Senator Russ Feingold has accused the Bush administration of “trying to drill their way out of the national energy crisis,” the AP reports. His comment about the Bush administration hits the nail on the head. His constant, steady opposition to the ANWR bill is a big contrast to the moral decay of the Republican Party, whose members can’t tell right from wrong.
The AP article notes that Minnesota Republican Senator Norm Coleman made a campaign promise not to vote for the ANWR bill. However, now, he is waffling on the bill like a person who knows he is not supposed to lie, but who wants to do it anyway. Coleman is like the people who call Dr. Laura who waffle about cheating on their spouses or doing a headlong rush into a premarital sexual relationship or something of that nature.
The Environmental News Service quotes Bill Frist as saying that this is crucial to our national security:
“The oil in the ANWR is critical to our economic and national security,” Frist said, who added that drilling in the refuge will create “hundreds of thousands of jobs” and that new technologies would safeguard the fragile Arctic environment from the impacts of oil development.
“Some critics complain that drilling in ANWR will hurt the environment,” Frist said. “This simply isn’t true.”
The problem with Frist’s logic is that what he is saying is just a bunch of verbiage. One person’s plan to protect our national security might be another person’s attack on civil liberties. One person’s economic development plan might be exploitation of migrant workers for another. Therefore, what Frist says is just a bunch of “meaningless sounds,” as the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes would put it.
If this is such an important part of our national security, then why does Frist have to game the system, as Feingold implies?
“This isn’t the way to make policy relating to energy,” said Senator Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat. “This back-door tactic is an abuse of the reconciliation process. It reflects poorly on this body and invites greater mischief down the line.”
“This is no way to treat the crown jewel of our National Wildlife Refuge System,” Feingold told colleagues.
As opposed to the moral relativism and the selective values of the Republicans, who think all campaign promises are important, but some are more important than others, Senator Feingold has had a proven track record of standing up for the environment:
“Wisconsin has a long tradition of conservation. Former U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson was the original founder of Earth Day in 1969 and a tireless advocate for environmental protection. Our conservation efforts are indebted to the work of another Wisconsin environmentalist, Aldo Leopold, founder of the Wilderness Society.
Wisconsin was also the home state of the legendary John Muir, the first President of the Sierra Club, whose ideas about conservation and the essential role of wilderness in nature inspire environmentalists to this day.
I will continue to work hard to protect our public lands, ensure safe drinking water and breathable air, end environmentally harmful subsidies, and preserve the quality of Wisconsin’s environment.”
There is a whole list in the link above about Feingold’s long-standing support for the environment. More Feingold votes on the environment can be found here. By contrast, another example of the moral relativism within the Republican Party involves Senator Arlen Specter, who had voted against ANWR in the past:
On the Senate floor, the final minutes of the roll call were tense, with a few senators waiting until the end to finally cast their vote. One of the last was Sen. Arlen Specter, R- Pa., who voted against the drilling ban. Murkowski gratefully shook his hand after he voted.
So, after opposing ANWR for all these years, Arlen Specter has bought into the Bush administration’s spin that “9/11 changed everything” and that therefore, they can do whatever they want.
And why should we trust Interior Secretary Gale Norton when he says this in the same article:
“ANWR needs to be judged on its own merits,” she said. “There are people who have said, `if you go into ANWR, you’re going to be going into all the parts of wilderness areas in this country.’ That is clearly not true. … People have said if you go into ANWR there are going to be drilling rigs right off the beaches of Florida. That is clearly not the case. The president has ordered a moratorium that will protect Florida waters.”
Yeah, sure. This is all about trust. Bush and his people have had a proven track record of telling lies. For example, just today, Think Progress revealed that Vice President Cheney lied about the Saddam/Bin Laden connection long after the AL-Qaeda operative recanted his claims of a link between the two men. So, why should we trust Secretary Norton when she says there will be no other public lands opened up for drilling?
The passage of the ANWR bill is not a sure thing; 24 GOP Congressmen sent a letter to Bush saying it was not appropriate to consider ANWR along with the budget bill:
This summer, two dozen Republican House members sent their leaders a letter saying they didn’t think it was appropriate to decide an important environmental issue in a budget bill. But Alaska senators needed ANWR to pass on this special type of legislation. Unlike a regular bill, a budget reconciliation bill can’t be filibustered, so supporters need only 51 votes to get it through the Senate, rather than 60.
But, given the oscar-winning performances of Senator Ted Stevens playing the victim like so many of our trolls here, you never know. Many Republican congressmen are vulnerable to this kind of behavior; just recall the passage of the latest energy bill, in which the vote was held open for two hours, while DeLay, Blunt, and Hastert stalked the floor of the House screaming at Republicans who had voted against the Energy Bill.
Stevens thinks this should be all about him:
“I’m seriously depressed, unfortunately, clinically depressed,” said Stevens. “And I’ve been told that [it’s] because I’ve been at this too long.”
It’s the fight to allow oil drilling in a portion of ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
When the issue of opening ANWR last came up for a Senate vote in 2003, it lost by four votes.
