Energy -- A Stunt-Driven Agenda

August 5, 2008

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, and Ryan Powers

ENERGY

A Stunt-Driven Agenda

On Friday, the House was scheduled to close for its regular August recess. House conservatives, however, refused to leave the floor, demanding a vote on offshore drilling. With the C-SPAN cameras and the House floor lights turned off, a handful of conservatives stuck around for over five hours "to attack Democrats for leaving town without doing something to lower gas prices." "Eighteen times over the past 90 days, the minority tried, unsuccessfully, to force the House to adjourn. Now the House has finally adjourned -- for a five-week recess, no less -- and Republicans are demanding that the chamber be called back into session," the Washington Post's Dana Milbank observed. Believing "they have struck political gold with American voters," conservatives are lauding their stagecraft in the most grandiose terms. "Today is the 2008 version of the Boston Tea Party," exclaimed Rep John Shadegg (R-AZ). "[L]ike the founders of this country we're going directly to the American people," boasted Rep. Tim Price (R-GA). "This could be America's greatest hour," crowed Rep. Don Manzullo (R-IL). Conservatives extended the theatrics yesterday and have declared they will continue their floor protests for "as long as it takes." House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) called their tactics "stunts" that amount to little more than "transparent political effort to manufacture headlines." Even President Bush isn't falling for it. Although the House conservatives have asked him to call an emergency session of Congress, Bush refused.

CONSERVATIVE OBSTRUCTION ON ENERGY: House conservatives are not looking for any fix to gas prices: They are intent on drilling and drilling only -- and simultaneously filling Big Oil's coffers. These same conservatives have voted to block legislation that would have released oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, block legislation banning price gouging, and block legislation requiring oil companies to first drill on the land already leaded to them. Conservative leaders have blocked or voted "no" on eight different energy bills aimed at addressing rising prices, including bills that raised vehicle fuel efficiency, provided tax incentives for renewable energy, invested in energy efficiency, required a 15 percent renewable electricity standard, and expanded commuter rail and bus services while reducing transit fares. Opening new offshore sites to drilling is a boon only to Big Oil companies, and they have responded to conservatives' efforts by opening their wallets. Just in the last year, House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), one of the leaders of the floor standoff, has received more than nearly $100,000 from the oil and gas industries, with $20,000 from Chevron alone.

LAZIEST CONGRESS WANTS TO WORK?: In a press conference yesterday, Rep. Wally Herger (R-CA) demanded that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) "allow us to come back from our vacation, and work here." Rep. Adam Putnam (R-FL) said Friday, "This band of brothers here is staying late to make a point to the American people: We want to work." His colleagues then chanted: "Work, work, work." Yet House conservatives have hardly been known for their work ethic. In 2007, when Pelosi shook up the "Do-Nothing Congress" of 2005 and 2006 by implementing a five-day work week, conservatives were furious. "Democrats could care less about families -- that's what this says," Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) complained. He defended the three-day week used under the conservative majority, declaring they could keep in touch with Washington "with BlackBerrys" and cell phones. In fact, the 109th Congress -- the last under conservative leadership -- was in session for a grand total of 103 days in 2006, and "failed to enact a host of once top-priority legislation" on issues such as Social Security, immigration, and ethics reform. As Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) said of the 109th's pathetic work schedule, ""[I]t's really bad news for America because we're simply not doing our jobs. They're paying us full salaries, but we're not working full time."

A STUNT, NOT A SOLUTION: Not only are conservatives engaging in a meaningless political stunt, but their policy prescriptive -- offshore drilling -- is also nothing but a gimmick. Opening more offshore areas to drilling "would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030," according to the Energy Information Administration. Earlier this summer, the government's "top energy forecaster" said of offshore drilling: "It doesn't affect prices that much." Meanwhile, Republicans are mocking common-sense solutions like inflating your tires and tuning your engine, which "could save more barrels of oil in one year than new offshore drilling could produce in four." In the long term, Americans need an energy solution that prioritizes independence from fossil fuels altogether to help with the rising costs of gas -- not political stunts and empty gimmicks.

VETERANS -- 'RAMPANT VIOLATIONS' UNCOVERED IN HUMAN EXPERIMENT STUDIES AT ARKANSAS VETERANS HOSPITAL: The Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) released a report today citing an Arkansas veterans hospital for "rampant violations in its human experiments program." The investigation into the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System in Little Rock "found that researchers had failed to report 'serious adverse events' during the experiments, including the deaths of 105 veterans." The report also found that "entire consent forms were missing, signatures were missing from consent forms, HIV testing was conducted without documented consent, and research officials failed to obtain witness signatures in a study involving patients with dementia." In one review of cancer studies, investigators "randomly sampled the files of 105 patients and could locate only 20 consent forms." The studies at the hospital "involved thousands of veterans who had volunteered for behavioral and drug experiments." The Inspector General has recommended that the VA "determine whether human subject research should continue at the hospital." This report comes just two months after a Washington Times/ABC News investigation revealed that mentally distressed veterans were recruited by the VA for tests on pharmaceutical drugs linked to suicide and other violent side effects.

