"(...) On that first day, in January 2001, the president instructed his chief of staff, Andy Card, to send directives to all the executive departments with authority over environmental issues, ordering them to put on hold more than a dozen new regulations left over from the Clinton administration. The regulations he and his vice president, Dick Cheney, wanted scrapped included everything from those that lowered acceptable arsenic levels in drinking water to new standards that would reduce releases of raw sewage. Bush and Cheney also set about eliminating rules that limited logging, drilling, and mining on public lands, and others that would have increased energy-efficiency standards. Aditionally, the administration wanted to repeal the ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Gran Teton National Parks. Bush's track record as governor of Texas should have prepared us for his assault on the environment. When he left office in Austin, his home state topped the nation in manufacturing-plant emissions of toxic and ozone-causing chemicals, in discharge of carcinogens, in release of airbone toxins, and in production of cancer-using benzene and chloride. Texas was also the No. 1 state when it came to violations of clean-water discharge standards and the release of toxic waste into underground wells. By the time Bush left the governor's office, Houston had passed Los Angeles as the American city with the worst air quality. And a third of Texa's rivers were so polluted they were unfit for recreational use" - from the Editor's letter.
Continua a ser uma das revistas mais badaladas do mundo, depois da GQ é claro, mas nem por isso deixa de ser menos interessante. O número de Janeiro de 2009 é a melhor prova de que há revistas que nunca envelhecem. Para além das fantásticas fotografias de Tina Fey tiradas por Annie Leibovitz, de um longo texto sobre o casal Buckley e de um artigo sobre os gostos de YSL, recomendo vivamente a leitura do artigo "Capitalist Fools" de Joseph E. Stiglitz, um laureado com o Nobel, sobre a crise do sistema financeiro e as falhas de controlo que estiveram na sua base, para lá do magnífico texto de Graydon Carter já acima parcialmente transcrito.
