Covering for Cheney The
imbalance in the press coverage was apparent, too, with Bush’s vice
presidential running mate, Dick Cheney, a longtime favorite of official
Washington. At
the vice presidential debate, Cheney depicted himself as a self-made
multi-millionaire from his years as chairman of Halliburton Co. As for
his success in the private sector, Cheney told Democratic nominee Joe
Lieberman that “the government had absolutely nothing to do with
it.” After
years of hyper-critical coverage of Al Gore for supposedly puffing up
his resumé, one might have expected the major media to jump all over
this patently false statement. But the big newspapers and the major
television networks offered no challenge to Cheney’s comment. Bloomberg
News,
a business wire, was one of the few outlets that took note of the
variance between Cheney’s assessment and the facts. “Cheney’s
reply left out how closely Dallas-based Halliburton’s fortunes are
linked to the U.S. government,” Bloomberg News said. The article noted that Halliburton was a leading defense contractor (with $1.8 billion in contracts from 1996-99) and a major beneficiary of federal loan guarantees (another $1.8 billion in loans and loan guarantees from the U.S.-funded Export-Import Bank during Cheney’s years). The
article also cited internal Ex-Im Bank e-mails showing that Cheney
personally lobbied bank chairman James Harmon for a $500 million loan
guarantee for Russia’s OAO Tyumen Oil Co. The Ex-Im loan guarantee,
approved in March, helped finance Halliburton’s contract with
Tyumen. In
further contradiction of Cheney’s self-made-man claim, the article
quoted from a speech that Cheney gave to the Ex-Im Bank in 1997. “I
see that we have in recent years been involved in projects in the
following (countries) supported, in part, through Ex-Im activities:
Algeria, Angola, Colombia, the Philippines, Russia, the Czech Republic,
Thailand, China, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Kuwait, India, Kenya, the Congo,
Brazil, Argentina, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Indonesia, Malaysia
and Mexico,” Cheney said. “Export
financing agencies are a key element in making this possible, helping
U.S. businesses blend private sector resources with the full faith and
credit of the U.S. government,” Cheney added. [Bloomberg News, Oct.
6, 2000] Fresh from his debate pronouncement about his self-reliance, Cheney took the offensive denouncing Gore for alleged exaggerations. “He [Gore] seems to have a compulsion to embellish his arguments or … his resumé,” Cheney said on Oct. 6. “He seems to have this uncontrollable desire periodically to add to his reputation, to his record, things that aren’t true. That’s worrisome and I think it’s appropriate for us to point that out.” Normally,
hypocrisy is considered a big story, especially when the accuser’s
behavior is more egregious than the actions of his target. Yet,
Cheney’s own resumé polishing was barely mentioned in the major
media. When it was, it was excused as harmless banter. The
media maintained this position even as Cheney went out of his way to
defend his self-made man statement in comments on National Public Radio.
There, he compounded his deception by insisting that the government
contracts with Halliburton had predated his arrival at the company in
1995. “We
did do some” work for the government, Cheney told NPR interviewer Bob
Edwards on Oct. 11. “The fact is the company I worked for won a
competitive bid before I ever got there. So it’s not as though this
were some kind of gift.” [NPR’s
Morning Edition ] Contrary
to Cheney’s suggestion that he was not responsible for bringing in any
of Halliburton’s government business, Halliburton actually moved up
the list of Pentagon contractors during Cheney’s tenure, reaching 17
in 1999, the latest available rankings. The
documents, cited in the Bloomberg News article, also made clear that Cheney personally lobbied for loan
guarantees from the Ex-Im Bank. The bank uses U.S. taxpayer money to
finance the overseas business of U.S. companies, what some critics call
“corporate welfare.” The
major media’s one-way microscope on Gore’s credibility missed
Cheney’s exaggeration about his career while letting Cheney continue
attacking Gore over alleged exaggerations about his career. Bush & the Environment Similarly,
the press let Gov. Bush escape any serious attention over false and
misleading statements about the environment and global warming, issues
that will affect the future of the planet. In the Oct. 11 debate, Bush
offered conflicting statements within the space of a few minutes, but the
big-time press took no notice of the problems. Bush’s
first swing at the issue of pollution-causing industrial plants went
this way: “We need to make sure that if we decontrol our plants that
there's mandatory -- that the plants must conform to clean air
standards, the grand-fathered plants. That's what we did in Texas. No
excuses. I mean, you must conform.” Just
minutes later, he had shifted toward what sounded like a voluntary
program. “Well, I -- I -- I don't believe in command-and-control out
of Washington, D.C. I believe Washington ought to set standards, but I
don't -- again, I think we ought to be collaborative at the local
levels. And I think we ought to work with people at the local levels.” Beyond
the question of coherence, Bush’s statements seemed contradictory.
