At a rally in Ohio on Tuesday, GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin told the crowd that she'd head up energy policy in a McCain administration.
"John and I, we've discussed some new responsibilities that I'm going to have as vice president," Palin said. "First, I'll help to lead the mission of energy security."
She cited her record of taking on "the big oil company interests" as a qualification for that work, as well as her experience lobbying for a natural gas pipeline. "I got agreements through competition to build a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline and that's going to feed very hungry markets when it's built," she said. "When that last section of pipe is laid, America will be one step closer to energy independence and that's good for our economy and it's good for our security."
McCain also claimed last week that his running mate "knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America."
But Palin's energy-related rhetoric has already gotten her into trouble on the campaign trail. The pipeline she talks about only exists on paper at this point, and the necessary federal approval is still years away. She's also been called out for exaggerating the role that Alaska plays in the country's energy portfolio, claiming in her interview with Charlie Gibson last week that the state provides "20 percent " of the nation's power. It provides just 3.5 percent, and several fact-checking sites have since completely debunked her claim.
Palin has certainly taken on Big Oil interests in the state at times, imposing new taxes on the industry and dueling with them over the terms of the gas pipeline. But she's also seen as a friend of the oil companies, lobbying for drilling in places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and criticizing the Bush administration for not being pro-drilling enough.
At Tuesday's rally in Ohio, Palin also said that she would lead up the administration's transparency plan. "I'm going to help lead the mission of reforming government," she said. "We're going to make government more transparent and more accountable." But a New York Times piece published last weekend revealed a record of secrecy and cronyism in her time as governor.
One example The Times gave is how she handled the Interior Department's recent decision to list the polar bear as a threatened species.
Palin and other state officials expressed concern that listing polar bears would impair oil and gas development in the state, and sued the feds, claiming that their decision to list the bear was "not based on the best scientific and commercial data available." A "comprehensive review" of the federal science by state wildlife officials found no reason to support listing the bears as endangered, Palin argued. But emails released via a public-records request show that Alaskan state scientists agreed with federal researchers that polar bears are threatened by shrinking ice.
The transparency issue is even more relevant to a possible future Palin role in guiding energy policy given the record of the current vice president. Early in President George W. Bush's first term, Cheney led the White House's task force on energy. When lawmakers and interest groups pressed for records of the task force meetings to be released, Cheney refused. Ultimately, the issue wound up before the Supreme Court, where the justices sided with Cheney's assertion that the president and vice president have a right to meet in secret with anyone they want.
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Comments
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Russ Posted 5:04 pm
17 Sep 2008
September 16, 2008, 3:05 pm
Hey, How Hard Is It to Be President?
By The Editorial Board
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina -- a major player in the McCain-Palin campaign -- was asked on a KTRS Radio program in St. Louis whether Sarah Palin had the experience to run a major company like H.P.
Her answer: "No, I don't. But you know what? That's not what she's running for."
Of course, the McCain campaign insists that Governor Palin would be ready to step in as president should anything happen to him.
Running a company, it seems, is hard.
Leading a nation of 300 million people, with a budget of around $3 trillion, a couple of major wars going on, and the capacity to blow up the planet. Well, that's doable.
The same should be true of a VP as "energy czar".
[That's funny - don't we already have a Department and Secretary of Energy? This is a stark example of how a mccain admin would be Republican business as usual - bypassing the career experts, doing an end run around established government process, including regulatory process, throwing mud on stable government in general.
Also, am I the only one who's unnerved by the steady popularity in this country for seeking out a "czar", with all the authoritarian desires that term implies, for every problem, real or perceived? This at least is not a Rep vs. Dem issue - I recall czar-lust under Clinton as well. Rather, it bespeaks an impatience with, perhaps an exhaustion by, normal, stable government, and the dream of a man on horseback (or in this case yahoo on a snowmobile) sweeping that all away.
Clarification - I said it's not an intrinsically partisan issue, but the demagogy, irresponsible executive power, and desperation for simple answers involved does inherently favor the Rep agenda.
Still, it's possible the "energy czar" talk is just talk, to reinforce for the rubes this absurd lie that Palin know anything about energy or anything else, or that she has any qualifications at all. Not to mention the lie we keep getting, that she "took on Big Oil", as if there was some difference in policy principle, when all it was was a squabble over the loot.]
Fiorina says elsewhere that Mccain too wouldn't be able to run a big company. (She ought to know - she was incompetent at it as well.)
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Pangolin Posted 5:37 pm
17 Sep 2008
She claims that Alaska supplies the US with 20% of it's energy when it only supplies 4.5% of the oil it uses. Of course those supplie don't go to the US but to oil refineries that export more petroleum product than that out of the country.
The US could shut down Alaskan oil operations entirely by switching the Northeast from oil heat to geothermal heat pumps and lowering the speed limit to 60 mph.
Of course we'd still need to import oil but until we quit using it to push SUV's and jet airliners we will be importing oil.
Put the Carbon Back
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gzuckier Posted 1:04 am
18 Sep 2008
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mckittre Posted 3:52 am
18 Sep 2008
We're running countless villages, as well as some larger towns and a city on diesel generators - making for some of the most expensive electricity in the nation. This is in a state where renewable sources (wind, geothermal, etc...) are there for the using, and where the state government has a massive surplus to put into new projects if it wished to...
One of the biggest reasons given for the $1200 "energy rebate" Palin pushed for this year was that energy costs are so high here that some towns in the bush are in danger of shutting down because of it. The village of Adak on the Aleutian Islands recently told everyone to leave because the city had no more money to buy fuel.
Won't it be great when the nation's energy situation mirrors ours?
-Erin
www.GroundTruthTrekking.org
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redpanda Posted 5:12 am
18 Sep 2008
I happened across a Charlie Rose interview from 2007 yesterday, and it was remarkably unremarkable. Charlie Rose's format usually allows guests to demonstrate a degree of depth and thoughtfulness that never otherwise sees the light of day on television, but she was quite bland. She was asked a question about education and she talked instead about tapping oil reserves. It seemed like the only subject she cared about.
If this is the kind of thinking that McCain wants to elevate in his administration, then the democratic ticket and the republican ticket couldn't be further apart on energy.
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GonzoDon Posted 1:38 am
19 Sep 2008
Peak oil production in the United States occurred almost 40 years ago and no amount of drilling (or wishful thinking) will change that.
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