Activism Across America

The Concord Monitor, a major New Hampshire newspaper, has a tradition of offering endorsements in the Republican and Democratic presidential primary contests. This year, the Concord Monitor has broken with its tradition. This year, it has offered an anti-endorsement.

The Concord Monitor has written an editorial advising voters to, whatever they do, not vote for Mitt Romney. The paper writes, “When New Hampshire partisans are asked to defend the state’s first-in-the-nation primary, we talk about our ability to see the candidates up close, ask tough questions and see through the baloney. If a candidate is a phony, we assure ourselves and the rest of the world, we’ll know it. Mitt Romney is such a candidate. New Hampshire Republicans and independents must vote no.”

(Source: New Hampshire Monitor, December 22, 2007)

A couple of days ago, I wrote an article describing the terrible environmental record earned by California Representative Duncan Hunter in Congress. He got a zero percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters. The reaction of his supporters was an indication of the pathological disregard for a clean environment among right wing activists in America today.

One supporter called the zero percent rating an “impressive recommendation” for the Hunter for President campaign. Another supporter, writing for a blog called Ohio Duncan Hunter for President, remarked, “If you are a conservative, you know there’s always something fun about ticking off the envirowhackos.”

We don’t think that asking someone running for President of the United States to earn more than a zero percent rating on environmental legislation makes us “envirowhackos”. It’s saddening to me to see that defending polluters who trash the Earth is regarded by some Americans as “something fun”.

(Source: Ohio Duncan Hunter For President, December 21, 2007)

Tom Tancredo, a Republican who represents the 6th district of Colorado in the House of Representatives, is running for President in 2008. As President, it would be his job to represent all the people of the United States of America, including those who do not want to live in filth.

Keeping the nation clean is really what environmentalism is all about. Environmentalists seek to keep the air, ground and water clean, so that people have the chance to lead healthy lives without unhealthy levels of industrial contamination.

Sadly, Congressman Tancredo seems unwilling to provide the leadership necessary to enable Americans to live free of the filth of industrial pollution. On the National Environmental Scorecard assembled by the League of Conservation Voters for 2006, Tancredo earns only a rating of eight percent. Of twelve key pieces of environmental legislation in the House of Representatives in 2006, Tancredo only voted in favor of one.

A one-in-twelve record of environmental success is not the kind of record we need to see in our next President. (Source: League of Conservation Voters, National Environmental Scorecard, 2006)

As the campaign to become the Republican nominee for President in 2008, candidates Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter like to say that they are in favor of cutting government spending.

That’s not how they have voted as members of the House of Representatives, however. As members of Congress, Tancredo and Hunter have voted for Republican borrow-and-spend legislation over and over again, and they’ve voted against attempts by Democrats to bring Republican spending under control.

Consider, for example, the vote that Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo case in May of 2006 against an amendment designed to restore fiscal responsibility to logging in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. The Tongass National Forest contains natural resources held in trust for the American people. Yet, under the Republicans, the government has been giving the timber away practically for free.

In 2005, for example, the federal government spent more than 48.5 million dollars subsidizing logging in the Tongass National Forest. In return, the government only got back $500,000 dollars in fees from loggers. That’s 48 million dollars worth of services the government just gave away, as some kind of Logging Welfare. And did the loggers then sell us their timber products at a discounted rate, in thanks for the government giveaways? Nope. They’re taking from the American people on both ends.

A bipartisan effort led by Republican Steve Chabot and Democrat Rob Andrews led to an amendment to end federal government subsidies for logging roads into the Tongass National Forest. Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter opposed this effort to restore fiscal responsibility to government land management. Tancredo and Hunter voted to keep the big government gravy train going.

(Sources: League of Conservation Voters, National Environmental Scorecard, 2006; Library of Congress)

Duncan Hunter, arepresentative in Congress for Southern California and Republican presidential candidate in 2008, seems to hardly have ever met an environmental cause that he gave a damn about. In fact, in 2006, Congressman Hunter didn’t meet a single piece of environmental legislation that he was willing to support. His rating in the League of Conservation Voters National Environmental Scorecard for 2006 was zero percent. Duncan Hunter didn’t vote in favor of keeping the environment clean one single time.

That kind of extremist, stubborn refusal to act as a steward of the Earth has no place in the White House in this time of escalating environmental crisis. (Source: League of Conservation Voters, National Environmental Scorecard, 2006)

For as long as anyone can remember, Wyoming voters have leaned toward the right. They have consistently voted Republican in the presidential elections, and 2008 looks like another Republican year for Wyoming.

You might think that counts as a reason for all America to vote Republican. After all, shouldn’t we listen to Wyoming’s rugged example?

Actually, no, I don’t think that we should. You see, as part of its right wing identity, Wyoming sends strongly anti-environmental legislators to Congress. In the most recent National Environmental Scorecard, Wyoming’s congressional delegation scored the lowest of any delegation in the country. Wyoming’s representatives in both the House and Senate earned a zero percent rating in the scorecard. That means that the Wyoming delegation to Congress didn’t vote to protect America’s environment on even one occasion.

