ENERGY
Pandering To Big Oil
President Bush, "reversing
a longstanding position,"
called yesterday for an end to the federal ban on offshore oil drilling
and reaffirmed
his
call to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Bush's
flip-flop followed an even more egregious policy shift by Sen. John
McCain (R-AZ), who pushed
for offshore drilling in a
speech before oil executives in Houston
on Tuesday, though he had campaigned against it as recently as three
weeks ago.
Following Bush and McCain's lead, a number of conservatives reversed
their former opposition to offshore drilling, including
Florida's Gov.
Charlie Crist (R), Sen.
Mel Martinez (R) and Rep.
Connie Mack (R). Former House
Speaker Newt Gingrich has been leading
the charge
to expand domestic drilling, with his "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less"
campaign. Yet the election-year gimmick of expanding offshore drilling
does nothing to solve America's energy crisis, nor will it have an
ameliorating effect on soaring gas prices. Under McCain's assumption of
21
billion barrels of oil in the
banned areas -- higher than the
Department of Energy's estimation of 18
billion barrels -- there is
still only enough to support America's
total consumption, at 7.5
billion barrels per year, for
three years. The bottom line is that
America consumes 25 percent of the world's oil
but has just 3 percent of the world's reserves, as Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) pointed out. "We
cannot drill our way out of this
problem," he said. David
Sandalow, a Brookings Institution energy expert, said of offshore
drilling, "It's
like walking an extra 20 feet a
day to lose weight. It's just not
enough to make a difference."
ACCOMPLISHES NOTHING: Over
two years ago, Bush
declared, "America
is addicted to oil." But the
latest Bush-McCain proposal will do
nothing to solve that problem. "Feeding that addiction by tapping
another vein
just drills us into a deeper hole," said Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ). Bush
declared that expanded drilling would "bring enormous benefits to the
American people." In his Tuesday speech, McCain explained
his flip-flop by saying he wanted to "address the
concerns of
Americans, who are struggling right now to pay
for gasoline." Yet as the New
York Times writes today of expanding
offshore drilling, "This is worse than a dumb idea. It
is cruelly misleading." The
Energy Information Administration (EIA)
predicted that "access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf
regions would
not have a significant impact
on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before
2030." Even McCain's own top economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said
offshore drilling would have "no
immediate effect" on gas prices.
Just yesterday, McCain seemed to reverse
his long-standing opposition
to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- something Bush
continued to push for in his
speech -- even as he declared Tuesday that the "next president must be
willing to break with the energy policies...of the current
Administration." Bush's own Department of Energy estimated
that drilling in the Arctic refuge would cut oil
prices by
only about 75 cents a barrel.
What's more, even if the refuge were
opened this year, its extracted oil would not reach the market for 10
years.
FALSE
ARGUMENTS: Bush
blamed "Democrats on Capitol Hill" who he said "have rejected virtually
every proposal" to increase oil production, adding "now Americans
are paying the price
at the pump for this obstruction." Congress is not blocking domestic
drilling. In fact, the number of drilling permits both on- and
off-shore has exploded from 3,802
five years ago to 7,561 in 2007.
Congress and the Bush administration have opened up so much land to
drilling that oil companies can't keep up: In the last four years, the
government has issued 28,776 permits to drill on public land, yet only
18,954 wells were actually drilled.
Congressional obstruction is just one of the false arguments
conservatives are peddling. Another is the idea that we can drill and
still "ensure
that our environment is protected."
McCain declared drilling is so
"safe" that "not even Hurricane Katrina and Rita could cause
significant spillage from battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans
and Houston." This is patently false. Hurricane Katrina caused 44 oil
spills, resulting in more
than seven million gallons of oil spilled,
according to the Coast
Guard., nearing the nine million gallons spilled in the 1989
Exxon-Valdez disaster.
