Views expressed in guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media.
Visit the complete Guest Column archives.
America’s native criminal class
Guest Column | By Paul Driessen | June 11, 2008
There is no distinctly native American
criminal class, Mark Twain observed – except Congress.
A century later, government power and
intrusiveness have increased exponentially – and special interests have adapted
by employing lobbyists who can navigate Washington, explain technology to
tech-challenged members and staffs, persuade legislators that provisions are
vital (or disastrous), and give clients “a seat at the table” where subsidies,
mandates, taxes, preferences and penalties are meted out.
The system is both the cause and result of
far too many congressmen becoming members of what commentator Charles
Krauthammer calls an “ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class” that
has arrogated unto itself the right to rule American citizens.
Even legislators who don’t keep wads of
thank-you cash in their freezers have committed misfeasance and malfeasance, by
handling vital energy, environmental and economic matters in ways that would
likely be prosecuted if done by businessmen. Lawmakers, eco-activists and
companies routinely engage in social experimentation and central planning akin
to previous Great Leaps Forward – and refuse to acknowledge the damage their
actions inflict on workers, families, minorities and other businesses.
Today, in the name of protecting the
environment, politicians have locked up enough oil, gas, coal and uranium to
power the United
States literally for centuries. Representatives
of six of the nation’s eight biggest petroleum-guzzling states routinely vote to
ban drilling off our coasts and in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The
Interior Department estimates that these lands could hold more than the proven
oil reserves of Iran or
Iraq: 139 billion barrels that could
be obtained with today’s technology.
This energy belongs to all Americans. But
politicians keep it off limits, and force us to consume oil that the rest of the
world desperately needs. Food and fuel prices soar, poor families get pummeled,
and we are compelled to send trillions of dollars to corrupt dictators, and give
up jobs, tax revenues, royalties and security that developing US resources would
generate.
Drilling bans also increase the risk of
more spills from tankers carrying oil to replace what politicians have put off
limits. In sixty years of offshore oil operations, only the 1969 Santa Barbara blowout
resulted in significant oil reaching shore. Offshore oil platforms rarely
pollute; they create magnificent artificial reefs. As a scuba diver, I’ve seen
them firsthand, including the beauty where that blowout occurred.
So when Senator Maria Cantwell and
colleagues oppose drilling – and then demand that President Bush tell OPEC
countries to produce more oil – they are telling the world’s poorest people:
Drop dead. We don’t care if you need oil and soaring prices are killing you. We
refuse to do our part. We are consumers and importers, not producers. We will
always put our eco-centric attitudes and our ties to green pressure groups ahead
of your welfare.
When Congress doles out subsidies for
ethanol, it converts tens of millions of acres of crop and habitat land into
cornfields, diverts billions of gallons of water and fertilizer from food to
energy, and sends fuel and food prices even higher.
When it silently endorses NRDC campaigns to
stop petroleum leasing and drilling in western states – it shows it’s happy to
eliminate more jobs and energy production in the face of soaring demand and
prices, and turn those states into playgrounds for wealthy elites, unaffordable
for average Americans.
However, for sheer economy-wrecking,
nothing compares to climate change proposals like the 491-page Warner-Lieberman
bill. The Senate rejected it last week, but more proposals will soon be
introduced – even though 32,000 scientists have signed the consensus-busting
Oregon Petition, saying they see “no convincing evidence” that human greenhouse
gas emissions disrupt Earth’s climate.
Average global temperatures have not
increased since 1998, even though atmospheric CO2 levels have risen by 3% a
year. Moreover, notes meteorologist Anthony Watts, the 1.4 degree F decline in global
temperatures since January 2007 offsets the total net warming during the
twentieth century. And this temperature stabilization and downturn was
completely missed by every computer model that alarmists use to conjure up
apocalyptic climate scenarios.
All this means little to the “arrogant
knowledge class.” Senators Clinton, Obama, Reid, Boxer, McCain and colleagues
still insist that US carbon dioxide emissions be slashed by 71% – to levels last
seen in 1937, during the Great Depression, when our population was one-third of
today’s, and electricity use was in its infancy.
They would increasingly tax the 85% of our
energy that is generated by fossil fuels. Gasoline could hit $6 or
even $8 a gallon, and the cost of electricity and natural gas could more than
double by 2030, according to the American Council on Capital Formation and other
analysts. Moreover, sequestering all
that plant-fertilizing CO2 would cost millions of additional megawatts and
trillions of additional dollars in electricity.
The impact on services for poor, elderly,
disabled and homebound people – and on airlines and manufacturing – would be
disastrous. In impoverished Third World
countries, the effects would be catastrophic and lethal, as global warming pacts
are translated into ever higher prices for food, and a permanent dearth of
affordable electricity for economic growth, lights, refrigeration and
sanitation.
Many people and lawmakers finally grasp the
magnitude of these costs. But four-alarm politicians have the support of
activists, banks, scientists and corporations who say the climate bills are
landmark “green” legislation – as in $$$$ for research, complex cap-and-trade
tax deals, government handouts, mandates and subsidies for unreliable renewable
energy, and opportunities to gain advantages over competitors.
Notes the Wall Street Journal: the $3.3 TRILLION in
cap-and-trade auction revenues that Senator Boxer “expects to scoop up” by 2050
under Warner-Lieberman were exceeded only by the trillions in “revenue handouts”
she had already promised to its supporters.
