The American Spectator

Political Hay

Why Obama Models Dukakis

By Jeffrey Lord on 7.22.08 @ 12:08AM

(Page 2 of 3)

Lawyers for the groups challenged the U.S. Mineral Management Service's decision earlier this year to allow the energy giant to drill up to 12 exploratory oil wells in the Beaufort Sea off the northern coast of Alaska.

The attorneys told a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that the federal agency failed to adequately consider the impact of Shell's exploratory activities on endangered bowhead whales and other marine mammals."

"An oil spill in this area can have a potentially devastating impact that could linger," said Dierdre McDonnell, an attorney representing the Alaska Wilderness League, Sierra Club and other conservation groups.

* Drilling for natural gas: Here's a July 11, 2008 story from the Denver Business Journal:

Ten environmental groups filed suit in federal court Friday, seeking to block new natural-gas leases on western Colorado's Roan Plateau until federal officials evaluate alternative ways to develop the area's energy resources.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, names as defendants U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, the US Bureau of Land Management, an Interior Department agency that administers the Roan Plateau, and two regional BLM officials.

The suit asks that the BLM's resource-management plan for the Roan be set aside and that the agency be barred from leasing drillin g sites on the plateau on Aug. 14 as planned.

* Mining for oil shale: Here's a May 15, 2008 story from the Rocky Mountain News about the response of U.S. Senate liberals and the Democrat who is Governor of Colorado. Need it be said that Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO) is the conservative in this story?

The Senate Appropriations Committee today narrowly defeated Sen. Wayne Allard's attempt to end a moratorium related to oil shale development in Colorado.

It was a big day for Colorado energy issues on Capitol Hill as Gov. Bill Ritter testified before a Senate committee asking lawmakers to move cautiously on oil-shale development until more is known about the environmental impact and other issues.

Meanwhile downstairs, the appropriations committee was considering a massive Emergency Supplemental Spending Bill. Allard, a member of the committee, attempted to insert an amendment that would reverse the moratorium that lawmakers approved late last year.

The moratorium prevents the Department of Interior from issuing regulations so that oil companies can move forward on oil-shale projects in Colorado and Utah. Allard said the moratorium has left uncertainties at a time when companies need to move forward and in the long term make the United States more energy independent.

"If we are really serious about reducing pain at the pump, this is a vote that would make a difference in people's lives," Allard argued.

But in a 14-15 vote, the committee spilt strictly on party lines and rejected the amendment.

Day in and day out for decades liberals have actively pushed some version of the above when it comes to energy policy. Their activist groups sue to block the construction of refinery plants, as Leo DiCaprio's group is doing right now in Indiana, or nuclear power plants, as another liberal group is doing in South Carolina. They refuse to allow oil shale mining, as they are doing in Colorado, or they won't go along with drilling for either oil in offshore Alaska (note: this isn't even ANWR) or natural gas in gas-rich Colorado.

Is there any wonder Barack Obama echoes Dukakis in saying this election is not about being liberal or conservative? When it comes specifically to just one issue, the energy issue, it is liberals -- as environmental activists, as lawyers, as Hollywood celebrities, as governors, presidents, legislators and judges -- who have insisted for decades on the very policies that now have a stranglehold on your personal economic windpipe.

LEO ISN'T ALONE as a liberal Hollywood celebrity on that NRDC board, either. Laurie David, the famous liberal activist and ex-spouse of comedian Larry David, he of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm fame sits there as well. Ms. David, of course, was behind Al Gore's slide show-as-movie An Inconvenient Truth and has given bucks to every liberal candidate out there, Obama included. Both Leo and Ms. David are, according to the FEC, also financial contributors to MoveOn.org., that famous home of Obama supporters.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Barack Obama, Business, Environment, Hollywood, Law, NATO, Energy, Alaska, Oil