KC Star, June 30th, Opinion page
"After E. Coli Debacle, State's Clean Water Program Flails"
Maybe "Fails" would be a better word. Ken Midkiff, chairman of the Missouri Clean Water Campaign, documents the MO DNR's failure to keep up with spills and troubled waters. Funding of DNR is cited as the major reason for DNR's failure to cope. In any event, reliance on DNR to take care of business is a bad strategy for a City or private concern (say like WLIC). As Mr Midkiff says, "For the most part, dischargers are left to their own devices."
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An Argument For Big Government
The peak smog year ever in Los Angeles was 1955.
It was like that all over back then, and many of us today have forgotten how bad it really was. The early Sixties were the days when urban rivers like the Cleveland River used to catch fire. Boston Harbor was a famous cesspool. People made jokes about painting the Hudson blue.
How did such a thing come about? How is it that L.A. air can be better today than it was 50 years ago, despite the fact that the population has doubled and traffic levels quadrupled in that time?
The answer does not lie in the good intentions of industrialists nor the efforts of earnest do-gooders.
The plain answer, uncomfortable as it may be to those who believe in "free enterprise" and "small government", is that the air and water are cleaner than they used to be because government chose to make it so, and for no other reason.
It is an astonishing accomplishment of the corporate right that it has managed to convince ordinary Americans that the government is somehow their enemy—that there is some need to get government "off our backs."
I want government big and I want it powerful.We need a government that is powerful enough—and rich enough—to do battle with the other powerful forces in this land—to prevail on them to do what is right and not just what is profitable.
by Eric Rawlins 2004
Eric Rawlins is Berkley Liberal this written pre- banking crisis and pre -Gulf disaster
Most important he wrote this prior to the catastrophic re-election of your boy DubYa
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