The Wonk Room

Palin’s ‘Safe’ And ‘Environmentally Friendly’ Drilling: Millions Of Gallons Of Oil Spills»

In the vice-presidential debate last week and on the campaign trail today, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) — the person McCain has tapped as his “energy expert” — is repeating the absurd claim that oil and gas drilling is “safe” and “environmentally friendly.” Watch it:

But saying it’s so don’t make it so. Normal drilling operations cause significant pollution, environmental damage, and of course have tremendous global warming impacts. And frequent oil spills caused by global-warming-fueled storms mean that drilling is anything but “environmentally friendly.”

A new analysis by the Associated Press shows that Hurricane Ike “destroyed oil platforms, tossed storage tanks and punctured pipelines,” resulting in: “At least a half million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and the marches, bayous and bays of Louisiana and Texas.” The Coast Guard has responded to more than 3,000 pollution reports. “At times, a new spill or release was reported to the Coast Guard every five minutes to 10 minutes.”

Ike’s enormously destructive wreckage adds further proof that conservatives’ claims regarding the safety of offshore oil drilling are totally false. With the “drill, baby, drill” chant, conservatives repeatedly insisted that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita “didn’t spill a drop” of oil. Even the Secretary of Energy, Samuel Bodman, claimed that during Katrina and Rita, “there was not one case where we had a situation with oil or gas being spilled in the environment.” This is a lie: Those hurricanes caused 595 different oil spills, totalling 9 million gallons.

Sadly, the clear evidence of Ike’s environmental damage comes just days after House progressives caved to conservative pressure and allowed the ban on offshore oil drilling to expire, potentially clearing the way for hundreds of new rigs to be built — and for just as many opportunities for new oil spills to be created. As Palin might say, “Spill, baby, spill!“

Palin’s Bad Oil Math»

In tonight’s debate, Palin suggested that the “$700 billion” the U.S. spends a year on imported oil (the figure is actually closer to $536 billion) could be replaced by domestic sources. She further claimed that Alaska’s “energy” supply (by which she means only oil) is helping America on the path to energy independence.

But the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler points out that “various government agencies” have concluded that “crude oil production could be increased at most between 1 and 3 million barrels per day, on top of the 5 million barrels a year already produced domestically. The United States currently consumes about 20 million barrels annually, so an expansion of domestic drilling would make barely a dent in that amount unless consumption also is reduced.”

Colbert Parodies Big Oil’s Greenwashing Propaganda»

In last night’s Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert eviscerated the Drill, Baby, Drill hoax (”last week, the Democrat Congress voted to lift the 26-year ban on offshore drilling, thereby ending our dependence on foreign oil by one percent ten to twenty years from now”) before training his sights on Big Oil’s greenwashing propaganda. After airing clips from advertisements of Exxon Mobil, Valero, and Chevron, Colbert asks:

A lot of people talk about loving the earth. But how many of them actually penetrate it?

Watch it:

The parody promotional video Colbert airs in this segment is from Prescott Oil, part of the fictional Prescott Group corporate conglomerate that Colbert has used to skewer pharmaceutical industries.

The fossil-fuel industry is on track to spend one billion dollars this year propagandizing oil, coal and natural gas. As the Public Campaign Action Fund found, “In the first half of 2008, the major industry players, American Petroleum Institute, BP, Chevron Texaco, Conoco Phillips, Exxon Mobil, Hess Corporation, and Royal Dutch Shell, spent $92.2 million on broadcast and cable advertising; $14.9 million on radio advertising; $57.5 million on print advertising in magazines and newspapers; $5.3 million on Internet advertising; and $4.0 million on other media.”

Green Jobs Now, Or Newt’s Two-Cent Solution?»

In a new video, Green Jobs Now compares Newt Gingrich’s “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” propaganda to the Green Jobs Now green recovery agenda. Newt fares poorly. Watch it:

The Green Jobs Now Day of Action is this Saturday, September 27. Thousands of Americans will be calling for investment in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and job training for people who are ready to get to work building a more just and sustainable economy.

