14 Dec 2004 Poisoning Right-Wing Christian Children: Your Tax Dollars At Work
Used as I am to hostile, even homicidal emails from the left wing, I first started to delete this little gem of hostile stupidity I received in my junk mail folder. (And what a piece of junk it is!) But then, I read it again and got angry.
The correspondent, who suggests feeding poison to children at “private right wing Christain schools” (the redundancy and the spelling all are hers), apparently is employed by the federal government and writing on a government e-mail account.
Just makes you want to go work on your 1040 form, doesn’t it?
Our correspondent apparently is upset at this National Center article (or so we guess), which criticizes trial lawyers for trying to stick certain California taxpayers with a $66 million legal bill. The case referenced happened to be about groundwater contaminated by the gasoline additive MTBE, but it could have been a case about spoiled hamburgers — the legal bill was the issue at hand.
No matter. Any excuse to go after right-wing Christians, no matter how tenuous, is a cause that must, dear taxpayer, be taken up.
But don’t let my disgust get in the way of a few facts. Such as:
The pollutant Kathleen K. McConnell (“Kat” to her friends) of the federal Tennessee Valley Authority rails about is in some of our drinking water because the federal government mandatedthat it be put into gasoline.
Yep. The feds caused the pollution.
So shouldn’t this federal employee be embarrassed, ashamed, filled with remorse?
Shouldn’t she be on her knees apologizing to the little right-wing Christian children, not threatening to poison them even more?
I can tell you that if The National Center for Public Policy Research ever poisoned drinking water, why, I’d actually think we did something wrong.
And I assume the feds would jail us for it (that’s their territory, after all).
Well, I might think so, you might think so, but Kathleen K. McConnell of the federal Tennessee Valley Authority has a better idea: Feed the poison to even more kids. Or fantasize about it, anyway.
One more thing: The National Center for Public Policy Research has written about MTBE many times. There is this piece from 2000 explaining that MTBE is dangerous and that the federal government mandated it, and this one saying the government-mandated additive is not only dangerous, but makes gasoline more expensive, and (lo and behold!) this one describing the impact of these ill-conceived government mandates in, as our Tennessee Valley Authority correspondent just might put it, “urban industrial/low income residential neighborhoods.”
How is it that arch-MTBE foe Kathleen K. McConnell of the federal Tennessee Valley Authority failed to notice this modest July 2000 essay by Project 21 member Stuart Pigler criticizing the fact that minorities were paying ten cents more per gallon of gas just because of MTBE in the aptly-named “Bill Clinton Makes Blacks Pay More at the Pump.”
(Perhaps our friend Kat was too busy looking for the never-published piece by Jerry Falwell: “Bill Clinton Makes Little Right-Wing Christians Pay More at the Pump.”)
Kathleen K. McConnell of the federal Tennessee Valley Authority could have learned that we have extensively condemned MTBE had she done something revolutionary, such as click on our search page and enter “MTBE.” But she apparently did not want to find out that her biases against right-wing Christians were unfounded.
Enough said. Here’s her e-mail. I didn’t alter the formatting, punctuation or spelling. It is all hers — and yours, since you paid for it.
Your article neglects to mention that MBTE is a highly suspected carcinogen and that the amounts showing up in drinking water supplies is in excedence of the Safe Drinking Water Act if not on a federal level, for sure in some states. Except for the minor inconvenience of it having a pesky little trace odor, how about serving it up at the private right wing Christain schools all across the nation, instead of insisting that its presence in public water supplies in urban industrial/low income residential neighborhoods where it is most commonly found poses no health risk?
As MBTE is highly soluable in groundwater, it usually is the first paramter of nastiness to indicate a leading edge of a contaminant plume. Therefore, when it shows up, you can be assured that the other known carcinogens like Benzene and her pals Ehtyl benzine, Toluene, Xylene and others are sure to follow. Although many of the leaking underground storage tanks have been removed or taken out of service, the contaminant plumes beneath them have been left behind taking years to clean up. Furthermore, many of these contaminant plumes are not being addressed at all, unless through regulatory actions or litigation. So although lawyers are the boils on society’s butt, the lack of voluntarily cleaned up sites, regulatory enforced corrective actions, and ambiguous or poorly written legislation, legal action suits are frequently the only options for precipitating a necessary remediation to address this public health issue across our nation.
Your site does damage to your readers as it only gives partial truth, not full disclosure, one of the criticisms you cite throughout your blog. This makes me question which sector of Corporate America sponsors your propoganda.
Kat McConnell
[email protected]