Birds and Oil Don't Mix

Another reminder of the many costs of imported oil: This week a tanker carrying crude oil from Venezuela spilled more than 30,000 gallons of the stuff into the Delaware River near Philadelphia. Thousands of ducks and geese were coated in oil that leaked from a gash in the Greek-owned ship. Five hundred birds were already dead as rescuers took more oil soaked animals to a nearby wildlife preserve. The Coast Guard has set up miles of protective booms around the ship and at 12 places where the river meets smaller creeks in an effort to contain the environmental damage.

The more we ignore renewable energy and conservation, the more tankers will come into our bays and rivers, risking more accidents. In case anyone's missing the point here, the 30,000 gallons of imported crude oil that spilled would have refined enough gasoline for just 13 people to drive their Hummers this year.

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Chairman Carbon

The Senate's leading anti-environmentalist, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, is planning to use an expanded Republican majority to pass the Bush Administration's Clear Skies plan. Readers of the Insider, and George Orwell, will recognize this pleasantly named bill, which failed to pass in the last Congress, as an attempt to limit the Clean Air Act. The last time he brought up the bill, he realized that an environmentally friendly version was likely to pass his committee and he blocked any vote. Instead, he took the unproductive but entertaining step of issuing a report attacking environmental groups - particularly LCV. It was an appropriate follow-up to his earlier Senate speech denouncing as a "hoax" scientific reports that man-made pollutants cause global warming. But if Inhofe thinks it will be clear sailing for "Clear Skies" this time, he's getting ahead of himself. As LCV president Deb Callahan said in The Wall Street Journal, "I think he's going to have a harder time than he expects next year, and we will fight him all the way."

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At Least the Boat's Named After a Tree

Try fitting this on a t-shirt: "Congress went to Washington for a lame duck session and all I got were these lousy environmental budget cuts." Last week the 108th came back to town for some drive-by budgeting and passed a 2005 spending plan that slashed several important environmental programs. Funding for research and science at EPA was reduced. At the Agriculture Department, a voluntary conservation program was cut by $465 million compared to the 2002 Farm Bill. The Interior Department, which maintains and protects our public lands, wasn't given enough money to keep pace with rising costs. And one of the biggest cuts came in the program that helps fund sewage treatment facilities that keep our water clean and healthy. But, if you think Congress is unwilling to fund water programs, you're wrong - the budget included $2 million to repurchase the former presidential yacht, Sequoia. Priorities that make your head spin.

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At Risk

Birth-control programs are under attack. And with bigger conservative majorities, Bush can continue to chip away at reproductive rights.

By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek

Dec. 3 - Not since Margaret Sanger�s crusade to legalize birth control in the 1920s has family planning come under such assault. Pharmacists around the country are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth-control pills, exercising their right to �refuse and refer� under the industry�s code of ethics. These self-styled refuseniks are so ardent they generally don�t offer a referral, and in small-town America there is often only one pharmacy in town anyway.

On Capitol Hill, conservative Republicans inserted a provision in the budget to extend conscience clauses throughout the health-care industry. Democrats cried foul, and GOP leaders pulled the measure for now. But 13 states are considering 22 pieces of similar legislation that would curtail access to family-planning services, including contraceptives. �We need to say that in big neon letters,� says Planned Parenthood president Gloria Feldt. �Birth control has gotten to be like the air and the water. People think it�s there. We�ve got to get people to realize what�s happening.�

Feldt is lobbying for legislation called �Putting Prevention First� that would promote family-planning programs. It was scheduled for a hearing before the Senate Health Committee in September 2001, but got pushed off the agenda after the 9/11 attacks. �It�s a great vehicle to force the discussion�to force anti-choice zealots to own up to the fact they�re against family planning,� she says. Feldt is counting on the new Democratic leader, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, to carry the cause. Reid opposes abortion but is a strong supporter of family planning. He�s the ideal ally in Feldt�s view��anti-choice and pro-contraception.�

The Planned Parenthood building on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington is under tight security. A guard answers the door, which is locked. In the upstairs sitting room that Feldt uses as an office, pictures of her four grandchildren grace the mantel. Asked how she got into this business, she says with a laugh, �It was fate.� Pregnant at 15 in the hard-scrabble town of Temple, Texas, she married her high-school sweetheart and had three children by the time she was 20. �Then the birth-control pill came out and saved my life.� She went to college, got a degree in sociology and a job as a teacher with Head Start. Her classroom was in a Roman Catholic church in Odessa, Texas, where the priest was on the Planned Parenthood board. His parishioners were poor, and he told her that he couldn�t tell them to have a baby every year. �I didn�t realize how radical he was,� she says.

She started out as a volunteer for Planned Parenthood and rose through the ranks to become president in 1996. Under her leadership, the organization endorsed a White House candidate�John Kerry�for the first time in its 88-year history. The Democrat�s defeat was a disappointment, but Feldt is somebody who by nature sees a setback as an opportunity. �What seems like a defeat makes people pay attention,� she says, �and then you ride the wave.�

Feldt has been at this long enough that she remembers what a friend former president George H.W. Bush was to Planned Parenthood. As a member of Congress from Texas, Bush sponsored the Public Services Act, which funded programs to promote birth control along with health exams for women and pregnancy tests. �They called him �rubbers� because he talked about family planning so much,� she says. The current President Bush in his first budget took contraceptive coverage away from federal employees. Congress put it back, but with bigger conservative majorities, Bush can continue to chip away at reproductive rights.

The contrast between father and son on family planning is as stark as it is on foreign policy. Bush is using the regulatory powers of the Department of Health and Human Services to turn Title 10 of the Public Services Act his father championed away from family planning into an abstinence program. Traditional providers like Planned Parenthood get bypassed in favor of faith-based groups, a strategy that has political as well as substantive consequences. �Make no mistake about it,� says a Democratic operative. �This is old-fashioned ward politics funneling money through churches.� The effort paid off in the November election, boosting turnout among white evangelical churchgoers for Bush.

The big showdown will come when Bush names his first Supreme Court justice. Either he will overreact in a way that will now be public, and he won�t have any more hiding places, or he�ll read the polls and nominate somebody who can pass the mainstream test. �Either case we win,� says Feldt. In the last Congress, Democrats sustained 10 filibusters against Bush�s circuit-court nominees. After their election losses, some Democrats talk of using the filibuster sparingly. Feldt is not one of them. �What have they got to lose?� she says. �They can only gain by thinking like insurgents. That�s how the anti-choice right took control of the Republican Party. They weren�t afraid to cause trouble.�

� 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

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Word of the Day for Monday December 6, 2004

genuflect JEN-yuh-flekt, intransitive verb:
1. To bend the knee or touch one knee to the ground, as in worship.
2. To be servilely respectful or obedient; to grovel.

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