

Solution and Components
Resources: Agricultural research institutes; Federal and state governments; family farmers.
Goal:
1. Save existing family farms, as a valuable component of American society and source of traditional values
2. Encourage young people to reenter farming as a means of production and a way of life.

Program area: Rural development
Program-remedy:
1. Adopt a Family Farm Act, to help the small farmer
2. Institute a policy of fair prices and supply management of agricultural products
3. Negotiate international trade agreements that will help the marketing of agricultural products at fair prices
4. Create new programs designed to keep land in the possession of families (including debt moratoriums) and encourage the entrance of new families to farming
5. Develop diversification of crops and new markets for farm products.

Program-prevent:
1. Revise tax system and subsidies so that policies do not favor agribusinesses, tax sheltering, speculation, and other actions that harm the family farm
2. Link farm policy to the monetary and agricultural production environment, both national and global
3. Increase worldwide demand by raising standard of living of the developing nations.
Cost of program: -
Beneficiaries: Family farmers; small rural businesses serving farmers.

Historical highlights: http://www.nass.usda.gov/census/census02/volume1/us/st99_1_001_001.pdf

Never being wrong in political debate

My frustration with political debate, namely "conservatives," goes back to a message board I use to be a member of. One of the last replies I received was that "opinion pieces" are not factual and therefore not valid. This is completely correct. However, I have come to the conclusion that incriminating evidence on to an Administration rarely ever sticks. Nixon was one of the very few to step out of office. Evidence now from a conservative author suggests that those impeached charges were trumped up by the Democrats to put one of their own back in office.

So if I cannot conspire to my own conclusions after looking at what information is available, what can I do? I hope those that make these statements from one side of the fence will also allow the same freedoms with the politics from the other side.

What I'm trying to say is I have to presume to a certain extent that any administration in office is going to set up "meetings" behind closed doors that shut out the general publics knowledge of. The best I can do is see who is providing the more detailed arguments which includes not looking at the two-party system so black & white, us vs. them. The further I step outside the sphere the more I cannot reside in any given party because it becomes trading off of attacks. The same attacks that are nearly parallel in even though one party claims the other is only doing the misdeeding when in fact they are doing nearly the same thing.

I started out on this blog thinking that it seems conservatives have more corruption on liberals, and therefore I am center-right of the political equation. This is becoming less the case. What I'm tired of is the peachy picture either party portrays when common sense says it doesn't matter what party is in office. They both favor special interests before people interests.

In later posts I hope to focus on Reagan's "legacy" without linking to "opinion" pieces. In the meantime here are a couple on how our current Administration isn't the "religiousity" our President portrays.

Bush lies I
Bush lies II

More from "Bush Versus the Environment"

p. 89-91:
The Bush Administration has used such legal strategies so often that observers have coined a term for it: "sue and settle." Strictly speaking, the term alludes to cases in which an aggreviated party sues the federal government and the Administration, despite having a strong case, agrees to a sweetheart settlement that gives that party what it wants. But broadly speaking, the term also encompasses other forms of courtroom capitulation on the part of the government, such as simply mounting little or no defense, as in the case of the Roadless Rule, or not appealing a strong case to a higher court, again, as in the Roadless Rule.

Often the sue-and-settle approach has the disorienting effect of pitting the Administration against its own agencies and experts. Take the case of the California red-legged frog, once the Golden State's most abundant frog and likely the title character in Mark Twain's short story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Largely a victim of urban sprawl and the concomitant draining of wetlands, the frog landed on the threatened list under the Endangered Species Act in 1996, by which time it had been eliminated from more than 70 percent of its historic range. In order to protect the frog, in March 2001 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees endangered species matters, declared 4.1 million acres in California to be "critical habitat." This means that any company or person seeking to build on or otherwise develop a portion of that critical habitat must first convince Fish and Wildlife that the development won't drive the frog closer to extinction or impede its recovery. Though critical habitat designation doesn't prevent development, many home builders detest it because it may cut into their profits by keeping them away from certain coveted wetlands, making them build fewer homes on a given piece of land, or forcing them to buy land elsewhere to mitigate the damage they do where they're building.