Newt Gingrich’s “Solutions Day” is this Saturday, September 27. He’ll be calling for more drilling, privatizing health care and Social Security, and slashing corporate taxes.

Who will you join this weekend?

UPDATE: Adi at 1Sky reports: “We’re up to 558 events in all 50 states!” At SolveClimate, David Sassoon writes: “And the coalition now has a secret weapon: Patrick, and his caulk gun. Shock and Awe has met its match.”

Americans For Prosperity? Nope, Americans For Doing Nothing»

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) at the Americans for Prosperity “Do Nothing” Rally

Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the Koch Industries front group formerly run by Koch lobbyist Nancy Pfotenhauer, spent all of August attacking “Speaker Pelosi’s decision to adjourn for a five-week recess without allowing a vote on whether to expand production of American oil, natural gas or shale.” Their conservative allies in Congress staged protests on the House floor attacking Pelosi as a “dictator” who wouldn’t allow a vote.

When Congress returned to session, Pelosi called the conservative bluff. She held votes on a Democratic package that expanded production of oil, natural gas, and oil shale and a Republican package that expanded production of oil, natural gas, and oil shale. The Democratic package passed.

If AFP were honest in the slightest about their call to action, they would now be calling on the U.S. Senate to pass the House bill with all speed. But of course they are not. The House package is a genuine “all of the above” bill that would lower energy costs and create jobs. It rolls back subsidies for oil companies to support renewable energy, establishes a framework for new oil leasing, and establishes a national renewable energy standard. All of these elements are anathema to the oil and gas industry that funds front groups like AFP and their conservative allies. So what is a polluter propagandist to do? Attack the do-something Congress:

Other liberal leaders are trying to raise taxes on oil companies (which will mean higher prices at the pump!)

Expanding domestic energy production by getting at untapped U.S. resources is the key to lowering prices at the pump — so use the box below to contact your lawmaker today and tell them to DO NOTHING. That’s right. Tell your lawmaker that doing nothing is the right thing to do for American energy consumers.

AFP, in flipping from attacking liberals for doing nothing to demanding that they do nothing, doesn’t seem to have a very strong irony radar. Last month, they had to cancel a global warming denial meeting in Florida because of Tropical Storm Fay.

For those of us who actually want a do-something Congress, join Green Jobs Now and call on Congress for a green recovery.

We Campaign Takes On ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ Propaganda Machine»

Last month, the Wonk Room reported that the oil and coal industries and their conservative allies are spending two million dollars a day “to influence public opinion and public policy” this year. Most visible in this lobbying, advertising, and campaign donating machine has been Newt Gingrich’s “Drill Here, Drill Now” campaign, which has successfully driven the energy debate onto the false shoals of expanded drilling.

Evidently, Al Gore and the We Campaign have had enough. They’ve released a new ad, which they hope to run on national television, directly attacking industry propaganda and making reference to the recent sex, drugs, and oil scandal rocking the Bush administration.

Watch it:

The policy goal underlying the “Drill, Baby, Drill” message — lifting decades-old protections on America’s lands and waters — would help only Big Oil’s already obscene profits. But the primary political goal has been to prevent Congress from enacting genuine change, by killing climate legislation, blocking renewable energy investments and standards like those called for by the We Campaign, demonizing biofuels, and corrupting the media — drilling us deeper into the pollution economy just when we need to build our way out.

Today, Center for American Progress Action Fund fellow Bracken Hendricks is testifying before the House Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming about the Center’s plan for a Green Recovery. You can watch watch the webcast live at 1:30 pm.

The Green Jobs Now Day of Action, on September 27, is now little more than a week away.

