Graduated

On to the bar.

Outer Banks Bound

All of the 3LinDC bloggers will be heading to the Outer Banks this week for some (hopefully) well-deserved R&R.

As a result, no blogging for the next several days -- although I doubt anyone will actually miss us.

Senior Death Discount: Republicans Eager to Kill Elderly

Quick... Phil, call the AARP. They need to know about this article from the N.Y. Times:

[The] Bush administration [has a] policy to base some regulations on a calculation that the life of each person older than 70 should be valued less than the life of a younger person . . . .

Instead of the traditional assumption that all lives saved from cleaner air are worth the same, administration officials in two environmental studies included an alternative method that used two values, $3.7 million for the life a person younger than 70 and $2.3 million for an older person, a 37 percent difference.

This Bush administration policy is the ?senior death discount.? Applied to air pollution regulations, the senior death discount means that the air senior citizens breathe is 37% less valuable than the air breathed by younger citizens.

This is hideous, insidious, and sinister. Here is why:

1. The senior death discount makes no economic sense. We all breathe the same air!! Life expectancy calculations may make sense in the context of medical resources such as rare organs for transplant operations. Human organs are discrete, distinct, and rare commodities. Nevertheless, the senior death discount makes no sense whatsoever in air pollution.
2. The senior death discount makes no environmental sense. We all breathe the same air!!
3. The senior death discount enables the administration to turn on older Americans as a rationale to weaken environmental regulations.
4. The senior death discount blatantly devalues the lives of older citizenry to raise money (from polluters) for the Bush 2004 War Trust. That's filthy!! Go elephants!!

Comments??