IP: [ if US politics offends you, don't read this djf] SMELLS LIKE TEXAS -- From the Observer (London), Sunday, 19 May 2001

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Sun, 20 May 2001 11:37:11 -0400
> From: Gene Gaines <gene.gaines () gainesgroup com>
> To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
> Subject: SMELLS LIKE TEXAS
>
> Dave,
>
> Challenge - find one fact wrong in his Gregg Palast's
> story, below.  I highly recommend his work.
> IF YOU THINK BUSH'S NEW ENERGY PLAN STINKS,
> YOU MUST BE SMELLING THAT PIONEER SPIRIT
>
> In Texas, Palast totes up the big payday for the President's biggest donors
>
> by Greg Palast
> Inside Corporate America
> > From the Observer (London), Sunday, 19 May 2001
> --------------------------------------------
>
>
> Ah, the smell of Texas in the morning!
>
> According to LaNell Anderson, real estate agent, what I'm smelling is a
> combination of hydrogen sulphide and some other, unidentifiable toxic gunk.
> We've pulled up across from a pond on Houston's ship channel, home of the
> biggest refinery and chemical complex in America, owned by Exxon-Mobil.
> The pond is filled with benzene residues, a churning, burbling goop.
> Though there's a little park nearby, this is not a bucolic swimming hole.
> Rather, imagine your toilet backed up, loaded, churning and ripe ­
> assuming your toilet is a half-mile in circumference.
>
> I flew to Houston to prepare for this week's official release of
> President George W Bush's proposal to end the energy crisis in California.
> The Golden State is suffering rolling black-outs.  The state's monthly
> electricity bill has shot up by one thousand and still going higher.
> But as soon as I got a whiff of the President's proposals, I knew his
> plan had nothing to do with helping out the Gore-voting surfers on the Left
> Coast.  Bush's ‘energy crisis' plan reeks of pure eau du Texas,, that
> sulphurous combination of pollution, payola and political power unique to the
> Lone Star State.
>
> Bush put his Vice-President Dick Cheney in charge of the Committee to
> save California consumers.  Recommendation number one:  build some nuclear
> plants.  Not much of an offer to earthquake-prone California, but a darn good
> deal for the biggest builder of nuclear plants based in Texas, the Brown and
> Root subsidiary of Halliburton Corporation.  Recent CEO of Halliburton: Dick
> the Veep.
>
> Suggestion number two: drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic Wildlife Refuge.
> California does not burn oil in its power plants, but hey, committee member
> and Commerce Secretary Don Evans gave the arctic escapade a thumbs up.  Evans
> most recent employment: CEO of Tom Brown Inc, a billion-dollar oil and gas
> corporation.
>
> And so on.  Former Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower told me,
> "They've eliminated the middle man.  The corporations don't have to lobby the
> government any more.  They ARE the government."  Hightower used to complain
> about Monsanto's lobbying the Secretary of Agriculture.  Today, Monsanto
> executive Ann Venamin IS the Secretary of Agriculture.
>
> Well, back to energy.  The California's electricity watchdog agency
> claims that speculators and a little club of energy merchants exercised raw
> monopoly power to overcharge state consumers by a breathtaking $6.2 billion
> last year.  Bill Clinton, before his final bow, issued an order on December
> 14, halting uncontrolled speculation in the electricity market.  You could
> her the yowls all the way to Texas where the big winners in the power game 
> ­
> Enron, TXU, Reliant, Dynegy and El Paso corporation are headquartered.
> These five energy operators, through their executives and employees,
> ponied up $4.1 million for the Republican Presidential campaign cycle,
> according to the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington.
>
> They didn't have long to wait before their investment - excuse me, 
> donation - paid off big time.  Just three days after his inauguration,
> Bush swept away Clinton's orders directing controlled power sales to
> California.
>
> Back in the ship channel, once LaNell picked up the scent of airborne
> poisons, she hopped from her Lexus, pulled out a big white bucket and opened
> a valve, sucking in a 3-minute sample of air which she'll send off to the US
> Environmental Protection Agency.  The EPA will trace and fine the polluter.
> Hunting killer fumes is a heck of hobby.  LaNell began after learning she
> had a rare immune system disease associated with chemical pollution.  Her mom
> and dad died young of lung disease and cancer.  She grew up and lives near
> the ship channel.
>
> I didn't have the heart to tell her that she might as well chuck away her
> buckets.  Quietly tucked into President Bush's new budget, is a big fat 
> zero for the key EPA civil enforcement team.   This has no connection
> whatsoever to the petrochemical industry dumping $48 million into the
> Republican campaign.
>
> LaNell stopped to chat with some Chicano sub-teens playing soccer with an
> old bowling ball.   They live in what Exxon-Mobil calls its "vulnerability
> zone."  The refinery released 1,680,000 pounds of toxic chemicals into the
> air and water here last year by accident.  According to Exxon-Mobil records,
> if the pentane on site vaporized and ignited, it would burn human skin within
> 1.8 miles.  Seven-thousand three hundred people live in that zone.
