Tuesday, April 24, 2012

P.S. — Amy Goodman's Due Diligence On Gulf Oil Spill

WE STILL LOVE ALEX, but there's politics and then there's policy. Environmental policy, in particular, has been savaged by the Republicans, with President Obama's collaboration. I've never seen it this bad, with the public so apathetic about preserving our environment and ensuring that our food, air, and water supply is safe. Maybe it's easy to pretend horrific violence wasn't done to the Gulf, and  penitently eat our serving of poisoned seafood. But the public's torpid response has only emboldened the high stakes economic interests at play here. This is one working government-business partnership pact with the Devil.

Ken Feinberg, Mary Landrieu, BP and the EPA are confident they can sandbag the public with hollow and dangerous assertions of "safe" seafood. And they're right. The AP report that the Pentagon Commissary gave a boost to the Gulf seafood industry by purchasing it in bulk for distribution to East Coast military bases shows a reckless disregard for the health and safety of our troops. And it also shows that the government is neither an impartial nor independent monitor of seafood safety. Amy Goodman's Democracy Now, along with Al Jazeera and nonprofits like ProPublica, represent the dwindling sources of truly independent media taking a hard look at seafood safety claims and asking the tough questions. It's time MSNBC, and its cohorts, got on board — if they're willing or able.

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