Stevens took it personally saying, “People who vote against this today are voting against me. And I’ll never forget it.”
While we have plenty of differences within the Democratic Party, we rarely have examples of Democrats acting like this is all about them. Stevens, however, is like a 4-year-old spoiled brat who cries, screams, and sulks whenever he can’t get his way or get his favorite toys at Wal-Mart.
This week, wearing the same Incredible Hulk necktie he wears for major congressional battles, Stevens celebrated a different outcome — a two-vote margin of victory. Again, Stevens took it personally.
“It’s as important to me as the first step that Armstrong took when he stepped off on the moon,” Stevens said this week.
“This may be my last stand at trying to convince Congress to keep its word. I’m not sure I want to serve any longer in a Senate that cannot, will not, carry out commitments that were made by previous occupants of this body,” he said.
Interesting that he can’t document who had supposedly promised him they would support ANWR drilling.
There is a clear difference between level-headed Democrats like Feingold and Progressive groups like the Apollo Alliance, Kossacks like Meteor Blades and Jerome a Paris, and governors like Brian Schweitzer who develop comprehensive solutions for a long-term energy policy and Republicans who are stuck in the past of consuming as much as possible and then crying like spoiled brats when they can’t get their way. Democrats are givers to the country, while Republicans are takers from the country.
And while the Republicans love to frame this issue as a job creation issue, the Apollo Alliance shows that there are much better ways of creating jobs that do not involve ANWR drilling, such as:
–Making Ohio, a leader in manufacturing jobs and manufacturing job losses, into an alternative-energy manufacturing powerhouse and creating thousands of jobs in the process;
–In conjunction with Energy Action, develop a plan for campuses across the country to make them 100% sustainable and encourage them to invest in clean energy.
–In New York City, Apollo got a green building code passed in New York City unanimously. This code will create thousands of jobs by building structures which have stringent environmental codes.
Apollo’s plan involves the creation of an infastructure that would allow us to convert to clean energy, create 3 million new jobs, improve the trade deficit by $200 billion, and allow us to pay down $1 trillion of the national debt over 10 years:
That program calls for a national investment of $300 billion over the course of ten years to build the basic production and distribution infrastructure needed for a cleaner energy economy. Less than the estimated costs of the Iraq war (after just two years), the investment would pay for itself many times over. Direct economic benefits would include annual energy savings and improvements in our trade balance of about $200 billion; the creation of some 3 million permanent new jobs; and an added $1 trillion in GDP over ten years.
Given the enormous opportunities for energy savings in cities and renewable energy production in rural areas, Apollo would distribute savings and jobs to two distressed parts of our population. It would also give a kick to US manufacturing, giving companies a good reason to invest in the surging world market for clean energy products and technology. It makes both environmental and economic sense.
The Apollo program is being taken seriously by investors, as it begins to attract significant venture capital. A leading example is the Green Wave initiative, led by CA-Treasurer and Apollo national advisory board member Phil Angelides. Funded by CALPERS and CALSTERS, the leading public employee pension funds in California, Green Wave is investing close to a billion dollars to upgrade energy efficiency in those funds’ real estate holdings as well as in other promising clean technology firms. On the real estate side, the internal rate of annual return is upwards of 15 percent annually, making it an extremely attractive investment for institutional investors with comparable holdings.
And such plans involve the nearly unanimous support of the American people:
A new Yale University research survey reveals that while Americans are deeply divided on many issues, they overwhelmingly believe that the United States is too dependent on imported oil. The survey of 1,000 adults nationwide shows a vast majority of the public also wants to see government action to develop new “clean” energy sources, including solar and wind power as well as hydrogen cars.
The results underscore Americans’ deep concerns about the country’s current energy policies, particularly the nation’s dependence on imported oil. Fully 92 percent say this dependence is a serious problem, while 68 percent say it is a “very serious” problem.
Across all regions of the country and every demographic group, there is broad support for a new emphasis on finding alternative energy sources. Building more solar power facilities is considered a “good idea” by 90 percent of the public; 87 percent support expanded wind farms; and 86 percent want increased funding for renewable energy research.
According to Gus Speth, dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, “This poll underscores the fact that Americans want not only energy independence but also to find ways to break the linkage between energy use and environmental harm, from local air pollution to global warming.”
Results of the poll indicate that 93 percent of Americans say requiring the auto industry to make cars that get better gas mileage is a good idea. Just 6 percent say it is a bad idea. This sentiment varies little by political leaning, with 96 percent of Democrats and Independents and 86 percent of Republicans supporting the call for more fuel-efficient vehicles.
So, the choice is clear: The Republicans are totally out of touch with the American people. They have three choices, since the American people have spoken. They can show why these are such bad ideas. That is what debate is all about. Or, they can respect the will of the American people and work to create jobs through development of clean energy. Or, they can approve the ANWR drilling as a part of the budget and explain to their constituents why they opposed the will of almost all the country in choosing drilling over job creation.