ADMINISTRATION -- NEW BOOK ACCUSES WHITE HOUSE OF ORDERING FORGERY TO LINK IRAQ AND AL QAEDA: According to a new book, "The Way of the World," by Pullitzer Prize winner Ron Suskind, the White House ordered the CIA in fall 2003 to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the head of Iraqi intelligence, to Saddam Hussein. The letter, according to Suskind, "was designed to portray a false link between Hussein's regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war." Suskind, quoting "two former CIA officials who claim to have seen a draft of the letter on White House stationery," writes that "the idea was to take the letter to Habbush and have him transcribe it in his own neat handwriting on a piece of Iraqi government stationery to make it look legitimate. CIA would then take the finished product to Baghdad and have someone release it to the media." Habbush was reportedly paid $5 million afterwards. When the letter was first released in fall 2003 it was called "probably fake," as it contradicted "highly detailed" intelligence compiled by U.S. law enforcement officials. The White House attacked Suskind's new claims as "gutter journalism," while former CIA director George Tenet called the book "seriously flawed." Suskind responded on NBC's Today Show: "I think this is part of George's memory issue. ... I went to all the people around George, close to George, who remember because they were involved in the thing, and they remember what George says to them."

TERRORISM -- FORMER FBI OFFICIAL SAYS WHITE HOUSE TOLD FBI TO BLAME ANTHRAX ATTACKS ON AL QAEDA: Last week, Bruce Ivins, a government scientist who researched anthrax and was expected to be charged in connection with the 2001 attacks, reportedly committed suicide. As Glenn Greenwald has noted, President Bush and his administration initially attempted to link the anthrax attacks to Iraq. The New York Daily News has a new twist in the administration's attempt to peg the anthrax attacks to its own bellicose aims. Immediately after 9/11, the Daily News reported Saturday, "White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda," according to a former FBI official. "Mueller was 'beaten up' during President Bush's morning intelligence briefings for not producing proof the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, according to a former aide." The claims, however, were rejected by experts, who "told us this was not something some guy in a cave could come up with," the former FBI official said. As press reports have indicated, while the source of the attacks is still unknown, a large body of evidence points towards Ivins's lab in Ft. Detrick, Maryland.

Though conservatives have tried to force the House to adjourn "eighteen times over the past 90 days," now that the House is actually adjourned, Republicans are using political stunts to demand that "the chamber be called back into session" for a vote on offshore oil drilling. White House officials, however, rebuffed their efforts yesterday, saying they "don't have plans to call Congress into session."

According to documents obtained by the Washington Post, "the Bush administration informed all foreign intelligence and law enforcement teams visiting their citizens held at Guantanamo Bay that video and sound from their interrogation sessions would be recorded." Thus, the U.S. may possess "hundreds or thousands of hours of secret taped conversations" between detainees and foreign representatives.

Reacting to the Justice Department report on his administration's illegal hirings, President Bush said: "I had a lot of hires in this administration, a lot of parts of it. ... I've read the critique. I've listened very seriously to what they said. And other than that, I have no comment."

White House aides considered having President Bush give a "Reaganesque 'tear down this wall' speech on human rights in China," but abandoned the idea because it would have been "potentially insulting to the president's hosts." China authorities have ordered pastors, lawyers, and political activists whom Bush considered meeting in Beijing "to leave the city during the president's visit.

A Department of Veterans Affairs investigation has found that there were "rampant violations" in an Arkansas veterans hospital's human experiments program, "including missing consent forms, secret HIV testing and failure to report more than 100 deaths of subjects participating in studies." The report from the VA's Inspector General says the program "involved thousands of veterans."

Anti-American Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr "intends to disarm his once-dominant Mahdi Army militia and remake it as a social-services organization." The move "would represent a significant turnabout for a group that, as recently as earlier this year, was seen as one of the most destabilizing anti-American forces in Iraq."

"A secret deal between Britain and the...al-Mahdi militia prevented British Forces from coming to the aid of their US and Iraqi allies for nearly a week during the battle for Basra this year," the Times of London reports today. "One British official said that the deal was intended as an IRA-style reconciliation,” but it "did not work."

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank will no longer appear on MSNBC's Countdown. Keith Olbermann writes that Milbank has "accepted another television offer," saving the Countdown crew from making "an increasingly difficult decision" to let Milbank go after he refused to acknowledge distorting an Obama quote in his column last week.

And finally: Who will be the Comedian in Chief? Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Barack Obama (D-IL) "have shot 'funny' campaign ads" for this Thursday's season finale of NBC's show "Last Comic Standing." In Obama's ad, the senator jokes, "And if you don’t think I'm funny, you’ve obviously never seen me bowl." When a picture of him bowling appears on-screen, Obama says, "I'm not going to deliver this line any better than that," and walks off. In McCain's ad, when an off-camera voice tells him he is "funny-looking," a "faux-angry McCain" angrily barks, "Who said that?"

"The Pentagon is spending an unprecedented $300 million this summer on research for post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury" and "will fund 171 research projects on two of the most prevalent injuries of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars."

THINK PROGRESS: Laura Ingraham: We don't need graphic war images because "we know what it's like" from "high-tech Hollywood."

WONK ROOM: Previous release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves helped save the average household $125 over 100 days.

THE STUMP: Vice President Cheney's argument for not releasing innocent detainees: "They'll all get lawyers."

CALIFORNIA: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) proposes temporary California sales-tax hike to close the state's budget gap.

IRAQ: More than a half-dozen state legislatures will consider legislation barring their national guards from deploying to Iraq in coming months.

ECONOMY: Heating oil prices in the Northeast region have almost doubled over last year.."

"Our intelligence estimates at the time and intelligence estimates from other nations believed that [Iraq] still harbored [weapons of mass destruction]."
-- White House Press Secretary Tony Fratto, 8/5/08

VERSUS

"[T]he Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official 'that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.'"
-- Politico, 8/4/08, on a new book by author Ron Suskind

Think Progress

A Stunt-Driven Agenda

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