What will $600 billion in federal discretionary spending cuts mean for our region's air, water, wildlife and natural resources? Unless Congress acts to restore fiscal and moral balance to our budget by protecting the programs that benefit all Americans, we'll find out the hard way.
Those automatic cuts are now scheduled to hit in January 2013 after Congress' Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction couldn't reach a deal to make the same amount of cuts in a more careful manner. It was a missed opportunity to close the federal deficit by cutting more than $100 billion in wasteful tax subsidies to industries such as oil and gas that have seen record profits.
Our members of Congress still have a chance to do the right thing. Here's hoping they can reach a bipartisan budget deal that closes the deficit while protecting the 1 percent of the federal budget devoted to clean air, clean water, and healthy populations of wildlife.
Cathryn Lovell
Phoenix
Rich posted at 4:19 pm on Mon, Dec 12, 2011.
Dale,
Who established the dump site? That would be the government. Who used the dump site before Hooker? Government again, in fact some of the waste from the Manhattan Project was dumped there. Who allowed Hooker to dump there? Yep, the government. Who didn't maintain it after Hooker sold it to them for a dollar? The Niagara Falls City School District, once again, government. This is what you and Cathryn want to spend billions on? And Love Canal isn't the only encapsulated dump site waiting to explode, Tempe Marketplace sits on one, and who allowed people to build on it? Well, that'd be the government. We are so much better off when they don't get involved.
Rich posted at 4:08 pm on Mon, Dec 12, 2011.
Dale,
Who established the dump site? The government. Who used the dump site before Hooker? That would be the government again, in fact waste from the Manhattan Project was dumped there. Who allowed Hooker to use the dump site originally? Yep, same ol' government. Did Hooker profit from selling it? If so, only the dollar they got paid for it. Who owned it and didn't properly maintain it? The Niagara Falls City School District, yep the government again. This is the kind of regulation and management you and Cathryn think we need to pay billions for? We are 100% better off when they don't get involved.
Dale Whiting posted at 2:33 pm on Mon, Dec 12, 2011.
Love Canal was not government regulated. It had been closed. Hooker took it over, burried its wastes, then capped the wastes so that water would not seep down into the former canal, now burried. But because the caps stuck up above the surrounding ground lever, then Hooker turned the ground over to the community, the community took the caps off so that a school playground could be built,. Surface water [rain water, etc] seeped in, became contaminated with toxic wastes, and rose up during the wettest parts of the year and killed dozens of children. This single incident more than any other became the cause to create the EPA. But we have others. Any of you been to Time Beach west of St. Louis? I could go on and on. Should be end up eviserating the EPA, we will be killing future human beings, no doubt! This is a lesson from history, a history not worth repeating!
Rich posted at 7:34 pm on Sun, Dec 11, 2011.
"What will $600 billion in federal discretionary spending cuts mean for our region's air, water, wildlife and natural resources?"
Hopefully, they'll be a little safer. All you get with government control is overly expensive corruption and incompetence. Like introducing a Mexican wolf from Canada into an ecosystem that hasn't had a place for it in almost a century. Love Canal was, after all, already government regulated. More of something that doesn't work, only fails more massively. If they were actually good at it, it might be worth mortgaging our children's future for, they aren't. In fact they aren't good at much of anything, therefore our founders limited them, and they started trying to get past the limits on their incompetence before the ink on the Constitution dried. A good PR consultant makes a Congressman, but it doesn't make that Congressman smart.
Dale Whiting posted at 7:54 am on Sun, Dec 11, 2011.
Let's all move northeast to western New York state. I know a lovely place once called Love Canal. It has its own public schools and under the play ground of one was burried a lovely surprise, toxic wastes produced by a local chemical company! It killed several children and ruined the lives of most families in the neighborhood. Thank you Hooker Chemical for beginning the Environmental Movement. And thank you, today's Neo-Cons, for setting us back on the "right track" towards more Love Canals!