Inside the Beltway

DISHING THE DIRT

Run for the hills. Earth Day is only 48 hours away. Alas, it’s become a mawkish event, and a profitable one, too. Consider that 40 years ago, or maybe it was 400 years ago, Earth Day was a relatively simple affair. Neighborhood hippies would clean up a vacant lot, plant begonias, throw a ceremonial Frisbee and then wander off to explore weed of another sort.

Earth Day has become a $1.4 billion business, says Freedom Action, a political action committee that has tracked the revenues of Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection (where the annual take is over $88 million), the Environmental Defense Fund and six other groups. The committee has crafted an advocacy ad to share its findings.

“The leaders of these big environmental pressure groups are as out of touch with the concerns of average working Americans as the chairman of Goldman Sachs. The eight environmental pressure groups we highlight in our ad now largely serve as fronts for big corporations. They have worked closely together to write the [House and Senate] cap-and-trade bills,” Freedom Action Director Myron Ebell tells Inside the Beltway.

“Enactment of either bill would provide hundreds of billions of dollars in windfall profits to big companies like GE, Duke Energy and Exelon,” he adds. “Freedom Action’s ad shows that Al Gore is not the only person doing well from promoting global warming alarmism.”

AY-YI-YI

It’s pronounced “AY-uh-fyat-luh-YOE-kuutl-uh,” according to the British Broadcasting Corp., and “ay-yah-FYAH’-plah-yer-kuh-duhl,” according to the Associated Press. Still, scores of earnest journalists mispronounce Eyjafjallajokull, the excitable Iceland volcano that has disrupted air traffic, commerce and politics since Thursday. Though the dust is settling, journalists continue to mangle the name, or just shorten it to the jaunty “Ey-ja.” Meanwhile, a “best of” the bungles is already circulating on YouTube, which thanks reporters “for giving the nation of Iceland a good laugh.”

TAKING AIM

“Which part of ‘shall not be infringed’ confuses you?”

“Guns save lives.”

“My rights come from God, not the government.”

“Gun control is not about guns, it’s about control.”

“Armed gays don’t get bashed.”

- Protest signs from Patriot’s Day gun rights rallies on Monday

ALSO TAKING AIM

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