Keep toxics rules
Now we don’t just have to watch out for the likes of Sen. James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma (“Keep mercury rule strong,” BDN OpEd, March 5) trying to scuttle the new mercury and air toxics standard which, if allowed to take effect, will substantially reduce air emissions of mercury (by 90 percent), arsenic, acid gas, nickel, selenium and cyanide from coal and oil-burning power plants.
Now, our very own Sen. Susan Collins has introduced a rider to the Senate transportation bill (SA 1660 to S. 1813) eliminating EPA toxic air pollution standards for industrial boilers and incinerators. This rider also would significantly delay and weaken clean-up of toxic air pollution from these sources, which function as industrial power plants.
Maine has been called “the tailpipe of the nation” because prevailing winds blow air pollution into our state from industry to our south and west. As a result, Maine has a higher rate of asthma compared to the rest of the country. According to the EPA, the new mercury air toxics standard will save as many as 11,000 lives, prevent as many as 130,000 asthma attacks among children and prevent as many as 4,700 heart attacks nationwide. Yikes. Who would want to delay these rules?
I urge Sen. Collins to withdraw this amendment, which is unrelated to the bill it rides on. People should contact both Maine senators to ask them to support the new EPA mercury rule and let them know that we are watching.
Leda Beth Gray
Blue Hill
Obama’s drive to right
Regarding the BDN’s March 5 story “Holder says US can target citizens overseas in terror fight,” are Americans willing to surrender their constitutional protections in order to fight “terrorism”? Attorney General Erik Holder and President Obama believe they are willing, and continue to pave the way for dismantling our rights in the name of national defense.
I ask those who voted for President Obama — for “change” — to explain their passivity, indifference and total disregard for this president’s continuation of the Bush-Cheney-Pentagon-DHS agendas of total war, total fear, total militarism, total supplication to Wall Street and “the markets.”
The hushed constituency of Dems, liberals and progressives would, by now, have our president impeached if he were not Obama (the best president the Republicans ever had). Mr. Obama’s role was to neutralize opposition and move the entire political spectrum into right field. He succeeded.
But Obama loyalism, GOP religionism and militarism, and middle America’s creeping “good German” mentality are induced principally by the news media, which says nothing about losses to our constitutional safeguards, nothing about an escalating dismantling of our democracy, nothing about increasing censorship and the suppression of opinion and views contrary to the status quo.
To many, today’s media content seems no better than propaganda. Our intelligence community seems no better than the KGB and Stasi. And our unbridled militarism has surpassed that of any previous administration.
If the Constitution, democracy and truth are to prevail, they can do so only with people that are vigilant and awake.
Michael T. Bucci
Damariscotta
MICHAEL,
Obama was to the right before he got elected. His past associates are all pinko-commies. His preacher and band of merry followers including Obama all hate America. What part of his commie past didn’t you know before he got elected? The evidence was all out there in his writings, his comments, his associates, and in his entire demeanor. You act like it’s a big surprise that he’s trying to govern like a commie dictator.
If they all hated America they would vote republican.
Michelle was not proud of American until Barack was elected. Even when she was cashing those $350,000/year hospital paychecks she wasn’t proud. Wonder why healthcare is so expensive.
All that money for a position that was specially created for her. And she didn’t even have to show up for work most days. Can you say priviledged?
and the con-clown lies and delusions keep coming.
Her pay fluctuated from a low of 103K when she went part-time, to a high of just under 320K in 2005. She took a leave of absence to campaign with her husband, and made a menial 62.7K. And since her absence, her position hasn’t been filled. Why? Because the department she was in was “reorganized”. Imaging that.
Even if any of that were true, what is your point?
Can you spell privileged?
Well, I guess I’m not privileged.
She actually earned a lot less than that, and the position was not created for her. Class envy?
That wasn’t her salary.
Considering the fact that Bush signed the patriot act, and the Bush administration drew up the provisions allowing unlimited detedntion of US citizens in the Defense Authorization Act. It is obvious that neither the Dems nor the Repubs give a rat’s behind about the US Constitution. Both of these pieces of legislation received bipartisan support in the House and Senate.
The Repubs are lying to you, come to your senses and be an Independent, think with your own mind, not what someone spoon feeds you. All the R’s & D’s care about is maintaining power and the status quo.
don’t confuse them with facts.
Good one, you always bring a smile to my face and make me chuckle.
You can’t possibly believe what you write, for if you do, I really hope you have learned from your parents mistakes and are practicing birth control.