In June of that same year business interests led by the Home Builders Association of Northern California sued the government, largely on the basis that Fish and Wildlife had underestimated the economic impact of protecting the frog. (It's worth noting this argument, since opponents repeatedly and mistakenly criticize the Endangered Species Act for not taking economics into account. As the Home Builders' suit demonstrates, the act does indeed consider the economic costs of protecting species. It does so when critical habitat is designated--after which actual economic harm may occur--and not at the time a species is put on the list, which in itself carries no economic burden.) In 2002, after closed-door meetings between the Administration and the business interests that had bought the lawsuit (conservationist lawyers asked to be included but were refused), the Administration settled. It agreed to slash the amount of protected habitat from 4.1 million acres to 200,000 acres and those 200,000 acres were public lands that couldn't be developed anyway. Quoted in a story in the San Jose Mercury News before the Administration's deal with the plaintiffs, Fish and Wildlife spokesperson Pat Foulk had said, "We stand by our science. We don't think it's going to create the level of hardship the plaintiffs have indicated." But instead of defending its own agency's position, the White House thrust aside the studies and expertise of the Fish and Wildlife Service and sided with industry.

As Administration officials are quick to point out, other presidents have used settlements, both for and against environmental interests. But the current Bush Administration has carried the practice to new heights--or depths, depending on one's point of view. This White House uses sue-and-settle techniques more frequently than its predecessors, often to decide cases of immense magnitude, which wasn't common under past administrations. Vital environmental policy is being decided behind closed doors in settlements between the Administration and industry, policy that many critics think should be debated fairly and decided openly. Citing 11 cases that came up during the first 16 months of the Bush White House, a report from the office of Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) says, "If these cases of representative of DOJ's [Department of Justice's] current approach on environmental laws, it sends a dangerous message to environmental opponents. It tells them that if they do not like an environmental law or regulation, rather than challenge it in a public legislative or regulatory forum, they should sue. The failure to appeal just the cases in this report alone leaves far-reaching decisions on the books that reinterpret core legal principles..."

p. 94-95:
These cases typify the Administration's record. Tellingly, among the many such cases I examined, the Administration always sued and settled in a way that favored industry. I didn't find a single example in which a matter dear to corporate interests was undercut by a weak defense (when a strong defense was available) or a pro-environment settlement that the Administration had negotiated in closed-door mettings attended only by environmentalists.

Perhaps more than any other issue, the designation of wilderness is being profoundly altered by the Administration's sue-and-settle machinations. This comes as no suprise when you consider the pro-development resumes of Bush himself, Vice President Cheney, and many of the President's appointees. Timber companies, real-estate developers, and other business interests may chafe under regulations that restrict their activities, but they particularly abhor wilderness. These industries need land, and a wilderness designation goes beyond restricting them to shut them out almost entirely. Energy companies, ever popular with this Administration, have an especially big stake in preventing the establishment of additional wilderness. Oil and gas outfits cover BLM [Bureal of Land Management] lands, and of the BLM's 264 million acres only about 6.5 million acres--about 2.5 percent--currently are protected as wilderness. But millions of additional acres have been identified as potential wilderness, and some of the White House's most problematic sue-and-settle actions have been aimed at not realizing that potential.

p.99-100:
The fact that settlements can be larded with policy provisions that stray from the original lawsuit is just on of the attractions of the sue-and-settle approach. Settlements also enable the Administration and the plaintiffs to keep everyone else in the dark while decisions are being hammered out. Often citizens and environmental groups don't hear about a settlement until it is done. Even when the public interest attorneys get wind of an impending settlement they're usually shout out of the process; not only does the Administration refuse to let them participate in the talks but in many cases the Administration won't provide documents or even reveal when it and the plaintiffs are meeting. When conservation groups seek documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), frequently the Administration stonewalls, ignoring the 20-day deadline because they know they'll get a slap on the wrist. Late in August 2003, the Wilderness Society and Earthjustice brought suit against the Department of the Interior, accusing it of illegally withholding documents regarding the settlement deal it had made behind closed doors. At the time of this writing, the Wilderness Society had been waiting for nearly eight months and had received an inadequate response from Interior. In other wilderness cases conservation groups likewise have been left empty-handed and have had to resort to lawsuits to try to get documents from the Interior Department concerning agreements made behind closed doors.

