To Drill or Not to Drill....

--- In ThePublicSquare@yahoogroups.com, Mike Netherland wrote:

This is a message I sent this morning to Wayne Gilchrest. I wanted to send it to Roscoe Bartlett but his web site doesn't permit folks outside his district from giving him a piece of their minds. If anyone knows Rep Bartlett's e-mail address, please forward this to him.

Mike Netherland

Dear Congressman Gilchrest,
I quickly lost my appetite this morning as I read in the Sunday Capital (4-24-05) that you and your distinguished colleague and fellow "Republican" Rep. Roscoe Bartlett voted along with all the Democrats in Maryland to remove the provision allowing for drilling in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refugee (ANWR).

In doing so you keep company with those who secretly revel in such defections. Yours and Rep. Bartlett's votes and public positions will be used against ALL Republicans. You are not "independent-minded moderate politicians" as you will be portrayed in public. You are,
in fact, Democratic political campaign fodder.

I know you like to say you vote your conscience. And that is fine. But, hey, do us all a big favor and vote your conscience an an INDEPENDENT! Congressman, there is a reason why we have Democrats and Republicans and Independents and Greens and Communists and such. They are called "political parties." A political party is a group of like-minded people who band together to send a representative to Congress.

Think of it like this: A Green Party Congressman's LAST vote would be for allowing to take place drilling in the ANWR. He could say that he was only voting HIS conscience and that he was an "independent- minded" Green. Before the ink was dry on the edition of the "The Organic
Times" revealing his vote, amidst all the Republicans, the Green Party's clean-burning torches and pitchforks would be in the hands of tens of angry, tofu-eating yoga-meisters wending their way up Constitution Avenue towards his office.

The point is, Congressman, the Greens don't expect their party's representatives to vote for oil exploration. I know it's pretty simple but it illustrates my point: As a member of a political party there is very little room for voting your conscience. If this is what you want to do, then get out and run as an Independent or a Green. Let a "real" Republican represent us in Congress.

There are no qualifying or mitigating circumstances. There are only votes. And there is but two ways to vote. That's what it come down to, Congressman. Now I read your "position paper" on the Energy Bill. I see that you tried to make it better by voting for increased fuel efficiency mandates (CAFE) and making it easier to sue makers of MTBE's (a fuel additive that was supposed to make fuel burn cleaner...hmmmmm...great incentives there...I can just see
entrepreneurs risking everything in the name of fuel efficiency only to be flayed by the very congressmen who encouraged them in the first place) and to make it really difficult and expensive to use clean-burning natural gas by limiting the ability to locate LNG terminals (What's next, federal assistance to sue businesses trying to make "clean-burning natural gas" available to Americans? I can't wait for the toxic-by-product-of-ethanol-production lawsuits.).

No solutions in your position paper. None in Roscoe Bartlett's drivel about running out of oil which was apparently predicted back in 1950 by a Shell Oil scientist. We were supposed be running out out of food and water and places to live at about this time, too. What happened?

Just whining about tax breaks to "special interests" (as though letting slip the plantiff bar on MTBE makers and LNG shippers is not practically giving money to the Trial Lawyers and their Democratic beneficiaries) is not productive.

To sum up, you have no solutions and you voted to ensure that the rest of the Republicans had no solutions, either.

Thanks.