Women and Minorities Hardest Hit
By Robert A. Hahn Posted in Breaking News — Comments (12) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
It seems that Republicans are killing black people again. You know what that means. There's either an election coming, or a Clinton is planning to run for president.
You may recall that during the run-up to the 1992 election, the media — out of the blue, puns aside — decided that everyone
should be deeply concerned about the hungry people in Somalia. Why Somalia? Who knows. A lot of people at the time wondered that, there being hungry people all over the world. But never mind why, the important thing was that here were some hungry black people. And Bush the Father was doing nothing about it!
There were hungry Somalis on the TV every night, and starving babies in the newspaper every morning. Black people were dying, and the Republicans were asleep at the switch. This went on for months.
We all know how that went. We went over there to pass out food, and they shot at us. We quickly discovered that there was a reason these people were starving, and it wasn't because they were poor. It was because there were a bunch of thugs driving around in jeeps with machine guns, stealing everything from everybody. So we had a little mission creep... get rid of the thugs with the machine guns.
Somewhere in the middle of that, Clinton got elected. And that was the last we heard about the starving people in Somalia. Clinton surrendered to the thugs, pulled the troops out, and the Somalis went back to starving. But since there was a Democrat in the White House, there was no reason to be concerned about them anymore. So the starving Somalis disappeared from the TV and the newspapers.
Say this for the Democrats in the media: they learn from their mistakes. Yes, there is another election coming. And yes, there's a Clinton planning to run. But this time let's not start a war over it. War is bad karma. So this time, let's have the Republicans killing black people right here at home.
more below...
There is a stock joke among conservatives that if an asteroid were poised to strike the Earth, the media would headline it, "Women and Minorities to be Hardest Hit." That is what popped into my head the other day as I scanned down the headlines in my RSS reader and saw that the AP was hawking "More Blacks Live With Pollution." At the time, I didn't even read it. I just chuckled, figuring that the Green Weenies had finally latched onto the "minorities hardest hit" meme and that soon we would be hearing that Global Warming is especially hard on African-Americans. I'm still expecting to see that one, but in the meantime we're getting this:
- The original AP story, repeated everywhere, this time on CNN. Note the photo of the African-American woman whose child is especially hard-hit. Why is this happening? Because...
- A dozen years after former President Clinton ordered the government to attack environmental injustices, black and poor Americans still are far more likely to breathe factory pollution that poses the greatest health risk, an Associated Press analysis found.
See that? Clinton tried to put a stop to this travesty. Unfortunately, nothing happened during his eight years in office, and now it's a real problem. The story does, however, quote Carol Browner, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration. No AP story would be complete without a quotation from a Clinton Administration official.
- A local angle, Illinois third in bad-air areas; Minorities, poor in most danger from the Springfield Journal-Register.
- Ohio Valley's risky air affecting us all, from the Cincinnati Enquirer. In spite of the title, this one tells us that "In Kentucky, blacks were three times as likely as whites to breathe foul air."
- Out in Contra Costa county, CA, a Refinery exhaust plan draws criticism. That's because "pollution not only causes smog in the region, but it can aggravate cancer and asthma risks for refinery neighbors, many of whom are low-income minorities."
- Today's Towns With Unhealthy Air Fight Back, another AP offering, with another photo of another African-American woman. This one is elderly, so no sick child this time.
Anyway, you get the picture. What's needed here is an alliance between environmentalists and minorities, for only that can keep the Republicans from killing black people. Until now, African-Americans have not as a group been all that excited about environmentalism, but you can see how that might be politically useful to some people. Fortunately, the press has jumped right on it.
How did that happen? Well, all we know for sure is that the AP somehow discovered a "little known EPA project" that used a scoring system developed under Carol Browner,
who headed the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration. The AP was so enamored of this project that they performed a big study on it. They not only wrote a national story, they enlisted their local reporters to generate "local angle" stories. We know that because a bunch of those appeared as well.
