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Crimes Against Nature

How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy

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1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

"A meticulous, elegant, and devastating account of an administration that . . . seems to get a kick out of sticking it to the planet. Scary stuff." —New York Post

In this powerful indictment of George W. Bush's White House, environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., charges that the administration has taken corporate favoritism to unprecedented heights—threatening our health, our national security, and our democracy.

Kennedy lifts the veil on how the administration, in order to enrich its corporate paymasters, has eviscerated the laws that protect our nation's air, water, public lands, and wildlife. He describes the White House doling out lavish subsidies and tax breaks to energy barons while allowing the corporations to profit by poisoning the public and eliminating security at the more than fifteen,zero nuclear and chemical facilities that are prime targets for terrorist attacks. He shows how right-wing White House ideologues have taken the "conserve" out of conservatism and trampled the free-market democracy in favor of a kind of corporate-crony capitalism that is as antithetical to democracy, efficiency, and prosperity in America as it is in Nigeria.

Crime Against Nature is a book for both Democrats and Republicans, people like the traditionally conservative farmers and fishermen whom Kennedy represents in lawsuits against polluters. "Without exception," he writes, "these people see the current administration as the greatest threat not just to their livelihoods but to their values, their sense of community, and their idea of what it means to be American."

"A scorching assessment of the president's 'crimes against nature.'" —Vanity Fair

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 1, 2004
      "Of all the debates in the scientific arena... there is none in which the White House has cooked the books more than that of global warming," argues Kennedy in this harsh indictment of what he sees as the Bush administration's assault on the environment and democracy in general. Kennedy's investigation focuses on the undue influence of industry lobbyists (read Halliburton) on environmental standards and the government's alleged suppression of nearly a dozen scientific reports on global warming. He maligns Bush appointees like Interior Secretary Gale Norton ("a champion of corporate welfare for three decades") and offers a cogent analysis of Christine Todd Whitman's departure from the EPA in 2002. Although Kennedy accuses the Bush administration of using a campaign strategy that revolves around"fear-mongering," he uses fear to drive home his own points, noting things like the lethal mercury levels in tuna, pork industry pollution and insufficiently guarded chemical plants. Nevertheless, he competently ties the survival of democracy to sound environmental policy, contending that corporate power--particularly the power wielded by the oil, beef and lumber industries--must never supersede democratic institutions. Kennedy's argument is strongest when he sticks to the facts and avoids making the kind of angry, sweeping statements that fill the concluding chapter ("Instead of can-do American ingenuity, this is the administration of"can't do." It has constructed a philosophy of government based on self-interest run riot: It has borrowed $9 trillion from our children and looted our Treasury..."). Whether or not one agrees with these accusations, Kennedy makes a passionate case for more effective environmental controls and wraps it up with a practical vision of a free-market future"in which businesses pay all the costs of bringing their products to market," including the costs of environmental safeguards.

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