An hour with Robert F. Kennedy Jr

from the leed center at the university of kansas kate pierre presents an hour with robert f kennedy jr i'm gay mcintyre environmental activists robert f kennedy jr was named one of time magazine's heroes of the planet here's work throughout his career in environmental protection on the local state national and international levels his top crimes against nature was a presentation of a youth to lecture series sponsored by the student union activity and from bennett and now here at the robert f kennedy jr i'm really out of the area and cats i love coming to this part of the country and at a target or i just today in our energy over a k ha which is a i guess you know the characters when the campus radio stations and they were asking me about why i i am ali issues that i could be involved in what i choose the environment and what i said to them is that is that issues intertwined with everything

else that we care about it you can't really separate it were objects an informant for the sake of the fishes of the birds a decade and farmer because we recognize the nature is the infrastructure of our communities and that if we want to meet our obligation as a generation as a civilization as the nation which is to create communities for our children that provide them with the same opportunities for dignity and in richmond and good health as an end prosperity as the communities that our parents gave us without us are protecting our informal him to shush the air we breathe water we drink the wildlife the fisheries of the landscapes that connects forecast that provide contacts or communities and that are ultimately that connects or history and that are ultimately the source of our values and our bridges and our charters of people and i wanted to you know kind of experiment and something that i was saying at the

radio station about i'm talking about kind of the broader issue of not just the environment but that the corrosive impact of excess of corporate power on our democracy and to the american democracy and on a store by by saying this that i had been disciplined over twenty years as an informal advocate about being nonpartisan bipartisan of my approach these issues i don't think there's any such thing as republican georgia democrat georgia i think the worst thing that can happen in garmin is if it becomes the province of a single political party and you the ad i worked for both republican candidates and democratic candidates in every election cycle there is an article where my cousin arnold schwarzenegger is on the cover of newsweek this week where they talk about some of the involvement that i've had and his campaign says they're good on this issue of time to support them and a nonpartisan in the sense that i don't like i wrote a book about

president bush's been very critical of him but i'm not criticizing him because i'm a democrat he's republican allen the partisanship and the partisanship is a terrible thing for a country but and if somebody does something that's wickedly you should criticize and that's why i wrote the book and if you were if you were a democratic i would receive the same book about a m but you cannot talk honestly about the environment any contacts today without speaking critically of this administration this is the worst and former white house that we've ever had in american history born on if you had you go to an already sees website natural resources defense council which is one of the groups which i work you'll see listed there are over four hundred major environmental rollbacks that have been promoted are implemented by this white house over the past six years as part of a deliberate concerted effort to eviscerate thirty years of environmental law it's a stealth attack the white

house is used all kinds of ingenious machinations to conceal his radical agenda from the american public including orwellian rhetoric when i was sure the forest they call calvin for sac were there was for the article the clear skies will but most insidious lee they have the polluters in charge of virtually all the agencies they're supposed to be protecting the rest of us from pollution ahead of the four services the timber industry lobbyists are great oliver walzer patients in american history at a public lands is the mining industry lobbyist even trials invited her earlier this week a trial saw that as a mining industry lobbyist who believes the public lands are unconstitutional at the air division at epa is utility lobbyist jeffrey homestead who's represented nothing but the worst air polluters during his entire career the superfund is a woman whose last job was teaching corporate polluter salivate superfund the second in command of the epa is a

monsanto lobbyist and if you go through all the agencies of government the relevancy of identified the same thing the part of commerce which regulates fisheries department of energy department of agriculture department of interior the epa the fda's center even the relevant committees the justice department the five percent think is that as the polluting industry but the role of the representatives of the worst of the worst the worst companies within those industries that haven't chosen to run the regulatory agencies that are supposed to be protecting the rest of us from pollution there's that the new york times did a series last year they're actually kind of resurrected it this week because of some committee hearings by congressman waxman and this character phil cooley who was the head of he had the president's number one informal advisor he's in the white house top snacks the oval office and he the head of the council on environmental quality i'm which is supposed to advise the president on environmental impacts of every decision he makes phil cooley's last job was as chief lobbyist for

the american petroleum institute with a specialty in climate a lot logging on climate change as it turns out is principal preoccupation over the past six years has been combing through every federal scientific documentary issue by all the different agencies of government and removing him called victoria damaging statements about the oil industry the coal industry it suppressed wild labor studies on global warming taxpayer funded studies the u n i paid for an ad that so his job was just to lie to the american public in order to protect corporate profit taking and there's nothing wrong with having business people in government it's a good day if your objective is to recruit competence expertise but all these situations these particular individuals i've entered government service and not to serve the public interest but rather to subvert the very last year now charged with enforcing in order to enrich the president's corporate paymaster and they have imposed huge dimunition in quality of life of the people of this country most americans don't know

