4-4-11
Lloydgcarter.com
Drought of Candor
By Lloyd G. Carter
http://www.lloydgcarter.com/content/110404477_drought-candor
The House Subcommittee on Water and Power, now under the control of Republicans, will hold a field hearing in Fresno April 11 with the provocative title “Creating Jobs by Overcoming Man-Made Drought: Time for Congress to Listen and Act.”

The phrase “man-made drought,” like the terms Obamacare, death tax and death panel, was cooked up by political consultants with the intent to trigger an emotional response from listeners, rather than intellectual analysis. Use of the phrase began surfacing in 2009 when water deliveries to the western San Joaquin Valley were significantly reduced, thanks to reduced rainfall and snowpack and deteriorating ecological conditions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, triggering the Endangered Species Act.

It was “1984” author George Orwell who wrote that political language “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”  That is the case with the phrase man-made drought.