BOON
FOR BIG OIL: "The
only real
beneficiaries will be the oil
companies that are trying to lock up every last acre
of public land before their friends in power -- Mr. Bush and Vice
President Dick Cheney -- exit the political stage," the New York Times
writes today. It is not
surprising that oil
executives praised the idea
when McCain presented it to them on Tuesday. Houston-based
Anadarko Petroleum Corp. CEO Jim
Hackett called McCain's drilling plan "a
positive development for American consumers," adding, "We need to
get serious about producing our own resources for the benefit of
Americans." Larry Nichols, CEO of Oklahoma City-based Devon
Energy, called McCain's proposals a "truly honest assessment
of what our energy
policies have been and need to be." Big Oil has
also vigorously backed McCain's campaign. McCain ranks second
in the Senate for donations from
the energy industry and has
raised over
$700,000 from oil and gas this
election season alone.
ETHICS -- JUSTICE
DEPARTMENT GRANTS BEING INVESTIGATED FOR FAVORITISM:
The Justice
Department (DOJ) Inspector General and the House Oversight Committee
are
investigating
millions of dollars of DOJ
Office of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) grant money for
evidence of favoritism, the Washington Post reports. Last year,
Congress
approved more than $150 million in 2007 in
grant funds for the DOJ to distribute freely. But "according to
documents and
three sources familiar
with events," DOJ officials "disregarded independent reviews and
steered awards
to favored groups." The OJJDP passed over programs that were
ranked high on a DOJ merit scale -- including the National Child
Protection
Training
Center and the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network -- to instead
reward politically-favored groups, such as
thepro-abstienence Best Friends program,
even though it ranked 53rd
on a
list of 104 applicants. The
program's founder and president is Elayne
Bennett, the
wife of former Republican administration
official and conservative pundit Bill Bennett. Best Friends, which was
awarded double the money they had originally requested, had previously
held
"pricey society fundraisers" that OJJDP
administrator J. Robert Flores and his top aides often attend.
Flores is set to testify
today before the House Oversight
Committee.
CONGRESS
-- FEITH CHICKENS OUT OF CONGRESSIONAL HEARING ON
TORTURE,
REFUSES TO APPEAR WITH WILKERSON: Former
Undersecretary of
Defense Douglas Feith withdrew
from a scheduled appearance before a House Judiciary subcommittee
hearing on
torture yesterday because he did not want to to appear with
Colin
Powell's
former chief of staff Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was also testifying.
Feith was to speak about
his
role in helping the Bush administration evade
the Geneva conventions, but informed
the
committee
through his counsel that he
"would not
appear today because he is not willing to appear alongside one of our
other
witnesses," said Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). "Mr.
Feith's unwillingness to attend voluntarily and provide the truth about
this
government's actions shows a fundamental disrespect for Congress and
the
American people," Nadler
said. Wilkerson,
who left the
Bush
administration in protest over Bush policies, has criticized
Feith's
competence,
saying "seldom in my life
have I
met a dumber man." Seated next to Feith's empty chair, Wilkerson
testified
that Vice President Cheney probably
knew that the U.S.
was using torture at Guantanamo
Bay
and in Iraq. "At
what level did American leadership fail?" Wilkerson asked. "I believe
it failed at the highest levels of the Pentagon, in the Vice
President's Office
and perhaps even in the Oval Office."
TORTURE
-- MEDICAL EXAMS BACK UP
CLAIMS OF DETAINEE ABUSE UNDER U.S. CUSTODY: In
an interview with the New York
Times, Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler, military lawyer for a
Guantanamo detainee and Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, said "the
Bush administration's war crimes system 'is designed to get criminal
convictions' with 'no real evidence.'" Military prosecutors "launder
evidence derived
from torture," Kuebler said,
adding, "You put the whole package
together and it stinks." At the same time, a report
released yesterday by the Physicians
for Human Rights gives
credibility to Kuebler's claim
of detainee
abuse. "The first extensive medical examinations of former detainees in
U.S. military jails offer
corroboration for prisoners'
claims of physical and psychological
abuse at the hands of their American captors," the report found. "The
assessments of 11 men formerly held in U.S. detention camps overseas
revealed scars and other injuries consistent with their accounts of
beatings, electric shocks, shackling and, in at least one case,
sodomy." Physicians for Human Rights used "teams
of medical specialists" to
conduct the "physical and psychological
tests, including exams intended to assess if the subjects were
lying." In a statement, ret. Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, "who
led
the Army's first official investigation on Abu Ghraib, said the new
evidence suggested a 'systematic
regime of torture' inside
U.S.-run detention camps."