about they don't make the connections between what they see an asthmatic toddler when you know which has fishermen can't go on official local fresh water fishery and comedy the fish make the connection between the government actions that have caused those problems or contributors problems on and the problems themselves and the reason they don't make that connection is because we have a negligent and the indolent press in this country but it simply let down american democracy and it and i'll talk about that i talk about that a little bit of the radio station and then you know this is all tied in the opposition of corporate control and we had you know you hear people talk about the liberal media in america are still people around to talk about a liberal media is no such thing as a liberal media our country there's that that's what the letter joseph goebbels used to call the big lie if if you just keep repeating it and repeating it

repeatedly people believe it but you know what we have the weight of the nation magazine your mother jones you're like a rolling stone that many of the air america radio and that pretty much you know and then the rest of the characters are right wing media you look at who is on tv you know there's no like liberal counterpart park for bill o'reilly or sean hannity or on board you know bob novak are john stossel are going backward need to go on and on and on his easy dish right wing ideologues on you know every network it every hour on the us but theres old liberal counterpart frail but there'd be out there's a right wing media in this country had eight and that is we're disproportionately americans are getting their news according to a recent survey by pew thirty percent of americans now say their principal news sources talk radio which is ninety percent controlled by the right twenty two percent say cable is mainly fox news which is of course right when an amber says a simpler network was the most right wing of all it's unclear is the biggest television

network in america and he had a simpler was a former pornographer requires all seventy five of his local affiliate stations take a pledge that they will not report critically about this president about the warner actor number of other issues and the rest of the skeleton is only ten percent of americans now read newspapers the rest of us get our nose principally from the traditional corporate on media at abc nbc cbs and cnn with no ideology is have their own pocketbooks but that ideology too often ascribe terminus with the ideology of a party and particularly the republican party which wants to record all these consolidations that they're interested in and i'm and you know and with their advertisers market other big polluters that automobile industry the oil industry the coal industry as i am and i am big the devolution the american media began in nineteen eighty eight when ronald reagan abolish the fairness doctrine we had a law in this country call the fairness doctrine which was passed in nineteen twenty at the

dawn of commercial radio and fairness often said that that that the airwaves if you're a printing press and read anything you want you know that's a free market capitalism but if you put that the airwaves belong to the public cannot privately owned the broadcasters to be licensed to use them only with the proviso but they use them to promote public interest and to advance american democracy there with three requirements under the fairness doctrine was that they had to tell news a public employee and that's why six cotton is our own all the networks not because they wanted they didn't want a six o'clock news hour because that is apartments were traditionally money losers i wanna put entertainment gossip etc etc but they were required to put nose of the radio stations were required to periodically and tie up the people in the us or you hear those updates and number two if you're going to give opinion yet to tell both sides you could've radical fox news under the fairness doctrine you can about a rush limbaugh

rush limbaugh for four hours but then you'd have to have a countervailing voice you know for the next four hours you could have had russia at his judo ads for twenty four hours a day on the same station and of course russia nevada started in nineteen eighty eight the year the ronald reagan about fairness doctrine number three they had to be diversity of control or local control they had to avoid corporate consolidation because wanted to make sure that people in kansas to get proper courts and tornado warnings the people the south to get a country music that he would now have content and programming dictated by a couple of corporate upper centers around the country actually that vision of affairs doctrine was with straight in the nineteen forty five because congress saw that that's how hitler had taken over germany it by getting like taming the press by allowing these big corporate consolidation isn't controlling the media opinion through friendships or relationships in advertising

and government controls etc and on and they say we get what happened here with the nature there's hundreds and hundreds of owners all these different stations so they don't get so they're competitive they don't get caught up in all get caught by the government or ronald reagan about fairness auction in nineteen eighty eight as a favor to the big studio heads who held an elected at that and wanted to consolidate all the media and as a favor to the christian right which was already plotting the takeover of am radio as a result of that day there are five giant multinational corporations that own all fourteen thousand radio stations in america almost without exception all five thousand television stations and erica eighty percent of our newspapers all are billboards in most of the large internet content providers such as five guys were deciding what americans hear is news and these are guys who have all kinds of obligations and ties and favors with the government is that hundreds of subsidiaries are looking for government contracts etc plus

huge advertising revenue coming into the biggest polluters little elephant and i am he said they no longer have an obligation is rated at ut austin to serve the public interests they're only obligation out of their shareholders so to cut costs in order to benefit the shareholders got rid of all their investigative reporters there's eighty percent of investigative reporters have lost their jobs over the past fifteen years the people who could tell the story and connect the dots between the money that was taken by the president ian favors that he did for the polluters by abolishing you know the mercury role in the ozone a particular goals and the kid who you see gasping for as a fisherman okay official local favorite fishing hole those dots are not being connected but american people or the people who used to collect the thoughts are part of the investigative report i'm sure they get rid of their four news bureaus when i was hit abc had forty seven for news bureaus in europe today they have not to buy news of a cat so americans the only way to get foreigners those countries by going to be the senate and i'm he and

