Good Old Car

I am sitting here waiting for someone with database access so I can actually do some work and reading around the blogroll. Scarecrow has a good post over at Firedoglake and it pointed out some of the environmental damage that is being directly caused by the Bush administration and the losses we are sustaining to our National Forests and National Parks. He quotes several passages from an article behind the New York Times firewall that really pissed me off.

If Roosevelt roamed the West today, he’d find some of the same thing in the land he entrusted to future presidents. The national wildlife system, started by T.R., has been emasculated. President Bush has systematically pared the budget to the point where, this year, more than 200 refuges could be without any staff at all.

The Bureau of Land Management, which oversees some of the finest open range, desert canyons and high-alpine valleys in the world, was told early on in the Bush years to make drilling for oil and gas their top priority. A demoralized staff has followed through, but many describe their jobs the way a cowboy talks about having to shoot his horse.

In Colorado, the bureau just gave the green light to industrial development on the aspen-forested high mountain paradise called the Roan Plateau. In typical fashion, the administration made a charade of listening to the public about what to do with the land. More than 75,000 people wrote them — 98 percent opposed to drilling.

For most of the Bush years, the Interior Department was nominally run by a Stepford secretary, Gale Norton, while industry insiders like J. Steven Griles — the former coal lobbyist who pled guilty this year to obstruction of justice — ran the department.

Same in the Forest Service, where an ex-timber industry insider, Mark Rey, guides administration policy.

They don’t take care of these lands because they see them as one thing: a cash-out. Thus, in Bush’s budget proposal this year, he guts the Forest Service budget yet again, while floating the idea of selling thousands of acres to the highest bidder. The administration says it wants more money for national parks. But the parks are $10 billion behind on needed repairs; the proposal is a pittance.

What the Bush folks have done to the country is a lot like loaning your car to someone who has no appreciation for the hard work and effort it took to earn enough to afford to buy it. Someone just like Bush.

When he brings it back you can see the dents and dings, scraped paint, stains on the seats and cracked front windshield. This is like the obvious stuff we see with Bush. Daily death in Iraq of Americas young and scores of Iraqis, the weekly bad news from other places in the middle east, the latest corruption, the latest lie and the latest affront to the Constitution.

What is not immediately visible is the internal damage from poor maintenance, bad driving and carelessness. Engine’s been overheated, brakes worn from riding, tires worn from misalignment because he couldn’t be bothered avoiding pot holes and not running into the curbs. Not to mention thousands of miles taken from the life of the engine due to dirty oil and no tune ups.

What’s happened to America with Bush at the wheel is no different. What our parents and grandparents handed to us so proudly…maybe a little scratch here or a dent there and maybe some miles, but a fine American made dream machine that had provided for the family and returned good service for the investment in care. Our parents fully expected us to carry on the tradition of care and maintenance that such a fine piece of American workmanship deserved and required. We have faltered and let some bum drive our dream.

It is not too late however to do what is necessary to put our dream back on the road in a manner which becomes her history. If each of us works on a scratch or dent and we team up to do the bigger tasks our dream and the dreams of our parents and grandparents can be handed to our children in roadworthy shape and once again turn the heads of all who see her cruise through the world. It really is the least we can do.