There's an even more basic reason that the Administration finds settlements attractive. "If these cases got litigated," said Angell, "industry would have little chance of winning on the merits of the claim. If they settle, and basically the government gives them what they want, it's harder to overturn." It's difficult for citizens and public interest groups to object to a settlement, as they have few levers. Courts have a strong inclination to approve settlements and move on to the rest of their crowded dockets. From the judges' point of view a settlement means that the two opposition parties have agreed to a solution, so why rock the boat? Sometimes courts will scrutinize a settlement to determine how well it serves the public interest and occasionally they'll disapprove a settlement on those grounds, but the default position is approval.

p.101-103:
Many advocates of unfettered development insist that we already have enough wilderness in America. After all, Congress already has designated 662 wilderness areas encompassing 106 million acres. But a closer lookat the numbers reveals a different story. [b]A bit more than half of those protected wild acres sprawl across Alaska; only about 2 percent of the lower 48 has been designated wilderness. According to the Wilderness Society, 75 percent of the lower 48's 2 percent is scenic but often harsh and relatively unproductive desert and mountain country. And that 75 percent is not very diverse, representing only a small portion of the nation's eco-regions. In terms of both quantiy and quality, then, America doesn't have much land left, especially biologically diverse land, that hasn't felt the touch of industrial society. The Wilderness Society calculates that only 200 million or fewer acres remain that may be suitable for wilderness, and that number is constantly dwindling. And the amount of untamed land will shrink rapidly if the Bush Administration succeeds in its anti-wilderness sue-and-settle campaign.

Does it matter if we never designate another acre of wilderness in the United States? Critics portray wilderness as nothing more than the playground of an elite minority of white-wine-sipping, Eddie Bauer-clad environmentalists. These critics would say that 106 million acres--even given the caveats noted above--are more than enough. Advocates would retort we don't have enough wilderness, that we need wilderness more than additional oil wells or outlet shopping malls. These advocates would state that the image of wilderness as a playground for the eilite is a propoganda sterotype. They also would say that "playground" is a misleading word because the wilderness experience often goes beyond ordinary recreation and engages visitors on a more profound level. Hearing the howl of a wolf pierce the night while you're sleeping under the stars stirs primeval feelings, deeply meaningful feelings that you don't get from everyday outdoor pastimes like riding bikes or pitching horseshoes in the park. Advocates also would say that wild places have intrinsic worth apart from any service they provide for humankind.

Hardheaded critics [Rush Limbaugh --4Seasons] who scoff at the notion of intrinsic worth or deeply meaningful primeval feelings may find the practical ecological value of wetlands and water more compelling. Entire books recently have been written expounding on this rapidly expanding body of knowledge, so I can't begin to do the topic justic in this space. But here's a short list of services provided by wilderness and other undeveloped and less developed areas: forests help stabilize the climate by sequestering carbon dioxide; wildernesses serve as reservoirs for genetic diversity of plants and animals; healthy estuaries serve as breeding and rearing waters for many commercial fish species; undeveloped land maintain soil productivity; intact forests help control floods; and unspoiled wetlands help purify drinking water.

p. 107:
Speaking of the pending nominees who have made dubious remarks, William Haynes II deserves special mention. Picked by Bush to sit on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, Haynes currently serves as the Defense Department's top lawyer. In a 2002 case in which conservationists sued the Defense Department over the bombing of an island important to nesting migratory birds, Haynes and his defense team argued that nature lovers actually benefit when the bombs kill birds because it makes the surviving birds less common and "bird watchers get more enjoyment spotting a rare bird than they do spotting a common one." Does it suprise you that Haynes lost this case?

p. 170:
Reacting to the [Henry] Waxman report in an interview with The New York Times, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said, "This Administration looks at the facts, and reviews the best available science based on what's right for the American people. The only one who is playing politics about science is Congressman Waxman. His report is riddled with distortion, inaccuracies, and omissions." Waxman indeed may enjoy the political points scored by his report, but its many examples and details can't be dismissed so easily. I repeatedly contacted McClellan's office, as well as two other White House offices, to ask for more information about the "distortion, inaccuracies, and omissions" and to find out what sources McClellan used. After talking to a number of baffled staffers, I finally was told that McClellan go his information from the EPA. So I called over there and asked the same questions. "Huh?" was the gist of its response. It seems that McClellan offered a knee-jerk denial with no data to back it up. Not very scientific of him. In developing its campaign, the Union of Concerned Scientists evaluated many of the Waxman Report's claims and found every one that they examined to be solid.

p. 175-76:
...Even if all polluters adhered to religiously to those non-binding goals, Administration projections show that while the "intensity" would decline, the actual tonnage of greenhouse gas pollution produced in the U.S. would rise by 14 percent over the next ten years, just as it did in the previous ten years. Undeterred by this information, the White House produced a fact sheet claiming that even though Bush had shunned the Kyoto agreement, the President's "emission intensity" plan would achieve much the same result, reducing America's greenhouse gas pollution to 7 percent below 1990 levels by2012--the Kyoto target accepted by other industrialized nations that signed the treaty. But in reality the Administration's plan would lead to emissions 30 percent higher than 1990 amounts. In December of 2002, after launching all this "emissions intensity" business, the White House pulled out another favorite tool for those who want to bury inconvenient science: delay by study. Despite many years and hundreds of peer-reviewed studies showing ample agreement abou the essentials of global warning, the Administration insisted that it must study the matter for another ten years before taking significant action.

