Democracy for New Mexico

Join AFL-CIO, Working Families in ABQ Today to Protest Gas Prices and Giveaways to Big Oil

The latest federal legislation aimed at tamping down windfall profits for the big oil companies, as well as out-of-control speculation that's a big factor in driving up gas prices, was blocked by Repub Senators yesterday. GOP Senators even used a filibuster threat to stop the extension of tax credits for solar and wind energy, some of which have lapsed and some that will sunset at the end of the year. This last move will almost certainly damage alternative energy development businesses in New Mexico, causing the loss of more good-paying jobs down the road.

Good going Pete Domenici and crew. As always, GOP Senators buckled to pressure from Bush, who had threatened to veto the bills if they came to his desk. The Big Oil cronies like things just the way they are -- transferring huge gobs of money from ordinary people into the hands of their wealthy friends and supporters -- as profits and prices skyrocket for goods and transportation.

This latest Repub move to protect Big Oil -- regardless of the consequences -- follows on the heels of their blocking climate change legislation last week that would have enacted a much-needed cap and trade program and requirements designed to rein in rampant oil futures speculation and price fixing.

The boondoggle continues. Big donors to the GOP cause prosper beyond all reason. Working people suffer. Bush doesn't care. Worst of all -- prez candidate John McCain wants to continue Bush's energy horror show for at least four more years.

Join Today's Protest
AFL-CIO members, their families and local citizens won't take it sitting down. They'll join together this afternoon to speak out and protest the record high gas prices. The event will take place at the Shell gas station located at 5210 Central Avenue SE (at San Mateo), at 4:30 PM. Plans for the protest were sparked this week when the national average price of gas hit $4 on Monday, June 9, 2008, up from $1.47 the week President Bush took office.

"This is the first time in our nation’s history that gas has hit such a record high. The price of gas is literally choking working men and women out the American dream. It’s time for Pres. Bush and Sen. McCain to stop the giveaways to their friends in Big Oil and instead start sticking up for working people at home,” said Chris Chavez, Executive Director of the New Mexico State Federation.

At today's protest, union members and citizens will be calling on President Bush to boost the local economy in New Mexico and invest in jobs and energy independence. They will also be calling for an end to tax breaks that benefit Big Oil. The Albuquerque event is one of sixty happening nationwide as part of an AFL-CIO campaign to call on solutions to the record high gas prices.

WHO:  AFL-CIO working families in New Mexico
WHAT: Protest against soaring gas prices
WHERE: Shell Gas Station, 5210 Central Ave. SE (San Mateo & Central)
WHEN: Wednesday June 11th, 4:30-5:00 PM

Think about this: McCain's corporate tax cut proposal alone would give the five largest oil companies $3.8 billion in tax breaks. McCain loves big breaks for Big Oil.

I like this quote:

Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, called the tax breaks given to the oil companies "the largest packet of corporate welfare" ever granted by the U.S. Congress.

"Last year Exxon Mobile made $83,000 a minute in profits. Are they using all this profit to invest in alternative fuels? How about increasing refinery capacity? Oh no, they've got their hand out to us. This is the nerve," she told colleagues. "What nerve does it take for us to give oil companies $17 billion in taxpayer money with those kind of profits? This is like the twilight zone."

AFL-CIO President President John Sweeney had this to say: "Record gas prices are choking off the American Dream for millions of working families. When gas costs $4 a gallon, it defies logic that President Bush and Sen. McCain continue to support massive tax giveaways for Big Oil, while offering no real path to energy independence.  Are Bush and McCain so dangerously out of touch that they think the answer to the gas price crisis is billions more in tax breaks to ExxonMobil?"

At the rallies this week, AFL-CIO working families will highlight the oil industry's massive profits under George Bush -– which top $525 billion -– as prices have skyrocketed from $1.47 a gallon when Bush took office to a historic high of $4 a gallon today.

McCain's Dismal Energy Record
Union members will also raise awareness about Sen. McCain's record in support of the oil industry's interests, and highlight his lack of empathy for working families who are struggling. In addition to proposing massive tax giveaways for Big Oil, McCain has repeatedly voted to protect the oil industry's profits, even as they're squeezing working families at the pump. McCain voted against curtailing oil companies' windfall profits to give working families a tax cut in 2005, and he skipped a vote in 2007 that would have repealed tax breaks for Big Oil. Despite the economic woes facing working families, McCain asserted again last week that he believes the fundamentals of the economy are "very strong."

"Working people are getting battered in today's economy, and they're fed up with business as usual," Sweeney said. "It's more than the gas prices. The economy is bleeding jobs and people's stagnant paychecks can't cover the grocery and housing bills. Record gas prices are part of a much larger problem –- leaders like Bush and McCain have handed the reins of the economy over to Big Oil and other corporate interests whose only concern is maximizing their profit margins."

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82% Now Believe Country on Wrong Track; 31% Approve of Bush

The GOP and its candidates at every level have a lot to worry about in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, especially with a presidential candidate whose positions on most major issues mirror Bush's in almost every detail:

Eighty-two percent of Americans now say the country's seriously off on the wrong track, up 10 points in the last year to a point from its record high in polls since 1973. And 31 percent approve of Bush's job performance overall, while 66 percent disapprove.

The country’s mood – and the president’s ratings – are suffering from the double whammy of an unpopular war and a faltering economy. Consistently for the past year, nearly two-thirds of Americans have said the war in Iraq was not worth fighting. And consumer confidence is near its lowest in weekly ABC News polls since late 1985.

