Seattle is buzzing with chit chat of the new giant slayer, Maria Cantwell, junior Senator of Washington. It's said that she feels she is the new "Scoop" Jackson of international relations fame. Little Maria took on Senator Steven of Alaska, one of the DC beltway's most powerful voices for energy and commerce. And she got a delay.
It's now been over two and a half decades since early fossil fuel explorations proved that billions upon billions of oil barrels and untold cubic feet of natural gas are languishing under the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. We all know that economic activity in Alaska is confined to resource extraction and management. That's the fishery in the Gulf of Alaska, timber, minerals, and of course fossil fuels.
This find became public as the Alaskan pipeline came on line and the prospect of additional fossil fuel extraction swept a mostly poor state. Senator Stevens stepped forward to expedite further exploration so that the size of the find could be assessed. Not to happen. Enviro- extremists organized to stop any further fossil fuel drilling and extraction from Alaska by pressuring a strong majority Democrat House and Senate to take ANWR off America's drilling inventory. That was 25 years ago.
Segway to today's Congress where Republicans now rule. You'd think that conservatives might consider that they are being attacked by Democrats for energy prices. That's energy prices that are high because of Democrat resistance to fossil fuel exploration and extraction. That the Democrats that stop all refinery capacity enlargement. That's the Democrats that tax fuel more than any other product other than tobacco. That's the Democrats that lie and cheat about who's responsible for all of our energy shortages.
The House and senate have approved ANWR drilling straight up. Cantwell and her "friends" are using every method to subvert the will of the people. She might have stepped on the wrong man's toes. Cantwell after all lives in a glass house. She was elected in a Seattle "miraculous" recount, the practice for the governor's recount of 2004 where thousands of votes appeared to overturn early leads by the Republican.
More interesting was that Cantwell ran on a "no money from special interet groups" campaign pledge. So she borrowed a few million during the campaign. Then when she was elected, she used Hillary Clinton and Senator Edwards to raise money from special interests which they delivered to her to get around campaign laws. Since the dough was collected by others, she claimed she needn't disclose her contributors.
Then Maria led a group of "intellectual" women on a visit to Cuba. The recounts of their clam bakes and mutual respect cooing were not found in Seattle's papers, but in the New York Times. It's there that she was quoted saying: "That Fidel is a Merlot man, as opposed to Seattle's Chardonnay drinking progressive men." Never mind that Fidel is one of the world's most prolific mass murderers. He is after all progressive, whatever that means.
I suspect that Stevens will remember how precarious Maria's house of cards truly might be. Keep posted.
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