As if trying to hide an elephant in the living room by throwing a slipcover over it, the Administration has repeatedly has attempted to conceal the reality of global warming in environmental reports. This game started when an EPA-led task force published a report, in May 2002, that laid out a scientifically accurate view of globalwarming. The Administration stuck the report into the nether regions of EPA's Web site, but it soon slipped out. Industry and its allies howled. Bush sprinted away from the report, dismissing it as some blather "put out by the bureaucracy." Christie Whitman, then EPA Administrator, claime3d that she hadn't known about the report until she read about it in a newspaper. All this drowning of the report looked disingenuous when the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental group, released documents that told a different story--Bush officials had been closely following the report for months prior to slipping it deep into EPA's Web site. A few days after NRDC's revelations, Bush reversed field again and said. through spokesman Ari Fleischer, that now he stood behind the report. But Fleischer added that, somehow, the report didn't contradict the Administration's basic position downplaying global warming.

Perhaps because they'd been burned by the May 2002 EPA report, the Administration didn't take half measures with the next report on global warming. In September 2002, EPA released its annual report on air pollution, which for the previous six years had included a section on global warming. This time, rather than tuck this incendiary information into an obscure corner of the annual report as in the handling of the May document, Bush's EPA appointees completely cut it out.

p. 180:
The Administration's suppression of information extends beyond America's borders, too. Due to a variety of environmental problems, Yellowstone National Park had been listed by the United Nations' World Heritage Committee as an imperiled site that needed international attention. Paul Hoffman, Deputy Interior Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, asked the committee to take Yellowstone off the list, citing a Park Service report that showed, according to Hoffman, that "Yellowstone is no longer in danger." In a familiar pattern, the draft of the report, written by park staff, mentioned numerous problems, but Interior deleted discussions of those concerns in the version it sent to the U.N. hesitated to remove Yellowstone from the list. Finally, it did take the park off the at-risk list, but only after requiring that the U.S. keep the U.N. abreast of those ongoing environmental threats in Yellowstone and requesting that independent scientists and organizations participate in those periodic assessments. Apparently the U.N. didn't trust the Administration to provide unvarnished data.

It begs the question why Yellowstone or any other *keystone* National Park would be taken off the watch list. By taking them off the list, what they are in effect saying is the parks are no longer monumental heritages. They are just like any other piece of land that is not on the watch list. That basically, whatever. I have a feeling loosening Nat'l Park restrictions without one iota of historical thought is one example of the core of the problem in America. Here's my solution. Let the pro-industry have their way with much of the American landscape outside of our National Park's. Their record in time will speak for itself. But the NP's are the one area of land that Nature is above humans. Because time and time again it has become so obvious that when humanity and Nature collides, Nature loses. Our National Park's being taken off the at-risk list? Think about it. It baffles me. It should also be noted that after having visited message boards on National Park websites, the things tourists are continally saying is that while they had a wonderful experience, the parks are overcrowded, over commercialized, and not enough attention is paid to what is an acceptable amount of tourist interaction. --4Seasons

p.188-89:
"You need to be even more active in recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view, and much more active in making them part of your message." Does this sound like advice that guided HHS Secretary Thompson in making his appointments to the Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention? Well, it just may be, at least indirectly. The quote comes from Frank Luntz and the Luntz Research Companies, whom we met in the introduction. He's the Republican pollster and "message developer" (his term) who helped craft the Contract with America and who, more recently, wrote a memo laying out a public relations strategy that Republicans could use the spruce up their image on environmental issues. (The memo appeals mainly to antiregulatory, economically conservative Republicans, not to all Republicans and certainly not to the moderate Republicans who place a high value on federal environmental protections.) As noted in the first chapter, the Luntz memo has been very influential. These days you can't swing a stick without hitting a Bush official or the President himself giving a speech on the environment that bristles with "balance," "common sense," "accountable," and other market-tested words and ideas recommended by Luntz.