> Bush is addressing the problem.  He's closing down public access to these
> reports on the killing zones.
>
> A giant flare suddenly lit up the other side of the channel - and LaNell
> sped off to investigate. She discovered that a chemical plant blew a hydrogen
> line - and the operators, rather than store the ruined batch of ethylene,
> chose to ignite it.  The toxic fireball, big as the Houses of Parliament,
> burned from the stack for several hours, exhaling a black cloud over Houston.
>
> LaNell said this sickening ‘sky dumping' procedure is okey-dokey with
> Texas state regulators.   Now Bush proposes moving air quality enforcement
> away from the tougher feds to these laid-back state agencies.  And this
> week's Bush energy plan proposes additional loosening of EPA rules on the
> chemical industry.
>
> On to Dallas, where I met with Cynthia Glazer, founder of a group of
> bereaved mothers in Winona, Texas.  They lost their children to rare diseases
> which they believe is related to a local hazardous waste ‘injection well,' a
> big underground chemical dump.   Cynthia wore one of those fancy Western
> dance shirts with the metal bangles and cowhide fringe, so  I brilliantly
> asked her if she enjoys Texas two-stepping.  "Actually, I don't do a lot of
> dancing these days.  My bones are deteriorating."
>
> Phyllis and the moms took a bus to Washington DC.  But official doors
> slammed in their faces.  "They said someone who's given 200,000 or a couple
> million, their call goes straight through."
>
> One Texan who made his way through the doors to power is Ken Lay, the
> Chairman of Enron, the electricity speculating outfit which made out so well
> in this week's energy plan.  Lay is a Pioneer, not the kind that lives in a
> little house on the prairie, busting the soil.  A ‘Pioneer' designates the
> big buckeroos who pledged to raise $100,000 apiece for Mr Bush.  Four hundred
> Pioneers - that's $40 million in campaign booty.
>
> Lay wouldn't talk to me, but his fellow Pioneer, Senator Teel Bevins,
> Texas Panhandle rancher, was right friendly. His office walls in the Capital
> in Austin sport a pair of riding chaps, his Pioneer medallion, and the head
> of a deceased Long-Horn.   I was assured the back half of the beast ended up
> on the Senator's barbeque.
>
> Getting the hundred grand for Bush was no problem for the
> cowboy-politican.  Easiest money he ever raised ("Eezist monuh ah eva
> rayzed").   And Bush never forgets his friends.  One unheralded milestone of
> Bush's first hundred days is his allowing beef packers to zap meat with
> radiation to kill salmonella, a disinfectant cheaper than non-nuclear
> methods.  (Bush's proposal to simply permit a bit of salmonella in school
> lunch meats was withdrawn after the public reacted with loud gagging and
> retching noises.)
>
> I told the Senator about Phyllis Glazer, the cancer victim and pollution
> fighter, and her complaint that Washington access required big bucks
> donations.
>
> "Well, it's easy for the press to take some victim and make her a poster
> girl. The reality is individuals in a country with 300 million people have
> very little opportunity to speak to the President of the United States."
>
> But what about Pioneer Lay of Enron Corp?  His company, America's number
> one power speculator is also Dubya's number one political career donor.  Lay
> was personal advisor to Bush during the post-election ‘transition.'  And his
> company held a private meeting with the Energy Plans' drafters.  Bush's
> protecting electricity deregulation has meant a big payday for Enron, profit
> up $87 million this quarter.
>
> The Senator is nothing if not candid.  "So you wouldn't have
> access if you had spent 2 years of your life working hard to get this guy
> elected President raising hundreds of thousands of dollars?"
> In case I didn't understand, he translated it into Texan.  "Ya' dance
> with them what brung ya'!"
>
> I couldn't argue with that.  If President Bush chose to two-step with Lay
> of Enron instead of Phyllis Glazer, well, let's be honest, Phyllis ain't much
> on the dance floor these days.
>
> See the BBC television Newsnight webcast of Palast's investigation in
> Texas - and subscribe to Palast's columns at http://www.GregPalast.com.
>
>
> --------------------------------------------
> You can still view BBC TV's, THEFT OF THE PRESIDENCY, at BBC Newsnight;
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/newsnight/newsid_1174000/1174115.stm
>
> Read A BLACKLIST BURNING FOR BUSH The (London) Observer;
> http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4103063,00.html
>
> FLORIDA'S ETHNIC CLEANSING OF VOTER ROLLS Salon.com story of the year;
> http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/12/04/voter_file/index.html
> FLORIDA'S DISAPPEARED VOTERS in The Nation;
> http://www.thenation.com
>
> US media failures at SILENCE OF THE LAMBS;
> http://www.mediachannel.org/views/whistleblower/palast.shtml
>
> and on Bush family finances: BEST DEMOCRACY MONEY CAN BUY;
> http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=15&row=1



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