Al Gore = fish in barrel (via Glenn Reynolds):
Al Gore Jr. received more than $500,000 in royalties from the owners of zinc mines who held mineral leases on his farm near Carthage, Tenn. Now the mines have a new owner and are scheduled to reopen later this year.
Before the mines closed in 2003, they emitted thousands of pounds of toxic substances and several times, the water discharged from the mines into nearby rivers had levels of toxins above what was legal.
State environmental officials say the mine has had a good environmental record and there is no evidence of unusual health problems in the area.
But the mine’s reopening again raises concerns about threats to the environment.
Find out more about how Gore became connected to mining, what’s happened at the mines through the years and what the former vice president is asking the new owners to do in the Sunday Tennessean and at www.tennessean.com.
Stay tuned.
Hey, wait a sec…are there such things as Zinc offsets?
UPDATE:Here’s the link to the Sunday piece. Big headline, but–after press inquiries–VP Gore dashed off a letter:
Last week, Gore sent a letter asking the company to work with Earthworks, a national environmental group, to make sure the operation doesn’t damage the environment.
“We would like for you to engage with us in a process to ensure that the mine becomes a global example of environmental best practices,” Gore wrote.
Victor Wyprysky, the company’s president and chief executive officer, did not respond to requests for comment on the letter.
The letter was sent the week after The Tennessean’s Washington bureau posed questions to the former vice president about his involvement with the mine.
And further down:
In its last year of full operation in 2002, the Gordonsville-Cumberland mines ranked 22nd among all metal mining operations in the U.S., with about 4.1 million pounds of toxic releases. The top releasing mine, Red Dog Mine in Alaska, emitted about 482 million pounds that year. In 2002, Smith County ranked 39th out of more than 3,000 U.S. counties for lead compound releases and 21st for cadmium releases, according to tallies by Scorecard, a Web site run by environmentalists that compiles federal data.
Even Gore noted in his letter that, according to Scorecard, “pollution releases from the mine in 2002 placed it among the ‘dirtiest/worst facilities’ in the U.S.”
There are some who see hypocrisy:
[N]ow that the mine is reopening and Gore’s status as an environmentalist has grown, some of Gore’s neighbors see a conflict between the mining and his moral call for environmental activism.
“Mining is not exactly synonymous with being green, is it?” said John Mullins, who lives in nearby Cookeville. A conservative, Mullins welcomes the resumption of mining for the benefits it will bring the community. But he says Gore’s view that global warming is a certainty is arrogant and that by being connected to mining, Gore is not “walking the walk.”
And some who don’t:
Earthworks president and chief executive Stephen D’Esposito said Gore’s involvement with mining doesn’t bother him “in any way, shape or form.”
“We are going to have mining. The question is doing it in the right place and the right way,” said D’Esposito, who has not studied the Carthage mines.
But here’s the problem for Al Gore, as explained by Glenn Reynolds:
That said, it’s not clear that Gore himself has done anything wrong, though he’s clearly made money from a project that’s pretty environmentally unfriendly. But this will add to the perception that Gore’s green talk is hypocritical, I suspect. As I’ve noted below, if you adopt a quasi-messianic posture, people will judge your actions very differently than if you do not.
UPDATE II: {See extended entry}.
[Open full post]Over at the OSB, I’ve put up a post putting yesterday’s testimony by Valerie Plame in context. Included is an informative reminder that, at first–while attempting to protect their own journalists against charges of publishing sensitive national security information–many mainstream media outlets tried to convince the Justice Department that Plame’s identity was well known. (Guess it depends who’s bacon is being fried, huh?) Also of some help would this timeline (via NRO), which the author contends shows that it was really Wilson who revealed the now infamous details of who and what his wife (Plame) did (with some help from Richard Armitage). This whole thing is a good example of how, once a narrative has been established, new facts often don’t change what people think. Though some do.
Mr. Wilson was embraced by many because he was early in publicly charging that the Bush administration had “twisted,” if not invented, facts in making the case for war against Iraq. In conversations with journalists or in a July 6, 2003, op-ed, he claimed to have debunked evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger; suggested that he had been dispatched by Mr. Cheney to look into the matter; and alleged that his report had circulated at the highest levels of the administration.
A bipartisan investigation by the Senate intelligence committee subsequently established that all of these claims were false — and that Mr. Wilson was recommended for the Niger trip by Ms. Plame, his wife. When this fact, along with Ms. Plame’s name, was disclosed in a column by Robert D. Novak, Mr. Wilson advanced yet another sensational charge: that his wife was a covert CIA operative and that senior White House officials had orchestrated the leak of her name to destroy her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson.