that's why americans have no clue about what's happening in foreign countries in a way to let the least informed of anybody in the world but where the world's leader still supposedly and global issues and yet we know less about what's happening around the globe than any other people or a video and that's why we know that's why americans are already ready to accept this in the yukon fantasy that when we we've gone to rack and the bad guy you know flower petals on the streets in southern seoul know with with with guns and bombs and it impose american democracy in and you know sort of a four thousand year old feuds between kurds and shiites and nobody else believed as anybody else or we are crazy but you know americans were led to believe this because we we we know it's a little bit of foreigners and the yarn the new center is as i said the partisan bickering corporate profits and they'd no longer have an obligation to serve the public interest obligation to shareholders and you made that obligation by

raising advertising revenue which you've you had bought by raising viewership why we do that not by telling not by teaching the american people the difficult issues that we need to understand to make rational decisions in a democracy like it was having the social security system and how the medicare bill works and how the pharmaceutical you know bill's work and you know what happened to the ninety billion dollars that has disappeared when i get on to operate in and in stature want to rack cetera but you know you know those are difficult issues that are hard to understand an end if they don't get a lot of viewership and so hip but what does it mean what they do is by appealing to the lowest common denominator you know the prurient interest that all of us have the reptilian core of our brains for sex and celebrity gossip so they give us you know three weeks of anna nicole smith and you know lazy peterson and kobe bryant said you know i'm and michael jackson and anne what brad and jen and brad and no one yellow or whatever

and i have it now katie and tom cruise only that we know more about joe cage argue that we do about global warming and america's there are now the best entertainment reason for people on the face of the earth and i says i guess i do like you know i do like thirty cities here in red states republican audiences against a reaction of a republican audience that i do the liberal college kids of these kinds of the only difference is it another the republicans come up to me afterwards that they had whenever this before and i'm like you know it's cause you're getting in is from russian fox's at other you know i came to the conclusion a long time ago eighty percent of republican the values of the same values the same there's no difference between red state ids and blues think it's all the same and that you know eighty percent of it is really it's an information deficit

and that eighty percent of republicans are just democrats who don't know what's going on i had to do this the survey that came out after the two thousand for election confirm my anecdotal observations about this survey on by the public policy institute university of maryland's goal the paper reported and that it on and what they did is they went out they surveyed is a large survey of americans' based upon their party affiliation and their knowledge of current events and what they found was that people who said that they voted george bush had huge information deficits about current events on and very very little government for example more than seventy percent of people who said they voted for george bush said that they believe that saddam hussein had bomb the world trade center seventy percent of the people who voted for george bush said they believe the weapons of mass destruction had been found in iraq

and sixty five percent said that they believe the american invasion of iraq had was strongly supported on the muslim street among our racks muslim neighbors among our traditional allies in europe which was not true of course i sixty five percent so they believe the president or strongly supported the kyoto protocol strong labor and environmental standards in our interaction trees which of course is much a little sinatra and you know you may say on saturday so a lot of lawyer some unit defect and then people can you know can possibly believe that those kind of numbers but zardari which is the largest our largest power and a national polling firm in america and three months ago a poll of american military personnel interact and found that eighty five percent of american soldiers now serving interact believe that we are interacting punish some sense of on the world trade center that you can go on and look to some point in our life and this is on the polls and you can go and look it up on the internet so and then you

know people went back twice the same people the second time i went back and said were you getting your news from and what they found was that the people out all the misinformation invariably cited defense minister says talk radio or cable knows and they went back a third time to determine what people's essential values are and they did that by posing a series of hypotheticals for example they said what if there were no weapons of mass destruction or at one of saddam hussein had nothing to do with a bomb in the world trade center and one is the american invasion overact and was largely a pause on the miles of st martin's shot lies near should we still go on at eighty four percent of democrats and eighty four percent of republicans said the same thing we should not so the values were identical the only difference was the information and that's why information is so important why the process such an important function of democracy and you know i did a piece last year for vanity fair magazine

i'm about the odd about the american about bacon about the fairness doctrine and when i was researching it i went back and i looked at the original debates and that took place in nineteen twenty eight and you know the first option was almost unanimously supported by republicans and democrats in congress at that time and they recounted the debates that had occurred at the beginning of our country among the founders and that was a you know there was a there was a disagreement on where jefferson was the biggest democrat and said that small d democrat said that you know he believes in the universal franchise that everybody should be given the ball whereas adamson hamilton and madison believe that vote should only go to the landed gentry i wasn't because they were snobs reading less democratic it's that they believed that only the educated people within a society who were the landed gentry had the fortitude to fight for the civil rights they had learned during that war

