 |
 |
||
|
|
|||
 |
|||
|
|
|||
|
Endless Environmental Lies In the interest of full disclosure, I need to tell you that, years ago in the 1980s, I worked for a leading producer of a particularly effective pesticide that was applied with nothing more toxic than water. It is now, like so many other pesticides, not available to pest control professionals because it was literally forced off the market by the Environmental Protection Agency that insisted that millions of dollars of testing be repeated for its continued registration. The company decided it just wasn’t worth it. I have served as the public relations counselor to a state pest management association that began in 1941 when its founding members decided they needed to better understand the science involved with combating one of the most ancient vectors of disease and property damage, the billions of insect and rodent pests that besiege us to this day. Over the years since then, they have invited scientists to educate their members to better serve their customers. So, when I read yet another anti-pesticide news story in my daily newspaper, my first reaction was to heave a sigh of disgust and turn the page. My next reaction was the same one that caused me to create The National Anxiety Center to dispute the endless environmental lies designed to influence public opinion and policy. I got angry.
Like all such newspaper and other media stories that sound the warning claxon, you have to read further to discover there is no danger. Further into the story, you would learn that, "To what degree the findings represent a threat to human health is not certain. Most concentrations detected did not exceed federal human-health benchmarks." That was paragraph eight. In the next paragraph, the article notes that, "How the compounds may interact in the human body is poorly understood." And, if you read still further, you would find a quote from Jay Vroom, president of Croplife America, that "Normal water purification procedures used by municipalities…would remove most traces of pesticides." The key word here is "traces" because the measurements trumpeted in the first paragraph reflect a million parts per gallon and even a billion parts per gallon. Translation? So little presence of pesticides as to constitute no health threat whatever. Moreover, your local water company removes those trace elements before you ever drink them. So why then is the sidebar to the article titled "Drink at your own risk"? To scare you. That is the single operational mode of all environmental organizations and the data they serve up to the mainstream media that cleverly puts the scare in the first paragraph, confident that you are not likely to read to the end of the story, nor even understand that the threat they are describing is non-existent. In a similar fashion, the nation’s leading science magazines have become so debased by their alliance with environmentalists that one can no longer trust their latest "news." A case in point is a recent issue of Science magazine that reported Antarctica is melting. Two weeks earlier, it reported that Greenland was also losing big chunks of ice. Run for your life, the sea level is about to swamp all the coastal cities of the world. As Dr. Patrick Michaels noted on Tech Central Station, however, "Natural variability is sufficiently large on yearly and multidecadal time scales that it is simply impossible to conclude that anything other than natural variability is at play in either of those two stories." In other words, a study based on the last three years of ice mass cannot possibly be taken seriously. Unless, of course, you are an editor for Science magazine. If you are a scientist who follows such variations, you would know that over the course of the past several decades, the ocean-land system of Antarctica has been experiencing a growth in the amount of snow and ice. The lies the environmental movement has put forth over the last few decades can and does fill entire libraries. They have been aided and abetted by the mainstream media that knows that scary news sells newspapers and attracts views and listeners. Spring is right around the corner as I write and I guarantee you that billions of insect and rodent pests are about to debut once more to plague homeowners, apartment dwellers, and everyone else. It’s a good time to keep the phone number of your local pest management firm on the speed dial. The Illegal Immigration Time Bomb If Hillary Clinton were to be the Democrat Party candidate for President in 2008, one issue alone could defeat her. No matter who the Republicans run for President, one issue alone will prove an obstacle to victory. That issue is illegal immigration. In her typically strident fashion, Sen. Clinton told a rally of immigrants on Capitol Hill that she opposed making illegal entry into the United States a felony and that the Republican proposal to round up illegal immigrations for deportation would turn the country into "a police state." Mind you, they have already broken the law by sneaking into the U.S. or by over-staying their visas. The real problem for both the Democrats and Republicans is that America is now home to an estimated eleven million or more illegal immigrants.
