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Bush Bite #23 - 6 Oct 2004
Last Refuge
While most of us woke up to the fact that reducing our dependency on oil might help stabilize global relations, Bush and his cronies used the September 11 attacks as reasons we need to get more oil from wherever we could. Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska--which has been a Cheney obsession since 1987--suddenly became a matter of national security. Drilling in one of the countys last remaining bits of untouched wilderness was also sold as a jobs bill, and as a first step towards energy independence. Both the California energy scandal and the Northeast blackout were touted as reasons drilling needed to happen immediately--although neither had anything to do with gas or oil shortages.
The EPA reported that increasing fuel efficiency by just three miles per hour in new cars would save more than five times the amount of gasoline the ANWR could ever hope to produce. Senators John Kerry and John McCain put forward a bi-partisan fuel efficiency bill and the White House killed it. Bush even sued California for mandating a fuel efficiency standard that was tougher than the federal standard--using as a legal weapon, of all things, the Clean Air Act.
Bush included in the 2004 budget a tax break of up to $100,000 for purchasers of the biggest trucks and SUVs--the so-called Hummer Deduction.
Best of all, opponents to drilling in ANWR were branded as allies of Saddam Hussein--nevermind that the major proponents of ANWR drilling (ChevronTexaco, Exxon-Mobil, ConocoPhillips and BP) were buying 700,000 barrels a day from Saddam's Iraq.
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