[Marxism] We ought to know the drill

[Macdonald Stainsby <mstainsby@xxxxxxxxx>]

We ought to know the drill
Dan Carpenter

http://www.indystar.com/articles/7/230509-3517-026.html
March 20, 2005


So many battlefronts to report from, so little space.

Now Let's Be Friends: President Bush has picked John Bolton and Paul
Wolfowitz as ambassador to the United Nations and president of the World
Bank, respectively. Bolton, who made his name beating up on the U.N., and
Wolfie, whose idea of Third World investment is the hostile takeover. This
is a little like sending a couple of the boys over to gently remind a grocer
he's behind on his protection.

Coalition of the Hauling: As ally after ally pulls out of the
"international" campaign to liberate Iraq, the grim joke from a previous
enterprise comes to mind: "Will the last one to leave Vietnam please turn
off the light at the end of the tunnel?" You can bet the lights are burning
late at the hard-up recruiting stations and the White House fake news studios.

Abominable Snow Job: With slippery reasoning and a slick trick, the U.S.
Senate finally handed the oil lobby the keys to a fragile wilderness
President Dwight D. Eisenhower thought he had locked up for posterity
40-some years ago.

Now, the hope for those who wish to preserve the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge may lie in the fading ardor of the oil companies toward this last
protected sliver of the North Slope. Most of the big boys have pulled out of
the Arctic Power consortium, questioning the yields that might result from
industrialization of this pristine land of caribou, migratory birds and
traditional Inuit people. Still, even if they drill and fail, they have tax
breaks to cushion them. Plus, they have a trophy stuffed and mounted.

President Bush and Senate Republicans tried to hand it over, jiggering the
rules to jam ANWR into the budget bill and thus avoid the filibusters that
have thwarted it in past years when it had to stand on its own dubious
merits. Indiana's Richard Lugar gave the drillers their 51-49 edge.

The fight's not over. While the House is even more disposed to putting
monied interests (even where mildly interested) over wildlife, ANWR was not
done as a budget item by that body (no filibuster, no need), so
reconciliation will be needed in conference committee. Meanwhile,
environmental groups and others who think the Alaskan Coastal Plain has
enough derricks, tanks, pipelines, tractors and oil spills will keep putting
the word out.

"Today's vote is an abuse of the budget process that undermines the pillars
of our democracy. It is fiscally irresponsible and would sacrifice one of
America's great natural treasures," Shondra Zaborowski of the Hoosier
Chapter of the Sierra Club said Wednesday. "This razor-thin vote is by no
means a mandate."

Resisters are talking money as well as stewardship. They point out that oil
lease revenues claimed in the legislation vastly exceed what current rates
would produce, and any oil that might result from decades of exploration and
drilling would be less than 5 percent of American consumption by the
sunniest government estimates.

Moderate conservation measures and modest increases in alternative energy
would easily exceed any benefits from this risk to an irreplaceable
God-given legacy. If Bush meant what he says about energy independence and
national security, he would impose energy usage constraints across the
populace during a time of war in, of all places, the Middle East. Yet he has
asked no such sacrifice of the heaviest drinkers of oil in world history.

Guard our wilderness, Ike admonished; and guard against the evils of the
military-industrial complex. The old GOP general looks wiser by the day.

Carpenter is a Star op-ed columnist. Contact him at (317) 444-6172 or at
dan.carpenter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
--

Macdonald Stainsby
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
In the contradiction lies the hope
        --Bertholt Brecht.

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