and that the un and four masses which quickly trade away the civil rights because they would value and that admittedly that they were easily bought drivable because they were before and jefferson himself said that an informed public will trade a hundred years of hard for civil rights for a half an hour of wealth the first demagogue a tyrant or a religious fanatic who comes along and promised them a three hundred dollar tax break to me and say that last producer the first part as you know anybody would judge isn't set is that the remedy for that is not deprive the public of their power but rather to forcibly educate them whether they want to be educated or not so the thirteen colonies had something that had never been done in the history of the world which is they mandated public education and mandatory public education almost all the colonies because the belief was that if you were uninformed critically about current events

that you were a threat to all of us that you're a threat to democracy and jefferson l m in virginia created all these educational institutions the university virginia etc and you know we in our country get more education institutions that anywhere in the world because we believe it was a critical part of our democracy that you had to inform the public because of an informed public would withdraw way democracy as quick as they could and when the fairness doctrine came along it on a mediocre like china media was invented in nineteen twenty eight everybody recognized in congress that this was going to be the mechanism by which information was communicated to the public and they said we cannot allow this medium to fall into the hands of profit making corporations will then use it just to benefit their self interest and make all kinds of deals with government officials and drive it out there to get people throw away their civil rights dr are our

nation of democracy and the public and it's been out and so they mandated that the primary objective of the media have to be informed to inform the public of a lot of issues and we need to understand that rational decisions in a democracy at whether the public wanted to be informed or not that their job was to inform us tell us the truth about these issues and you know that and if they would back then when i was a kid if they put an ethical smith on for two weeks they would've lost their license the fcc would have a license but today a person who's deciding what is on your new show on the nbc nightly news is not a news person it's a bean counter for the accounting office of the general electric company and they're looking at those nielsen says they come in real time every six minutes and they can say if you put it a piece on global warming at your flat line if you put michael jackson and a baby out of the window you know you it has to go up and if you put you know pornography on my sax you know if you put on

like a celebrity on sex if you put a virus on our fear and a bit of a spike and hopefully you can wrap all those things into one story you know and that's why you know that's why we have monica lewinsky for a year because they survive suddenly decide oh shoot we can sell pornography in tennis news and i was kind of the beginning of a bubble that and you know a lot of people say the idea of live bees don't rush limbaugh and all these guys are constantly telling people well you know they had to decline an american morality is because of a hollywood liberals are conspiring to do you don't have to be great american rally but it was not barbra streisand who put desperate housewives on tv it is physical is wall street as wall street that is responsible for the decline of american values because they are the ones you know he is an elite there is an elite but it's

not a hollywood elite is the wall street week because they're the ones that are making money by selling pornography and they're the ones that are producing an out and grand theft auto and and desperate housewives and all that you know the sacks and the gossip all these this you know in this what we consider immoral soft on today is not people is not a few actors in hollywood is decision of wall street executives because pornography says doubts and gossip cells and all these you know it and since else about gambling and everything else as wall street's that stoic it's not the hollywood only attracts people that they use their shells like rush limbaugh that turn they are going around to get to the ball people in kansas and elsewhere who have the moral values and say to them a look you know with barbra streisand is threatening your values and really as people in the other direction saying about as well they would let me let me talk you do to try to get back the subject a little bit here and talk about

just some of the areas where like in my racket where there's this is the difference between this disconnect between public perception and reality caught up to like just about one industry and i in my book and crimes against nature talk about all these different issues and the chokehold on this administration including you know corporate agriculture in and factory hog farms and chicken farms and some of the things are really affect people in kansas now a major lender to the chemical industry well let me just talk about one industry that i was or burning power plants which also has an impact on this day i have three three sons of asthma what every four black children now in america that are in our cities we know that asthma attacks were triggered the attacks themselves in one of the busiest of the attacks themselves are triggered bright primarily by that air by an

obviously by the ozone and particulates and met with the principal source of materials in our atmosphere four hundred coal burning power plants are burning coal you legally it's been illegal for eighteen years and many plants cleaned up deeply in the blue states like massachusetts all the planes remotely install equipment below the ozone of particles but in the red states where corporations can easily dominate the state political landscapes the enforcement was much more lax and there were four hundred of them in those days there were not required that that would have forced to comply with the law clinic ministrations was prosecuting the war seventy five of those plants really unsettling and investigating another couple hundred but this is an industry that donated forty eight million dollars to president bush during the two thousands cycle have given fifteen million dollars that's one of the first things the bush administration did when he came into office was awarded the justice department and the epa drop all those losses the top

