Murkowski said wanted to protect the “mom and pop” oil companies from having to face large liabilities. Mom and pop oil companies?
If you can’t pay for your damages, you should not get a permit!
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Update May 18: Oklahoma Senator: Another Oil Company Whore
Inhofe Blocks Second Dem Attempt To Raise Oil Company Liability (VIDEO)
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Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan’s Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of “Hiking Idaho.” He also wrote “Beyond the Tetons” and “Backpacking Wyoming’s Teton and Washakie Wilderness.” He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
Comments
I bet she just received a nice campaign contribution form, let me guess, BP
So I guess I 99.5% agree with you… except for this…
http://motherjones.com/media/2009/11/why-its-not-smart-call-women-conservatives-whores
Bobby,
Thank you for an interesting link, but I disagree.
First of when we are talking about flat out sex for sale, there are both male and female whores. Wasn’t a prominent anti-gay leader just caught with a “rentboy?”
The word “whore” does not denote gender and certainly not when applied to someone who blatantly sells their vote for campaign contributions. Lisa Murkowski is featured as a whore here today because of her actions, not gender.
There are plenty of male politicians who whore.
I think the progress of feminism makes it so that “whore” cannot be a misogynistic word, but it is a strong word. I could say, “Lisa Murkowski,”person who has no values excect what money will buy.”
I do think it is amusing that right wing women who always said a woman’s place is at home, are now pretending they care about language and gender.
Fair enough, “whore” is certainly not the most sexist form of language that’s ever been used.
I’m still of the opinion that no one should call anyone a whore, notwithstanding people from all across the political spectrum using it to describe people they disagree with.
I’m neither right wing or woman, so I’m a little lost by the end of your reply.
Bobby and all,
We have ourselves a male oil company whore now.
Inhofe Blocks Second Dem Attempt To Raise Oil Company Liability (VIDEO)
I just called Senator Murkowski’s office at 202-224-6665 and gave her a piece of my mind.
I told her answering machine that if the taxpayers get stuck with one dime for the cleanup and restoration of environment and businesses affected, she should take a mop and bucket and go down the the gulf to clean up the mess herself.
She is UNBELIEVABLE!!!
She and Republican Boehner should be sent to swim in the oil slick
Alaskans must have a short term memory about the Supreme Court bailing out Exon for the Alaskan oil spill. I would think that Murkowski would be in deep political do do for supporting a cap on cleanup costs.
I get almost too depressed to comment on this one. She’s a legacy of her father, the last king of Alaska (for those who’ve seen the movie The Last King of Scotland). Our elected senators and reps hold lifetime positions unless they commit legal suicide. Frank Murkowski was actually a positive influence as an Alaska senator in Washington, the reason being that the he’s so abrasive and autocratic that he couldn’t accomplish any of his agenda in a gentlemen’s club requiring some semblance of social interaction and consensus building. His move to Alaskan governor gave him just the setting he lived for, the power to make people jump and do most anything he ordered. Fortunately, his ham-fisted way of wielding that power made him so unpopular that he came in third for re-election in his own party’s primary (One of his own campaign adds even admitted “Yes, I know I need a personality transplant!”). However, the legacy lives on because of all the qualified people in the state, he appointed his own daughter to his vacant senate seat. Her positions seem about the same, but her social skills considerably better. When she came up for election, it seemed almost inconceivable that a majority of even the harder-bitten Alaskans would rubber stamp such blatant nepotism against well-known former governor Tony Knowles. Then at the last minute, the rest of our delegation (Ted Stevens and Don Young) rallied and put out public ads raising the alarm that losing one of our seats from the Republican majority could seriously threaten the flow of federal funds. Given that horrific specter, conservatives turned out in force behind Murkowski. Now, of course Ted Stevens is gone, Don Young preoccupied spending his campaign war-chest fending off ethics complaints, and the Democrats in control of the house, senate and presidency. But Lisa Murkowski remains.
Lisa Murkowski, Ted Stevens, Sarah Palin… Alaskans sure know how to discredit themselves. If George Wallace or Lester Maddox had been Alaskans, just think of who the Alaskans would have been using aerial gunning on. Alaska the New Appalachia, even Bigger and Badder than the Original, YEEHAW!
mikarooni –
Actually, we’re guilty of most of the above – but can hardly be held responsible for Sarah Palin. People in the lower 48 should look in the mirror if they want to explain her, she has so completely re-branded herself from the person we elected governor (I use “we” loosely as I didn’t vote for her). It may surprise you that during her first year, she actually worked across the aisle and took her own party members to task for ethics lapses and even helped push through an oil tax increase to rectify their shameless sell-out for small change ($100s to a few $1,000 each; they thought they had nothing to fear from our toothless, lap-dog ethics enforcement system but never dreamed the FBI was in the room). She was not the most widely engaged chief executive but seemed a complete breath of fresh air after Frank Murkowski. It was Murkowski who basically made all the changes on predator control – completely ignoring the tourism boycott threats that had intimidated prior governors and saying we’re not only going to do a lot of it, but we’re going to use private volunteers to the maximum extent possible. The Palin administration really did nothing to add or detract from that.
