'Environmentalism' Hijacked By The Far Left
By Gordon Bishop (07/31/06)
I wrote my first newspaper pollution investigation for the North Jersey Herald-News in 1960. It was on the appalling destruction of the Saddle River, a once serene stream that wound its way through Bergen County, a suburban bedroom community for North Jersey residents serving the New York City media, financial and insurance centers.
As a fledgling reporter/columnist, I saw what the invasion of industrialism could do to our natural environment. The Saddle River was the vulnerable recipient of chemicals, garbage, litter, sewage. . . you name it, you could find it in this once pristine waterway.
I was 22 years old then. There were no local, state or federal laws regulating air or water pollution. That all came about in 1969-70, with the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and the municipal Environmental Commissions. I served on the Eatontown, NJ Environmental Commission in the 1970s while working as The Newark Star-Ledger’s Environmental Editor and Columnist (1969-1996).
In the beginning, the environmental movement was led by nonpartisan leaders such as President Theodore Roosevelt, the father of the original “conservation” movement.
It was a fiscally conservative Democrat from the State of Washington (Henry “Scoop” Jackson) who introduced legislation known as NEPA – the National Environmental Policy Act that led to the creation of EPA. In 1972, I wrote a book with Senator Jackson titled “Land” for McGraw-Hill publications. (Republican President Nixon signed NEPA into law – a Republican and Democrat working together.)
Jackson ran for President in the Democrat primaries in 1976, but was beaten in the Pennsylvania primary by a peanut farmer from Georgia named Jimmy Carter. Carter won and was a one-term President because of his policies that led to double-digit inflation and double-digit unemployment.
That was the beginning of the transformation of the conservation movement to the liberal environmental movement. From then on, the Far Left passed so many costly rules and regulations that America’s industries starting to flee the United States for more friendly economic environments off-shore.
The liberals created a radical atmosphere that brought on the protests against industry, nuclear power plants, and just about everything that had to do with excessive environment controls of our nation’s economic system. In a word, “Capitalism.”
The Democrats of Senator Jackson’s party moved from liberalism, to socialism, Marxism and, yes, even communism.
That all gave birth to political losers such as Al Gore and John Kerry, all victims of the liberalism and socialism.
This all leads to what’s happening in the corrupt State of New Jersey.
The President of New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities is Jeanne M. Fox, former Region II EPA Administrator (New York/NJ metro region) and former Commissioner of the NJ DEP, both appointments by two super-liberal governors of New Jersey.
Fox is now caught up in a big $80 million scandal having to do with the BPU’s secret “Clean Energy Program,” which collects $10 to $20 a year from each customer’s power bills to provide “education, information and financial incentives for renewable energy systems and energy efficient measures.”
The State Treasury’s investigation has found that BPU administrators, led by foxy Jeanne Fox, handed out money to friends and Democrat cronies, including at least two Corzine appointees.
Fox’s husband, Steve DiMicco, a top New Jersey Democrat operative, ran campaigns for ex-Governor James McGreevey, who resigned in disgrace after he admitted he was having a sexual relations with his Homeland Security chief.
DiMicco is now directing the U.S. Senate campaign for Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ).
Ironically, as Fox and her husband moved farther and farther to the Left, I moved to the Right, touting the conquests of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, the Republican who became Speaker of the House of Representatives with his brilliant “Contract With America” in 1994, the first time in 40 years Republicans took control of the House.
Personally, I was a good friend of Steve DiMicco when we were building our careers together, he in the political Democrat circles, myself as the leading environmental journalist and commentator in New Jersey. I even wrote a novel and used Steve as one of the central characters in that novel.
Now he and his wife are being swept away by the radical Left that’s destroying America and its traditions and all our great flag stands for: Liberty, Freedom, Opportunity, Family Values, Religion, and God.
It’s a shame that friendships have to end this way.
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