Sunday, September 05, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: Corporate polluters and mercury emissions

I see where Miss Hillary was doing the Sunday talk show circuit last weekend, seeking to "inoculate" the Democrats against an anticipated George Bush "convention bounce."

Like the rest of the choreographed chorus, her message was simple: Don't believe the Republicans are the moderates they pretend to be -- they're hiding their real right-wing radicals.

Tim Russert, who was interviewing Miss Hillary in the segment I saw, asked who those far-right radicals might be. Anti-birth-control televangelists? John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge and the gang at the Transportation Security Administration, requiring sheep-like Americans to surrender their shoes, their belts and their dignity?

No, Miss Hillary named "Tom DeLay and the far-right leadership of the House and Senate."

"Senator Frist of Tennessee is a far-right radical?" Mr. Russert asked, incredulous.

"Well, not him, but his caucus," Miss Hillary bore in. "His caucus is always pushing him further and further to the right," to positions that are "dangerous to the future of America."

Two things struck me:

1) As opposed to the recent Democratic convention, where the Democrats didn't put on any false front, pretending that John Kerry the warhawk is Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower rolled into one? Did they instead run out Derek Shearer and Roberta Achtenburg as their featured speakers, promising that electing John Kerry would mark a new birth of wealth redistribution and racial quotas in America, winding up their Boston shindig with an actual gay marriage, just so we'd know exactly what the modern left-liberal Democratic agenda is all about? Did I miss this exercise in "telling it like it is"?

Meantime, 2) I'm glad someone finally spoke up about what a bunch of radical government-haters these Bush Republicans have turned out to be. Frankly, I never would have believed they could reduce the size of the federal government by two-thirds in only three years.

"Not," as the youngsters are fond of saying.

The Bush administration is spending more tax loot than any Democrat in history. Given how the Democrats are rending their hair in the face of this ongoing socialist largesse, one wonders what further levels of shrillness they'd have left in reserve if any Republican really did move to restore constitutional limited government -- other than perhaps pouring gasoline on themselves and forming a nice little circle of luminaria around the Capitol rotunda.

So what are the Democrats squealing about?

Every couple of days we at the Review-Journal receive another copy of what appears to be a form letter from the leftist environmental camp. Here's the bulk of such an actual letter, e-mailed to us Aug. 9 over the signature of what I presume is an actual voter from Carson City:

"As a concerned citizen, I am deeply troubled by the Bush administrations assult (sic) on our environment. It began as soon as he took office and has continued ever since. ...

"Recently Bush and his appointees have sided with corporate polluters to release seven times the mercury poisoning into the air as current law allows. And it's the American people, especially our newborns and growing children, who will pay the price for corporate profits.

"It is a known fact that mercury causes mental retardation, learning disabilities and attention deficit disorders. Mercury spewing into the air from power plant smokestacks falls into lakes, streams and ponds which accumulates in fish and endangers humans and animals that eat fish. ...

"Before you cast your vote this November, please do your own research and find out just how dangerous this administration is to our environment. ..."

Taking the lady's kind suggestion, I did some of that research. And here's the thing: The assertion that President Bush and his appointees "have sided with corporate polluters to release seven times the mercury poisoning into the air as current law allows" is a crock. I called the EPA: There are no limits whatsoever on how much mercury can be emitted into the atmosphere from coal-fired electric plants, or any other plants. There never have been.

What's actually going on is that the EPA has announced a proposed regulation -- due to go into effect next spring that would require power generators to reduce mercury emissions from smokestacks for the first time. The power generators have agreed to shoot for a 70 percent reduction. Environmental extremists are insisting that should be upped to more than a 90 percent reduction, no matter what it costs.

Wait, it gets better: How much would mercury in your body -- or your kids' bodies -- be reduced if we shut down every coal-fired power plant in America forever, reducing our electrical output by 50 percent and throwing us back into a new Dark Age?

Less than 1 percent.

That's because most mercury toxicity in kids comes from thimerosal preservative in childhood vaccinations. But even if you don't count thimerosal, the World Health Organization says 80 percent of the remaining mercury toxicity comes from the mercury amalgam fillings in our teeth. Of the remaining 20 percent below that some comes from dental office wastes flushed into our rivers, and an unknown part from mercury precipitating into the food chain from the air.

But most of the mercury in the air comes from volcanoes.

So what's being fought over is whether a source of mercury that adds up to less than 1 percent of toxic loads in anyone's body should be reduced to 30 percent of 1 percent ... or to one-tenth of 1 percent ... even if the latter goal could end up doubling our electric bills and leading to blackouts around the nation.

Next time: hard numbers on the real sources of mercury.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the books "Send in the Waco Killers" and "The Ballad of Carl Drega." His Web site is www.privacyalert.us.