That kind of stark failure, due to ideological anti-environmental extremism, provides a very good reason to vote contrary to the advice of Wyoming, and work to elect a progressive President instead.

(Source: League of Conservation Voters, National Environmental Scorecard, 2006)

I’m of two minds when it comes to the Vermont Progressive Party. On the one hand, it’s nice to see a state where there is a genuinely progressive-minded political party that’s not mired in the mess that has become the Green Party. I like the Green Party in theory. In practice, the Green Party has been a lesson in lost energy and a vision of defeat-as-success.

On the other hand, I see the language embraced by the Vermont Progressive Party as it prepares for the 2008 race for Governor. Vermont Public Radio reports the unanimity with which the Progressive Party and Democratic Party of Vermont have agreed that there must only be one candidate facing the Republican candidate.

Practically, I understand the strategy. With a split vote between a Democrat and a Progressive candidate, the Republican could win without a real majority of votes. Functionally, however, how much of an independent political party can the Vermont Progressive Party be when it agrees that it has no choice but to coordinate with the Democratic Party of Vermont and avoid giving voters the choice between a Democratic candidate and a Progressive candidate.

Is the Progressive Party anything but an arm of the Vermont Democrats in a circumstance such as this? Can the Vermont Progressive Party be a model for the rest of America if it has been co-opted by the very Democratic Party with which so many American progressives are profoundly discontented?

As we think ahead to the presidential election of 2008, it does us well to think back to one of the low points of the 2004 presidential election. The Club For Growth paid a couple of actors to pretend that they were authentic, upset voters telling latte-sipping, Volvo-driving, New-York-Times-reading, Howard Dean to go back to Vermont, where he belongs. The advertisement was supposed to demonstrate just how out-of-touch with America Howard Dean was. The Club For Growth’s alternative, who was supposed to be in touch with the pulse of America: George W. Bush.

That’s really how the right wing sees things, though. As the right wing sees it, the big problems aren’t whether you break the law, trash the Constitution and lead America into unnecessary wars. The big problems with America, they say, are that too many people drink latte and read the New York Times.

Of course, that advertisement wasn’t just an insult to Howard Dean. It was an insult to Vermont. The idea was that Vermont was full of wacko liberal ideas that were too weird for the rest of America.

What are those weird ideas that people have in Vermont, anyway? Cleanliness is one. The people of Vermont believe in keeping their state and their country clean. When it comes down to it, that’s what environmentalism is really all about: Picking up after yourself.

The clean politics of Vermont are revealed quite well in the record of the state’s congressional delegation, as analyzed in the National Environmental Scorecard put together every year by the League of Conservation Voters. In the most recent National Environmental Scorecard put together by the LCV, red state delegations, from those states that voted to re-elect George W. Bush in 2004, earn an average score that’s between 20 and 30 percent. Vermont, however, is the only state in the Union to earn a 100 percent rating for the politicians it sends to both the House and the Senate.

Vermont liberals are focused on keeping America clean and in the clear, far and away outperforming states that voted Republican in 2004. That’s a good reason to, the next time you see a latte-sipping liberal from Vermont, pull up a chair and listen for a bit. You just might get some good words of advice.

(Source: League of Conservation Voters, National Environmental Scorecard, 2006)

Hawaiian bird lovers have a special reason to vote for a progressive President in 2008. The National Audubon Society reports that, of the 217 threatened American birds listed on their 2007 Watchlist, 39 are native only to the Hawaiian islands.

Right wing politicians lack the resolve to take firm action to confront this crisis. They’re better at coming up with excuses than they are at coming up with solutions. Only a progressive President will permit a concerted government strategy to avert a wave of Hawaiian avian extinction.

(Source: National Audubon Society)

The U.S. Forest Service has been caught in an insult against state environmental officials in Arizona and New Mexico, and assault on land in those states, a reckless endangerment of fragile ecosystems there, and a violation of a legal settlement, and a lie to the American people.

The U.S. Forest Service, in a 1996 legal settlement, agreed to protections for areas of ponderosa pine and other conifers in Arizona and New Mexico. However, in 2007, the Forest Service abruptly ended its adherence to the legal settlement, and changed the official rules for the management of that land.

Trying to blunt protest over this betrayal, the Forest Service claimed that state officials from Arizona and New Mexico had expressed no concerns about the changes. Records from the Game and Fish Department of Arizona show that’s just not true. State environmental officials expressed profound objections to the loosening of rules protecting the land. The Forest Service simply ignored their concerns.

This particular case shows how the right wing federal government’s refusal to accept its responsibility for environmental protections doesn’t affect wildlife. The neglect also affects relationships between the federal government and state governments. In both respects, the anti-environmental government set up by Republicans has failed to function.

(Source: Center for Biological Diversity, November 27, 2007)