Transcript: Read the rest of this entry »

Exposing The Big Oil Lie: ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’»

Even as the sordid details of the Drill, Baby, Drill sex, drugs, and oil scandal in the Minerals Management Service are revealed, conservatives continue to press their drill-drill-drill agenda in Congress. They continue to repeat the Big Oil lie that opening America’s coasts to further drilling would lower gas prices, despite the clear finding by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) that lifting the offshore drilling moratorium would not affect oil prices.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research found that the news media has mindlessly amplified that lie. The hundreds of broadcasts on “proposed drilling for oil in environmentally sensitive zones in the United States” almost completely ignored the EIA report:

CNN — whose news coverage is sponsored by the coal and oil industry — was particularly egregious, talking about the drill-drill-drill agenda 139 times but mentioning the EIA’s debunk only once on August 7 (actually, I was able to find one other mention that same day).

From the American News Project comes a telling video report on how conservatives are “just lying to the American public” by promising lower gas prices from expanded drilling. Climate Progress’s Joe Romm is interviewed, and he explains the dirty money connection:

It is conservatives who get ad campaigns and who get contributions from the oil companies. The oil companies get bigger profits when oil prices are high. So it is not surprising that conservatives have for twenty-five years opposed higher fuel economy standards. And it is not surprising that conservatives have steadfastly opposed alternative energy and renewable energy. They don’t want people to get off of fossil fuels and traditional energy because conservatives get paid by those companies.

Digg It!

Watch it: Read the rest of this entry »

The Drill, Baby, Drill Scandal»

Our guest blogger is Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

During the Republican National Convention, delegates repeatedly demonstrated their obsession with offshore oil drilling by chanting “drill, baby, drill!” It turns out they were literally describing the relationship between Department of Interior royalty collectors and the oil industry.

Multiple reports released on September 10 by the Department of Interior Inspector General found that the Mineral Management Service officials responsible for collecting royalties from oil and gas producers are accused of accepting gifts, trips, and special favors from producers. The report described “A culture of ethical failure… [and] a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity.” These government overseers also abused alcohol and cocaine with officials from energy companies that they were supposed to collect royalties from, and “had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.”

The MMS employees are responsible for collecting royalties from producers for oil and gas produced on public lands, which can be paid in cash or “royalty in kind.” The latter allows the producer to pay its royalties by delivering oil and gas to the federal government, which is either stored in government reserves or sold on the open market. The total royalty tab is about $10 billion annually, and is one of the largest sources of federal revenue aside from taxes.

The DOI Inspector General previously found that the Department under collected billions of dollars of revenue owed the U.S. taxpayer from oil companies that produce and sell oil and gas from public lands and waters. The IG found that DOI provides mediocre oversight of oil and gas companies to ensure that they are paying the full royalties owed to the U.S. treasury. The result was billions of dollars of uncollected royalties owed to the federal government. These officials, in effect, helped subsidize oil companies already engorged with record profits that averaged $236 per driver over the past year.

This “sex, drugs, and oil” agency is the same one that would oversee the expansion of offshore oil drilling into protected ocean areas. No wonder coastal businesses that depend on clean beaches and ocean are so worried about the potential for harm from expansion of offshore oil drilling from Malibu to Miami to Maine. The federal watchdogs are in bed with the oil companies that they are supposed to oversee.

Gingrich ‘Drill Here Drill Now’ Book Blames ‘Left-Leaning Politicians’ For Energy Crisis»

As the Wonk Room reported yesterday, Newt Gingrich’s “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” campaign will soon include the launch of a book, inventively titled Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less: A Handbook for Slashing Gas Prices and Solving Our Energy Crisis. Drill Here, Drill Now was ghostwritten by American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF) official Vince Haley, formerly Newt’s research director at the American Enterprise Institute, the premier Exxon-Bush think tank. It’s being published by Regnery Publishing, the right-wing organ that distributed Jerome Corsi’s Unfit For Command.

Newt’s book oozes with false sympathy for working Americans:

The suffering of Americans due to high energy prices is bad enough. But there’s more: powerful people believe that Americans — everyday folks just trying to earn a living, feed their families, and help others — are actually the root cause of the energy crisis. These influential people — many of them the very same individuals who helped create the energy crisis in the first place — have little compassion for the suffering of their fellow countrymen.