It's not suprising that the role of science in environmental issues gets the Luntz treatment. Luntz's marketing research revealed what any observer of environmental debates already knew: the perception of what the science says about an issue exerts enormous influence on citizens' attitudes toward that issue. As the Luntz memo puts it, "People are willing to trust scientists, engineers, and other leading research professionals." Toward the end of the memo, Luntz includes a model speech on the environment to serve as a template for antiregulatory rhetoric. In it he includes four key statements that he urges GOP politicians to use while speechifying, on of which is, "New regulations should be based on the most advanced and credible scientific knowledge available."

This is of course a fine sentiment with which no one would disagree publicly, but it is also a principle from which the President and many of his appointees routinely stray. When introducing his global warming plans in 2002, Bush said, "When we make decisions, we want to make sure we do so on sound science; not what sounds good, but what is real." But earlier in this chapter we saw some of the many ways in which the Administration has mistreated science in the global warming debate. Thousands of scientists have reached a consensus regarding some basic aspects of climate change, yet the Administration instead empahsizes the findings of a handful of dissenting researchers and information provided by corporations that stand to lose money if greenhouse gases are regulated. Clearly, the President is not basing decisions on the "most advanced and credible scientific knowledge available" nor using "sound science." The Bush subscribes--perhaps literally--to Luntz's propaganda approach to science, in which image triumphs over "what is real." Perhaps I should put this in Luntz parlance: When Bush and Administration officials alter or suppress information or present only one side of scientific discussion, they are behaving in a manner that runs counter to the goal of "balance." When confronted with such deceptive practices, "common sense" tells citizens that they should hold the President and his appointees "accountable." If this mistreatment of science continues and environmental policy drifts away from its scientific moorings, the natural world and human health also will be set a drift.

p. 214-15:
Advocates of cost-benefit analysis employ a number of methods to determine the dollar value of environmental and human health benefits. Alan Krupnick, Senior Fellow and Director of the Quality of the Environment division at a think tank called Resources for the Future, says that it's possible to put a price tag on more things than you'd think. "Sometimes there are clever ways of teasing our people's preferences of reducing their risk of having health effects or risk to the environment," says Krupnick. One common and representative method is called "willingness to pay" or "WTP." Researchers survey citizens to determine just how much they'd pay for a particular environmental good. In one famous example people on average said that they'd spend $257 per household to save bald eagles from extinction.

WTP and its kin generate considerable controversy, however. For example, critics worry that WTP researchers tend to reject responses from people whose comments don't fit neatly into the survey's approach, especially those people--"skeptics"--who question some of the survey's premises. For practical reasons surveys can't allow respondents to think outside the box: "They just have to put up or shut up," says Krupnick. A reputable practitioner like Krupnick will try to accomodate some of the skeptics' objections while developing the survey, but not all WTP surveyors do this. Critics also question the very foundation of WTP.

Continued on p. 216-17:
WTP also reveals a fundamental inconsistency in the attitudes of the promoters of cost-benefit analysis. On the one hand, WTP calls on ordinary citizens to make dauntingly sophisicated calculations, calculations that become keystones in the cost-benefit edifice. On the one hand, much of the impetus for the development of cost-benefit analysis stems from the expert analysts' deep mistrust of ordinary citizens. Many cost-benefit proponents believe that the public approaches environmental regulation in an uninformed , overly emotional way. (A favorite adjective is "hysterical.") This ignorant fear, according to the analysts, then gets incorporated into regulaory policy via Congress, a political body that bends to the will of the mob instead of following the scientific path the experts lay out. So which is it? Are you and I analytical geniuses or "paranoid" (a word Graham has applied to the public) ignoramuses? That sounds like a rhetorical question, but it's not. Except in the cases of WTP studies and their ilk, many cost-benefit practitioners consider regular folks "irrational."

Then there's WTA. Before I explain the acronym, let me pose two hypotheticals that Thomas McGarity, a law professor at the University of Texas, uses on his students every year. One: You get a glass of water. There's a one in a thousand chance that it contains a poison that will rapidly and painlessly kill you. McGarity has an antidote that he's willing to sell you. How much will you pay to allay that one in a thousand chance of death? That's WTP, willingness to pay. Two: You get a glass of water. There's a one in a thousand chance that it contains a poison that will rapidly and painlessly kill you. How much would McGarity have to pay you to drink that water and take that one in a thousand chance of dying? That's WTA, willingness to accept. "I promise you," says McGarity, "the amount is always much, much higher when it's a question of how much it would cost to get my students to accept the risk rather than how much they'd pay to get rid of the risk."

