our president is a black gold whore

facts and info adapted primarily from: "Energy Company Policy," The Progressive, June 2005: http://progressive.org/?q=node/2012

We all know GW and most of the conservatives don't give a flying fuck about this planet we live on, right? To them it's only a cauldron of sin and a fleeting and soon to be destroyed, god-imposed limbo. These wackos believe the "2nd coming" is right around the bend and some of them are even doing everything in their power to hasten its arrival!

Besides pushing the Israelis to take a hard line against allowing any sort of Palestinian state, and dismantling most of our system of checks and balances as well as the foundations of American civil liberties (besides those that protect gun and property owners), they are also working hard to divvy up and consume the last remnants of natural resources left in the world.

Fact: "In the first quarter [of 2005] alone, the four biggest companies--ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP, and Chevron-Texaco--earned $97 billion in profits combined. Yet the House rewarded energy companies with at least $12 billion in tax breaks and subsidies."

[the nature of the Energy bill, still not passed, may have changed since I wrote this draft]. In addition to the blatant money issue, the Republican-controlled Congress is also pushing through a new Energy bill in Congress. Among a long list of things this atrocity of a bill does (see article link at top) to gut existing environmental regulations, here are just a couple of the biggest doosies:

• allows corporations drilling for oil on public land to skip paying cash royalties to taxpayers - they get to feed freely and profit at the tit of scarce and fragile publicly owned natural resources.
• allows energy companies to be reimbursed by taxpayers for part of the costs of complying with federal environmental laws
• caps the liability of nuclear energy companies should a major disaster occur. Do ya think this will make them more or less safety-conscious?
• allows energy companies to ignore some parts of the 1969 National environmental Policy Act, which requires environmental impact studies and public comment periods for all major projects on federal land (for example, oil and gas drilling and exploration). In other words, these corporations will be able to go onto some federal areas and start digging and drilling and disposing of waste products, etc. without any oversight or study of the possible impact on the surrounding environment/ecology. Know of any federal lands near you? How about near nearby national parks? The answer for most is probably yes.

The only way, obviously, to put a stop to this gutting of our planet and our collective pocketbooks, is to vote these bozos out of office. Add this to the list of reasons (and arguments used to convince friends) for making sure your vote counts.