These villains are not the antagonists you’ll find in any of the most recent Batman films, but the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Action Fund’s (along with Environment America) naming of 193 U.S. House members and 39 U.S. Senators as “Dirty Air Villains” are no less dangerous to the health of American’s than the evil characters Bane or the Joker.
Not surprisingly, but no less disturbingly, the NRDC Action Fund analysis “found that on average, House members who took more than $100,000 in career polluter campaign contributions voted against clean air laws nearly twice as many times as those who accepted less than $100,000 from dirty industries.” Similar conclusions were found for members of the U.S. Senate.
What a revelation! Money influences the votes of the U.S. Congress!
If you’d like to view more of the disturbing findings, go to http://whovotesdirty.com/, just make sure you wear a gas-mask (it really stinks!).
Also not surprising are how each political party lined up in the hero versus villain categories. The percentage of Democratic Party representatives who were dubbed as “heroes” was an incredible 98.5% (140/142). And the two congress members named heroes who weren’t Democrats were Independents, not Republicans.
So here’s an honest platform for the Republican Party to run on: increase taxes for the middle and working classes; lower taxes for the wealthy; economic programs that will shred America’s social safety net and bankrupt our country; environmental laws that will leave (and have left) millions of Americans vulnerable to the worst effects of environmental degradation and pollution; clean air laws that are eliminated (will anyone run the Boston marathon with a gas-mask?).
The Republican Party has a lot to be proud of. Not only has the GOP done more to shorten the lives of millions of Americans than many diseases, it’s done so with the callousness of a psychopath. Who needs fellow-feeling when I have this great dirty-industry-funded pool in my backyard!
What a wonderful life for some, indeed.
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