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Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend June 19, 2005 RFK Jr. assails Bush, media in Ashland speech By JOHN DARLING for the Mail Tribune ASHLAND — Charging that the Bush administration has put corporate polluters in charge of all federal agencies that are supposed to protect the environment, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. tried to make the case Saturday that members of both parties are environmentalists — but the public suffers a huge "information deficit" due to a lazy press. "There is no real values difference between Republicans and Democrats. When I tell Republicans what’s happening to the environment, they say, ‘how come we never heard of this?’ I ask them where they get their news and they always say FOX and Rush Limbaugh," said Kennedy, 53, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Bringing nostalgic memories of the gestures and themes of his assassinated father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and uncle, John F. Kennedy, he spoke to a crowd of 200 in light drizzle at the annual World Wellness Weekend at the Southern Oregon University stadium. While his main theme was the looting of natural resources by President Bush’s campaign donors, Kennedy also took swipes at the "these characters in the White House" for turning a $5 trillion federal surplus into a $5 trillion deficit in five years, "making this the most hated nation on earth" and greatly lessening American’s security — all the while "violating the standards of Christianity they proclaim." At one point, in a slashing attack on acid rain and mercury polluters, he branded President Bush "the worst president in history" for rolling back environment rules that would have prevented such contamination. Advertisement Kennedy, who is also chief lawyer for Riverkeeper and president of Waterkeeper Alliance, both water protection organizations, said he gets a New York state fishing license every year and it comes with warnings about the many lakes in which fish are inedible, due to mercury in them. "One is six American women have so much mercury in them that exposure of babies in their wombs can result in blindness and retardation — a loss in IQ of five to seven points," said Kennedy. "It would cost coal burning power plants less than one percent of revenue to remove the ozone and particulate that’s causing this, but instead they contribute $106 million to Bush and one of the first things he did was order the EPA to stop prosecuting these criminals who run the 1,100 plants that were supposed to be cleaned up years ago." Drawing on the Bible and the Magna Charter, Kennedy said stewardship of the "commons" — meaning air, water and natural resources — is a core value of all societies and religions. It’s how King John "got in trouble with Robin Hood," by saying only the nobility could hunt deer and that led to the monarch’s forced signing of the Magna Charta, one of the earliest documents defining democracy and the common good. "Privatizing the commons is what tyranny always does. When corporations put mercury in our water, that’s stealing from the public and privatizing the commons for their own quick profit," said Kennedy. "Corporations should make us prosperous but should not run our government. The corporations don’t want democracy and free market. They want profit and they use campaign contributions — which are just bribery — to gain advantage over their competitors." Kennedy said the merger of state and corporate power is a definition of fascism and that’s what is happening in this political climate. "We need free and independent people willing to stand up and speak the truth to power." When the Kennedys held center stage in American politics in the 1960s, Kennedy said, he would travel the world with his famous father and uncles, seeing millions of people flock to hear their speeches, "starved for the moral authority of an American leader." He added, "After 9/11, the most influential French newspaper, Le Monde, headlined ‘We are all Americans now’. That’s the most bitter pill to swallow — that the love, respect and leadership this country had built up over 230 years has been squandered by the monumental arrogance of these characters in the White House. "How they can say they’ve made this a more secure nation is beyond my comprehension � that they can get away with that kind of lie." Kennedy bashed the "indolent" press, which, far from being the "liberal media," is "no longer functioning but just entertaining, appealing to the reptile brain with sex and violence, so we get Michael Jackson, but we don’t get news we need to advance our democracy." Six corporations, he added, own 80 percent of newspapers and over 6,000 radio stations. Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2005 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. 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