GPinchot’s Recent Comments

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  Ignorance is Not Bliss

  I wish people who care about the environment and want to help protect it were more careful about their comments.  I wish this magazine was more careful about its reporting, more thorough in its research and better informed with its questions.

  It doesn't take much effort for one to discover how valuable a friend to the environment Rep. Dingell has been and how important he will be in
  the next Congress.

  Those who would belittle or dismiss John Dingell do themselves no credit and do the cause of environmental protection harm.

  Just look at the Wikipedia:  

  "Dingell is generally classed as a liberal Democrat, and throughout his career he has been a leading congressional supporter of organized labor, of social welfare measures and of traditional progressive policies. At the beginning of every Congress, Dingell introduces a bill providing for a national health insurance system, the same bill that his father proposed while he was in Congress. However, he was a strong proponent of Bill Clinton's managed-care proposal early in his administration."

  Of course Dingell isn't monochromatic on all issues:  

  "On some issues, though, he reflects the conservative values of his largely Catholic and working-class district. He was a supporter of the Vietnam War until 1971. Although he supported the Johnson Administration's civil rights bills, he opposed campaigns to expand school desegregation to the Detroit suburbs via mandatory busing. He takes a moderately conservative position on abortion. He has voted against clean air bills if these appear to threaten Detroit's automobile industry.

  "An avid sportsman and hunter, he strongly opposes gun control, and is a former board member of the National Rifle Association. For many years, Dingell has received an A+ rating from the NRA."

  I don't agree with everything Dingell believes, especially about General Motors and guns. Should that be the litmus test?

  The political analyst Michael Barone wrote of Dingell in 2002:

      "There is something grand about the range of Dingell's experience and about his adherence to his philosophy over a very long career. He is an old-fashioned social Democrat who knows that most voters don't agree with his goals of a single-payer national health insurance plan but presses forward toward that goal as far as he can."

   "It's hard to believe that there was once no Social Security or Medicare", Dingell says. "The Dingell family helped change that. My father worked on Social Security and for national health insurance, and I sat in the chair and presided over the House as Medicare passed (in 1965). I went with Lyndon Johnson for the signing of Medicare at the Harry S. Truman Library, and I have successfully fought efforts to privatize Social Security and Medicare". Whether you agree or disagree, the social democratic tradition is one of the great traditions in our history, and John Dingell has fought for it for a very long time."

  Now look at what matters most about the environment: not some abstract, unreacheable goal of environmental utopia, but down to reality issues regarding pollution in this country and the imminent hazards to public health not being addressed by this Administration.  

  That is Dingell's agenda. When a man with his experience, knowledge and influence speaks, we ought to listen carefully before leaping in with emotional reactions uninformed by any information.

  Who is responsible for most of the threat from pollution we face? Who is responsible for cleaning it up or protecting us from it?  How are they doing?

  Without John Dingell do you seriously expect any attention let alone action to occur regarding the protection of public health and the environment in this country over the next two years?

  Environmental protection is an extremely complex, technical subject. The subject of Clean Air Act compliance and this Administration revolves around what toxic pollutants? Do folks know it is mercury and now lead?

  What upsets me most is to see not only commenters with their ready, shoot, aim knee-jerk, top of the head, uniformed emotional outbursts, but rather it is the vacuous, uninformed and poorly researched approach of the reporter on this piece.

  She doesn't know or care, apparently, the extent of the pollution caused by the US Dept of Defense or what Mr. Dingell appears ready to do about it.

  She doesn't know, apparently, how this Administration has used the Dept of Defense as its stalking horse, using its vast political clout, to suppress all other Federal agencies, roll over the US EPA and the State regulators, and do serious damage to the infrastructure of our environmental laws.

  She takes for granted that all we have to do is fix global warming and save the pandas and whales and all will be well -- or at least it sounds to me like that sort of teenaged volunteer sort of thing. The Jessica Simpson approach to  environmental protection -- "I totally don't know what that means, but I want it."

  Not one jot of evidence she knows what she is about in my opinion.

  Very disappointing.

  For example, why not ask Mr. Dingell why he is concerned about the Pentagon's cleanups? Why does he share Sen. Boxer's concerns about Ammonium Perchlorate and TCE?  

  Why does the Administration want a top Pentagon official to be the US EPA Inspector General despite the fact the man, Alex Beehler, has no accounting or investigation experience?

  What does Mr. Dingell think the Pentagon is up to when it appoints high level people to work on what they call "emerging contaminants?"  What are those? Or are we assuming chlorinated hydrocarbons in industrial solvents are ok for us to have in our drinking water in any old concentration the Pentagon likes - so long as they don't have to pay to clean it up?

  Is the Pentagon planning to clean up those chemicals in our drinking water for which it is responsible? Or is the Pentagon planning to find a way to destroy the Federal and state regulatory role as scientific arbiter of how much environmental public health risk is too much -- in other words, take away the fundamental cornerstone of environmental law, the ability of independent regulators to set a standard above which you got to clean up.

  Just a little homework would have found all that ...

  Pls, try to do better next time -- better still, go back and get it right.On John Dingell talks to Grist about climate change, fuel economy, and the 110th Congress posted 2 years, 11 months ago 17 Responses