Like John and Yoko, industry and politics in the U.S. have climbed into bed together and just refuse to get out. Nowhere is that more evident than in Texas, homeland of the Bush clan and the most polluted state in the country. Let’s spell it out: Texas is the number one spewer of toxic chemicals and carcinogens into the air, number one in chemical spills, number one in ozone pollution, number one in carbon-dioxide and mercury emissions, number one in clean-water violations, and number one in the production of hazardous waste. How did it get that way? Largely because of the oil industry, which all but owns Texas — and made a bid to own the entire country by using Vice President Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force to shape national energy policy. Can the knot be untangled? Not easily, after 50 years of intimate relations between energy barons and the Bush dynasty (which has had a family member in a governor’s mansion, on Capitol Hill, and/or in the White House for the last 50 years).