Who are the “influential people” who “helped create the energy crisis in the first place” Gingrich and Haley blame? Is it Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, Enron, Exxon Mobil, Peabody Coal, Tom DeLay, John McCain, hedge-fund speculators, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich himself, or others in the conservative elite who have profited from skyrocketing energy prices and prevented change while American families suffered?

Nope! The villians in Newtland are “anti-energy, left-leaning politicians.”

McCain’s Slick Talk Express»

Our guest blogger is Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The McCain campaign just released an ad claiming that Gov. Palin (R-AK) “took on Big Oil.”

Watch it:

In fact, Palin is a champion for Big Oil. And in Sen. McCain’s acceptance speech tonight, he will repeat the lines used by Big Oil in their own public relations campaigns:

– “Energy independence” by drilling everywhere, even in protected places.

– Support for more alternative energy without effective commitments.

– Eventual reduction in global warming pollution.

He repeatedly made these points over the past two plus months.

This speech will attempt to obscure the facts that tell the real story of a McCain-Palin Administration:

– Denial of science. When asked about global warming, his running mate, Gov. Palin, said, “I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.”

– Opposition to clean energy. McCain missed all eight critical clean energy votes over the past year and voted against a renewable electricity standard four times since 2002.

– False promises. Drilling everywhere will not reduce oil or gasoline prices. The Department of Energy determined that drilling in the outer continental shelf “would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices.”

– Big Oil subsidies. McCain would provide $39 billion in new and existing subsidies and handouts to big oil over the next five years.

– Choosing Big Oil before clean energy. McCain announced that he would have cast the deciding vote against the extension of tax incentives for wind, solar, and efficiency in December 2007 and February 2008. That bill would have eliminated $13 billion in existing tax breaks for big oil.

– Fueled by Big Oil. McCain’s campaign is run by oil industry lobbyists, and has taken over $1.5 million from the oil industry.

So McCain’s clean energy flourishes tonight are all pomp but no circumstance. His record shows that he supports the Big Oil agenda along with the Bush Administration and Governor Palin. His “energy independence” proposals would only yield more profits for Big Oil, and his mention of clean alternative energy is nothing more than a talking point.

Gingrich Repeats Big Oil Lie, Reveals Propaganda Plan On Tavis Smiley»

On the Tavis Smiley Show Monday, Newt Gingrich revealed the propaganda strategy of American Solutions For Winning The Future (ASWF), the 527 corporation funded by right-wing billionaires to sell a Big Oil agenda to the American public. First, he repeated the central falsehood of his campaign:

Well, we launched at American Solutions a petition drive called “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” to make the obvious point that if you used America’s energy resources and you didn’t have to buy oil from Venezuela or Saudi Arabia it’d be a lot less expensive.

Gingrich’s “obvious point” is an obvious lie. The United States has only two percent of the world’s oil and gas reserves but uses 24 percent of production. Under Bush, domestic drilling has surged — but so have oil prices. The only sufficient American energy resources to get off foreign oil are efficiency, wind, solar, and other unlimited, renewable energy.

He then outlined the next roll-out of his propaganda campaign, building on the current petition drive and YouTube contest with a book release on September 22 and a movie release coinciding with “Solution Day” on September 27.

Watch it:

The book, Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less, blames “anti-energy, left-leaning politicians” for the energy crisis, absolving Gingrich, Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, Enron, Exxon Mobil, Peabody Coal, Tom DeLay, John McCain, hedge-fund speculators, and others in the conservative elite who have profited from skyrocketing energy prices and blocked reform while the rest of us suffer.

The movie, We Have The Power, extols the virtues of nuclear power in a visit to Three Mile Island and stars Newt’s wife Callista as she talks with industry lobbyists.