Either the national government sets standards with compliance required
or local governments can be allowed to set their own environmental rules,
possibly in cooperation with business. Bush seemed to be having it both
ways. In
Texas, Bush’s record suggests that he opposes mandatory standards even
at the local and state levels. Bush cites as his most significant
environmental accomplishment the setting of new rules for grand-fathered
industrial plants, previously exempt from Texas clean air laws – what
he apparently was referring to in his debate remarks. But
those plants were asked only to voluntarily comply with the clean air
rules. The 1997 law carried no penalties for industries that didn’t
seek a permit under the law. It is the kind of standard that polluting
industries would salivate over at the national level. As
it turned out, Bush’s administration had drafted the new rules in
close collaboration with representatives of the industries being
regulated. The role of industry representatives was discovered in
confidential memos obtained by the Sustainable Energy and Economic
Development Coalition under the state’s Freedom of Information Act. [Sierra
Magazine, Nov.-Dec. 1999] Without
mandatory requirements, environmentalists argue that as few as 10 out of
more than 800 grand-fathered facilities are likely to reduce emissions.
[San Antonio Express News, June 4, 1999] Other
Bush comments have raised questions about his commitment to solving
pollution problems in Texas and nationally. “I do not believe you can
sue your way or regulate your way to clean air and clean water,” Bush
told the Dallas Morning News [Dec. 1, 1999] On global warming, Bush’s debate comments were perhaps even more misleading. “I just – I think there’s been some – some of the scientists. I believe, Mr. Vice President, haven’t they been changing their opinion a little bit on global warming?” Bush said. In
reality, the only change within the scientific community has been to
revise global warming projections upward, recognizing that the rising
temperatures are a greater threat than had been thought. No credible
scientist now denies that global warming is a real environmental
development that has begun or is about to begin. Even industry front groups, such as the Greening Earth Society, which supplied Bush some of his data for his Sept. 29 energy address, no longer deny the trends, though they argue that global warming might be beneficial. The Greening Earth Society, which was created by the Western Fuels Association, argues that higher levels of carbon dioxide will spur plant growth. [For
more on Bush’s reliance on Greening Earth data, see our story about Bush’s
energy estimates.] In his debate comment, Bush might have been referring to the recommendation from scientist, Dr. Jim Hansen, that the world first should address less common greenhouse gases, rather than confronting carbon dioxide, a gas emanating from fossil fuels and representing a much more difficult political battle. Hansen’s
suggestion, however, does not mean that scientists are less concerned
about the world’s dependence on fossil fuels or the onset of global
warming. In
the debate, Bush also protested the Kyoto Treaty aimed at curbing the
pollution behind global warming. Bush said, “I’ll tell you one thing
I’m not going to do is I’m not going to let the United States carry
the burden for cleaning up the world’s air, like the Kyoto Treaty
would have done. China and India were exempted from that treaty.” In
fact, China and India were not exempted from the treaty. They weren’t
subjected to the same requirements as the developed world, but they
committed themselves to reducing emissions and China appears to have
stopped its emissions growth. Per person, China and India already have
pollution rates that are fractions of the pollution caused by the United
States. At
another point in the debate, Bush said the Clinton-Gore administration
“took 40 million acres of land out of circulation without consulting
local officials. … I just cited an example of the administration just
unilaterally acting without any input.” Bush
was referring to a pending administration proposal to protect 40 million
acres of roadless areas in national forests from more road building and
logging. As the Sierra Club noted in a press release, Bush’s statement
was false. “In
fact, the Forest Service conducted 600 public meetings about the
proposal nationwide and more than one million Americans urged the
administration to strengthen the proposal,” the Sierra Club said.
“There was ample opportunity for local officials and others to comment
on the proposal.” Defending
his own record in Texas, Bush also asserted that “our water is cleaner
now.” False again, the Sierra Club said. “The discharge of
industrial toxic pollution into surface waters in Texas increased from
23.2 million pounds in 1995 to 25.2 million pounds in 1998, the last
year with data available,” a Sierra Club press release said. If
Gore had made similar misrepresentations, they would have filled the air
waves. Bush’s falsehoods passed virtually unnoticed. |