... Bush now has gone 40 months without majority approval, beating Truman's record (also during economic discontent and an unpopular war) of 38 months from 1949-52.

When Will It End if McCain Has His Way?

Attacks on U.S. troops over the past two days killed six soldiers, the U.S. military said Wednesday, pushing the military's death toll in Iraq for April to 48, the highest for a single month since September. Fierce fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City fuelled the bloodshed in April, with at least 1,073 people killed across Iraq and the US military's toll hitting a seven-month high. According to data collected by the interior, health and defense ministries and made available to AFP, 966 civilians were killed in April, as were 69 police officers and 38 soldiers. Read more. Visit the site Iraq Coalition Casualtiesicasualties.org for statistics on troops wounded and killed.

Technorati Tags:Iraq, MoveOn, political ads, mission accomplished, George Bush, McCain

Who's Really Out of Touch? Bush III, Er, McCain

For a painful picture of the horrible economic impacts to New Mexico of the Iraq occupation -- and McCain's Iraq and tax plan proposals -- see this post on Clearly New Mexico. Already, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has show in a recent report that New Mexico ranks 6th in the nation for income inequality. This will only get worse if McCain is allowed to carry Bush II's agenda into another presidential term. Know anyone who seems attracted to the "maverick" McCain? Make sure they get the facts.

Technorati Tags: John McCain George Bush Out of Touch Progressive Media

McCain's Lobbyist Campaign Manager Wows the Crowd at Tamaya

UPDATE: Also see Ali's post at Clearly New Mexico for her take on the meeting and a video clip.
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McCain campaign manager Rick Davis at GOP meeting
in Bernalillo, New Mexico today

Not really, but he probably thinks he did. Republican lobbyists like Rick Davis who have ties to both the telecom industry and Ukrainian/Russian oligarchs are like that. They're used to getting attention and they're used to getting their way. Surprised that alleged "ethical reformer" and "maverick" John McCain has a lobbyist running his campaign? You shouldn't be. His campaign staff is loaded with them.

Words and actions are apparently two different things in McCain's world. Tell the people what they want to hear and then do what your corporate masters dictate to maximize profits. It's the oldest game in the book, and it's used unsparingly by our oldest presidential candidate.

Liberals!
Davis spoke today at the confab of GOP state party chairs and RNC bigwigs that's underway at the pricey Hyatt Regency Tamaya out at Santa Ana Pueblo near Bernalillo. Besides predicting victories and trying to convince his fellow Repubs that all is well in right-wing electionland this year, Lobbyist Davis pulled out this chart to try and impress the troops:

No, your eyes aren't fooling you -- there's a dirty word in plain sight on that humongous chart. LIBERAL! Davis must have thought he was very clever, showing how the percentage of Americans who identify Obama and Clinton as LIBERAL has been climbing. As if that's a bad thing or, as the chart claims, that our Dem prez candidates are "well to the left of the American electorate."

I guess it all depends on how you define LIBERAL and LEFT. Davis might be surprised to learn that polling continually shows that the majority of Americans agree with the core values held by LIBERALS. They're strongly for ending the quagmire in Iraq. They're demanding universal health care in no uncertain terms, and schools that turn out well-rounded, articulate human beings rather than test automatons. They want greedy, bottom-line obsessed financial institutions and corporations reined in to serve humans instead of the other way around. They want to be paid a living wage. They want to switch to renewable energy and clean up the environment. They want unrigged justice and a level playing field for all. And they want to keep the lobbyists like Davis as far from the political process as possible.

Mr. Lobbyist
Just who is McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis and what does he do for a living? Christy Hardin Smith of Firedoglake and Huffington Post offers some tasty tidbits:

-- Rick Davis arranged a cocktail meet and greet with McCain and a Russian businessman, Oleg Deripaska, so controversial that the US has revoked his visa -- at an economic conference in Switzerland. Davis' lobbying firm was trying to secure business with the Russian at the time, while the firm was already representing a competing political interest in Ukraine.

-- Mr. Davis, while working with the McCain 2008 campaign, also managed to procure a fat internet services contract from the campaign and kept lobbying for clients whose interests were opposed to McCain's own policy pronouncements.

--It seems that Davis has quite a few money-scandal skeletons in his closet:

Davis is a particularly easy target, having several money-related scandals in his background. A veteran of the Reagan administration, Davis ran McCain's presidential bid six years ago. He also founded a lobbying firm -- Davis, Manafort Inc. -- which has made at least $2.8 million lobbying Congress since 1998.

Over the past eight years, Davis' two roles often overlapped. In 1999, while he was McCain's campaign manager, his firm represented SBC Communications Inc. and Comsat Corp. At that time, both communications companies had controversial mergers pending at the Federal Communications Commission. The Senate Commerce Committee has legislative authority over the FCC, and McCain was chairman of that committee. Both mergers were eventually approved....

There's lots more on Davis, and other lobbyists who work for McCain, but you get the idea. Mr. Straight Talk's campaign is run by a prominent Crooked Talker.

McCain Attempts Mea Culpa
And where was McCain today -- on the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.? Trying to make amends for his history of colluding with the equality-impraired -- and battling against the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday -- by speaking at the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. Where he got booed, rained on and hassled. He also dissembled to the press about his dismal civil rights record, and became irritated when pressed. But at least he's not LIBERAL.