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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