Tuesday, November 16, 2004
On the Moral Implications of Torture and Exemplary Assassination
If the US can increase the fuel efficiency of its automobiles by one mile per gallon, it would conserve as much oil as there is in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge that Bush has been pushing to drill in. Increasing the fuel efficiency to 7.6 miles per gallon would conserve as much oil as we use from the entire Gulf region...
Instead, the Bush administration has eliminated tax breaks to buyers of the most fuel-efficient hybrids, and increased tax breaks to purchasers of the biggest gas guzzlers... so much so that for some people it's cheaper to buy a Hummer than to buy a $22k fuel-efficient hybrid. It's not so surprising then to hear that when he was a Senator, Bush's Energy Secretary got more money from the automobile industry than any Senator in history...
The head of the Forest Service is a timber industry lobbyist... The head of the Public Lands is a mining industry lobbyist who believes that public lands are unconstitutional... The head of the Air Division at the EPA is a utility lobbyist who has represented nothing but the worst air poluters in America... The head of Superfund (hazardous waste cleanup program) is a woman who's last job was teaching companies how to evade Superfund...