You might wonder how the AP suddenly developed a keen interest in some obscure EPA project dating from the Clinton administration. On its face, that's almost as weird as picking some African country at random and writing a bunch of stories about how people are starving there, as if they hadn't been starving there for a hundred years.
Here's my guess. The Clinton (there is really only one of them, though it has two bodies) has decided that it must remain at least slightly in favor of the Iraq war so as to counter the public's perception that Democrats are weak on defense issues. But now it needs to do something for the Democratic base, which doesn't like the war very much and is screaming at The Clinton for going off the reservation. Here's an idea: The Clinton will embrace environmentalism! It will out-Gore Al Gore on saving the planet!
Now it is true that in its previous life, The Clinton never submitted the Kyoto treaty for ratification. But so what? It can go to Montreal and condemn Bush for doing the same thing, and most of the press will go along. And it is also true that the data the AP used in its "minorities hardest hit" stories are from 2000. The Clinton had been president for seven years, but never mind that. It's 2005 now, the Republicans are in, and black people are choking to death on the fumes.
The only question now is how long we have to wait before The Clinton releases a "major policy statement" in which it reveals itself to be Mother Gaia herself. It won't be long now. Browner did her part. The rest is up to Hillary.
« Toward an Understanding of the Obamian Language — Comments (4) | Update on Alliance for Justice "Rolling Justice" Tour — Comments (2) »
Women and Minorities Hardest Hit 12 Comments (0 topical, 12 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
With ANWR and some other energy/envior issues, including expanding nuclear power, being pushed to the forefront of the debate recently, I had been wondering how the dems would hold their hodge-podge coalition together, when spiking fuel and energy costs would indicate that many of these things would benefit the underclass constituency that the dems purport to represent.
The pro-choicers will trade their support to anybody in the dem coalition who vows to uphold abortion, so they are no issue. But how to keep the minority vote in line? Wouldn't anything that helps push down gasoline, electricity and heating prices have a meaningful benefit to blacks, who are disproportionately on the lower end of the economic ladder? Nick, it looks like you've provided the answer- blacks now need to fear a new boogeyman. Forget about the Church burning scare, now there is a conspiracy destroy the black community with the pollution from any expansion of our energy production and infrastructure. I guess we will know the fix is in as soon as Revs Jackson, Sharpton, etc start harping about "enviromental genocide."
Wicked sense of humor though, what?
Yeah, when Democrats are in the Whitehouse.
I vacillate between embarrassed chuckles and utter disgust.
I live in Contra Costa County, California. Yes, we have a bunch of refineries, including the Chevron facility that employs 4000 people and has been in operation since 1904. We also have other refineries all along the county's northern waterfront, as that's where tankers offload from the Pacific. Our county seat, Martinez, is a lovely old town dating to Mexican times. It is affluent. Across the bridge is Benicia, California's old capitol in 1854, a lovely little town with a beautifully restored waterfront. And on it goes. The "problem" is that there are a bunch of public housing projects, near the Chevron refinery, that were built in the 1950s. They are no closer to the refinery that the weathier people in Martinez and Benicia. BUT, they are mostly BLACK, as it Richmond. Can you see the connection now? What bogus nonsense.
...is an end to poverty.
Individual democrats would love to see an end to poverty, but the leadership isn't about to give up a guaranteed pool of votes. That's why the "war on poverty" is more effective at making poverty more comfortable than it is at getting people out of poverty.
As for the topic at hand, seems to me that the white folks will be the first to go drown when the rising sea levels (caused by global warming, or course) floods out the beachfront property.
So in the final analysis, it's all (excuse the expression)a wash.
Nick-- about your signature quote-- "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. But give a man a poisonous fish and you feed him for a lifetime." -- Is this intended to mean that if you give a man a poisonous fish and he immediately dies, you have in fact fed him for the remainder of his lifetime? (Ha)
in the Clinton years. As I recall, it cost a lot to be with the Clintons.
because they really don't lose that pool of votes. It does, however, lower their per capita get-out-the-vote costs.
The poor may not always be with us.