Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Speaks to Sierra Club on Non-Environmental Issues
by muddy paw
Robert Kennedy, Jr., in a speech before the Sierra Club, as reported in a diary on DailyKos -
"And I say that this is an administration that represents itself as the 'White House of values' but every value that they claim to represent is just a hollow façade, [that masks] the one value that they really consider worth fighting for which is corporate profit taking.
"They say that they like free markets but they despise free market capitalism. What they like - if you look at their feet rather than their clever, clever mouths - what they really like is corporate welfare and capitalism for the poor but socialism for the rich.
"They say that they like private property but they don't like private property except when it's the right of a polluter to use his private property to destroy his neighbors property and to destroy the public property.
"And they say that they like law and order but they are the first ones to let the corporate law breakers off the hook. And they say that they like local control and states rights but they only like those things when it means sweeping away the barriers to corporate profit taking at the local level. And you and the Sierra Club know, and I can give you hundreds of examples.
It was a wide-ranging speech, touching on many structural defects of our current politics besides environmental-related issues.
"... we have negligent and indolent media and press
in this country which have absolutely let down American democracy [applause].
All this right-wing propaganda which is planned and organized and [has]
dominated this country [and] the political debate for so many years, talking
about a liberal media. Well, you know and I know there is no such thing as a
liberal media in the
"There is a right-wing media and if you look where most Americans are now getting their news, that's where they're getting it. According to Pew, 30 percent of Americans now say that their primary news source is talk radio which is 90 percent dominated by the right.
"Twenty-two percent said their primary news source is Fox News, MSNBC or CNBC, all dominated by the right and another 10 percent, Sinclair Network, which is the most right wing of all.
"[Sinclair] is the largest television network in our
country. It's run by a former pornographer who requires all 75 of his affiliate
television stations - and this is where Mid-Westerners get their news, red
state people get their news - all of them have to take a pledge to not report
critically about [Bush] or about the war in
RFK Jr. is chief prosecuting attorney for the Hudson
Riverkeeper, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council and
president of the Waterkeeper Alliance. He is also a clinical professor and
supervising attorney at the Environmental Litigation Clinic at Pace University
School of Law in
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