Also, the Rome Sentinel (in upstate New York) has a good three part series (via American Thinker) on the whole matter: the web of incompetence, the web of deceit, and 3) the web of politics.
[Open full post]I’ve already asked, “How is Firing Government Attorneys a ‘Scandal’?” Well, it ain’t. I agree with Andrew McCarthy:
The politicians on Capitol Hill theatrically castigate the politicians in the administration for making political decisions about political appointees based on political considerations. The politicians in the administration reply, “That would never happen,” before conceding that it precisely happened … without their knowledge, of course. And the political press is aghast.
Thus, was the “scandal” born. But, thanks to the by-now expected political ineptitude of the Bush Administration, the “scandal” has been turned into a scandal. To boil it down:
1) The Administration had every right to fire those attorneys, no matter what. Even if it looked vindictive and partisan, that’s politics.
2) The Administration tried to say that they were being high-minded. But instead of simply stating that these attorneys “serve at the pleasure of the President,” there was some effort to denigrate the performance of those fired. Stupid. As McCarthy said on Boston’s Michael Graham show (to paraphrase), these are highly motivated lawyers, wouldn’t you think they’d fight back?
3) Which brings me back to the title of the first post. The only controversy is in the way that the Administration has failed miserably to deal with this.
The Democrats and press alleged scandal over the initial act. In my opinion, there was no scandal. No matter who brought it up–the White House or the AG–or why or whatever. It was politics. It ain’t purty, but it’s still legal. But now, instead of just playing it straight and/or being surprised that the Democrats and the press would take them to task for just about anything they do, the Bush Administration was caught off guard. Now hearings are in the offing and the made-up “scandal” has become one in actuality. Nice job.
ADDENDUM:: Incidentally, to some of the commenters to the last post: you see how–as a story changes and more information comes out–a position can also change? (Even if it that change may be a bit too nuanced for some.) I’m the first to admit that I have politically and ideologically based biases. But once initially formed, they aren’t static and locked in for all time. How about you?
It should make for riveting television when WPRO-AM talk-show host Dan Yorke and blogger-political activist Matt Jerzyk square off on immigration on 10 News Conference at 6:30 AM this Sunday. (A few disclosures: I’m a weekly guest on Yorke’s show, and Jerzyk is an occasional Phoenix contributor.)
Jerzyk and Yorke have been engaged in a tiff since Jerzyk made a recent post responding to some of Yorke’s assertions about the New Bedford immigration bust.
Considering how George W. Bush is in his second term, you have to laugh when conservatives blame liberals for shortcomings in the nation’s immigration policy. That said, both immigrant advocates and immigration critics seem united in their belief that the staus quo leaves a lot to be desired. Since immigrants have long made for convenient scapegoats, the hard part is stimulating a dialogue that promotes light, rather than just heat (if not outright misinformation).
Should be interesting. One point though: I don’t think many conservatives are blaming just liberals–President Bush has certainly gotten his fair share of criticism. Any conservative criticism of the actions of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation in the aftermath of the recent New Bedford raid is because they seem more concerned about playing up the plight of exploited illegal immigrants over an entirely legal (if somewhat mishandled) raid. As the ProJo editorializes, the law enforcement officers were simply doing there job–upholding the law. None of this means that conservatives are letting the President off the hook for his predisposition to amnesty.
[Open full post]…our own Rep. Patrick Kennedy was hooked on OxyContin? (Video Here)
Probably not.
Wonder which doctor he had? Or was there more than one? Could he have been doctor shopping? {Oh yes, this link is intended to be “ironic”}.
Will the media care?
Or are we just supposed to feel bad for poor Patrick and his battle against the same old “demons“?
Just wondering.
OK, to be fair, the Ambien sleep-driving incident may have not been his fault. But, if that was the only reason for the accident, then why the next-day check-in to rehab? Oh, that’s right, because maybe mixing Ambien and alcohol (much less OxyContin) ain’t exactly the best thing.
So the Bush Administration fires 8 lawyers and somehow this “scandal“is the next Watergate? Please. I agree with Mike Gallagher on this one:
[T]o read today’s papers, all the political controversies in our nation’s history combined don’t add up to the earthquake of a scandal that is rocking our world: the Bush Administration was involved in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall of a high school social studies class when a student timidly raises his hand and says to the teacher, “Um, Miss Smith – if President Clinton can fire all 93 U.S. attorneys for obvious political reasons, why can’t President Bush?”
Oh but it is different. Just ask the CBS News blog, who are setting it all straight by, for instance, pointing to this explanation:
Although Bush and President Bill Clinton each dismissed nearly all U.S. attorneys upon taking office, legal experts and former prosecutors say the firing of a large number of prosecutors in the middle of a term appears to be unprecedented and threatens the independence of prosecutors.