reinforces that epa bruce buckeye sylvia larsen eric shaffer all resigned their jobs and protest these were not democrats these were people would serve through the reagan administration the bush administration the top justice department attorney said that this had never happened before in american history where a an american presidential candidate accept money from criminals under indictment the orders those cases dropped when he achieves office immediately after dropping the cases whitehouse abolished the news source rule which was the heart and soul of the clean air act the most important division in the statute that's the rules require those plants to clean up eighteen years ago so now there's no requirement that they ever have to clean up the ozone of particulates and all those plans in massachusetts and elsewhere that invested in the equipment to clean up the ozone free tickets are now at a huge competitive disadvantage in the marketplace and i would ever watch my children gasping for air and bad air days because somebody gave money to a politician and

if you go to bp his website when you go home tonight not it's not an artist sees website but federal epa you'll see that that single decision alone by president bush to abolish the news source role to fill eighteen thousand americans every year six times the number of people were killed in the world trade center attacks which year after year after year after year after year there should be a front page headline of every newspaper in this country every day you are worried about in the american press about twenty months ago the federal epa announced today in nineteen states is now and safety any freshwater fish caught in the state because of mercury contamination in forty nine states as of last week at least some of the fish or on safety because of mercury contamination the mercury is mainly coming from the same four hundred and fifty coal burning power plants some other

western states also comes from mining operations but by a large the great bulk of it is coming from the same plant it always they were all the fish are still safety as wyoming where the republican controlled legislature has refused to appropriate money to test the fish but all the other states believes are most or all the fish on safety and we know a lot about mercury that we know a few years ago we know for example according to cdc that one out of every six american women now has so much mercury in her warm that her children are at risk for a grim inventory diseases autism blindness metal retardation heart liver and kidney disease and i have so much mercury in my body i got my little sister recently every woman of childbearing years you get are levels tested everybody should get that was jessica the diet it out in a fight cause alzheimer's affects about cassie cetera but women digitally because the fetus so horrible you can get your levels as it by going to our website to water keeper alliance and handsome has a little

lock of your hair and will send you back your mercury levels but my levels just an eating fish are more than two times when the double about to have times would epa considers a i was taught by dr david carpenters the national tortilla mercury contamination a woman with my levels of mercury in her blood would have shot george with cognitive impairment permanent brain damage i said to him you mean she might add he said about the size of very certain today her children would have some level of permanent neurologic impairment probably an iq was he estimated with my levels of mercury of about five to seven points per minute it was all today their six hundred and forty thousand jobs according to the cdc six hundred and forty thousand children born in america every year that exposed to dangerous levels of mercury in a mother's will and the clinton administration recognizing the gravity of this national health epidemic reclassified mercury as a hazardous pollution under the clean air act that triggered a requirement that all those plans

remove ninety percent of the mercury within three and a half years it would've cost them less than one percent of plants raben is a great deal for the american people but still billions of dollars for that industry and that's the industry became a hundred million dollars is president and about six months ago the white house announced it was abolishing the clean air rules and substituting instead rules that were written by utility industry lobbyists will require the industry could never have to clean up the mercury new rules incidentally were written by a law firm called lacing then watkins which you know does a lot of good things but that is the law firm also for the worst of the worst of the worst these utilities like you know criminal enterprises like the southern company ad the chief lobbyist for that law firm was a man named jeffrey homestead who today is the head of your division at epa so he just took roles that were written by his old colleagues for his old clients

and made american law and save billions of dollars for his buddies by imposing tens of billions of dollars of cost on the rest of us and today's republican about those regulations today's his top deputies who are also former lobbyist for the industry left epa to go back and work for southern company their work being done and about a month ago jeffrey homestead left the pa as well go work for bracewell giuliani which is giuliani's lot new lobbying firm which is also today is now the chief lobbying firm for the southern company so you know that's a pickle revolving door in washington and you know we're living in a science fiction nightmare today or my children and the children the most americans including most because in kansas but no longer engage in the seminal primal activity of american youth which is to go fishing with their father mother in the local fishing hole and come home safely eat the fish because

somebody gave money to a politician i live two hours south of the adirondack mountains i take my kid's fishing and hiking hunting and swimming and camping up there is the oldest object and wellness on the face the earth it's been protected as forever wild since eighteen at eight we'll write the american people believe the generations of our citizens would be able to enjoy as pristine lakes and landscapes and spoil but tonight one fifth of the lights in the adirondacks is sterilized for massive raid which is coming from the same coal burning power plants and which has incidentally destroy the forest cover on the high peaks of the appalachians from georgia all the way up into northern to back and this president having accepted a hundred million dollars of that industry and put the brakes on the sash or requirements that they clean up the acid rain and as a direct result of those rollbacks epa announced a couple months ago and for the first time in thirty years to the clean air act the sulfur dioxide levels of an american era marriage as they're going up this year of a national model for percent a single year two years ago

