Friday, May 14, 2004
Even the conservative parties of Europe are to the left of the Democratic Party in the U.S.
The European political center is where the American left would love to be. Europe’s famously generous social state is still alive and mostly well, though under attack by globalization and corporate opportunists who would like to bury it and render Europe more like the United States.
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In many ways, Europeans are doing better than Americans.
Europeans have free health care for all, cradle to grave; free education through university level; generous retirement for their elderly; an average of five weeks paid vacation, more sickleave, and parental leave. Social spending in Europe runs some 50 percent above that in the United States. Alternate energy development (wind, hydro, tidal and hydrogen cell power), food safety, organic and anti-GM laws, and labor laws are the envy of activists in the U.S. Americans now work a full day longer per week – about seven weeks longer per year -- than French workers. And, still, many European countries by 2003 enjoyed lower unemployment, once the U.S. stock market bubble had burst.
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America's overburdened sewage treatment plants dump an estimated 1.3 trillion gallons of untreated sewage and industrial waste into our rivers each year. Instead of more sewage treatment funding, the Bush administration has propose to cut funding and loosen regulation, endorsing a policy called "sewage blending" - mixing partially treated sewage with fully treated sewage after rainstorms and dumping it into public waters.
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Bush said he supports hydrogen-powered automobiles and put money and research behind it.
But, Mother Jones reported that he wants to ensure that the method used to produce the hydrogen will be fossil fuel-dependent. According to the administration's National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap, drafted last year in concert with the energy industry, up to 90% of all hydrogen for fuel cells will be refined from oil, natural gas, and other fossil fuels. Such a system, experts say, would effectively eliminate most of the benefits of hydrogen because it would generate large amounts of pollution. Not surprisingly, such a system would insure the massive profits of the energy industry, which bankrolls Bush's campaign
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The European political center is where the American left would love to be. Europe’s famously generous social state is still alive and mostly well, though under attack by globalization and corporate opportunists who would like to bury it and render Europe more like the United States.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
In many ways, Europeans are doing better than Americans.
Europeans have free health care for all, cradle to grave; free education through university level; generous retirement for their elderly; an average of five weeks paid vacation, more sickleave, and parental leave. Social spending in Europe runs some 50 percent above that in the United States. Alternate energy development (wind, hydro, tidal and hydrogen cell power), food safety, organic and anti-GM laws, and labor laws are the envy of activists in the U.S. Americans now work a full day longer per week – about seven weeks longer per year -- than French workers. And, still, many European countries by 2003 enjoyed lower unemployment, once the U.S. stock market bubble had burst.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
America's overburdened sewage treatment plants dump an estimated 1.3 trillion gallons of untreated sewage and industrial waste into our rivers each year. Instead of more sewage treatment funding, the Bush administration has propose to cut funding and loosen regulation, endorsing a policy called "sewage blending" - mixing partially treated sewage with fully treated sewage after rainstorms and dumping it into public waters.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Bush said he supports hydrogen-powered automobiles and put money and research behind it.
But, Mother Jones reported that he wants to ensure that the method used to produce the hydrogen will be fossil fuel-dependent. According to the administration's National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap, drafted last year in concert with the energy industry, up to 90% of all hydrogen for fuel cells will be refined from oil, natural gas, and other fossil fuels. Such a system, experts say, would effectively eliminate most of the benefits of hydrogen because it would generate large amounts of pollution. Not surprisingly, such a system would insure the massive profits of the energy industry, which bankrolls Bush's campaign
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