Mountain Views News          Saturday, June 19, 2010

Left Turn / Right Turn

9

 Mountain Views News Saturday, June 19, 2010


GREG Welborn

South Carolina Democratic 
Comedy Troupe

HOWARD Hays 

As I See It

 
Following my column two 
weeks ago on assigning blame 
for the gulf oil spill, Greg set 
the record straight last week 
and blames those darned environmentalists. 
  
He could’ve taken it further; happening in 
the Gulf of Mexico, it must have something 
to do with illegal immigrants.   Had “big 
government” not imposed regulations on BP, 
they could’ve adopted safeguards guided by 
the free market.   Reports of cleanup crews 
becoming ill from exposure shows the failure 
of “Obamacare”.

 

 Maybe I missed it, but I don’t recall any 
suggestion that if big oil were allowed to set 
up shop in our arctic wildlife refuge, they’d 
forgo drilling in our outer continental shelf. 
  
I do recall, decades ago, promises that once 
they started drilling on the Alaska North 
Slope, we’d be relieved of high gas prices and 
threats of OPEC embargos.   They drilled, got 
the oil - then sold it to Japan and we went 
back to high gas prices and threats of OPEC 
embargos.

 

 The problem’s not a shortage of pristine lands 
available for exploitation.   On the campaign 
trail two years ago, then-Senator Barack 
Obama, in response to Sen. John McCain’s 
call for more offshore drilling, pointed 
out there were already 68 million acres of 
federal land under lease on which the oil 
companies were just sitting - about three-
quarters of all leases held (President Bush 
wanted to add another 1.5 million acres in 
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), are 
kept as assets on their books and as a come-
on for potential investors.   Sen. Obama 
supported use-it-or-lose-it legislation that 
would require companies to either explore 
and drill on leased lands or pay a fine if they 
didn’t (funds going for alternative energy 
development).   There’s a disconnect between 
“drill, baby, drill” proponents and reality; 
turning over more millions of acres doesn’t 
mean more drilling; big oil often determines 
the commodity is more valuable left in the 
ground when bringing it up would threaten 
to lower the market price.

 

 There’s deep-water drilling because we’ve 
been subsidizing it.   Oil companies have 
found it cheaper to drill overseas, but saw 
“energy independence” as an effective pitch 
for tax breaks.   The companies knew it 
wouldn’t be achieved, that we’d be importing 
two-thirds of our oil through the next decade 
under most optimistic projections, but it 
worked - in 1995 the Deep Water Royalty 
Relief Act eliminated the 12% royalty levied 
on oil extracted in federal waters.   The levy 
was supposed to be reinstated once oil hit 
$40 a barrel, but President Bush made sure it 
stayed gone when he signed his 2005 energy 
bill - and threw in an extra $2.6 billion in tax 
breaks for good measure.

 

 It’s hard to turn this into a partisan 
debate - from either side.   Following the 
disastrous 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, the 
Environmental Protection Agency was 
created under President Richard Nixon 
and his domestic policy advisor, John 
Ehrlichman.   The aforementioned Deep 
Water Royalty Relief Act was passed under 
President Clinton, and Bush’s 2005 energy 
bill was supported by Senator Obama. 
  
There’s something more ominous at work; 
the protection of the interests of no particular 
party, and of no particular country, but of 
trans-national corporations whose profits 
from offshore drilling lie in offshore tax 
havens - and whose allegiance lies only to 
themselves.

 

 Nor is there any allegiance to their workers. 
  
As reported in The Guardian, survivors of the 
initial blast and fire on the rig were detained 
for up to forty hours, unable to contact their 
families, until they’d signed documents 
absolving Deepwater Horizon / BP of 
liability.   There’s no allegiance to the right 
of gulf residents, or the rest of us, to know 
what’s going on.   Small-town police and fire 
authorities have routed media access requests 
to BP personnel.   BP has forbidden clean-up 
crews from talking to the press and allowing 
pictures (especially of dead animals).   Private 
security contractors hired by BP have blocked 
access to public beaches and taken power 
from local sheriffs.   There have been reports 
of confiscating cell phones and cameras, and 
prohibiting scientific monitoring equipment. 
  
Permissions for flyovers have been revoked 
once it was learned reporters would be 
among the passengers.   A particularly chilling 
episode was captured on video and shown on 
CBS Evening News; a news crew member 
demanded to know from a Coast Guard 
official why they were being denied access to 
a public area.   The official replied, “These are 
BP’s rules.   These are not our rules.”   (Coast 
Guard Commandant Thad Allen denied such 
incidents were occurring even as reporters 
relayed their first-hand experiences.)

