Posted on 05/22/2005 6:30:40 AM PDT by QwertyKPH
WILKES-BARRE -- In a commencement speech Saturday to the graduating class of Wilkes University, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sought to link environmental threats to threats to democracy.
In the speech before a crowd of approximately 3,500, the architect of the New York City Watershed Agreement, environmental lawyer and environmental author, spoke critically of the Bush administration. Kennedy said the administration promoted 400 major environmental rollbacks during its last term to deliberately “eviscerate” 30 years of environmental law.
The Bush administration’s policies allow coal burning power plants to continue to burn coal, which causes increased instances of asthma and high levels of toxic mercury in freshwater sources, said Kennedy, adding that mercury contamination can cause autism, blindness and mental retardation.
Meanwhile, he said, many of the heads of environmental agencies in the Bush administration are run by representatives or former representatives of the industries that pollute the worst.
“The head of public lands is a mining industry lobbyist who believes that public lands are unconstitutional,” said Kennedy, who initially struggled to speak through what he called a touch of laryngitis.
“It is the polluters who are running the agencies that are supposed to protect us from pollution.”
Kennedy, who was given the honorary degree Doctor of Laws at the ceremony, also blamed problems in the environment on what he called an indolent, negligent press that doesn’t properly cover issues and the current administration.
At the end of his speech, Kennedy, who said he hoped to be heard in a nonpartisan light, earned a partial standing ovation; nearly all of the graduates stood, but many in the audience remained seated.
Verbal responses to the speech were similarly mixed.
“I thought (the speech) was a completely inappropriate anti-Bush diatribe. It had nothing to do with sending these graduates on their way,” said Paul Gallagher, a businessperson from Dallas who was watching his wife graduate with a master’s in special education.
A Bear Creek resident saw the speech a different way.
“He looked at everything going on with the asthma. A lot of my family members have it. It’s a good issue,” said Sherry Weitz, a printer. Her father, brother and sister suffer from the debilitating lung affliction, she said.
he wanted to be seen in a non-partisan light?
LOL!!! what an idiot....was he high or something?
This clown and his cousin joe in MA will ultimately run for the senate.
After the speech Kennedy jumped into his Gulfstream private jet for his return to Boston, and burned enough fossil fuel to supply ten families with gasoline for their work commute for two weeks.
"LOL!!! what an idiot....was he high or something?"
You have to ask? He's a Kennedy!
well yeah...
he could have been drunk too :)
Wasn't this the one that was on Heroin for just about the entire decades of the 70s and 80s?
The usual bilge from the usual useful idiot.
The whole clan is a bunch of dopers.
I'd believe it, and the ones that aren't on dope or something, are drunk
He struggled with laryngitis? HE always sounds horrible, I can't stand to listen to him.
He should have told them that, to be successful, you should first be born into a famous, politically-connected family of drunken womanizers.
Everything cause harm except the hydrocarbon laden contrails of RFK Jr's private jet.
>> "The Bush administration’s policies allow coal burning power plants to continue to burn coal" <<
Wow. How politically deaf is this guy. He said this in Wilkes Barre, which is in the center of what once was a huge coal mining industry. An area that was devastated by the decline of the coal industry. An area that has a huge percentage of old people because most of the young moved out when they could not find jobs in the collapsed coal industry.
.
FREEDOM lost is FREEDOM lost.
And there's nothin' in this world quite like losin' it.
Just ask the once FREE People of a once FREE South Vietnam about their prices paid the last 30 years for losing theirs:
Pictures of a vietnamese Re-Education Camp
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308949/posts
NOTE: More enviromental effect on this planet was inflicted naturally by last Christmas' South Asia Earthquake's kicking Earth's Axis off kilter a bit than by any of RFK Jr's unnatural enviromental fears.
NUTS
.
This is where Gov. Arnold gets his enviro policy.
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