Gingrich’s false “Solution Day” coincides with the Green Jobs Now Day of Action. Go to the website — GreenJobsNow.com — to fight for real solutions, not more pollution.

Bush Exploits Hurricane Gustav To Demand More Offshore Drilling»

President Bush exploited this morning’s press briefing on the “follow-up efforts” to Hurricane Gustav to attack Congress about lifting the offshore drilling moratorium. Stating that “what happens after the storm passes is as important as what happens prior to the storm arriving,” he made the declaration that “our discussion here today is about energy.” Bush wasn’t referring to the 1.4 million Louisianans who have lost power due to the storm’s destructive force, and chose not to mention the 102 deaths caused by Gustav. Instead, he went on the attack:

I know that Congress has been on recess for a while, but this issue hasn’t gone away. And, uh, this storm should not cause members of Congress say well, we don’t need to address our energy independence. It ought to cause the Congress to step up their need to address our dependence on foreign oil. And one place to do so is to give us a chance to explore in environmentally friendly ways on the Outer Continental Shelf.

Watch it:

MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough were both floored by Bush’s decision “to use another hurricane in Louisiana to promote offshore drilling at this point,” after he “performed so poorly during Hurricane Katrina.”

Bush’s tasteless politicization of an ongoing civil emergency repeated tired right-wing talking points. As Van Jones told the Wonk Room last week, Bush is selling false solutions and more pollution:

Let’s be very clear. Number one: There’s no such thing as American oil any more. These are multinational corporations. If you let multinational corporations drill all this oil, they’re going to sell it to the highest bidder, whether it’s China, or India, it doesn’t matter. Why would we throw away America’s beauty chasing the lost drops of oil, so multinational corporations can sell it to India and China?

And people also got to remember, we didn’t stop this as an environmental issue. We didn’t stop offshore drilling for the duckies and the fishies. We stopped it because coastline communities were suffering. Because the property owners, the children who live in those coastline communities — not when there were oil spills — but every day, when your child goes out to swim, he comes back covered in oil, you have to use gasoline to get the oil off your child. That was happening coast to coast

Transcript: Read the rest of this entry »

The Podesta, Pickens, and Pope Power Summit»

At the Big Tent in Denver, Center for American Progress President and CEO John Podesta, Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope, and oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens engaged in a discussion about our energy future. Pickens, who believes that our global oil production is at its peak and will soon inexorably decline, discussed his “Pickens Plan” for a massive increase in wind and solar electricity production and a shift for trucking fleets from diesel to natural gas. Podesta noted that the climate crisis is evident today, in the flooding in Florida and the increasing threat of powerful hurricanes. “The cost of doing nothing,” Podesta said, “is extremely substantial.”

This panel of three highly powerful individuals from the environmental, progressive, and conservative energy industry communities represented a remarkable confluence of priorities, in recognizing the energy crisis and the need to get off oil. As Carl Pope described:

If our politics was even vaguely functional, anything that all three of us agree on would have happened long ago. We have some very deep profound political problems. Our politics are broken.

Pickens himself, a highly influential fundraiser for right-wing politicians, described how his money has gotten him access in Washington but that he had learned that his contributions don’t translate to policy. He expressed his enthusiasm for the ability of the Pickens Plan campaign to reach millions on the Internet and mobilize hundreds of thousands of people. He argued, “I’m not doing this to make money. My entire estate will go to charity when I go. We are now importing almost 70 percent of our oil. It’s too much. We’re not talking about my generation — we can make it to the finish line.”

They also aired for the audience a fifteen-second spot that was rejected by NBC censors, because, according to Pickens, the network wanted him to prove that “we’re not doing a thing here” on energy policy. Watch the rejected ad: Read the rest of this entry »

Report: King Coal And Big Oil Unite To Buy The Future, Spending More Than Two Million Dollars A Day»

As Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) sets foot on a drilling rig off the coast of Louisiana, his “drill everywhere” message is being amplified by political spending of more than two million dollars a day by the oil and coal industries. The Public Campaign Action Fund has released a major report finding that King Coal and Big Oil have united in an attempt to buy the future:

We estimate that the coal and oil industries spent an astounding $427.2 million over the first six months of 2008 to influence public opinion and public policy.

