Time for Congress to get off its crazy train
Rep. Eric Cantor
We all deserve to breathe clean air, but the House of Representatives today acted as if our air doesn't need to be quite so clean.
Guided by Rep. Eric Cantor's toxic dirty-air agenda and a host of political paybacks to dirty-industry campaign contributors, the House passed a bill to block the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing certain clean air standards.The bill is called the TRAIN Act, H.R. 2401, and it is a train wreck. If it becomes law, it could cause 139,500 deaths due to air pollution. One of the most anti-public health bills ever considered by Congress, the TRAIN Act passed the House by a vote of 249 to 168. Read this punch-packing reaction to the bill's passage by Earthjustice's Marty Hayden.
This TRAIN Act was the first item in Cantor's death package of bills designed to overturn eight life-saving clean air and hazardous waste rules by the Obama administration. While it's terrible that it passed the House, President Barack Obama has promised to veto this bill if it gets by the Senate.
Many of us think our air in the United States is so clean that we don't have to do anything else to protect it. But the truth is that roughly half the people in the United States live in counties that have unhealthy levels of either ozone or particle pollution. And almost 154.5 million Americans live in areas where they are exposed to harmful levels of air pollution. This is simply because industries are polluting without adequate controls.
These statistics can feel overwhelming and faraway. If you need some real-life illustrations of how damaging and even fatal this pollution can be, look no further than the communities of east Los Angeles, or Chicago's southside, or Pittsburgh's Allegheny County, where the air pollution is causing asthma, cancer, heart disease, lung disease, emergency visits to the hospital, and even deaths. View 50 personal stories of air pollution impacts here.
This doesn't have to be the way it is. The EPA's recent report, The Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act from 1990 to 2020, found that cutting air pollution through the Clean Air Act will save $2 trillion by 2020 and prevent at least 230,000 deaths annually.
As a couple of first steps toward saving more lives and ensuring Americans are breathing healthy, safe air, Obama's EPA has proposed a few critical new rules to reduce air pollution: The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which would save 13,000 to 34,000 lives and bring in $120 to $280 billion in annual health and environmental benefits; the Power Plant Mercury and Air Toxics Rule, which would save 6,800 to 17,000 lives and bring in $59 billion to $140 billion worth of health and environmental benefits.
Right now, our priority as citizens who care about our lungs and our lives should be to make sure our senators oppose this bill when it enters their chamber. Please call your senators now (dial the United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected with your senator) and tell them to squash the TRAIN Act and the rest of Cantor's Toxic Agenda!
Also, please see how your House representative voted and take a second to either thank him/her for doing the right thing, or hold them accountable for voting for dirty air!
Print this page
Email this page
When I moved to Washington D.C. from northeastern Pennsylvania, the air was so poor my lungs hurt. Our air needs to improve, not get worse.
The earth and its inhabitants do not matter to the House, the Senate, or the President.
I pray to the powers that be,
that those folks who are praying to get raptured
get their request.
And the rest of us can work sensibly to undo the damage humanity has done to the planet.
Monmouth County NJ has the 15th worst air pollution in the USA. So how does Chris Smith vote?
Profit is King and Mammon is God. In their puerile and myopic lust for the last dollar; the next car or tallest skyscraper it is all to maximize their burnt offering before their materialistic idols. They think it is a sweet savor unto the "lord"; at least maybe to the shining one that many of them worship.
I'm not religious but I did learn a thing or two by studying comparative religions. There are a couple of things I learned from the New Testament. The first is about doing your good deeds in public to be seen and win the approval of the public. Ain't we great? Praise us and worship us for our good works. Be like us. Let us tell you what to think and believe. Guess what; they have already received all the rewards they're going to get. This is merely Hegelian divisionism wherein they do their good works in the daytime to balance the evil and negativity of that which they do under the cover of darkness. Unfortunately the earth and the rest of us have to suffer their arrogant abrogative behavior and practices so that they can be exalted.
Secondly, covetousness is the root of all evil even to encompassing the lust for money; power and sex. When the harmonic resonance that governs this body of matter dissipates and the life force is withdrawn; we will find out that reality is much, much more different than we thought. Many will be returned to possibly a lesser status than the one they have in this life. Many will find that the afterlife is a very quiet, silent place where they can reflect on all the errors they performed in their myopia. The really evil ones; well there is a thing called a dimensional black hole that tears apart the darkest, most evil and foul of those among us. It takes a long time to dissipate the energy but rest assured that although their individuality and consciousness are torn apart; it is redistributed on the other side of the hole.
Sorry but nothing is to be done about the lower fourth spirits which is where those who should but refuse to proceed higher dwell. It is here where those disincarnate spirits that religion know as demons dwell. I suspect that they are spiritual beings that once had corporeal form in the third dimension as men or beings of another type of hominid; reptilian or insectile perhaps. Let us not be so arrogant to think that other life forms will appear as we do.
In the end everyone must answer for what they have done. Even the lower fourth in their dissolution; deceit; desolation and arrogance suffer the great agony of the Great Emptiness. Negativity may be part of the universe but when negativity is all you have it is equivalent to nothingness. So let the sons and daughters of darkness; these all mighty; wealthy people who rape the earth and enslave the populace thinking they are gods who can do whatever they will continue. They have their reward but I wonder if they will still consider it was worth it when retribution is meted out.
After all; everyone pays - sooner or later.
Michael Kirkby
This is just another political trick - let the next guy pay the bill, not me.
Just like the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan - do it on borrowed money (not within the Federal Budget) and let the next guy worry about the National Debt.
Eric Cantor is hazardous to your health and your pocketbook.
What is wrong with these people that they care more for money and their next new car, which I am sure will not be electric, then they do for the health of their children?
What is wrong with these people that they care more for money and their next new car, which I am sure will not be electric, then they do for the health of their children?
Post new comment