Bush Team Readying Backdoor to Drill Arctic Refuge

[G_j]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022605X.shtml

Bush Team Readying Backdoor Route to Drill Arctic Refuge
BushGreenwatch.org

Thursday 24 February 2005

Having been thwarted repeatedly in its effort to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling for oil, the Bush Administration and its Congressional leadership have come up with a plan for a sneak attack on the issue.

Rather than holding a straightforward vote on the Senate floor, where strong public opposition halted drilling in the past few years, House and Senate members are quietly planning instead to attach the drilling measure to upcoming budget legislation, where it would be all but impossible to stop (budget bills are exempt from filibuster or extended debate).

This past Tuesday, SaveOurEnvironment.org, a national coalition for the environment, said the planned maneuver demonstrates that "proponents of drilling know they cannot pass this through the normal legislative process, so they are resorting to a procedural tactic to prohibit open and honest debate."

"Not only does this type of backdoor maneuver endanger the Arctic Refuge, its wilderness and wildlife, it also poses a genuine threat to the integrity of our democratic process," said Bill Meadows, president of the Wilderness Society. The society reported that a recent bipartisan national survey found Americans oppose drilling in the refuge by a margin of 53 to 35.

..more..

[usregimechange]

1. Crooks.

[ashmanonar]

3. crooks, thieves, and liars the whole lot of them,

and they all deserve to be strung up. how many would cheer, globally, if that happened?

[Stop_the_War]

2. If Bush drills the Arctic Refuge, Alaska may turn blue...n/t

[AlinPA]

6. I thought Alaskans get a cut of oil revenues, so wouldn't they like this?

[Blue_In_AK]

8. Yes, we get a cut.

The Alaska Permanent Fund http://www.apfc.org/ was created to benefit the people of Alaska when the Trans-Alaska pipeline started pumping oil from Prudhoe Bay. We all get a check every year, the size of which depends on how well the investments did, averaged out over the previous five years. The Fund is worth about 30 billion dollars now. Every one of us received a check for a little over $900 last year. The most we ever received was $1,967, I believe, in 2000.

I don't know if drilling in ANWR would have anything to do with the Alaska Permanent Fund or not, but many people here support it because it would provide jobs, etc., all the usual short-sighted reasons.

[Metrix]

4. Editorial: Arctic refuge/Big Oil moves on, without Bush

"In a remarkable moment of candor, one of President Bush's energy advisers recently acknowledged that Big Oil has lost interest in drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5261341.html

[PurityOfEssence]

5. Consider it done. It's a question of making people bend to your will.

Okay, so it's more than that, but that's a HUGE component of it.

Much of the real momentum behind current conservative plans is nothing more than rubbing the noses of opponents in it.

Yes, there's a mountain of money to be made by friends of the administration, even though there's not that much oil there. By the time anyone can point out what a boondoggle it all was, we'll all be dead.

It's like Social Security: fuck reality, causality or functional competence, this is a pissy, asshole-masculine revenge plot to fuck the memory of FDR and shove it down everyone's throats that we can do as we please. That was also a major element to the Iraqi-attaqi, lest we forget.

To really understand modern conservatives, one must think like a nasty little boy on the playground. It's about making others bend to your will. It's about intimidation and the buttressing of power that can't be questioned; in short, it's monarchy writ large and spurred on with the vicious, manic public hatred and vilification of anyone who stands in your way. It's an all-out push now: fuck unions, fuck workers, fuck the ability to sue, deny all personal freedoms, demand absolute obedience and push to completely dominate the world OR ELSE.

It's madness. To analyze their actions through the prisms of rationality or maturity are the foolishness that lulls us all into not believing what true ugliness they'll bring forth. This is a move to rule the world and destroy everyone who impedes that.

Sadly, the ritual vilification of environmentalists leads us to endless silly mineral exploitation. It doesn't even matter whether there's enough there to make it worth the effort, it simply has to be done to show them tree-huggin' homos who's boss.

Deee-skusting.

[blue4barb]

7. If you haven't read Robert Redford's letter on Arctic Refuge

drilling, it's a good one.

www.savebiogems.org/redford/index.asp