and may i flew over the coal fields the appalachians with where loudest calls coming from and i saw something but the american people could see if there would be revolution in this country we are cutting down the appalachian mountains with these giant machines called drag lines which are twenty two stories high i flew under one of them and a piper cub and they cost a half a billion dollars for one machine and they practically dispense with the need for human labor which indeed is the point when my father with fighting strip mining appalachian back in the sixties i remember a conversation i had with him when i was fourteen years old when he said they were not destroying the environment they are permanently impoverishing these communities because there's no way that they can regenerate an economy for these barren landscapes that are left behind and he said they're doing it so they can break the unions that's exactly what they did what he told me that you are a hundred and forty thousand unionized mine workers in west virginia drinking call out of tunnels in the ground

today there are fewer than eleven thousand miners left in the state almost none of them are unionized a strip industry isn't add they're taking the same amount of coal out but they were in nineteen sixty eight the only differences but the back at least some of the money was being left in those communities in west virginia for salaries for the workers etc now it's just all going straight up to wall street to the corporate offices of massey coal pd call a morgan stanley the big banks and houses that you know that all those operations and you know west virginia's being liquidated for cash and using these giant she aims and twenty five hundred tons of dynamite that are exploited every day in west virginia to hiroshima bomb once a week they're blowing the tops off the mountains to get to coal seams been at them they take the rock and debris and rubble and they scrape it with these big chains and the lead the adjacent river valley and they bury the hollows the virgin river valley they've already buried twelve hundred miles of american rivers and strange and by the time this president

leaves office they will if latin america the appalachians the size of delaware it's all illegal you cannot in the united states of america take rock and debris and rubble and dump it into a waterway without clean water act permit and you could never get a permit to do such a thing so we sit them and we sit them in front of a conservative republican federal judge judge charles haid in west virginia a judge and said the exact same thing i say he says it's all illegal it's been illegal since day one and he enjoyed all about top mining today's when we got that decision and that the lobbyist for nasa told the people that the backdoor of the interior department with with the deputy this number two person of interior under gale norton stephen grimes who was a former lobbyist for those companies and he rewrote one word of the clean water act the definition of the word fill to change thirty years of statutory interpretation and overrule the judge's decision effectively

and make it illegal but in west virginia not just in west virginia but in every state in this country including kansas as it is today the dump rock and debris and rubble and garbage and construction waste in any kind of solid material into anyone away the united states without a clean water are poured all you need today is a rubber stamp permit from the corps of engineers which in some districts you can get over the telephone so you know this is what we're dealing with today this is not just the destruction of arc armor but it is these the subversion of american democracy and you know the one of a one of one was the point i tried to start off with which is that and well the reason we protecting farmers not for the sake of fish as the birds aren't saying because nature and ridges is it in recess economically yes it is the base of our country and

we ignore that at our peril the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment but it also enrages us or aesthetically and recreation and culturally and historically and spiritual and human beings rather appetites the size money and if we don't feed them were not integral while we're not going to become the kind of being said our creator intended us to become when we destroy nature we diminish ourselves we impoverish our children we're not fighting to preserve those ancient force the pacific northwest as rush limbaugh loves to say for the sake of a spotted owl or preserving those four is because we believe the trees have more value to humanity standing than they would have to cut them down and i'm not fighting for the hudson river for the sake of the shadow the surge of the striped bass because i believe my life will be richer my children my community will be richer if we live in a world where there are shattered certain stripers the hudson where my children can see the small gear traditional fishermen of the hudson river and they're tiny open both are assholes mcgillis and touch them and they come sure have to wait out the tires of a retired

nasa doing that connect themselves to three hundred and fifty years of new york state history and understand that they're part of something larger than themselves or part of a continuing part of the community i don't want my children to grow up in a world with are no commercial fisherman on the hudson river words all important seafood and unilever and four hundred ton factory trawlers i'm a miles offshore strip mining the ocean you know with no interface with humanity and sucking up billions of dollars every year in government subsidies that are not available to the small fishermen and i don't want my kids to grow up in a world where there are no family farmers left in the state of kansas where it's all in all your false smithfield and cargill and premium standard farms raising animals and factories warehouses and in achieving their stock and their neighbors and their wives and their their workers swift unspeakable cruelty and contaminating the landscapes the soils the air of the water of the state and

liquidating those assets for cash and i'm putting for all family farmers out of business you know again only because the subsidy there's no way does that feel produce a pound of bacon or pork chop cheaper or more efficiently than traditional family farmer unless they cheat the system except for by by gaming the system for monopoly control or by using huge government subsidies that are not available to the little guy it's not an efficient way for me it's just that they have control of the system and they played all the little guys out of business and driving the final nail in the coffin of thomas jefferson's vision of american democracy rooted in tens of thousands of independent free holes on by family farmers each with a statement in our system of government and i don't want my kids to grow up in a world where we pay the landscapes lost touch with the seasons the types of things that connect us to the ten thousand generations of human beings that were here before their laptops and they connect assault really dig it and i don't believe that nature is god and what we are the worst thing is

