Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. does his hero Upton Sinclair proud in this engrossing expose_. Integrating the Bush Administration’s threat to our economy, democracy, security and environment in devastating detail, Crimes Against Nature should be required reading for our midterm candidates. As RFK Jr. explained to Bill Mahr recently, "Good environmental policy is good economic policy;" his "Ring of Fire" radio program makes that case every Saturday (5-7 on Air America). His fact attacks on "Western welfare cowboys" and Coors-funded cabals like the (yikes!) Castle Rock Foundation hit especially close to home on the Front Range. While Colorado’s cast of characters will not arouse civic pride, it should energize our efforts to take the high county back.

RFK Jr explains all:
The threat to our health:
"The right-wing propaganda campaign has convinced the American people that the environmental laws were new innovations passed after Earth Day. But in fact, it’s always been illegal to pollute."
      Kennedy explains the ancient Public Trust Doctrine and Nuisance Law, which protected natural public assets for the common good until late 19th century industrialists
began buying up politicians and courts. The environmental movement launched by Silent Spring codified the original common law doctrines, but the Bush Administration’s scorched-earth energy policies are dismantling these Nixon-era protections. The litany of duplicitous destruction funded by the "Gang of Five" (John M. Olin, Sarah Scaife, Bradley, Castle Rock and Charles G. Koch Foundations) is literally sickening in their assault on science and citizens. While connecting the donors at the highest levels, Kennedy makes the politics very personal by sharing his son’s battles with asthma and his own blood toxins from local pollution.

The threat to free market capitalism:
"You show me a polluter and I’ll show you a subsidy...The dominance of our government by large corporations leads to the elimination of markets, and ultimately, to the loss of democracy."
      In addition to the billions of dollars in direct subsidies granted extractionist empires (which hypocritically rail against "big government"), polluters transfer the costs of disease and destruction to the public even while evading taxes on obscene profits. Not content to plunder our public lands, these craven cartels erode the foundation of our communities, bankrupting the local businesses whose civic investment built small-town America.

The threat to democracy:
"My American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as ‘a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership together with belligerent nationalism.’ Sound familiar?"
      Kennedy details the sausage factory of donor-driven assaults on regulatory agencies and long-standing protections. The profit motive behind every piece of recent legislation in the era of Big Business government is unfortunately much clearer than our skies or streams. Less clear to the uninformed electorate has been the reason behind our press poodles’ passing on the story of the 21st century. The mega-media quash critical reporting of its sponsors and owners, blacklisting advocates like RFK Jr. from our newspapers and airwaves while force-feeding consumers with trash and trivia. While the war on journalism began with Reagan’s gutting of the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine, his Texan heirs have taken censorship and propaganda to news lows. The few whistleblowers who try to publish the dirty truth find no justice in the Bush-appointee courts. At a time when Americans’ health, commonwealth and individual freedoms are under siege, the public is too uninformed and distracted by terrorist bogymen to appreciate the threat from our own government.

Clear skies ahead?
RFK Jr. offers historical hope in the first Earth Day, "when 20 million Americans came out into the street to demand the return of their ancient environmental rights. The result of that was the passage of 29 major environmental laws over the next decade..." He explains that the radical right resorts to duplicity and doublespeak because the public supports clear skies and healthy forests. With the facts on our side, we could swing the pendulum back if voters realized the magnitude of the crisis.
      I look forward to hearing Robert F. Kennedy’s advice for "securing our future" in his Be The Change-sponsored speech at the Douglas County Events Center June 25th. To find out more about his causes and coalitions or purchase tickets to his upcoming appearance, check out some of the links below:


http://www.airamericaradio.com/weblogs/ringoffire/ http://www.nrdc.org/
http://www.riverkeeper.org/our_pace.php http://www.waterkeeper.org/
http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/

---

Back to the HR DEMS Bookclub