McGarity has another question, not hypothetical: "Why do econimists always use [in cost-benefit calculations] willingness to pay instead of willingness to accept, even though they all acknowledge that either can be seen as valid? Answering his own question, he says, "Because they want the number to be low," thus holding down the benefit side of the equation. McGarity says that cost-benefit practitioners don't like WTA because it tends to elicit what they see as unreal responses, such as someone asserting that it'd take $10,000 to convince him to accept the death of a bald eagle, as opposed to the $257 an average person theoretically is willing to pay to prevent that bird's death. In most economists' view a rational person couldn't possibly believe that an eagle's life is worth $10,000, ergo that person is irrational and any valuation technique that allows such irrational input isn't valid. Cynically, I must add that some practitioners likely stick to WTP and its much lower benefit figures simply because it caters to their vested interests. Mc Garity believes that the technical issues of WTP versus WTA reveals profoundly different views of environmental protection. "I would agree," he says, "that if you use willingness to pay as the measure, you're saying that the world is such a place that people can destroy our resources willy-nilly as long as we can't pay them enough to stop. Whereas, if you use willingnes to accept as the measure of these more or less priceless things, then you're saying that we live in the kind of society in which we have a right to clean air, clean water, etc., unless someone convinces us--pays us, if you want to call it that--but at least convinces us that it ought to be destroyed. Basically, in using willingness to pay, they are subtly forcing upon us a view of the world that says that development can proceed unless you persuade us to stop, which is exactly the opposite of how most people think of the world."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Book excerpt
Chapter One

The Fox Is Guarding the Henhouse

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush offered clues as to how he would deal with the environment. In his speeches he said nice things about cleaning up pollution and protecting wildlife and supporting parks, even going so far as to make some specific promises (several of which he broke soon after assuming office). But people who looked beneath his words and heeded the old Watergate adage-follow the money-quickly saw where Bush's loyalties lay. The trail of campaign dollars led to big corporations and powerful industries, many of which will lose a lot of money if the federal government does a better job of protecting the environment, and will make a lot of money if the government weakens certain environmental regulations. The Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group, took the campaign contribution data compiled by the Federal Election Commission and coded it by industry. Using that coded information, Public Campaign, a progressive public interest group, and Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, figured out how much money the various industries affected by environmental regulation had given to which politicians and political parties. Mining, timber, chemical and other manufacturing, oil and gas, and coal-burning utilities together contributed a staggering $44.1 million to the Bush-Cheney campaign and to the Republican National Committee.

Public Citizen and Earthjustice then did something even more interesting. They took the industry-by-industry breakdown of campaign contributions and compared it with the environmental policies undertaken by the Administration during Bush's first 18 months as president. For example, the timber industry gave $3.4 million and the Administration introduced and pushed an initiative designed in part to open up more federal lands to logging. In another example, the coal-burning utilities gave $2 million and the Administration has made regulatory changes and has not enforced existing laws so that these utilities can avoid the expense of installing the most effective pollution-control technology.

Global Journalist
In evaluating the environmental record of any U.S. administration, journalists must try to separate factual criticism from political advantage. So, are the critics mostly members of the Democratic Party and trashing Bush because of partisanship? No, Devine concludes. He backs his conclusions with interviews, personal visits to sites of environmental contention and extensive use of documents, including federal agency studies, Congressional hearings and reports by scientists from around the globe.

On the other hand, Devine thinks the critics of the Bush Administration go too far when they say the President and his appointees are opposed to clean air and clean water.

I'd guess that Bush and his appointees would be perfectly happy to have clean water, clean air, abundant wildlife, lush forests and plenty of wilderness, Devine says. I don't think they would mind keeping species from going extinct, stopping harmful chemicals from being used as pesticides, arresting global warming and preventing pollution from killing people. Yes, they would say, these are nice things. Nice, but not important.

As journalists try to ferret out the truth about environmental policies and practices, Devine suggests they look for balance: We do need raw materials. We do need industry. We do need places upon which to build homes and human communities. We do need to live with some pollution. ... So the trick is to find ways to meet the needs on both sides of the equation in a manner that can be sustained indefinitely. ... The debate is about the balance.