The national election changed everything. She branded herself to appeal to lower-48 people, and she became embittered by the barrage of ethics complaints launched within the state, some of which in fairness were basically picked off the ground by a few zealots and thrown at her to see what would stick. She came back from that heady experience and basically neglected her job and the state – losing apparent support of even most republicans in the legislature. And she suddenly became very partisan to the point of being vindictive. I don’t know that she would even have been re-elected. She finally said, “I’m a super-star down south. Why am I taking this for peanuts when I can make $millions off impressionable people in the lower-48?!”
It’s sort of like BJ Hill shining the dudes. Just about every Alaskan is full of stories of bumping into people all over the world who are completely on fire and full of questions about Sarah Palin. In remote parts of Patagonia right after our presidential election, I had people who could hardly speak a word of English asking about Sarah Palin – before even mentioning Barack Obama. It may seem irresponsible, but most of us don’t have the energy or enthusiasm for debate with every one of these people. Many of them are nice, earnest folks and you just get tired of pricking their bubbles. She’s the nation’s problem now, not just ours. And if the nation can’t see what we saw, then I guess we’ve all got whatever’s coming.
You’re clearly correct about Caribou Barbie being our national problem now and pardon my frustration; but, she’s just the latest of a very long line of disappointingly bad Alaskan influences going back to the 1970s and before. Alaska is a beautiful place; I get frustrated waiting for that incredible scenery and environmental wealth to produce a leader worthy of it, a Muir, Church, Metcalf, Marshall, Udall, Brower, or maybe just a Babbitt. Alaska could lead in ways that redefine sustained use; but, instead, we get Rossi and warmed over Wildlife Services rhetoric. It’s irritating..
Money..all is about money. Caribu barbie sold herself just like Murkowski. And if people in Utah stand in line in freezing temps in the middle of the winter to get her signature at Costco book signing..figure it out…greed is the name of the game..power and money..I just wonder how is that Alaskans are voting for them? Is this the brain freeze?
PS. I love Alaska. I just wonder what motivates people of Alaska to elect officials like SP and before the Murkowski (father)
IzabelaM & mikarooni
If you figure it out, I’d be very interested to know myself. I obviously don’t hang out in typical circles because I know hardly anybody who’s voted for these people. I think to understand it better you’d have to spend time and figure out people in the Anchorage and the Mat-Su Valley around Wasilla, where well over half the population is. Since 2000, the population in the Mat-Su (Palin Country, basically the strip mall end of Alaska) has increased 42% compared with 10% for the state, with no change in Southeast. That means some regions, particularly bush areas, have lost considerable population and the state is becoming less diverse with political power ever more concentrated.
Actually, I can answer the question in part by recalling my late aunt and uncle. Many people of my generation came to Alaska in the 1970s for the outdoors and the environment but they came after WWII for opportunity. My uncle, fresh back from the Phillipines, purchased with his army buddy a 2 seat Taylorcraft on skis and a Parker side-by-side shotgun and hunted wolves for the $50 bounty. Later on, he was an oil pipeline foreman and settled with my aunt in Anchorage. They always voted pro-development and ended up disappointed about how the Knik causeway (now called Don Young Way – one of the two potential “Bridges to Nowhere”) was never built to bring them wealth from their speculative land holding over there, and how few roads they had to take their retirement motor home on, instead of the way it was always supposed to be in their golden years – an Alaska road map looking like “a plate of spaghetti”. I loved them dearly but we just never saw the same things in this state – I saw what was here and they saw what you could do with it.
Actually, I have to say we’ve had some good governors – and Jay Hammond – who was way too green for my aunt and uncle, was one of them. Tony Knowles, although an Anchorage restaurant owner, was certainly green in many ways – he commissioned the 1997 National Science Foundation review of Alaska predator control and tried to keep predator control completely bottled up by appointing a Board of Game that was basically the mirror image in representation of the current one. He was no doubt influenced by his chief of staff who has since been working for Oceana. Even former governor Wally Hickel who just passed away last week, although a big dreamer-development kind of guy (and Hammond’s political rival) put the great whales on the endangered species list during his brief stint as Secretary of Interior.
Okay, maybe I judged too quickly; I forgot about Hickel.