Let us marvel at what centuries of inbreeding can produce.
I really hope you keep posting this bs here. It gives everyone a chance to see how dumb and ignorant some people on the right are. You ignore facts and make up your own. I will admit it is entertaining. You should have tried to be a stand up comedian. You already have people laughing at you.
More absolute nonsense and complete lies straight from the mouths of the crazy right wing extremists Druggie Rush Limpmind The National GOP Woman Hater, NutBall Glenn Beck, and the entire FakeNews Crazyland, not to mention that ultracrazyland FreeRepublic on the internet. See you in November when Obama and the Democrats utterly destroy the crazy TeaNut GOP Circus Clown Party at the voting booth. Republicans all belong in clown suits and should be throwing pies at each other. Actually, that is an insult to clowns. There is more sanity at the Barnum and Bailey Circus than in the Republican Party.
I thought I was watching monty python and it was just the Republicans being themselves.
Every once in a while, Amcon, I don’t agree with you, but you sure have a knack for making smoke come out of liberal ears and gibberish out of their mouths.
Keep up the good work !
Not exactly smoke out of our ears… more along the lines of mocking derision. It is impossible to fathom how anybody can be so willfully ill informed. It becomes a question of whether or not he actually believes what he says or is he sane and just posts to make conservatives look bad.
That’s EXACTLY how I feel when I read some of the comments from the lefties on here. Especially those that blindly defend Obama at every turn, and they do that even when the facts are presented to them.
We still have a bit more rope for you am. Keep pulling. Keep pulling.
typical silly bunch bunch of con-clown lies and delusions.
Amcon, you are clearly part of President Obama’s re-election effort. Your posts are a transparent attempt to convince the reader that all Republicans are crazed paranoids still looking for Communists under their beds, totally divorced from reality, and beholden to Rush Limbaugh and other rabid reactionaries. Just as President Obama is hoping for Santorum to make life difficult for Romney, he is hoping that your devious posts will create a false impression that all Republicans are lunatics.
Amcon, I am not conned by this subterfuge. As Emile Zola said over 100 years ago: “J’accuse!” Amcon, stop trying to con us.
Michael T. Bucci, I believe that those targeted and killed were known terrorists who joined an organization that has delcared war on the US and it’s citizens. In all wars there are going to be people killed in the line of duty. Where is your outrage at the enemy killing our troops?
It scares me to see people defend this action of our government. If they were known terrorists, then apprehend them, give them a trial, and sentence them. All American citizens are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law–not in the court of Obama’s Justice Department’s opinion. This man was not on the battlefield. He was not aiming a gun at anyone.
It boggles my mind that the very vocal people who criticized Bush for holding non-citizens in detention without giving them due process according to the US Constitution are now so very silent, or even supportive of Obama targeting and killing a citizen without even the pretense of justification. AG Holder is demanding we bring the non-citizen detainees to trial in NY–he even says he is sure they will be convicted and executed. Obviously he has the evidence. If he has the same type of evidence on the mullah, then he should have apprehended him and brought him to trial. If we are able to send a drone missile into his compound to kill him (and how many others were also killed?) then we ought to be able to apprehend him somehow.
We are at war, I don’t like it but that just happens to be the situation. When you go to war their will be instances when you kill the enemy on sight. It has happened in every war in the history of man. There is no Marcus of Queensbury rules when you go to war. The guy that was born here in this country and decided to leave this country and join with the enemy forces who dcelcared war on this country, became an enemy soldier. When he was spotted on the field of action (to terrorists, the world is their field of action) he was killed. This is the situation we are in and the terrorists organization laid the ground rules. There game, so let’s see how good they can play it.
If I had my druthers, when we found out that Osama bin Ladden was hiding and being harbored in Afghanistan, this country should have given Afghanistan a short and simple ultimatum. Hand him and all his cohorts over within 2 weeks or be prepared to suffer the worst bombing campaign since WWII. That country should have been made a poster child to all nations that wish to harbor terrorists organizations. IMO this all would have been over with 10 years ago.
The problem with “bombing campaigns” is that they kill 10 innocents for every one guilty party. It amounts to trying to tune a carburetor with a sledge hammer. We are operating under a totally different set of rules these days. The enemy doesn’t wear uniforms so they can be identified, they believe God talks to them and them alone, and they hide behind women and children. I don’t happen to believe that innocent people should have to die for the actions of a few nut jobs that do not speak for the majority. Anymore than I would want to fight or die for something that some nut job politician or general said or did in this country. Our military has done an amazing job of ferreting out the cowards and keeping the “collateral damage” to a bare minimum. We all owe them a tip of the hat for the difficult job they have done in winning the hearts and minds of those who never wished to be combatants in the first place. America has led the way in changing how we look at war. War is insane to begin with, but it doesn’t mean that once declared, we can’t conduct ourselves like humans and pinpoint the problems to be eliminated.