i do believe that is the way that god communicates us was forcefully and got us human beings are many that goes to each other to organized religion for the great books of those legends through through our three wise people to art literature and music poetry but nowhere with such force and detail clarity and texture and grace and joy as the creation you know we don't know michelangelo by reading his biography we know by looking at the ceiling of the sistine chapel and we know our creator best by immersing ourselves and creation and potentially will this which is the ongoing work of the creator and that's why you know if you look at every religious tradition throughout the history of mankind the central epiphany always a person will go to the wilderness to express self realization mohammad ago the wilderness about heroin six of nine to climb to the summit the middle of the night on a camping trip with his family and wrestle an angel their long and bitter and sweet from moses to go to the

wilderness of mount sinai for forty days alone does it take to get the cadavers the jailers had to spend forty years wandering the wilderness to purge themselves the four hundred years of slavery in egypt christ of your the wilderness alone for forty days discover his divinity for the first time his mentor was john the baptist who lived in a cave in the jordan valley address in the skins of wild bees a honey locust and all my struggles were taken from the neck from a tree i am the line you're the branch must see a little salt a scattering the season the fellow ground he called self officially a farmer of a new deeper shepherd the reason he did that was that's how he stayed in touch with the people as the same reason that you know all the old testament prophets all the time on a quranic profits the punishment brothers all the way back to the papal office it isn't all came out of the wilderness without exception of all of the music parables outdoors and fables drawn from nature's morality plays the teachers the difference between right wrong with the face of god looks like and the reason they did

that was that's how they stayed in touch with people has all of these profits for revolutionaries and also were challenging religious fundamentalism and you know you look at cry central mission he was constantly rebuking the fire season the saddest susan's cry for a boo with jerry falwell's of pat robertson's of his death for providing up lining up heavy burdens for other mandate to carry an annual rebuking them for further from the robbing widows are orphans or they advertise their own your systems of power and he was saying to his followers you have to pay attention to all the rules regulations in these books in all and made in the old house in the bible and he said is that the law were made for men men was a major law and he said you can ignore that raul was about the sabbath and you can ignore the laws about you know what's clean and clean assad what what what what makes you clean air and clean his orchard putting abroad but the way you behave the way you live your life if you have it with tolerance and patience and kindness

and generosity you abrasive poverty and the impoverished and your kind and forgiving each other and you do not judge and that's what that's what the point of religion that fundamentalism is the distortions a perversion of religion because the true religion as a search for the existential troops and and i'm an iphone als and isn't and is a citizen and that search somebody who says it's an exercise of power is somebody who says all the truth is in this one book and an italian would have names and you know do what i say and i know anna and christ was challenging that and he was saying that that's not give them this is the point i was the fundamentals in the end who murdered and that was something that we should pay attention to today and you know that and the reason they use these parables allegories taken from nature is because that's how he stayed in touch with the common people who would have who would have dismissed because everything was a challenge that contradicted what they heard from the lyrics of his ticket sophisticated

people their time and they would dismiss it as a quack but they were able to confirm the wisdom of his pals through their own observations the fishes of the birds and they're able to say he is not telling us something no he simply eliminating something very very old messages that were written into creation by the creator of the beginning of time and we have been able to discern are decipher them to the profits came along with immerse themselves and wellness and learn his language and come back to the city's teachers' the wisdom of god this is where our values comfort and you know this is where are there are american values as well we are united in this country because of our experience with with with nature and with with agriculture and with and with wellness from the beginning of our national is your greatest political and cultural and religious leaders were telling the american people you don't have to be ashamed because you don't have the fifteen hundred years of culture that they have in europe because you have this relationship to the lab and we will do this which is the only work the creator and that's going to be the source of your national character our greatest

american store in frederick jackson turner said that an american democracy came out of the forest and the wilderness of the farm fields and that you know and i'm and that that that's what defined us as a people of cultural political action is at every valid piece of classic american literature the unifying theme is that nature is the critical defining element of american culture where there's hawthorne and although our you know f scott fitzgerald jack london mark twain edgar on paul i'm the first washington irving a first international bestseller we'd lose this country was james fenimore cooper who wrote the weather's starting to last the mohicans the path out of beer slim about this character mattie bubble i was a creature of the american wilderness and he has all the activism virtues of the european romantics associated with the american would land he's independent self reliance a crack shot his courage integrity wasn't a gentleness from the forest they made him a

