JoseCuervo
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And Kerry was a 92% earner... The highest ever...
Bush's environmental outrages spur group to battle
It may not get the same attention as weapons of mass destruction and tax cuts for the rich, but the League of Conservation Voters wants Americans to remember one other thing about George W. Bush when they step into the voting booth in November.
He has the most abysmal environmental record of any president in modern history. Yes, believe it or not, even worse than Ronald Reagan, who once claimed that trees cause more pollution than automobiles.
It's so bad that the league has given George W. the first F in its 34-year existence.
OK, so that's not exactly a shocker. But it is significant. Why?
Because, unlike the Michael Moores and Linda Ronstadts of the world, the League of Conservation Voters isn't linked to any political group or movement. It's a national, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that judges candidates strictly on their environmental records and which - as Mike Palamuso, its Wisconsin campaign director, noted in a phone interview this week - has endorsed Republicans about 25 percent of the time.
(The group is not directly affiliated with the Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters, which was founded in 2001.)
But this election, the national league has concluded, is hardly a close call. In fact, it's so dismayed by the Bush administration's meat-cleaver assault on the Clean Air and Clean Water acts that it recently launched the "Environmental Victory Project," a massive grass-roots campaign whose sole goal is help send George W. back to Texas. (See www.envirovictory.org.)
To that end, league volunteers are going door to door in four critical swing states: Wisconsin, Florida, New Mexico and Oregon. In Wisconsin, they've already knocked on 50,000 doors in the Milwaukee area. And beginning next week, they will begin targeting swing voters in Dane County as well.
Kerry, of course, already has a strong base in Dane County, Palamuso says. But polls also show there are a fairly large number of undecided voters in rural Dane County, "and we need to make sure they swing our way."
And how do league volunteers hope to accomplish that?
By making the same two points over and over:
• That George Bush's environmental record is a disaster. (To cite one glaring example, Bush - unlike his father, Reagan or Bill Clinton - "has opposed requiring corporate polluters to clean up their own messes at toxic waste sites," Palamuso notes.)
• That John Kerry's 92 percent lifetime environmental voting record on the league's congressional scorecard is one of the highest ever achieved. (By comparison, Al Gore had a lifetime voting record of 64 percent - or similar to Kerry's running mate, John Edwards. Which is still quite impressive for senators from Southern states, Palamuso says.)
"I mean, the Republicans have spent millions and millions of dollars attacking Kerry and accusing him of being a flip-flopper," he says. "But on this issue, Kerry has a very consistent record of fighting for a cleaner and safer environment. And you can't argue that. It's very clear."
Actually, the general response that the volunteers have gotten so far has been "truly remarkable," Palamuso says. Even Bush supporters, he says, have acknowledged that the president's environmental policies have been a big disappointment.
"I think you've probably seen a lot of the same polls I have that indicate the environment doesn't always register high on people's list of priorities," he says. "But what we've found is that when we begin to explain the huge differences between Bush and Kerry on this issue - the fact, for instance, that Bush consistently favors corporate polluters and special interests - people do respond to that."
Palamuso says the volunteers have encountered some voters who question why the league felt compelled to act now - as opposed to past elections. And the answer, he says, should be obvious to anyone who's been paying attention.
If we're really sincere about the need to protect our resources for future generations, "we can't allow this administration to have four more years," he says.
"We simply can't."
