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As bad as it is, it could be worse

By Henry Lamb
web posted May 15, 2006

Nancy Pelosi is euphoric in her anticipation of moving into the speaker's office after the November elections. So sure is she of a future Democrat majority that important legislative business may have to wait until the next Congress for action. Between now and November, nothing is as important to Democrats as bashing Bush and the Republican Congress.

Republicans can lose control of the House with the loss of only 15 seats; there are at least 30 Republican seats widely seen to be in jeopardy. Should the Democrats regain control of the House, the stage will be set for retaking the White House in 2008.

John Conyers would become chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He has already announced the creation of a special committee to investigate the Bush White House, looking for justification for impeachment proceedings. Yes, this is the same John Conyers whose staff say they have been forced to babysit, tutor Conyer's children, run personal errands for the Congressman, and work in Conyers wife's political campaign.

Nancy PelosiWith the likes of Pelosi and Conyers at the helm in the House, the next two years will be pay back for Clinton's impeachment, and for the 2000 Supreme Court decision that gave the presidency to Bush. Beyond the political retribution lies a Democrat agenda that could be far worse than even the Clinton-Gore era of idiocy.

Pelosi says that Democrats will end dependency on foreign oil by 2010 - not by opening known oil reserves in the U.S., but by looking to the heartland for biofuels. This is "sound-good feel-good" pre-election rhetoric that cannot possibly succeed.

Do the math: the U.S. consumes 394 million gallons of gasoline each day. Because ethanol produces only about 76 percent of the mileage produced by regular unleaded gasoline, the "heartland" would have to produce 518 million gallons of ethanol fuel - for each day's consumption. Even blended with 15 per cent gasoline for E85 fuel, the "heartland" would still have to produce 440 million gallons of ethanol each day.

To meet this production requirement, an area more than twice the size of Texas - 358 million additional acres - would have to be planted in corn. Currently, all land planted in all crops totals only 442 million acres.

This simply is not going to happen. Even if there were another 358 million acres suitable for growing corn, the environmental lobby would never let it happen. They have successfully blocked the disturbance of a mere 2,000 acres of Alaska for nearly two decades. They have been on the warpath to prevent the use of genetically-modified seeds, and the use of industrial chemicals and fertilizers for years, to say nothing of the anti-irrigation campaigns going on around the country. A four-fold increase in corn production would mean a four-fold increase in all these practices that the environmental lobby has deemed to be "unsustainable." Nancy Pelosi's rhetoric is unrealistic pre-election pandering.

This so-called Democratic energy policy is just silly; the rest of the Democrat's agenda is dangerous. On the domestic side, Democrats seem eager to follow the European model of the socialist superstate, which provides "free" everything to everyone. Never mind that this model requires up to 70 per cent of total national production to sustain, and is responsible for the continuing decay of the European economy.

On the judicial front, Democrats are desperate to regain the White House before another Supreme Court Justice is appointed. One more less-than-liberal Justice will tilt the scale for another generation. This possibility gives Democrats nightmares.

It is the Democrat's view of foreign policy that is most troublesome. Under Democrat rule, the Kyoto Protocol would be immediately reinstated and sent to the Senate for ratification, as would be the International Criminal Court. The war on terrorism would be turned over to the U.N. and the U.N. would be turned over to corrupt bureaucrats to continue doing - or not doing - whatever they wish, accountable to no one.

Republicans must bear the responsibility for the current state of political affairs. They have had much help, of course, from the media, and from a large disloyal segment of the opposition. Nevertheless, should the Democrats succeed in taking the House in 2006, and the White House in 2008, it will not be because the Democrats have a better idea; it will be because the Republicans failed to deliver on the conservative principles they were elected to implement.

Henry Lamb is the executive vice president of the Environmental Conservation Organization (ECO), and chairman of Sovereignty International.



 

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