"So?"

I enjoyed yesterday's ABC story on the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war in an
interview featuring vice-president Dick Cheney in what Martha Raddatz called "remarkable."
Here is a small part of her interview transcript of Cheney's Iraq war.

Martha Raddatz: There are Americans who say, "It's not worth fighting."

Dick Cheney: So?

Martha Raddatz: "So?" You don't care what the American people think?

Dick Cheney:  No I think you cannot be, ahm, blown off course by fluctuations  
in the public opinion poll.

What a fine example of government no longer responsive to, nor caring a damn
about, its citizen's wants or needs.

Examples of such arrogance abound. Last month I wrote about the final hearing by
the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's (TECQ) unpopular decision to
allow one of El Paso's historically absolute worst polluters, ASARCO, to reopen its
copper smelting operation within our city's limits. Texas, with a reputation as one of the
nation's most polluted states, upheld itself as "The Pay Toilet for Industry" with that
decision by its very shills of industry, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality!

But El Paso is still fighting. They have filed a legal appeal to the TCEQ to reconsider
their decision. (I'm not holding my breath for any different outcome.)

And just as El Paso has challenged the poisoning of its air by the reopening of the ASARCO
smelter, it has now denied the federal government access to easement land to construct a
new taller, meaner border wall between itself and our Mexican neighbors living in Juarez.

Such challenges by El Paso create legal entanglements that are often expensive, drawn out
affairs. Some El Pasoans question the wisdom of the city expending money to fight pollution.

I heard this same argument by TV station's  KVIA News. As El Paso's local ABC affiliate, KVIA
was questioning the city's  efforts to halt the border wall by asking how much are we willing to
pay to defy the powers that be?

I think the more likely question asked should be, how much are we willing not to pay so as
to allow the powers that be to continue to take us into trumped up bogus wars or pollute our
environment and our lungs, to sacrifice the health of communities, construct expensive and
ineffective border barrier boondoggles against the public's will, etc. so those in power won't
be "blown off course by fluctuations in public opinion polls."

We already have the governments we can't afford. To just lay back and take it because to
challenge them is going to cost us as one local TV news station suggests will be far more
expensive for us all in the long run. Dada thinks It's time to stop taking what they're cramming
down our throats and start shoving it up their asses!