The Bush administration has ignored the issue of illegal immigration despite the fact that thousands cross into the United States every day. They mostly come across our southern border, but it is just as easy to come in from the equally vast border we share with Canada. After they arrive, they find work, they apply for a variety of benefits, send their kids to school, use the emergency rooms of hospitals which by law cannot turn them away, and some commit crimes. If they give birth to a child here, it is automatically granted U.S. citizenship. According to the Center for Immigration Studies that has just issued a 44-page report on "The Connection Between Legal and Illegal Immigration", as legal immigration levels have risen since 1965, illegal immigration has increased with it. The Center found that "the share of the foreign-born population who are illegal aliens has risen steadily. Where they made up 21% of the foreign-born in 1980 and 25% in 2000, they numbered 28% percent as of 2005." Several amnesties have masked the rise in illegal immigration, the most recent being the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. Suffice it to say this whitewash piece of legislation did nothing to reform or control immigration. It legalized three million illegal aliens. They, in turn, became eligible to sponsor additional immigrants, thus contributing says the Center to the ranks of both legal and illegal immigrants. The more you legalize, the more who see the opportunity to enjoy the same instant process. As commentator Michelle Malkin points out, this is a slap in the face to every naturalized American who patiently went through the process to become a citizen. The entire immigration system is broken and, to make matters infinitely worse, Chairman Arlen Spector (R-PA) of the Senate Judiciary Committee has begun debate on a proposal that would create a "Gold Card" program to grant amnesty to illegal aliens who broke the law to get here before January 4, 2004. So we have the Democrats criticizing efforts to make illegal entry a felony offense with Sen. Richard Durban (D-IL) saying it would make the job of law enforcement seeking illegal aliens more difficult. Isn’t that the job of law enforcement, finding criminals? And isn’t it the job of Immigration and Customs Services to deport illegal aliens? Meanwhile, on the other site of the political aisle, you have Republicans saying that we should expect the ICS department to conduct background checks on those who want the Gold Card visa. The only problem with that is that the Government Accountability Office has issued a report that says ICS has no grasp whatever on the problem of immigration fraud, doesn’t do enough to deter it, and won’t have any kind of a working fraud-management system in place until 2011. The ICS can barely cope with those seeking naturalization. Little wonder that a significant portion of the Mexican population continues to move to the United States without bothering to inquire about the naturalization. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, Mexico accounted for 30% of the foreign-born in 2000 and more than half of the Mexicans known to be living in the U.S. were here illegally. Granting yet another amnesty, no matter how you dress it up or what you call it, brings us full circle back to the fact that amnesties simply invite more illegal aliens. So-called "undocumented workers", another way of saying "illegal aliens", are the focus of both Democrats and Republicans trying to figure out a way to put them on a fast track to citizenship. A lot of Americans don’t like this idea and a lot of them vote! This is happening when the United States presumably has a homeland security problem in the form of porous borders, a laughable deportation program, and virtually no system in place to track anyone who enters the U.S., whether as a tourist, a student, a businessman, or to pick crops. The 2008 national elections are going to revolve around the issue of illegal immigration and, at this point, neither party has a sensible solution other than to make it a very good choice to come here any way that you can. Would you like to help the Center maintain this website and continue its communications program regarding the major issues of our day? If so, you can donate to the Center via this website or, if you prefer, you can send a check to The Caruba Organization, 28 West Third Street, Suite 1321, South Orange, NJ 07079. Thank you!
©
2006 Alan Caruba. |
||||||||||||||||||||
"The nation’s streams and rivers, from the Midwestern corn belt to the HawaiianIslands to the suburbs of New Jersey are infused with dangerous pesticides, the U.S. Geological Survey reported yesterday." If you read no further than that first paragraph you would, like millions of other Americans, conclude that your health was endangered. You would be wrong. 
For a nation that is said to be hated by foreigners, an awful lot of them want to come here. Just ask the Customs and Immigration Service, a division of the Department of Homeland Security. Remember why this department was created? It had to do with a number of illegal immigrants who flew commercial jet planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.