By Jessica Goad
Sometimes it takes a bit of humor to reveal the core of bad policy ideas. This is just what happened on the Daily Show two nights ago, when former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain stopped by for an interview with Jon Oliver on energy policy. As part of the interview, Cain called for selling off national parks:
Jon Oliver: Gas prices are strangling Americans.
Herman Cain: Yes. Let’s sell some of these federal lands that contain newly discovered oil shale resources. Let’s sell some of these parks that are nice to have but do we really need millions of acres of parks in order to say that we are environmentally friendly?
Oliver: How much can one family picnic?
Cain: Exactly. And in today’s world, where we are a 24/7, 365 information overload society, how much picnicking are the kids doing if they are texting while picnicking?
Oliver: That’s what I’m talking about right there!
Cain: So we don’t need as many parks.
Oliver: That’s just an ecological fact.
Watch it:
| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Herman Cain: An American Presidency – Energy Policy | ||||
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While it’s no surprise that Cain’s policy ideas are often radically far right, the truth is selling off national parks and other public lands has recently been proposed by a handful of Republicans.
In March, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) told a town hall gathering that “we don’t need more national parks in this country, we need to actually sell off some of our national parks.” And former Rep. Richard Pombo proposed selling national parks to mining companies in 2005, which likely contributed to his election loss.
Also, Mitt Romney told the “Reno Gazette Journal” that he doesn’t know “the purpose of” public lands, which include 397 national park units on 84 million acres. National parks provide $31 billion in economic contributions every year and support 258,000 jobs.
Jessica is the Manager of Research and Outreach for the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress.
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If nothing else, we need the green growing things in those parks to absorb the toxic CO2 spewed by these virulently ignorant people who call themselves Republicans.
Rachel Maddow said Cain is doing political satire (quoting Pokemon? Come on). What’s interesting about him is that he knows what conservatives want to hear and he says it. Does he believe a lot of it? Probably. But I think Democrats would be better served by acting like we are in on the joke and following what he says to its ultimate ridiculous conclusion (a la Colbert) rather than our usual retreat into shock and anger.
Cain reminds me of a friend from LA who breaks out in hives when he has to drive into the Valley, because there are trees there.
“Gas prices are strangling Americans.” NOT. What is strangling America and the world is the fundamental failing of Western Capitalism that allows, nay encourages, the few to profit from the pollution and exploitation of the commons. The GOP do not fund abortion! How come my tax dollars must fund the Ecocide of the Planet?
Cain for President!
So that we can all play Abel?
When folks say there’s no difference between Republicans and Democrats, they are ignoring issues like public lands policy.
Conservationists for generations have invested time and money to protect these parklands. In the past, Republicans like TR supported such conservation. Those days are gone.
Wow!! It is very obvious you have forgotten all the millions of acres that President Clinton set aside to save “from” the Republicans a few years ago. And Bush basically did nothing for conservation as he was too interested in drilling up the Alaska wilderness.
Where do people like you get your information from…Oh, I know…the GOP
Did anyone ever believe that Herman Cain was not a complete idiot? Not only is he full of opinions on subjects he is totally uniformed about he also makes up lies to support his ideological fantasy world. No different than all the other candidates who tried for the Republican nomination this time around. No different from their candidate. This has happened before with the Republican Party but, at the time, they had a few intellectuals around to try to keep the party grounded in something that resembled reality. Now they have slipped their mooring and are completely a drift. The real problem for us all is that the Republican voters are happily a drift with those they would have lead our nation.
I’m afraid that you have just revealed yourself to be a member of the ‘reality-based community’. The loonies of the far Right are those who ‘create their own reality’, and the Universe bows down before their omnipotence. This type of delusion of grandiosity is common in various psychoses, and its manifestation by those whose worldview is crumbling under the weight of its irreducible contradictions is no surprise. If the world will not behave as these crazy, twisted, psyches demand, then they are clearly prepared to destroy it for it’s insubordination. The selling-off of National Parks, the latest enclosure by the insatiably greedy, has been appearing on Rightwing psychos wish-lists for years, which means that it will happen.
