Obama Press Release: Email To McCain Campaign Regarding Conference Call On Public Financing
June 19, 2008 | Permalink
[Obama Campaign Email Sent To McCain Campaign On June 19, 2008]
This email is in regard to a conference call that McCain Campaign held today (Press Release and Audio available here).
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From: Bill Burton
To: Jill Hazelbaker (McCain Communications Director)
Subject: quick question about your conference callJill – hope you’re well. We’d like to add our campaign counsel, Bob Bauer to your conference call with Trevor Potter so that we can arbitrate some of the disagreements that the two of them have over the meeting they recently had. If you can please shoot me the dial-in, Bob is available to join for the first bit, go over his notes from the meeting with Mr. Potter and would be happy to take questions from him, the press corps or whomever. Sorry for the late notice.
We’re of course willing to split the cost of the call.
Hello –
Turn the page — politicians of any stripe — support their “Lobbyists and Industrialists and their related Sycophants” — pretending that they’re free of such influences — “Baloney!” Check this out: (E-Mail) June 23, 2008. Larry Rother, New York Times: “Obama Camp Closely Linked With Ethanol”:
When VeraSun Energy inaugurated a new ethanol processing plant last summer in Charles City, Iowa, some of that industry’s most prominent boosters showed up for instance, came to help cut the ribbon:
Leaders of the National Corn Growers Association and the Renewable Fuels Association, — and so did
Senator Barack Obama.
Then running far behind Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in name recognition and in the polls,
Mr. Obama was in the midst of a campaign swing through the state where he would eventually register his first caucus victory.
And as befits a senator from Illinois, the country’s second largest corn-producing state,
he delivered a ringing endorsement of ethanol as an alternative fuel.
Mr. Obama is running as a reformer who is seeking to reduce the influence of special interests.
But like any other politician, he has powerful constituencies that help shape his views.
And when it comes to domestic ethanol, almost all of which is made from corn,
he also has advisers and prominent supporters with close ties to the industry at a time when
energy policy is a point of sharp contrast between the parties and their presidential candidates.
In the heart of the Corn Belt that August day, Mr. Obama argued that embracing ethanol
“ultimately helps our national security, because right now we’re sending billions of dollars to some of the most hostile nations on earth.”
America’s oil dependence, he added, “makes it more difficult for us to shape a foreign policy that is intelligent and is creating security for the long term.”
Nowadays, when Mr. Obama travels in farm country,
he is sometimes accompanied by his friend Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader from South Dakota.
Mr. Daschle now serves on the boards of three ethanol companies and
works at a Washington law firm where,
according to his online job description, “he spends a substantial amount of time providing strategic and policy advice to clients in renewable energy.”
Mr. Obama’s lead advisor on energy and environmental issues, Jason Grumet,
came to the campaign from the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan initiative associated with Mr. Daschle and
Bob Dole, the Kansas Republican who is also a former Senate majority leader and a big ethanol backer who had close ties to the agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland.
Not long after arriving in the Senate,
Mr. Obama himself briefly provoked a controversy by flying at subsidized rates on corporate airplanes,
including twice on jets owned by Archer Daniels Midland, which is the nation’s largest ethanol producer and is based in his home state.
Jason Furman, the Obama campaign’s economic policy director, said
Mr. Obama’s stance on ethanol was based on its merits.
“That is what has always motivated him on this issue, and
will continue to determine his policy going forward,” Mr. Furman said.
Asked if Mr. Obama brought any predisposition or bias
to the ethanol debate because he represents a corn-growing state that stands to benefit from a boom,
Mr. Furman said, “He wants to represent the United States of America, and
his policies are based on what’s best for the country.”
Ethanol is one area in which Mr. Obama strongly disagrees with his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona.
While both presidential candidates emphasize the need for the United States to achieve “energy security” while also slowing down the carbon emissions that are believed to contribute to global warming,
they offer sharply different visions of the role that ethanol, which can be made from a variety of organic materials, should play in those efforts.
Mr. McCain advocates eliminating the multibillion-dollar annual government subsidies that domestic ethanol has long enjoyed.
As a free trade advocate, he also opposes the 54-cent-a-gallon tariff that the United States slaps on imports of ethanol made from sugar cane,
which packs more of an energy punch than corn-based ethanol and is cheaper to produce.
“Besides, it is wrong,” he added, to tax Brazilian-made sugar cane ethanol, “which is much more efficient than corn ethanol.”
Many economists, consumer advocates, environmental experts and tax groups
have been critical of corn ethanol programs as a boondoggle that benefits agribusiness conglomerates more than small farmers.
Those complaints have intensified recently as corn prices have risen sharply in tandem with oil prices and corn normally used for food stock has been diverted to ethanol production.
Absurd positions — for Brazilian and for Corn — “Ethanol = Moonshine” from various sources — particularly regarding the Brazilian Sugar Moonshine — are found in the rest of this article — neither “Ethanol = Moonshine” do anything to prevent Environmental Destruction, ED!
An Emailer wanted some additional information on CFR’s Brazilian sugarcane methanogenic anaerobic fermentation technology. He replied to my sending a Project outline that we had prepared with:
“I´m always in contact with Tad Patzek and David Pimentel about the agro-energy ethanol question.”
Keeping up with one side of the U. S. corn based ethanol-moonshine fiasco — he added:
“From my readings - but, and even more so, from my experience here in Brasil where
I work with landless peasants and sugarcane cutters,
I know that this “ethanol boom” is no more, no less than a huge hoax …
sooner rather than later, someone is going to say the equivalent of “the king´s got no clothes on”.”
The model that we have in Brasil -
the monocultive, latifundiary model is unsustainable
economically inviable
politically retrograde
socially excluding
culturally genocidal
- environmentally devastating.
I won´t say I´m a “canny” Scot, but it would take more than logic to convince me to invest money in this Brazilian model of production.
I´m a Scottish priest,
a member of the Land Pastoral Commission (CPT) here
in the sugar cane zone of Pernambuco, N.E. Brasil.
It used to be called “the Forest Zone” -
until the sugar barons knocked down 93% of it.
Well — lets say that’s one side of the Brazilian ethanol-moonshine circumstance, somehow — and it may reflect my own prejudices — I know he’s not on “Cool Ade”!
The New York Times Editorial — below — “The High Cost of Ethanol”:
Examines the Politics of Ethanol — with the exception of the fact that importation of Brazilian Ethanol —
partially blocked by an import duty —
might be a positive unless it is examined who suffers in Brazil when Ethanol is produced in Brazil —
Emphasizes the impact on current biofuel production from food and on agricultural land
wheat,
corn,
animal production
etc.
But when consideration is given to the impact of Politics; the Bush Administration, their “Consultants” and their “Lobbyists and Earmarkers and Political Sycophants” who do everything in their bag to promote U. S.That does not reduce import petroleum — the entire “Moonshine = Ethanol” only hurts the ‘Non-ethanolers’ and helps the ‘Greedy’ who eat off a misdirected subsidy!
Stop the “Moonshine = Ethanol” movement and Conserve — Stop Environmental Destruction, ED!
Best, Dick
http://www.CorpFutRes.com