[pf] NY Times: Bush: "Contempt for public opinion as well as for science

· The second of 2 items, sent to me by my wife, originally at:
http://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000/MediaCompilation4.htm

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From: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/31/opinion/31LEWI.html
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The Feeling of a Coup
(March 31, 2001)

By ANTHONY LEWIS

BOSTON -- We are learning something these days about the power of a willful
president. Without a popular mandate, George W. Bush is making radical
changes that will have long-term consequences for this country and the
world. He is making them in a hurry, and for the moment there are no checks
or balances to stop him.

Day after day headlines tell us of fundamental policy reversals. Mr. Bush
spurns the global effort, going back to the first Bush presidency, to
reduce global warming. He calls off talks with North Korea about its
missiles, casting doubt on the whole attempt to ease relations between
South and North. He proposes to rethink U.S. aid programs that help
dismantle former Soviet nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

A string of Bush administration decisions has halted steps to protect the
environment. Arsenic in drinking water, roads in national forests and so
on: limits are going to be "restudied." 

The reasons given for the environmental decisions have been almost
insultingly unconvincing. Christie Whitman, administrator of the
Environmental Protection Agency, said she was withdrawing the arsenic limit
set in a Clinton administration regulation because it had not had "thorough
review" in terms of "sound science." In fact, the limit was proposed by
highly regarded scientists after extended study.

Mr. Bush, explaining to senators why he opposed the Kyoto protocol on
global warming, spoke of the "incomplete state of scientific knowledge of
the causes of, and solutions to, global climate change." Of course the
science is incomplete on global warming, as it is on most subjects. But
virtually all scientific experts support the theory that greenhouse gas
emissions contribute to warming.

Contempt for public opinion as well as for science is evident in the
environmental decisions. A striking example is what has happened to a
Clinton regulation that prohibited road-building in about a third of the
national forests.

The head of the Forest Service, Michael P. Dombeck, resigned the other day
and sent a letter to his boss, Ann M. Veneman, the secretary of
agriculture. He respectfully urged her not to abandon the ban on roads.

"Doing so," he wrote, "would undermine the most extensive multi- year
environmental analysis in history, a process that included over 600 public
meetings and generated 1.6 million comments, the overwhelming majority of
which supported protecting roadless areas."

Mr. Dombeck's plea is not likely to move the Bush administration. It
postponed the effective date of the road-building regulation for 60 days
for further review. And in the meantime its lawyers have not defended the
regulation in a lawsuit brought against it by the Boise Cascade timber
company and the state of Idaho.

The American public would almost certainly vote to protect roadless parts
of the national forests, as it would to reduce the amount of arsenic in
water. But the public is not the audience that concerns Mr. Bush and his
appointees. They are out to please the interests that supported and
financed his campaign: timber companies, mining companies and the rest.

Nor is Mr. Bush moved by the arguments of respected Republican elders. As
he ordered a review of the program for dismantling Soviet weapons, former
Senator Howard Baker — whom he has named ambassador to Japan — was telling
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the program should be funded in
full.

The Bush motto, a Washington quip has it, is "Do it my way or no way." That
catches the willful quality of these first months. But there is more to the
story than that.

This is the most radical administration in living American memory. I use
the word deliberately. Today's right calls itself "conservative," but it is
not that. Conservatives want to conserve. That is why Teddy Roosevelt
started the national parks and the conservation movement. George W. Bush
and his people are driven by right-wing ideology to an extent not remotely
touched by even the Reagan administration.

And we haven't seen the half of it. As Mr. Dombeck said of opening the
national forests to road-building, the decisions "will have implications
that will last many generations."

All this from a man who ran as a "compassionate conservative," concealing
his hard-edged ideology, and who could not get half the voters to vote for
him even in that guise.


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sent to Pos Fut list by David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
http://www.geocities.com/davd.geo/index.html#top
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