SPORTS WITH RALPH.Dave Zirin writes: "Ralph Nader is best known as a legendary consumer advocate, a person who has touched virtually every aspect of our lives from car safety to the quality of our food. He's also a notable thorn in the side of Democratic Party activists desperate to win a presidential election and flummoxed by his quadrennial candidacy. However, few people know that Nader is also an avid sports fan. He was responsible for the launching of the League of Fans, a sports reform project, and he has also passionately pushed for a "Bill of Rights" for the American sports fan. ... See his interview with Nader.
(6/20/08)
BUSH GUSHES MISINFORMATION. With his approval ratings sinking below 30%, George W. Bush once again has lowered the bar for contempt of the nation's chief executive with his suggestion that lifting the federal ban on offshore oil exploration in the Outer Continental Shelf would bring immediate relief to high gas prices.
Bush on June 18 called on Congress to “pass good legislation as soon as possible” that would lift the ban and allow states to permit offshore oil drilling. Bush said in order to relieve the “painful level” of gas prices, “our nation must produce more oil.”
As part of his plan, Bush also reiterated his demand that Congress allow oil drilling in the Alaskan Arctic Wildlife Refuge. According to Bush, drilling for oil in the Arctic Refuge will “bring enormous benefits to the American people”:
BUSH: we should expand oil production by permitting exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or ANWR. … In the years since [1995], the price of oil has increased sevenfold and the price of American gasoline has more than tripled. … I urge members of congress to allow this remote region to bring enormous benefits to the American people.
If Congress were to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, crude oil prices would probably drop by an average of only 75 cents a barrel, according to Department of Energy projections issued Thursday.
The report…found that oil production in the refuge “is not projected to have a large impact on world oil prices.”
Moreover, in 2005, DoE estimated that there are nearly 18 billion barrels of oil available in the OCS, which is roughly double the reserves in the Arctic Refuge. Thus, by 2025, drilling in Alaska and the OCS would shave around $2.25 off the cost of a barrel of oil meaning “little to no impact on the price at the pump, today or tomorrow.”
ThinkProgress concluded, “At best, Bush’s plan saves mere pennies on a gallon of gasoline 20 years from now, while putting billions more into Big Oil’s pockets. Perhaps oil company executives were the ‘American people’ he was referring to.”
Brad Johnson of ThinkProgress.org adds that lifting the offshore moratorium is a boon to Big Oil and nobody else.
He notes that the federal moratorium on Outer Continental Shelf drilling was signed into law by President Reagan in 1981 and extended by President George H.W. Bush after the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989. Bush's justification for ending the moratorium relies on misleading and false statements, Johnson added:
Congress — which was under Republican control for most of the Bush presidency — is not blocking drilling. The number of off- and on-shore drilling permits has exploded in recent years, going from 3,802 five years ago to 7,561 in 2007. Between 1999 and 2007, the number of drilling permits issued for development of public lands increased by more than 361%.
In fact, Congress and this administration have already opened the floodgates for more oil and gas drilling in the years to come. Since 2002, the number of permits issued has greatly outstripped the number of new wells drilled. In the last four years, the Bureau of Land Management has issued 28,776 permits to drill on public land; yet, in that same time, 18,954 wells were actually drilled. That means that companies have stockpiled nearly 10,000 extra permits to drill that they are not using to increase domestic production.
Furthermore, less than a quarter of offshore acreage open to drilling is being used. Only 10.5 million of the 44 million leased acres are currently producing oil or gas.
The vast majority of federal oil and gas resources offshore are already available for development. According to the Minerals Management Service, of all the oil (85.9 billion barrels) and gas (419.9 trillion cubic feet) believed to exist on the Outer Continental Shelf, 82% of the natural gas and 79% of the oil is located in areas that are currently open for leasing (such as areas in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Alaska coast).
The projections in the OCS access case indicate 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.
And in 2030, “any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.”
Romm has more on McCain's flip-flop on offshore drilling, pandering to the oil companies, and embrace of “the exact same strategy endorsed by the man McCain is trying so hard to run away from — President Bush.”
We add that Bush was not a very successful oil executive, but he has enough background in the oil business to know that drilling in the Arctic Refuge and offshore reserves would take years to produce oil, if they are successful.
John McCain and Fla. Gov. Charlie Crist also have strained their credibility by jumping on the offshore drilling bandwagon. Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio (R) “challenged Gov. Charlie Crist and John McCain’s implication that drilling could lower gas prices anytime soon.” Rubio, an attorney involved in real estate and land use, told the Miami Herald that Crist and McCain are making a “disingenuous” and “flawed” argument:
“For anyone to represent that someone drilling off the coast in Florida is going to lower gas prices here or anywhere in this country is disingenuous and a flawed argument,” he said. “Oil drilling could take 10 years before any oil is pulled out of the ground, and there are a large number of leases held by oil companies that are not being exploited now. We can’t say we need more until we’ve exploited those.”
TIM RUSSERT, R.I.P. We're sorry to hear that Tim Russert, host of NBC's "Meet the Press," has died of a heart attack at age 58.
(6/9/08)
WHY CLINTON LOST (AND OBAMA WON)
Contributing editors at DailyKos.com focused their Sunday essays on one question, Why Clinton Lost (and Obama Won) in the first-ever Sunday Kos Symposium in which we all focused on one topic, but came at it from different angles, for a full day. The essays were as follows:
Hunter opened with (appropriately) Why Clinton Lost, a sweeping overview that ultimately came down to: her campaign did not campaign.
Smintheus weighed in with Change and the Bush Legacy, in which he argued that Clinton was so closely identified with Bush, mostly through her vote for the Iraq war, that a vote against her was the equivalent of a "smite Bush" button.
MissLaura explored the underutilization of volunteers and people who wanted to be participants in the campaign in She didn't channel supporter passion.
Devilstower drew attention to the role of Bill--and the unfortunate timing of the role he played--in Too Soon a Bulldog.
Georgia10 discussed how it all came down to her baggage and the scars from previous battles--the "things she carried"--Why Obama Just May Win Big In November.
Brownsox took the opportunity to look not so much at where Clinton went wrong as what her opponent did right in The Obama Express.
Trapper John deconstructed the misogyny and dehumanization that fed into the stereotype of the threatening, ambitious professional woman in The Nutcracker.
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Also see reminiscences by two former Alabama journalists about the late George Wallace, the former Alabama governor who transformed American politics with his combination of racism and populism. Claude Duncan remembers the good George Wallace in "George Wallace Joins the Ghost Brigade", while Peggy Roberson reminds us of the bad George Wallace in "Remembering George Wallace"
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