Senate Republicans are apparently too polite to call out Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) on his shameless exploitation of his long-dead sister.
Marian Rosenstadt died in 1983 from as asthma attack. Her unfortunate passing wouldn’t be news today except that her brother, Sen. Lautenberg, continually raises her death as a justification for stringent EPA air quality regulations. He did so again today during the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on EPA’s clean air transport and mercury rules.
Although we don’t yet have a transcript from today’s hearing, Greenwire previously reported about Ms. Rosenstadt’s death as follows:
Many years ago, Lautenberg’s sister Marian Rosenstadt was diagnosed with asthma. She had a machine in her car, he said, that helped her during attacks.
At a school board meeting in Rye, N.Y., she felt such an attack coming on. She rushed out to her car but did not make it in time, passing out near the parking lot.
But these facts hardly constitute evidence that outdoor air quality played any role in her fatal asthma attack.
Sen. Lautenberg should be ashamed for exploiting his sister’s tragic death for political purposes.
He also used her asthma to advocate for airplane cabin smoking bans c 1996. I know because I was at the hearing. Perhaps the school was a flying school?
A severe asthmatic had no business going to a school board meeting in a filthy school auditorium back in the 80’s. Maybe Mr.Lautenberg should lobby for Cleaner schools.
We already knew politicians had absolutely no intellectual integrity, so it should be no surprise the depth they’ll assay in their effort to ‘protect’ us and to ‘save the world’…
Demagogues have no shame. You cannot shame a person that uses his dead relatives to promote his own agenda.