|
|
Tom DeLay's Environmental Assaults and Leadership Downfalls Make Headlines
- 1) DeLay to caribou, seals, etc: drop dead. Houston Chronicle, September 26, 2003.
- 2) DeLay makes Texas Monthly's worst legislators list. Associated Press, June 19, 2003.
- 3) Tom DeLay, 'Hammer' of the House. United Press International June 12, 2001
- Quotes from Article:
"Part of the allure that DeLay offers business lobbies is his near-visceral opposition to any environmental or safety regulation. He has pushed for the repeal of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, opposes the Kyoto global warming treaty and wrote the Contract With America planks that called for a rollback of federal regulation. And, according to Congressional Quarterly, he called the Environmental Protection Administration the "Gestapo of government."
Bombast aside, DeLay can also be physically combative. In 1997, he and the equally feisty Wisconsin Democrat Doug Obey had to be separated as they came to blows on the House floor. This led to his comment that despite being a devout Christian he had always had trouble with that "turn the other cheek aspect" of the religion. DeLay otherwise limits his attacks at Democrats to the verbal kind, calling them arrogant and elitist."
- 4) DeLay lashes out at TV war critics, Houston Chronicle, April 4, 2003
- 5) Sins of Emissions, A Mother Jones Sept./Oct. 1996
Quotes from Article:
- "Tom Delay gained notoriety for openly inviting industry lobbyists to help rewrite environmental regulations."
- "The insecticide DDT? According to DeLay, it's perfectly safe. The bald eagle? Never approached extinction. Acid rain? All you gotta do is pour a little lime in a few lakes. Global warming? A myth and a fraud. "The Nobel appeasement prize," DeLay sneered when scientists researching ozone depletion won the award last year. The Environmental Protection Agency? "The gestapo of government," he fumes."
- "DeLay's chief passion . . . is the wholesale deregulation of American business. More than any other politician, DeLay is responsible for the House's all-out assault on 25 years of bipartisan environmental regulation. In the past. . .years, he has tried to repeal the Clean Air Act, fought to cut the EPA's budget by a third, and invited corporate lobbyists and contributors to pen legislation exempting their industries from environmental laws."
- "From 1973-84, DeLay operated a Houston-area exterminating business. He often says he ran for office partly because of his frustration over EPA regulation of the pesticides used in his trade."
- "DeLay's far-right extreme agenda includes to repeal environmental protection laws by dismantling the EPA and gutting the Clean Air Act, allow big polluting companies to continue to pollute our air, water and other resources, teach creationism in public schools, abolish separation of church and state, and outlaw abortion in all cases. DeLay also opposes campaign finance reform and has taken more money from tobacco interests than any other Texas legislator."
|