And, according to CBS legal analyst Andrew Cohen
What is different about this current episode is that a Republican White House sought to replace Republican-appointed federal prosecutors mid-stream who were by all accounts doing precisely what they had been asked to do. We now know, from last week’s testimony, why in some cases this was so and the answers we got make it clear that the reasons were not high-minded or lofty.
I’m glad the unbiased media is on the case. So, to dismiss someone, the Executive Branch must do so for only high-minded or lofty reasons? So much for executive privilege. I’ll throw up another Clinton example: remember the Travel Office? OK, it may not rise to the same level. And, as NY Sen. Chuck Schumer points out, “U.S. attorneys have always been above politics, and this administration has blatantly manipulated the U.S. attorney system to serve its political needs.” Hmm. What about this?
…the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, which is Manhattan, which is a big post, was a Chuck Schumer protégé, and he was there for five or six years. If there was somebody else prior to him, then this guy who was Schumer’s protégé was second. He was there for a number of years. A Chuck Schumer protégé was the US attorney for the Southern District of New York. They finally got a new guy in there — I don’t know, a year and a half, or two years ago — a man by the name of Mike Garcia, finally a Bush appointee after four or five years of his administration, and Schumer now has the audacity to say that US attorneys have always been above politics?
Of course not. And that’s what this really is about. Politics. It’s not illegal, it’s not a crime. It’s pure political opportunism. That’s it.
[Open full post]The NY Times has decided that the choir shouldn’t be charged for their sermons (via Instapundit):
The New York Times is opening up access permanently to TimesSelect to all students and faculty who have .edu e-mail addresses beginning on March 13.
“It’s part of our journalistic mission to get people talking on campuses,” says Vivian Schiller, senior vice president and general manager at NYTimes.com. “We wanted to open that up so that college students and professors can have a dialogue.”
Well, at least one side of the dialogue will be pretty well covered.
[Open full post]In addition to Giovanni Cicione being elected Rhode Island GOP Chairman last night, John Robitaille of Portsmouth was elected First Vice-Chair, Karen Salvatore of North Kingstown was elected second vice-chair (becoming the only candidate not endorsed by the state party’s nominations committee to win a leadership position), Robert Coupe of Cranston was elected party secretary, and Marc Tondreau of Lincoln was elected treasurer.
[Open full post]Out with the old, in with the new.
By a unanimous voice vote, Republicans at their state convention last night elected 36-year-old Barrington lawyer Giovanni Cicione as party chairman, replacing Patricia Morgan.
“I will work to make our party, once again, the party of unity,” Cicione said in a statement handed out to the media….“I urge you to remember our greatest asset is unity, our greatest weakness is internal division,” Cicione stated. “Our party is the party of reform. We were the champions of separation of powers. Pension reform was our idea….We believe government is at its best when it governs least. Local control and open processes work best. Our opponents favor government that intrudes into every aspect of our lives and economy. They impose over-reaching regulations that are then governed by so many layers of bureaucracy, they escape scrutiny and accountability.”
He also pledged to concentrate on recruiting good candidates, especially female candidates. “I will be announcing in the days to come a slate of prominent women in our party who will co-chair this effort that we will call the WE CAN project” — which stands for the Women and Elections Candidate Project.
To any convention attendees: who else was (s)elected to the new RI GOP leadership? Apparently the ProJo didn’t find that newsworthy.
[Open full post]Liz Boardman has a report in this week’s South County Independent on a presentation given to the South Kingstown Republican Town Committee by Sean O’Donnell and Roland Benjamin on “Consumer Driven Health Plans”, i.e. health savings accounts combined with high-deductible insurance. Ms. Boardman provides a straightforward example of how CDHPs work…
Under CDHPs, employees put pre-tax dollars into a special savings account. Their employers match at least a portion of that amount. The employee uses the money to pay a relatively higher deductible, but any costs above that are fully covered by the plan.Among other benefits, South Kingstown Republican Town Chairman Dave Cote sees CHDPs as a possible way of relieving the fiscal crunch on Rhode Island’s cities and towns…
For example, an employee with a $2,000 deductible would contribute $1,000, and his employer would add the other $1,000. If the employee has a chronic illness, such as asthma, he would likely spend his $2,000 on maintenance drugs and doctor’s visits, but he would cap out after $2,000 and not pay any additional costs…
Using a CDHP system, Benjamin told the group, LFI was able to hold the cost of health insurance steady after several years of near double-digit increases with traditional plans.
Coté said the GOP would be holding workshops about CDHPs around South Kingstown and statewide. “The end result, we hope, would be the students benefiting by infusing the savings back into school programs and extracurricular activities, like languages, sports and gifted programs,” he said.[Open full post]