These industries are on track to spend about a billion dollars influencing energy policy this year, with their “clean coal” and “drill drill drill” messaging. They are supporting pollution-friendly candidates and spreading false doubt about the seriousness of global warming.

This total includes the $12.2 million dollars spent in six months by Newt Gingrich’s billionaire-and-coal-funded 527 corporation, American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF), on its “Drill Here, Drill Now” campaign, and the $40 million that coal industry front group Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (now part of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity) pledged to spend influencing the public. It also includes John McCain’s million-dollar haul from the oil and gas industry.

The Public Campaign Action Fund’s estimate of $427.2 million fails to include the expenditures of pollution-agenda front groups that are “organized under sections of the Internal Revenue Code that do not require the public disclosure of their spending.” These groups include the likes of:

• Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth
• American Council for Capital Formation
• American Energy Alliance
• American Enterprise Institute
• Americans for Prosperity
• American Future Fund
• Business & Media Institute
• Coalition for Affordable American Energy
• Competitive Enterprise Institute
• FreedomWorks
• Heartland Institute
• Institute for Energy Research
• National Association of Manufacturers
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Therefore the Public Campaign’s estimate is rather conservative.

Global Boiling: Tropical Storm Fay Crashes Denier Townhall»

Americans For Prosperity (AFP) has a brief message on its website today:

Ft. Myers and West Palm Beach Town Hall Meetings Rescheduled

The August 19th Ft. Myers town hall and August 21st West Palm Beach town hall will be rescheduled as a result of Tropical Storm Fay. We apologize for any inconvenience.

AFP is a front group for the right-wing pollution company Koch Industries, with an agenda of attacking “global warming alarmism” and promoting increased offshore drilling.

Somehow I doubt they planned to discuss how global warming intensifies tropical storms and threatens Florida’s coasts, nor how tropical storms and offshore drilling are a disastrous combination.

The American Spectator Thinks Oil CEOs Should Be Fired»

The conservative periodical American Spectator has published a piece by Andrew Cline, editorial page editor of the Manchester Union Leader, which argues that lifting the offshore drilling moratorium would “lower oil company profits“:

But Republicans have a golden opportunity here to turn the tables back on the Democrats. All they have to do is give a basic economics lesson every chance they get. The American people aren’t stupid; they will get it. The lesson is this:

If the Democrats really wanted to cut the profits of Big Oil, they would vote to…increase the supply of oil! Oil company profits are so high because the price of oil is so high. The price is so high because demand is so much higher than supply. Allowing oil companies to drill for more oil will increase supply, which will lower prices, which will lower oil company profits!

By this logic, the CEOs of oil companies should be fired for violating their fiduciary duty to their shareholders, since they are the ones leading the call for expanded drilling:

Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson said it’s “nonsensical” to oppose lifting domestic drilling moratoria.

Shell CEO John Hofmeister said the offshore moratorium “has denied U.S. oil companies the opportunity to produce more hydrocarbons.”

ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva called for lifting the offshore moratorium, saying, “We cannot just wish fossil fuels away.”

Chevron CEO David O’Reilly said Bush should have “lifted the moratorium with a presidential order.”

Cline’s argument is embarassingly nonsensical. If we pretended for a minute that proven U.S. oil reserves could magically be multiplied overnight by ten times to match U.S. demand, the money flowing into the coffers of oil companies wouldn’t change, since their profits are a product of both price and production. The decrease in price would be balanced by the increase in production. That’s the “basic economics lesson.”

Of course, even if the moratoria were lifted today, and even if oil companies could fast-track exploration and drilling, the oil found would only change U.S. production by a few percent — not 100, 1,000 or 10,000 percent — and would have little to no impact on oil prices.