Their evil knows no bounds either. Ending food stamp program for the poor and severely under employed! It never ends. Ending EPA! And many of the programs they wish to kill had been championed by Republicans!
Acually the right wing as you call them has set aside more land than any Republican alive.
By 1956 the Five Civilized Tribes retained just 326,902 acres of trust land, or 1.6% of the land they held ‘in perpetuity’ in 1898. Oklahoma was ‘privatized’ into being and now elects Inhofes in the grand tradition. These people are dead serious and do not care who or what suffers. Have a laugh, then be very afraid.
To his credit, Cain knows how to not take himself seriously.
Exactly.
There is plenty of open and post urban parkland in Detroit for Rep Upton to raise grass carp and fire ants. But, the Hermans would have to say the businesses built it all themselves after bulldozing an ancient city built by other space aliens.
Big Oil in the Bakken Formation, Western ND, wants to drill in Teddy Roosevelt National Park.
Even though they now have 7K wells and project to add another 42K wells on ‘private’ property, they are lobbying the ND legislature to allow penetration of the Nat’l Park.
They do this because THEY CAN, not because they need to.
Is Cain the Mittwitt’s environmental spokesman? ;^)
Much of what he says is a bit scary, but I think Cain was just being humorous at towards the end; i.e. everybody run.
Like Ernest said (above) “to his credit, Cain knows how to not take himself seriously.”
” ..the truth is selling off national parks and other public lands has recently been proposed by a handful of Republicans.”
This sounds like that Michelle Bachmann moment in Florida when she proposed drilling for oil in Everglades National Park, without realizing that the Everglades are the freshwater supply for Miami and south Florida.
A short list of other locales with very practical reasons to hold onto national parks:
San Francisco relies on the Hetch Hetchy system for its water supply, partly in Yosemite National Park.
Washington DC’s water comes from the Great Falls of the Potomac, protected by a national park on the Virginia side of the river.
Yeah, let’s sell Hetch Hetchy to some rich water-rights owners, Fiji Water Co. comes to mind, and they can sell it to SF! Or they can pipe it south the the Imperial Valley and sell it to farmers and cities there.
Drill for oil in the Everglades! These people were fed and cultivated by the Kochs. Imagine the Koch Bros watching NOVA! Wouldn’t that be bewildering!
Let’s not leave out the Shenandoah National Park or the George Washington National Forest. They’d likely sell to the same countries that have been buying up agricultural and forest land in east Africa as insurance policies against climate change in their own countries.
Even when they are not proposing sales, they are sneaking through long-term grazing and mineral leases. Excuse me? Mineral leases mean they destroy the park to access the minerals
Herman Cain sure knows a lot for a man who can’t figure out how thermoses keep cold things cold and hot things hot. It’s because he’s an executive!
Is he the man who puts coffee and icecream, together, in his thermos?
Has anyone tried to count the number of non-sequiturs here?
We can’t drill enough to affect the world’s oil price – it is determined in global markets
AND
gas prices not the same as oil prices – refineries have more to do with it, inventories etc
and if you really wanted to help consumers how about cut $300 billion from the nearly $1 trillion ANNUAL spending on militarism (Pentagon plus wars plus hidden military spending in Energy Dept and in NASA and in DIA etc)
That would give us 1000 USD per man, woman, and child to make up for higher gas prices. And still leave us by far spending more than any other country on earth (and it’s not apples to apples since we have more advanced murder, I mean military, tech) and we could cut much more than just 300 billion of that 1 trillion
They can’t claim it’s all parody either since SO MANY Republicans talk about “high **gasoline** prices (as set in global markets) are because of **oil** not being sucked out of the ground enough in U.S. regions…
Way to go if you want to destroy our life support system.
And all the other beings that live on this planet.