State Democrats Offer Empty Rhetoric & Smears Rather than Solutions for Gas Prices
Ever wonder why Dan Parker spends most of his time issuing press releases full of empty rhetoric and negative smears?
Ever wonder why they're all directed to help his party's Congressional candidates, rather than his party's gubernatorial candidate?
Anyhow...
To their latest daily eruption of vapidity and hot air:
Arctic Power has lobbied Congress for nearly two decades, often on behalf of the oil industry. The Anchorage Daily News reported that, "Arctic Power has been working Congress since 1992, and has spent most of its money lobbying to open ANWR." [Anchorage Daily News, Editorial, 4/23/08 ]
I am shocked, shocked, to learn that oil companies might want more drilling in places like ANWR.
I hate to break it to Democrats, but everyone but them and their greenie-weanie special interest backers wants more drilling in places like ANWR.
The relationship between 9th District Republican challenger Mike Sodrel and Big Oil is nothing new. Sodrel has received $71,412 from the oil and gas industry contributors. [OpenSecrets.org]
Let's examine where Baron Hill has been getting some of his campaign contributions.
In his political career, Baron Hill has received around $165,000 from "energy and natural resources" special interests (a catch-all phrase that includes everything from oil companies to coal mines).
Mike Sodrel has received just a tad over $100,000 from them by comparison.
By the standards of Dan Parker and the Indiana Democrat Party, there seems to be something wrong with receiving money from the energy industry.
So why aren't they attacking Baron Hill for getting 65% more money from them than Mike Sodrel?
Let's drill into Baron's numbers a bit more, shall we?
Baron used to work for Merrill Lynch, a big Wall Street firm that is making big bucks on trading commodities like oil.
In fact, Baron Hill has received some $132,000 in recent years from securities and investment industries, which include a lot of the very firms that Baron is now supposedly denouncing for speculating on the price of oil.
But what about the money that environmentalist groups, such as the Sierra Club ($9,835) and the League of Conservation Voters ($3,543) have given to Baron?
They've given him $13,378 in his political career.
And that might not sound like a lot, but they got a big return on their small investment; Baron voted against drilling in ANWR repeatedly.
Solving our energy crisis: Stunts vs. Substance. While Mike Sodrel, Luke Puckett and Greg Goode busy themselves with political theater on behalf of the oil industry, Indiana 's Democratic Congressional delegation is hard at work fighting to provide immediate relief to Hoosiers. Rep. Baron Hill, for example, has authored legislation that would reestablish effective oversight of the U.S. commodity futures markets, and the Congressman authored a recently enacted bill that raised fuel efficiency standards (CAFE standards) for the first time in 30 years.
Trust me when I say that going to a frozen hellhole like ANWR is hardly a political stunt.
This isn't exactly a taxpayer-funded junket to Portugal, Australia, Vietnam, or some tropical Pacific island (while Indiana was sending to Iraq its largest overseas National Guard deployment since WW2, no less).
What a guy!
And let's be quite clear.
Who in their right mind really thinks that more red tape, more lawsuits, higher taxes, and more Congressional hearings--political stunts by Baron, all--are going to change the price of gasoline by a single penny?
Baron's fuel efficiency standards bill will not take effect until 2022 (worst-case estimates would have new oil coming out of ANWR before then), is a toothless and gutted version of a much more stringent and meaningful bill, and is weaker than a measure Baron voted against back in 2001.
When Democrats say that we can't drill our way out of this situation, they're not being truthful with the American people.
Don't get me wrong; drilling isn't by itself a magic fix to higher oil prices and our dependence on foreign oil.
But what Democrats like Baron Hill need to realize is that drilling might not get us out of this situation by itself, but we're not going to get out of this situation at all without including more drilling as a big part of the solution.
The racial environmentalist Luddites that control the modern Democrat Party in Washington won't let us do any of that.
They'd rather that the middle class of this country be destroyed by higher gas prices.
They'd rather that hundreds of thousands of blue-collar jobs in the auto industry be lost forever.
They'd rather see countless families rendered homeless because they can't make their mortgage payments because they have to pay for gas just to go to work.
And that's before we get into the rising costs for food, both here and overseas, that will soon see people around the world starve because they can't afford to pay for the fuel costs that will be added into the prices of the stuff they will buy to eat.
America will either solve its energy crisis (and that solution has to include more oil drilling), or you can kiss the economy of this country goodbye.
Sadly, that seems to be perfectly okay with Baron Hill, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Dan Parker, and the modern Democrat Party.