 

 Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), Chairman of 
the House Select Committee on Energy 
Independence, compiled damning evidence 
of oil companies’ lack of allegiance to our 
nation’s laws requiring adequate safety 
measures be taken and adhered to.   He 
shows that the laughable “Oil Spill Response 
Plans” for Gulf drilling submitted by Shell, 
Exxon, Chevron, Conoco/Phillips and BP 
are “virtually identical”.   All, for instance 
make references to protecting walruses 
(“which have not called the Gulf of Mexico 
home for 3 million years”).   He points out oil 
companies pulled in $289 billion in profits 
over the past three years, while spending only 
$39 billion on exploring for new oil and gas 
- “Yet the average investment in research and 
development for safety, accident prevention, 
and spill response was a paltry $20 million 
per year, less than one-tenth of one percent of 
their profits.”   In preparing for hearings, House 
Energy Committee Chair Henry Waxman 
(D-CA) cited a BP engineer’s description of 
Deepwater Horizon as a “nightmare well” a 
few days before the blast, and describes BP’s 
“carelessness and complacency” in making  
“decisions that increased the risk of a blowout 
to save the company time or expense”.

 

 I’m sure the oil companies love to see the 
protection of our shorelines, our oceans 
and the livelihoods of so many Americans 
become an excuse to knock “environmental 
ideology”, as Greg does.   What bothers me 
more, though, is seeing appeals for more 
nuclear power plants along with reminders 
that “Mistakes happen” in the same opinion 
column.

Sometimes politicians give up a straight line that 
comedians would literally sell their mother to 
have, and such is the case with the Democrat’s 
reaction to Alvin Greene’s surprise win in the 
South Carolina Democratic Primary. You see, 
Mr. Alvin Greene is a political newcomer, with 
an apparently shady past who trounced the 
more established (key word there) Democratic 
candidate, Mr. Vic Rawl, and won the primary. 
Mr. Greene took 60% of the vote. The Democratic 
reaction: it must have been a Republican dirty 
trick.

So if I understand this correctly, Democrats are 
saying that their followers – the Democratic voters 
in the State of South Carolina – are so stupid as to 
be tricked by those “wascally” Republicans into 
voting for a man who has no political experience, 
no job, no house, no campaign headquarters 
or website, and no real campaign to speak of. 
Couldn’t possibly be that the voters are so sick 
and tired of establishment Democratic politicians 
and their fiscal irresponsibility that those voters 
wisely decided that one of their own – a 6-pack 
Joe so to speak – could easily do a better job? 
Even if the poor guy doesn’t have a chance at 
beating the Republican candidate (and I’m not 
saying that), couldn’t it be that the Democratic 
voters sill invoked some degree of wisdom in 
deciding to send a message to the spend-like-the-
world-is-ending-tomorrow politicians that their 
ride has come to an end?

That’s the logical (I think!?) conclusion I come to. 
It’s not the one that the arrogant establishment 
types have come to. They point to what they 
perceive as Alvin Greene’s total lack of credibility 
and assume that someone has played a trick on 
them. The problem with this scenario is that 
it ignores many of the facts which are easily 
observed by the voters.

They say Mr. Greene has no job. Well so do 
10% of Americans, and that doesn’t make them 
unqualified; it just means that they’re struggling 
to make ends meet. That’s something we wish all 
politicians really understood.

They say Mr. Greene has no political experience. 
Well neither did Abraham Lincoln or Ronald 
Reagan before they ran for office. And don’t 
even begin to get me going on the paucity of 
experience in Obama’s resume when he ran for the 
Presidency. He might have been a state senator 
and (briefly) a U.S. Senator, but the man ducked 
more votes than anyone else, straddled the fence 
on enough other issues to qualify for a circus act, 
has never really managed anything in his life, and 
doesn’t seem to be doing a particularly good job 
at managing in his current position. 

They say Mr. Greene has been arrested and 
been involved with some pornography. I’m 
certainly not going to argue that these are great 
qualifications for the job, but if they are meant 
to be strong disqualifications, then I’ll gladly 
accept the resignation of a fair number of sitting 
Congressmen and Senators. If only we would 
actually take seriously things like breaking 
your wedding vows, your civic vows or your 
constitutional vows, we’d have a much better set 
of elected representatives. When the perpetrators 
who currently hold office resign, I’ll tell Mr. 
Greene myself to hang it up.

No, this isn’t good for the Democrats who 
currently run this country, so naturally they’re 
blaming Republicans. Since nobody can figure 
out how Mr. Greene could come up with the 
$10,000 required to file for the election in the 
first place, it must have been some Republican 
operative who paid the fee. For that sin (if it is 
one – more on that later), Rep. James Clyburn, 
one of the leading Democrats in South Carolina, 
has demanded that the U.S. attorney launch a 
formal investigation. If that was just an attempt 
at a joke, it wouldn’t be funny. The fact that he’s 
serious makes it hilarious. He must have one of 
the shortest memories on Capital Hill.

Doe Representative Clyburn (3rd ranking 
Democrat in Congress) not remember what 
his own party did to Senator Patrick Leahy’s 
Republican opponent in 1998? Liberals convinced 
an average dairy farmer, Mr. Fred Tuttle, to run 
in the Republican primary so as to minimize the 
chances that the stronger Republican candidate 
would win and face off against Senator Leahy in 
the November election. Odd as it was, Mr. Tuttle 
won the Republican primary, despite not having 
experience or a very solid campaign, and then 
promptly pulled out of the November election 
by endorsing the Democrat, Senator Leahy. The 
press, and the Democrats, loved 
that one. They made a movie 
about it and printed stories 
praising the gentlemanly nature 
of the race.