bestseller in europe not because it was good writing it was it was atrocious but because they believed that there really was a truth that there was a new being being melded out of the american wilderness in an agricultural experience that would have huge impacts and lasting impact of all humanity throughout the entire planet and we made him a bestseller in this country because we believe that about ourselves than a generation after that of emerson thoreau couple of kicked off the trace of european heritage embrace nature's the spirit of all americans and they say if you're an american and you want to hear the voice of god if you go into the forest with the songs the birds that russell believes if you wanna see the americans so we have to look in the mirror of walden pond are poets whitman frost emily dickinson robert service farmer and our artists we have to the fighting skills or this country the hudson river school thomas call for church center left mr spears ak party and a western school running to russell and all the pain of the stark indomitable landscapes el capitan sierra nevada storm came

out the grand canyon already have evidence of humanity is like and white and religious and you know there's other national skills for the damage the british of this alive the french are times a very important races with as they detained american artist joe spectators while the state because they saw that as a way to capture americans or you know this is where our values government is so ironic to me but this administration has been able to go all in all of very gullible press and a large part of the american people and calling itself an administration of it is because it seems that all the values that they claim to embrace are really these hollow hollywood facade said conceal the one thing that they really consider worth fighting for which is corporate profits at they say they're conservatives but they've torn the conservative conservative because they say that they like free markets but they despise free market capitalism if you watch their feed and so listening to that in a seductive noises that come from her mouth

and you know what they really love is corporate crony capitalism and corporate welfare and you know capitalism for the poor the socialism for the rich you know they say that they like fiscal responsibility but they've run up the biggest deficit in history they say they like lawn ordered that the first ones let the corporate lawbreakers off the whole they say that they you know they love the constitution but they have destroyed the bill of rights allowed torture eavesdropping of the end of habeas corpus a hundred and fifty years of history and they you know plenty of christianity but they've violated every one of the manifold mandates of the christian faith we carefully informant that we act as stewards we treat our children's responsibility and you know i'm it does that as well i think that they you know i mean i look at this white house some time and this may be unfair but i say to myself i did they get so many draft dodgers in one place the thing

the thing that makes our country is worth fighting foreigners with dinosaur and as these brave young men and women in a thirty five hundred people have died or they're barred best young men women and the fifty thousand and that won't be you know have shown harm you know so courageous in our country that the things that make our country we're fighting for is not you know the fact that you can come in and make a big pile and whoever dies have the most of when this it's that and all of it's the the values that we have nurtured republicans democrats over the ages and that we represent to the rest of humanity the last great hope for humanity as thomas jefferson put it into believing that our country is a city on the hill that we represent the best of american thought of you know that the justice and democracy and kindness and mercy and generosity and it's those things that make our country you know we're fighting for our office one last story when i was a kid i want your with my father czechoslovakia poland and france england and germany and

greece italy and everywhere we met went we were met by fast crowds of people hundreds of thousands of people came out just to try to touch my father and to be near an american politician because they love their country you know they look to us that were starved for leadership they look just for moral authority last of the united states represented and they probably ministries after are presidents washington jefferson lake in madison and roosevelt candidate and i remember the day after nine eleven when the headline on the biggest newspaper in france le monde was we're all americans now and for weeks and weeks after nine eleven there were spontaneous candlelight vigils involving tens of thousands of people on the streets of pay rent who loved our country and look just wanted to express their solidarity with americans of their love for the united states of america we were the most beloved nation in the history of the world and it took two hundred and

thirty years of discipline restrained and visionary leadership by republicans and democratic presidents to build up those vast oceans of public love for the united states and respect and leadership and moral authority and and six short years for a monumental arrogance and incompetence those those reservoirs have been drained dry and weeds today are the most hated nation on the face the earth according to a recent poll and europe osama bin ladin is now among european use more popular than the president united states and that to me is the better spell to swallow because i saw as a boy the hope for american leadership not just do good things for our country but to do good things for all of humanity and the faces of those crowds hundreds of thousands of people that i saw as a boy and on a close with a proverb for the lakota people that's been expropriated to some extent by the environmental moment when they said we didn't inherit this planet from our

ancestors we borrow it from my children and i would add to that that if we don't return to our children something roughly equivalent of what we received much as the land but the values that emanate from this plan that they'll have the right to ask us some really difficult questions thank you all very much seafood for you just heard a lecture given by robert f kennedy jr recorded april eleventh two thousand seven at the leed center at the university of kansas it was a presentation of play hughes student union activities and the student senate as this year's didn't lecture series the recording engineer was tubby smith and kate mcintyre k pr presents is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas says

it is you're right next time on and keep your presents kwame anthony appiah novelist essayist and professor at princeton university on the relativity of mortality join us eight o'clock sunday night on kansas public radio for making sense of moral conflict many americans eat eggs but were the cats most american meat eaters who refused to leave cats have only the defense and the very thought of fills with disgust they were disgusted by the idea of drinking orange juice is having cooperated even if i know that the cockroach was rigorously water play area at our present kwame anthony appiah sunday night at eight o'clock and kansas public radio