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In an interview with the New
York Times, Lt. Cmdr. William C.
Kuebler, the military lawyer for Guantánamo detainee Omar
Khadr,
said "the Bush administration's war crimes system 'is designed
to get criminal convictions' with 'no real evidence'
and that military prosecutors
"launder evidence derived from torture." "You put the whole package
together and it
stinks," Kuebler said.
Under a wiretapping bill set to
be approved by the House, U.S.
phone companies would receive immunity
and "be shielded from
potentially billions of dollars in lawsuits." As a "compromise," the
bill would also "allow
a federal district court to dismiss a suit
if the company was provided written assurances that Bush authorized
their participation in the spy program and that it was legal."
The New York Times reports that
there is currently a "shortage
of ships used for deep-water offshore drilling,"
meaning that
any attempts to lift
the offshore drilling ban
would have little near-term effect. The "world's existing drill-ships
are booked solid for the next five years," and shipbuilders have raised
prices since last year "by
as much as $100 million a vessel
to about half a billion dollars."
"Former Gov. Jeb Bush, who
negotiated the federal-state compromise
to keep
drilling away from Florida shores,
said in an email to the Miami
Herald" that he now
supports drilling off Florida
with restrictions.
At a gay-rights panel
discussion at the Center for
American Progress Action Fund last
week, Sen. Gordon Smith
(R-OR) linked the issues of polygamy
and same-sex marriage.
He has since apologized. "My remarks referenced a point in time when a
few of my ancestors were persecuted for not adhering to that belief,"
Smith said. "It
was an unfortunate reference,
and I apologize for making it."
"Six years and $16.5 billion
later, the U.S. still
lacks a
solid plan to create a
self-sustaining security force in
Afghanistan," according to an audit by
the Government
Accountability Office.
In an increasingly gloomy
assessment of the U.S. economy, chief
executives polled by Business Roundtable "expect
employment at
their companies to decline in coming months
and rising costs
to pinch their profits." The group “whose outlook is usually
relatively upbeat, has become
pessimistic amid mounting energy
prices and housing-market
worries."
And finally: Last week,
President Bush made headlines while in
Germany for praising the country's asparagus after a dinner with
Chancellor Angela Merkel. "The
German asparagus are fabulous,"
Bush said. In response, Sen. Patty
Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA) have had 10
pounds
of Washington state asparagus delivered to the White House.
"Mr. President, if you liked the German variety, we guarantee you
will
love the Washington state variety,"
Murray and Hastings wrote in
their letter. Murray added that it is the "best in the world."
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House leaders in both parties struck
a deal on a long-overdue war
supplemental bill that includes
billions for emergency flood relief, an extension of unemployment
benefits and expanded GI
Bill
college benefits for veterans.
CALIFORNIA: California Supreme Court set to "decide another potentially landmark civil rights case: whether doctors can refuse to treat certain patients for religious reasons."
ARIZONA: Lawmakers passed another bill creating penalties for doctors who perform late-term abortions, which is likely to be vetoed by the governor.
MAINE: "Maine's governor and members of the state's congressional delegation Wednesday unanimously opposed President Bush's plan to allow expanded offshore oil drilling."
THINK
PROGRESS: Ex-State Dept.
official: Hundreds of detainees died in
U.S. custody, at least 25 murdered.
WONK
ROOM: Public health plans should
compete with private policies.
MEDIA
MATTERS: CNN's Glenn Beck
inflated estimated Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge oil production by 7,000 percent.
INFORMED
COMMENT: Iraqi re-Baathification
law touted by conservatives as a
success has yet to be implemented.
"I don't think that administration officials purposely overstated [the
threat of Iraq]. I do think there were errors made in the presentation."
-- Iraq war architect Doug Feith, 6/18/08
VERSUS
"A long-delayed Senate report...has concluded that President
Bush
and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by
exaggerating available intelligence and by ignoring disagreements among
spy agencies."
-- New York Times, 6/5/08,
on a Senate Intelligence Committee report
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