In that example, it was pretty obvious that 
Democrats were involved. They contributed 
time, energy and money to Mr. Tuttle’s campaign. 
When it was over, everyone simply acknowledged 
that the voters had spoken. Nobody called for 
investigations or insulted the Vermont electorate 
for supposedly being stupid to vote for such an 
inexperienced candidate. They accepted that 
voters send messages to their leaders in all sorts 
of fanciful and imaginative ways.

Returning to the South Carolina story, there is 
absolutely no evidence that Republicans were 
involved in Mr. Greene’s campaign. In fact, as 
I said before, and as has been acknowledged 
by the press covering this story, there was no 
real campaign. If Republicans had really been 
involved and decided to spend $10,000 for 
the filing fee, don’t you think they would have 
coughed up a few more dollars for a campaign 
website, a couple of staffers and maybe a new 
suit or two for the candidate? He made a few 
appearances, after all, but didn’t make much of an 
impression other than being an outsider. 

I laughed especially hard when President 
Obama’s senior advisor, David Axelrod, said Mr. 
Greene was not a “legitimate” candidate. I may 
be too simple of intellect to really understand 
the significance of that statement, but it seems 
to me that the person who wins the election is 
by definition a “legitimate” candidate. Don’t 
you think? What absolute hubris, arrogance 
and condescension it must take to tell voters 
that they just elected an “illegitimate” candidate. 
Does Mr. Axelrod mean that only candidates 
he approves of are legitimate? Does he mean 
that only those political science majors or law 
school grads from the “right” East coast schools 
are legitimate candidates? Does he mean that 
only those politicians who embrace the current 
norms in D.C. are legitimate candidates? What 
possible definition could he have in mind that 
doesn’t insult every Democratic primary voter 
in South Carolina and, by very logical extension, 
every voter of every party in every state who has 
or will vote for an outsider in a noble attempt to 
shake up D.C. and express their rage at the fiscal 
malfeasance that passes now for serious debate 
and policy in our nation’s capital?

Hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters took 
part in the South Carolina primary, and 86% of 
them voted for a Senate candidate. That’s an awful 
lot of people to dis. It may well be possible that a 
Republican did in fact pay Mr. Greene’s filing fee. 
But it could also have been a hyper liberal activist, 
like an ACORN representative or a George Soros 
apparatchik. We saw that sort of influence 
brought to bear against another establishment 
candidate in the Arkansas Democratic primary. 
The liberals and the labor unions turned on the 
current Democratic (establishment) Senator, 
Blanche Lincoln, like she was Benedict Arnold. I 
don’t know who paid Mr. Greene’s filing fee, but I 
don’t care. It doesn’t matter.

The man had to agree to run, and he had to at 
least show up a couple of times. He did both, 
articulated something, and netted a whole lot of 
angry-at-D.C. votes. The obvious message here 
is the one that the Democrats in power refuse 
to acknowledge. What they are doing to this 
country is an outrage, and normally quiet, non-
involved people are becoming voters, looking for 
alternatives, joining Tea Parties, and generally 
scarring the hell out of those who are in power 
and who consider power their natural right. 

It is a good day in America when voters take back 
the right which is naturally theirs. Apathy has its 
place and its value. When one trusts the elected 
leaders and the country is generally heading in 
the right direction, it’s O.K. to skip an election 
here and there to attend to other more pressing 
matters – like earning a living, caring for others 
in the community and looking after your family. 
That’s a good thing, and America has been blessed 
with many of these periods. But it is equally a 
good thing when the country is being driven off a 
cliff that citizens get back involved in politics and 
vote their conscience. What we’re learning is that 
there is more wisdom in “throw the bums out” 
than has ever been acknowledged. 

About the author: Gregory J. Welborn is a 
freelance writer and has spoken to several civic 
and religious organizations on cultural and 
moral issues. He lives in the Los Angeles area 
with his wife and 3 children and is active in the 
community. He can be reached at gregwelborn@
earthlink.net.

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Wednesday 3-7 pm 

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San Marino Community Church 
1750 Virginia Road, San Marino, CA 91108For more information call: (626) 282-4181 
Connect with us online: www.smccpby.com9:15 am Traditional WorshipSunday school (K-5) and childcare provided, youth worship service10:30 am Adult Spiritual Formation11:15 am “The Gathering” worship serviceCasual worship, multi-voice ensemble, childcare provided“The Sound of Silence”
For Saturday, June 19, 2010Have you ever felt that God was 
silent? You’re not alone. Even 
the Prophet Elijah went through 
a period when the Lord seemed 
absent. Life doesn’t always 
turn out like we expect and we 
sometimes may feel abandoned 
even by God. But silence does 
not always mean absence. This week Rev. O’Grady 
explores the silence of God and Elijah’s discovery.
Vacation Bible School registration: www.smccpby.com