OK, look at every conflict since WWII. We have tried to play pick and choose in these conflicts. We seem to have lost the ability to perform all out war. Korea was the first conflict. Where do we stand there? Has it really been resolved or is it an open sore. Vietnam? I think we wasted a lot of our and their blood to no great resolve. In hindsight we should have backed Ho Chi Min after WWII as he was one of our best allies in fighting the Japanese. Did a lot more for us there than France. Iraq? Still seems to be a festering sore that we should have sidestepped. But Bush wanted the oil, ironic that France seems to have gotten the contracts. Lebanon we sent our Marines into a shooting war and what did we do? Our Marines were told they could carry weapons but not loaded!!! Our leaders decision there led to the murder of over 250 Marines in one suicide bombing mission. What was the result? We turned tail and got out of Dodge.
Look at Germany, Japan and Italy today. They were our enemy in WWII. Have they tried to remount an attack on the world since then? Have they threatened their neighbors since then?
I believe the answer is NO. They have become some of our stauchest allies and have enjoyed unprecedented wealth and prosperity since WWII.
I am not advocating war. In fact I would love to see peace throughout the world and all the resources that are spent on war and the ability to do war were redirected to improving the planet and the living conditions of everyone on earth. Think of all that could be accomplished with the military budget put toward medicine and education. Solving the comming energy crisis before it hits. Bringing education to every living child on the planet. There is way too much brain power being wasted in ignorance. That would be my dream.
Agreed! Peace is the intelligent choice.
That I can agree with 100%.
When you are at war, you may kill on the battlefield. You may not declare the world your battlefield and bomb away. People criticized Bush for the argument that he could grab and detain people from nations we were not at way with officially because the “war on terror” was a world-wide war. Now those people are strangely silent when Obama makes the same argument.
It appears many of those grabbed in foreign countries were transferred to other foreign countries where torture was commonly used. I think that was the issue. If they had been brought to the US to stand trial it is my opinion there would have been less outcry. Look at what happened when Obama wanted to close Gitmo and bring the prisoners to US jails for trial. He could not keep his promise to close Gitmo because the right in this country would not accept a civilian court trying them. Now the right uses his failure to close Gitmo as a talking point to claim Obama’s policies have failed.
In general I agree on innocent until proven guilty, but as patomi has pointed out, we are at war and the enemy has declared the battleground to be world wide. They refuse to obey the rules of war and do not even have a uniform. George Bush Jr. was correct in that this will not be a war we are accustomed to, that there are a whole new set of rules, if any at all.
Now he can grab American citizens on our own soil – indefinite detention. But, hey, we’re still free aren’t we? The Land of Liberty and all that?
Osama was hiding in Pakistan. Terror has been with humans since the beginning of time. There will never be an ‘end’ to this ‘long war’. The US is at perpetual war now.
I can’t say I support the actions at all. However, that being said, stripping people of their rights in other countries is far more constitutional than stripping people of their rights in this country. Personally both are cynical and jaded interpretations of the constitution and represent the worst thinking in Washington DC, but only President Bush’s would be seen as unconstitutional. You do not get to maintain your US rights in foreign countries.
You don’t get the protection of our Constitutional rights if you committed a crime in a foreign country against their laws. But this man’s crime was against the US. The US government was charging him, a US citizen, with terrorist plotting. Therefore he is under the protection of the US Constitution. The correct procedure is to extradite the suspect to the US for trial.
I don’t believe we couldn’t get the guy. We got Noriega and brought him to trial–and he was not even a US citizen. But a US citizen in Yemen is beyond our reach? I don’t buy it. If the Obama administration cannot muster the negotiating power to extradite a terrorist from Yemen, well, that says a lot about how much the US power in the world has been diminished under this administration.
Mr. Bucci:
Why is the left completely excusing and tolerant of Nobama executing an American citizen without a trial?
The left was all over Bush demanding that he extend rights to the Gitmo prisoners but when Nobama executes an American absolute silence.
Another example of a complicit media and a duplicitious left.
