God bless America and all her various gasses
I want to take all the people who came up with this campaign and put them on a cruise ship with malfunctioning toilets for a week or ten. That still won't be torture, but it'll be nearer to it than "oh noes,
the government might make us pollute less."
A conservative energy group is comparing regulations to curb carbon pollution proposed by the Obama administration to CIA torture tactics recently detailed by a controversial Senate report.
The American Energy Alliance (AEA) posted a cartoon and brief comment on its website over the weekend, comparing the Environmental Protection Agency to the CIA.
“Whether it’s the costliest regulation in history or the coal-killing power plant rules (that [President] Obama’s law professor says raise 'constitutional questions'), it’s clear that the CIA isn’t the only government agency engaged in torture,” AEA said.
Get it? Because torture is in the news, so—etc.
There are two ways a group of corporate-backed fossil fuel lobbyists scratching their behinds in ye olden idea room can come up with the idea of comparing pollution regulations with state-sanctioned torture. First, they might honestly believe that not allowing every one of their sponsoring companies to dump whatever they want into the air, soil, groundwater, or lodged between lettuce leaves in your next sandwich is indeed an outrage akin to the systemic torture of human beings in order to obtain true or false confessions from them. Or second, they might not think state-sponsored torture is a very bad thing at all, and thus comparable to their own travails against the man and his rules.
Either scenario can only happen if multiple somebodies involved are outright sociopaths. Again, though: corporate-backed fossil fuel lobbyists.
AEA, an energy group linked to billionaire donors Charles and David Koch, also posted a cartoon showing a massive “EPA torture report” squashing Uncle Sam.
Which doesn't even make sense. Oh, it's a Branco cartoon? I understand—carry on. (And I see David Koch's famous magnanimity and "social liberalism" continues to be conspicuously absent from the efforts he staples his money to.)
You know, if al Qaeda was caught plotting to dump barrels of a highly toxic something in an American town's water supply, we'd go to war over it. We'd go to war at least twice, and probably with any country that was once itself seen in possession of that toxin, and the countries next to them, and the countries that said nice things about them on Facebook. If Exxon-Mobil does it, though, they're fined some walking-around money and that's it.
So no, guys, I think you're doing pretty well for yourselves. Try to soldier on in these times of adversity, won't you?