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 Get This:  Disaster Capitalism comes to Oregon! Chris Andreae 04/22/08  

1. Earth Day has two faces?  You know there is something deeply arsed-up when PGE is involved.  That aside, cap and trade is a shell game and opening the Gates of the States to assorted “green” industries has got a few flies in it.  For starters, these companies simply by virtue of their existence are going to create a lot more garbage than we can handle as things stand now.  Secondly, they are not all Oregon-based industries, and they are getting hefty tax incentives to essentially ship most of the money elsewhere.  Jobs will be created – some – but wages are heading south and they won’t be back for the foreseeable future.  It’s looking more and more like a zero-sum situation – except in terms of PR.  Climate change is the single most screamingly urgent disaster the planet has faced in countless millennia and it is upon us now.  There is only one solution and that is Consume Less.  But that’s bad for the bottom line and so we celebrate disaster capitalism in the form of Earth Day.  Which, it must be said, has its smiley face.  People who don’t usually give a rip about the environment will show up in Pioneer Court House Square  for an ear and an eyefull regarding What You Can Do – that is unless the weather is bad…
2. The Bush administration plan for the spotted owl is not so much a plan as a swansong.
3. The Governors of Oregon, Washington and California are pestering Nancy Pelosi to break a little of that Federal Funny Money loose to help salmon fisherfolk left fishless by Consumers Gone Wild.  It isn’t like we never saw it coming… (The Usual Experts, by the way, are “mystified” by the disappearance of the salmon.  What are they “experts” on,  quoits? spelunking? The Didgeridoo?
4. Plan ahead!  OSU is now offering a degree in something called ‘water conflict management.’  Yikes!  I think I can see where that’s heading.  Better ask for an arsenal of state-of-the-art weaponry for a graduation present – just in case “arbitration” doesn’t work out as expected.  And have a nice Earth Day…)
5.  Cutthroat Capitalism:  A federal appeals court has ruled that the Fish and Wildlife Service should start to seriously think about protecting cutthroat trout.  (Sure…They’ll get right on it – just as soon as the first lobbyist arrives at the door with a briefcase full of money from its master waiting behind the curtain to cash in on the disaster with another dubious technological fix-or-cut-bait…
6. A man in Prineville celebrated Earth Day by getting himself arrested for abusing animals on a grand and truly vile, despicable scale.  (And he wasn’t even testing eye make-up…)
7. The Badlands east of Bend are officially ‘Good’ thanks to the Campaign for America’s Wilderness.
8. And in Washington a middle school science teacher got himself suspended without pay for refusing to administer the odious WASL test  - an educational technological fix/hoax perpetrated by the private tutoring industry in its mad dash to reap the benefits of bad education.  (And what did you do to mark the exuberant unraveling of No Child Left Behind this week?  Margaret ‘Spell It Like It Isn’t’ Spellings plans to change the EduAct – hopefully into something that bears some remote relationship to the actual education of young people…)
9. We Won’t Be Fooled Again:  Speaking of whom, Youth are voting – many of them for the first time – this election.  That’s a Good Thing until the kids figure out that the fix is already in and it has been thus since about 1990…
10. Prison riots in Colorado left two men dead.  And the Supreme Court upheld lethal injection as a human kind of murder.
11. The Abramoff lobbying probe gets scandaler and scandaler.
12. Chinese fellow got sentenced to ten years for trying to give American military secrets to China.  (See that was his first mistake:  If he had tried to sell them to the Chinese the Feds would have understood and let him off with a reprimand and a gift certificate for Red Lobster…).  But wait!  There’s more from the arms trade desk!  A boatload of Chinese weaponry bound for Zimbabwe got turned back – even though the Chinese tartly explained that the munitions were actually on their way to Angola.  Gee, thanks for clearing up that little misunderstanding…
13. US wages are eroding.  It’s official.  You aren’t going broke just standing there breathing until some “expert” says you are.  (Suggestion:  Sell US military secrets to the Chinese…Or if you are the guy with the faster boat try Zimbabwe or Angola for that matter…)
14. Bolivian President Evo Morales can come to my Earth Day any old time he likes…Morales says that “capitalism harms the planet”.  Hear that, you West Coast salmon fishermen?)
15. Oil hit $118 a barrel.
16. Pakistan released Sufi Muhammad, a big-time Taliban playa from prison.  And in Pakistan, unlike here in the USofA, I’m sure Muhammad will be able to find gainful employment despite his record…
17. ‘Yeah, Right’ Dept:  The US wants “stronger Iraqi-Arab ties”.  And as the Rolling Stones remind us, “You can’t always get what you want.”