Bob Corker Just Can’t Win
The Republican senator is now getting blistered from the right.
To break the stalemate over U.S. energy policy, a bipartisan group of senators known as the Gang of 10 has put forth a compromise proposal in hopes that the rest of Washington will stop clawing each other like feral cats.
The gang, headed by Democratic Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia -- and including our very own Bob Corker -- has something to appease both left and right.
For conservatives, it wants to allow oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and 50 miles off the shores of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, if those states approve. For the left, it wants to assist U.S. automakers in ensuring that 85 percent of their fleet runs on non-petroleum fuels within two decades. The money would come from killing $30 billion in tax breaks for energy companies, which now have more money than God and Dubai.
But it’s that last point that has the gang running afoul of the special interest right – namely the Americans for Tax Reform.
Needless to say, these guys aren’t big on taxes. So they’re ripping Corker for “siding with tax-and-spend liberals” and making a “backroom deal.”
If it sounds like crazy talk, it is. The Gang of 10 isn’t exactly known for its Maoist proclivities, nor have the senators been very secretive about their proposal.
But the attack does show how difficult it is to moderate in Washington, a place where all things tend to be colored in black and white. The taxpayer group rightly notes that Big Oil will simply recoup the loss of tax credits by further gouging consumers. Then again, it also seems to believe that the U.S. will magically shift its energy use without new costs to anyone.
There are, of course, native problems with Corker’s plan. For one, off-shore drilling is no more environmentally safe today than when the first President Bush banned it. And kicking $30 billion to the U.S. auto industry – America’s Leader in Incompetence Since 1972 – is kind of like giving your deadbeat brother-in-law money to invest in a worm farm.
But whatever you think of the plan, at least Corker is trying to make something happen. The same can’t be said for many of his colleagues.
Comments
Missing from the discussion is the real problem with the Gang of 10's energy plan. It does almost nothing to deal with global climate disruption.
Conservatives can't even bring themselves to utter the term "climate change" without the nuts from their party yelling falsehoods about the problem.
Liberals, acknowledge the problem but don't want to rock-the-boat prior to the election. However, after the election they still will not take action. They will figure out a reason why when they have to.
The Gang of 10 claims that their plan is comprehensive when in fact it is nothing more than a cobbled list of pork projects for its members. It is fraud.
Posted 08/27/2008 at 07:12:41 AMYou may be right, DMac. The nutbag faction of the GOP just can't break away from the notion to drill our way out of this. Notice how original estimates concluded that it would take 20 years for new drilling to see its way to the pumps. Now even McCain's saying it could be done in as little as 18 months. Pure folly.
The flip side, though, is that even if Democrats win big in November, it's still going to take a huge welfare package for Ford and GM to get anything done. Industrial state liberals are going to feel the need to pay back the UAW, which means continuing to prop up the incompetence of the American auto industry.
Posted 08/27/2008 at 12:07:24 PMI was afraid Bob had been sucked in by the neo-cons when I heard he had spent a lot of time with James Baker.
My fears were confirmed when I just saw him on television supporting the neo-cons attempts to reignite the cold war with his trip to Georgia.
Cheney led Saakashvili to believe that the Russians wouldn't dare take action if he moved Georgian troops into South Ossetia because of US and Israeli support for the Saakashvili regime.
But the people of South Ossetia have been defacto independent of Georgia since 1993, and Russia was committed to their defense, so they moved in to protect the people of South Ossetia and kick Georgia's butt.
Cheney and the neo-cons want a return to the cold war because they see support for their "war on terror" waning, and they believe that there must be a constant state of war of one type of the other in order to keep their high profits up in the defense industry.
Our only hope is that the people of America and corporations which DON'T make their money on security and defense will realize they're getting screwed and stop the neo-con madness.
Posted 08/31/2008 at 02:44:27 AMI was afraid Bob had been sucked in by the neo-cons when I heard he had spent a lot of time with James Baker.
My fears were confirmed when I just saw him on television supporting the neo-cons attempts to reignite the cold war with his trip to Georgia.
Cheney led Saakashvili to believe that the Russians wouldn't dare take action if he moved Georgian troops into South Ossetia because of US and Israeli support for the Saakashvili regime.
But the people of South Ossetia have been defacto independent of Georgia since 1993, and Russia was committed to their defense, so they moved in to protect the people of South Ossetia and kick Georgia's butt.
Cheney and the neo-cons want a return to the cold war because they see support for their "war on terror" waning, and they believe that there must be a constant state of war of one type of the other in order to keep their high profits up in the defense industry.
Our only hope is that the people of America and corporations which DON'T make their money on security and defense will realize they're getting screwed and stop the neo-con madness.
Posted 08/31/2008 at 02:46:44 AMSorry for the double post--I thought the 1st one errored.
Btw, what about Tennessee's own untapped oil reserves?
Now that oil prices are high, it's cost effective to go after our own oil, yet I haven't heard of any initiatives to do that.
We're currently pumping just 1/3 of the million barrels/year we were pumping in 1982.
Posted 08/31/2008 at 03:49:53 AM