The oil companies and those paid to promote their agenda are the only ones who would benefit from lifting the moratoria. Big Oil will use the additional leases to pad their inventories, and in decades sell the oil on the global market. And the oil-fueled right wing will continue to peddle their propaganda.

UPDATE: Newt Gingrich (ASWF) also thinks oil CEOs should be fired:

American Solutions For Winning A Gas Card»

Newt Gingrich’s billionaire-funded 527 organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF), has announced an exciting new contest: “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Nothing.” Claiming that “common sense is losing out to political posturing,” Newt introduces his YouTube contest for “a short video why we must adopt a ‘Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less’ approach” with the prize of “free gasoline for an entire year.” Watch it:

For the first time, there will a beneficiary of the ASWF propaganda campaign who isn’t a right-wing millionaire or oil executive. But checking the contest details reveals the meager prize:

The contest winner will receive a $2,500 gift card, or a series of gift cards totaling $2,500 from a major gasoline provider in the United States.

So the prize is really $2,500 that goes to an oil company. Is it even, as Newt promises, worth “free gasoline for an entire year”? Probably not.

The average American’s gas bill in 2006 was $2,227 — when gas was $2.58 a gallon. But a gallon of gas is now $3.80, a nearly 50% increase. ASWF’s $2,500 gas card won’t pay for a year of gas unless prices fall back to $3 a gallon — or the winner cuts back driving significantly. If gas stays at $4 per gallon in 2009, the average household will be looking at a bill of about $3,500 $3,300. So Newt’s propaganda contest is really more likely to turn out to be “Drill Here, Drill Now, Drive Less” for its one “winner.”

Just like the hoax that offshore drilling would help Americans pay less at the pump, or the absurd claim that conservative propaganda has affected the price of oil, even Gingrich’s YouTube contest is built on cheap promises. If Newt wanted to offer a genuine prize, he’d give away a Tesla electric sportscar. If Newt actually cared about Americans, he’d support relief for every driver, such as a “reliefbate” paid for by closing oil subsidy loopholes or by implementing a windfall profits tax on oil companies.

Of course, filling the gas tank isn’t an issue for the backers of ASWF’s agenda. It takes Sheldon Adelson, the right-wing kingpin who’s given ASWF more than $3 million, less than ten seconds to make $2500 from his Chinese casinos, and it takes Exxon Mobil less than two seconds.

Digg it!

UPDATE: $4 gas, as kiweagle notes in the comments, translates to an average gas bill of approximately $3,300 a year. $4.30 gas gives a gas bill of approximately $3,500 a year.

Obstructionist Conservatives Brand Pelosi As ‘Dictator’»

Conservative members of the House have been frothing that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) adjourned the lower chamber of Congress for its traditional August summer district work period — branding it a “five-week vacation” — instead of letting them dictate the agenda. They wish to pass their drilling-centric energy bill, after having blocked numerous other pieces of energy legislation in June and July. Their strategy is to brand Pelosi as a dictator, with pro-drilling conservatives representing the will of “average American people”:

– Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI): “This is the people’s House. This is not Pelosi’s politiburo.”

– Rep. John Boehner (R-OH): “She’s gonna bring us back and not deal with it? The American people are gonna hang her.”

– Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC): “When the people of France were starving, they went to the queen and said, ‘The people have no bread.’ The queen’s answer was, ‘Let them eat cake.’ That is not the kind of answer we expect from the leader of the people’s house in the United States of America.”

– Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ): “There’s going to be a change in this policy, Nancy Pelosi notwithstanding. She can’t repress us forever.”

– Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO): “I can’t answer why she’s acting like a dictator.”

– Rep. Denny Rehlberg (R-MT): “Nancy Pelosi should not hold the American people hostage.”

– Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX): “In your mind, do you believe America is a democracy or a dictatorship?”