Make no mistake. Warner-Lieberman and its
kin have nothing to do with saving the planet. They are about the power to
control – and curtail – the power we rely on: for homes,
offices, hospitals, food, consumer products, transportation and modern living
standards.
They are about who gets to decide: where our energy will
come from … how much we will have … what it will cost … whether there will be
enough to lift more families out of poverty … and who will be the winners and
losers in a world of government-mandated energy scarcity. They are about
creating a massive, regressive tax and regulatory scheme – to redistribute
people’s incomes to constituencies that politicians judge are more likely to
keep them in office.
It’s truly ironic. Fifty years ago,
Democrats were defending the Jim Crow laws they had enacted to keep blacks from
schools, lunch counters, buses and drinking fountains. Today, Democrats are
leading the fight to impose what Congress of Racial Equality chairman Roy Innis
aptly calls “Jim
Crow energy policies” that block access to energy, drive up prices, and keep
minorities from achieving economic civil rights.
Even more ironic, four decades ago,
Republicans led by Senator Everett Dirksen wrote and enacted landmark civil
rights bills. Today, a biracial Democratic presidential candidate and Senate
Republicans like John Warner and John McCain are championing Jim Crow energy and
climate policies that trample on economic opportunities and civil rights.
These policies are far more criminal than
anything Mark Twain ever dreamed possible.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power ∙ Black death. Cyril Boynes is CORE’s director of international affairs and Honorary Consul General of Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom of Uganda to the Americas.
Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.
6 Comments | Post a Comment
I have always marveled at how Mark Twain’s description of the government fit the day. I guess that was 15 years ago. I’m sure he would never have imagined that they would literally try to turn the U.S.A. into a third world country.
What I don’t understand is, why the American people would want to vote for a leader that tells them they can’t drive their cars, they can’t heat or cool their homes, etc. My opinion is, there is not one leader in the group running for president.
“This energy belongs to all Americans.”
Uh, no. It rightfully belongs to whomever has sufficient resources and ingenuity to recover it. After recovery, it belongs to whomever buys it from those who earned it by extracting it.
The myth that the government owns land that isn’t owned by anyone in particular is just an unchallenged assertion by collectivists. It is no more correct or feasible than the Law of the Sea treaty that claims any resources in the ocean as the collective property of humanity.
Technically, the energy doesn’t belong to all Americans. First off, it belongs to the people under whose land it is. Secondly, it belongs to the people who purchase it from the owners, then who extract, refine, etc.
However, when the government gets involved and gives subsidies, allows drilling on government controlled land( that is citizen owned land) , has the authority to issue drilling rights, allows imminent domain to be used to force the extraction of the energy - then the American people do have part ownership.
If we are paying for all this government help and control, then we have a financial stake and therefore do have some ownership - or should.
Mary R - I have a theory about them being called our ‘leaders’. I think that was a word that was put in place by politicians for a reason. If they are ‘leaders’ then we are followers. We are supposed to be the leader of this engine called a free society. These people we elect are just supposed to keep it working and following the way we choose.
We have, indeed, become followers, but I just don’t think that is our role. These people are supposed to ‘represent’ us and vote and act according to our wishes - not decide what they want,what some foreign government wants, or some group with the most money wants.
“...government controlled land( that is citizen owned land)...”
That is the myth I’m referring to.
Land that no SPECIFIC citizen holds title to within our national borders is under government stewardship, not government ownership. It is not the property of “the people;” it is the property of exactly no one.
This fact is recognized in, for example, the Homestead Act which granted title to citizens who occupied and made productive use of land for a certain period of time. It is also explicit in “adverse possession” laws which grant title and ownership to a person who occupies and makes productive use of land for a certain period of time.
“Granting” permits and extracting royalties is an example of power arrogated to the government by politicians. Mining claims are an example of how the government should handle the situation: allow any citizen (or business) who has the resources, ingenuity, and perseverance to attempt extraction of natural resources from land that is under government stewardship to “stake a claim,” register that claim as protection against “claim jumpers,” and then preserve their right to own the fruits of their labor which they have EARNED.
No, the government isn’t supposed to own anything, so technically correct.
But when they decide who uses it, who goes on it, who lives on it, how it’s used, etc., etc., then there is control and ownership. It doesn’t ‘belong to no one’ - as in ‘free for the taking’.
June 12 at 2:06 pm | #1 | Link
Paul Driessen most definitely “tells it like it is,” for which he is to be congratulated, considering the craven cowardness and abject blindness of ever more and more Americans! How many of us are capable of seeing the truth of what is taking place during these days to undermine the USA? Congress is destroying America from within, which radical Islamic savages are working from outside. Who are the “special interests” [the phrase makes me sick] controlling the “sanctity” of our very own oil reserves? I think of the oil off the coast of my state, California, suspecting various individuals and groups of deliberately defying the laws of this land, the USA, in order to deny Americans the right to utilize our very own resources?! I wonder who are the exalted ones among the liberal leftwingers who have shut off a large portion of the northern California coast line for their very own private reserve?! Fortunately, before their bloody hands clutched onto this Lost Coast area, I became familiar with its isolated beauty via my small cab-over camper, in which one could safely park overnight without cost. Now this and other similar areas are never mentioned among the public, all, of course, to protect the Elite’s Greed! This bunch of government “insiders literally bring me to an acute state of nausea!