When an investigation was finally completed on many of those at Gitmo it was determined that they were not terrorists. Some were turned in by neighbors or those with whom they had had a feud in order to get the reward money being offered. The one American terrorist killed had been seen in videos urging others to kill Americans. That is a great difference.
The great difference? Are you serious? You are willing to extend American Constitutional liberties to suspected non-citizen terrorists (and they were not just people who were “turned in by neighbors”), but not to an American citizen?
If the US government has a case against a suspected terrorist, then they apprehend the suspect and give him a trial by jury. You do not send a drone missile to wipe him out in his home. You are really saying that our Constitutional rights do not apply to all citizens, if the government decides someone doesn’t deserve them. Are you really willing to live under that type of government? I am not.
Treason should always be punished by death.
As determined by whom? Eric Holder? And wasn’t the man’s teenage son also killed? I guess sins of the father apply to treason?
Excellent point.
IF you are convicted of treason. Study the Soviet method of suppressing “treason”. The population at large generally believed that those executed by the government were conspirators and saboteurs working to kill Soviet citizens and destroy their country.
Do you really want to start down that path in the name of safety and security? Allowing our justice system to work is sometimes slow, complicated and occasionally ineffective. But at least it is open and it offers the best opportunity for your rights to be protected as much as the terrorist’s rights.
You seriously think the government would never send anyone to your door to get you. Solzhenitsyn thought the same.
How much of a chance to take him alive do you think there was? He was in a foreign country, probably surrounded by enemy fighters. I would guess about the same chance as Bin Laden.
Actually, after the furor of Bin Laden’s assassination settled, it was determined that there was a lone gunman (his son) who they killed, and a bunch of women and children. They could have easily caught him alive and brought him to the US for trial. They chose not to.
But the bigger point is that Bin Laden is not an American citizen. There is no expectation that a non-citizen receive Constitutional protections.
The Constitution has no extra-territorial reach to areas not under American control. It was applied to Guantanamo, because we essentially own that piece of land. It has not yet been applied to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, because we do not exercise sovereignty there.
I am puzzled that your dislike of President Obama has spurred you to come to Osama bin Laden’s defense. As I had a friend who was on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, I have not lost a second of sleep over the split-second decision a Navy Seal had to make. I am glad that we finally elected a President who actively pursued bin Laden, rather than that “all hat, no cattle” Texan who said he’d stopped thinking about bin Laden and closed down the section in the CIA dedicated to finding bin Laden.
If we could elect dead non-Americans to the vice-presidency, you could urge Romney to make bin Laden his running mate.
I am not defending Bin Laden. I am defending American principles. I also very strongly oppose the death penalty. I don’t support war. We killed Bin Laden–but the world is no safer. We may feel better that he has paid for his crimes. But tell me–when does the killing end?
You say my dislike of Obama makes me take untenable positions. The truth is that I bet I would like Obama on a personal level. When I heard his victory speech after the Iowa caucus in 2008, I was very impressed with his passion and charisma. But I don’t agree with his policies. I don’t expect I ever will.
Are you kidding? Bin Laden has been a hero of the right since the days of Reagan. It makes sense really since the Conservatives have been waging war on America for much longer than Bin Laden.
That’s uncalled for. I don’t usually take offense to the comments on here. But I find yours offensive.
wandini, I have to say I often have taken great umbrage at your comments but on this issue I find your comments succinct, well argued, completely in line with my own thinking. Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago was one of the those books that changed my life. This issue of extra- or extraordinary-judicial killings is also a game changer. I could quibble about a couple of points, but you have it right as far as I can see. That is a hopeful thing with regard to the rest of our disagreements over policy and practice.
Here is an idea. The next time some one in a foreign country makes videos or gives orders instructing their followers to kill Americans, let’s send in a bunch of lawyers armed with briefcases and dressed in thousand dollar suits. That will make them surrender.
The Geneva Convention, which we signed and which is binding on us through the Constitution, sets up specific rules for captured combatants, regardless of citizenship. It has very little protection for combatants other than their treatment upon capture. Your distinction between citizen and non-citizen dodges the real issue: whether the person is a captured or an active combatant. A number of American citizens died as a result of our bombing in WW II of Germany and Japan, some of whom were POWs. We likely tried to kill Axis Sally, the American citizen who broadcast propaganda for the Nazis, when we bombed German communication centers.
The difference with the Yemen example is that we are not at war with Yemen. We were not targeting enemy positions. We attacked a private residence with the sole aim to execute an American citizen. We also killed innocent people who just were at the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t agree with the Bush doctrine that the world is our battlefield. I also do not wish to surrender the guilt/innocence decision to whatever Presidential administration is voted into power.