In fact, when they are not crying in the dark, it is conservatives who are acting like dictators. Conservatives in the Senate have filibustered an energy agenda supported by the majority of the American people — and of the Congress — over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Bush has declared his intent to veto such legislation over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

And, now, with an industry-friendly energy compromise crafted by the Senate’s self-dubbed “Gang of Ten,” the dictatorial conservatives continue their obstruction. As Gristmill’s David Roberts writes:

McCain has refused to support the compromise. House Republicans have refused to support the compromise. Rush Limbaugh and his band of dittoheads are going absolutely ballistic on the compromise, flooding the legislators responsible with angry phone calls and claiming that it’s going to sink McCain’s presidential campaign.

The only real failure of Pelosi’s tenure has been the lack of strong, mandatory legislation to reduce greenhouse gases passed out of the House. Somehow I don’t think the right wing will be complaining about that any time soon.

UPDATE: From Progress Illinois, Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL) joined the vilification of the Speaker of the House on a local radio show yesterday:

What the American people want is for us to work together to come up with solutions, not to have Nancy Pelosi being the dictator. This is a democracy.

UPDATE II: From Ari’s Freedom Switch, on August 11, Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX) compared Pelosi to Gorbachev, and himself to Reagan:

Ronald Reagan was a man of many quotes. One of his most famous was given in Berlin, while standing in front of one of the enduring symbols of communism: the Berlin Wall. Fed up with the silent suffering of millions of East Berliners, President Reagan demanded: ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!’. Today we stand in the People’s House, where our public debate has been silenced and we also demand: Speaker Pelosi, turn on these lights and give us a vote!

CNN’s Velshi Went On Arctic Refuge Tour With Right-Wing Representative Bachmann»

After a presentation on opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, CNN anchor Ali Velshi hosted a discussion between Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ). Velshi started the interview by making the startling admission that Bachmann joined him on his expedition to northern Alaska:

Congressman [sic] Bachmann, I want to talk to you first about this because those pictures we just showed, we took from an airplane. You were with us on that airplane. You went up there to get a sense for yourself about the impact of drilling in ANWR.

Watch it:

During the interview, Velshi asked Bachmann what lesson she learned from their joint trip. Her response:

Ali, I came away with the idea that this is the most perfect place on the planet to drill.

Bachmann’s bizarre response — she also called the ecologically unique refuge the “most convenient, quickest place” to drill, despite also saying it is “permanently frozen in darkness three months of the year” — comes as no surprise, as she is one of the biggest boosters of Big Oil propaganda in Congress. Just in the past two months, she’s claimed that caribou love pipelines, falsely blamed Democrats for blocking renewable energy incentives, and repeated the lie about China drilling for oil off the Florida coast. In this segment, Bachmann introduces a new lie, claiming “this area was specifically set aside for drilling by President Jimmy Carter for drilling.”

This is simply false. As Carter explained in a 2000 New York Times column calling for expanded protections of Alaskan lands from drilling:

Then, even more than today, much attention was focused on high energy prices; oil companies — playing on Americans’ fears — sought the right to drill in protected areas. While the House held firm, the Senate forced a compromise, without ever putting the fate of the refuge to a vote. Thus, the law I signed 20 years ago did not permanently protect this Arctic wilderness. It did, however, block any oil company drilling until Congress votes otherwise. . . The simple fact is, drilling is inherently incompatible with wilderness.

Velshi did not question Bachmann about any of these false statements. Velshi also failed to mention global warming even once, despite the extreme warming taking place in northern Alaska, driving wildlife toward extinction and threatening a global climate meltdown.

Freshman representative Bachmann is a hard-line conservative funded primarily by right-wing organizations like the Club for Growth ($92,630), TCF Financial ($38,400), and Koch Industries ($17,500), the right-wing corporate polluter. She has also received $20,250 from right-wing billionaire Stanley Hubbard, one of the the top funders of Newt Gingrich’s “Drill Here, Drill Now” organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF).

CNN’s campaign coverage continues to be funded by the coal industry front group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE).

UPDATE: Velshi’s Arctic Refuge piec