Category Archives: Politics
Bush, McCain and Palin’s Holy War
Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin taught in her “Bible study” class at the Assemblies of God Church in Wasilla, Alaska, that the US troops in Iraq had been sent “out on a task that is from God.” 1 She also taught the School for Ministry graduates that it was God’s will that the natural gas [...]
Bush and McCain’s Energy Answer: Let’s Drill Some More!
Last week, president Bush reiterated his view that removing restrictions on offshore drilling will provide relief to the country’s energy needs and help to lower prices at the pumps. The only folks who seem to be pushing such an agenda are those who directly profit from it: Bush’s own Energy Department declared that opening up coastal drilling would be a drop in the barrel, offering neither any significant increase in production nor lower prices. What it will do is increase oil corporations’ profits, already at a record high. Gotta get while the gettin’s good!
McCain’s proposed path doesn’t look much different. He’ already running an ad blaming Obama and the Democrats for $4 per gallon gas and he, too, is looking to lift restrictions and drill some new holes.
Federal legislation that promotes clean, alternative energy and reduces global warming pollution will reduce our oil imports four times more than drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the Rocky Mountain states, combined.
The best refutation of Bush and McCain’s claims may come from an unlikely source: billionaire Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, whose funding and now-infamous Swift Boat campaign helped put Bush Jr. in office the first time around. Pickens has seen the writing on the wall and has turned his attention to building wind farms.
And what the 80-year-old T. Boone Pickens says, in a $58 million campaign, is that we can’t drill our way to lower gas prices. By implication, anybody who tells you otherwise — including the fellow Texan he helped put in the White House — is a fraud.
This is a political parable for the ages: the guy who was behind one of the knockout punches to John Kerry four years ago is now doing Democrats the biggest favor of the election by calling Republicans on their phony energy campaign.
“Totally misleading” is the way Pickens describes Republican attempts to convince the public that if we just opened up all these forbidden areas to oil drilling then gas prices would fall. He’s not against new drilling, but he is honest enough to say it wouldn’t do anything.
Photi via flickr by vphill.