Honestly–if this were a Republican President, would you be trying to defend this act? I didn’t defend Bush.
When anybody declares war on this country they had better be ready to die, with or without a trial.
Wrong Eric Holder and Nobama do not get to decide who lives and who dies. If this was Bush you’d be screaming impeachment
You can say “Nobama” all you want and live in Republican crazyland denial all you want, but you know full well that the GOP TeaNut Party is entirely nutty, has lost its mind, that they are worse than clowns on parade, and the Mr. Obama and the Democrats are going to crush the GOP Goofballs at the voting booth come November. The majority of Americans have had it with their crazy nuttery.
Thanks for addressing the issue. Typical duplictious leftie.
The word is duplicitous. The drone attack on an American in Yemen who had actively encouraged and supported two terrorists attacks on American soil is supported by international law which allows the killing of an enemy combatant. I disagree with this policy, but it has a legal basis, unlike unlimited detention without trial or judicial review as had happened at Guantanamo.
Leda Beth Gray, thank you for your informative letter telling us about yet another vote by Susan Collins betraying her constituents. Too bad we cannot vote her out this November.
Unfortunately, environmental activists have spent far too much political capital on global warming and carbon emissions, which means the focus on real problems, like toxins, is lost. So we’ll all be driving a Prius and buying carbon credits while our fish load up with mercury…
You should better inform yourself about the very real, very dangerous effects of global warming and emissions. In fact the issue runs in tandem with toxins and mercury pollution… they are by no means separate issues.
“Toxic air” has a lovely ring doesn’t it? I guess it’s best to let them (Collins et al) completely foul the air. They’ve already poisoned the lakes and inland waterways with mercury to the point that you’re reduced to eating one fish per year out of these waters. Many could take advantage of this ready supply of food but instead are forced to buy it.
Just imagine the amount of revenue that could be generated by making the air completely toxic;
everyone gets their own bottle of air. If it cost $8 bucks for a bottle of air to blow out your PC, take a WAG at the cost of “personal breathable air.” That’s how free enterprise works, you get to buy what used to be …. free.
Michael you’re right about Obama’s drive to the right, and war is always messy. But what you fail to realize is that Obama, by taking a right-of-center position has forced the Republicans to the extreme right, pretty much right out the door. In doing so, Obama has relieved the Republicans of their false claim that they are the protectors of this nation; after all he did get Bin Laden.
Those who campaign in the Republican primary are referred to as clowns by folks in their own party because the candidates are so disconnected from reality and so far right, they are the ones who should be referred to when framing Extreme states.
Mr. Bucci, you’ve pretty much hit that nail squarely on the head… the one thing you didn’t do is offer any sort of solution? That really is the problem, isn’t it, coming up with an alternative?
There are efforts all over the country right now to pass local, state resolutions and eventually Constitutional amendments that reverse the corruption that has crept into our “of, for, and by the people” government. It is no longer that by any means, and we all should be very concerned about that, stand up and say we want our government back, and do everything we can to achieve that. Constitutional amendments, as well as local and state resolutions, condemning corporate personhood and the corruption of money in our politics, are worthy efforts to regain, and occupy, our government with people that will fight for the common citizens and their rights and values.
When enough towns and cities in Maine pass local resolutions that condemn corporate personhood, and the corruption of money in our politics, the State legislature might realize this is what the people demand. When enough State legislatures pass these resolutions they can call for a Constitutional Convention, a threat that in the past has prompted Congress to do the right thing and pass legislation that addresses the issue at hand. The Constitutional amendment that gave 18 year olds the right to vote passed under such conditions. Passed as the Vietnam War was killing said 18 yr olds, the issue had broad appeal and was ratified with amazing speed. With the ferment of discontent now in the country, for many of the things you state, we should do the same now, and lobby for Constitutional amendments that give the common people their government back. It has been taken from us, and we should want it back if we are the patriots we claim to be.
Get involved. Hopefully, it is not too late to save our country from the self-interested lunatics that have perverted science to promote their environmentally destructive agenda, played off of social issues that are better remaining personal choices not federal mandates, turning our air, water and food supply into commodities that profits are wrung from even if to do so makes us sick, obese, laced with the genetic materials from genetic engineering experiments whose effects on our children and ourselves are untested and unknown.
http://sdemetri.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/when-a-very-profitable-business-model-doesnt-make-sense-big-food/