WaPo's Frames

I haven’t read the other parts of the Cheney series in the WaPo–at this point I know enough to have an informed opinion. But when I read this, it was like a fart up my nose.

The Klamath case is one of many in which the vice president took on a decisive role to undercut long-standing environmental regulations for the benefit of business.

This frames the article thus: you’re either with Cheney and business, or you’re a tree-hugger. It is implicitly impossible to be pro-business and pro-environment, or in this case pro-salmon. Of course, here we actually have several industries on the other side–namely tourism and fishing. Cheney did not decide against tree-huggers and for hard working farmers–he decided for politically connected agri-business and against fisherman and the many small businesses that depend on tourism in the Klamath valley.

If you keep reading, you see that

Last summer, the federal government declared a “commercial fishery failure” on the West Coast after several years of poor chinook returns virtually shut down the industry, opening the way for Congress to approve more than $60 million in disaster aid to help fishermen recover their losses.

This whole idea that Republicans are pro-business is retarded. They are pro certain industries, mainly extraction and defense. If you fall into a less preferred industry, forget it.