Think Progress has evidence that FreedomWorks, Dick Armey's army of teabaggers and patriots, was used to build grassroots support for their offshore drilling initiatives.

While BP has spent hundreds of millions building its brand, it has offshored the dirty work of promoting expanded drilling to right-wing front groups and trade associations. In a 2007 PowerPoint presentation obtained by ThinkProgress, BP appears to have been interested in fighting to open up protected waters to new offshore drilling. The presentation, organized by the BP-funded front group “Consumer Energy Alliance,” was delivered at the American Gas Association’s marketing meeting in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. The presentation calls for a five-year plan to build grassroots support to open wide swaths of both the East and West coasts to new drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf: (read more...)

No! Say it isn't so. After all, FreedomWorks condemned the federal government, the Obama administration and just about everyone else on their hit list in defense of BP just two days ago, accusing them of putting their boots on the neck of industry.

This shouldn't surprise anyone who has been paying attention, but what it proves beyond all doubt to me is how similar the Dick Armey model is to the Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon model. The Freedomworks' grassroots movement-building prototype is nearly a carbon copy of the Scanlon pitch for the combined PR/lobbying effort to Indian tribes.

The Abramoff-Scanlon Model

It goes like this: Scanlon sells the tribes on a full-service political solution to reach their goal. Here's the opener from a pitch to Michigan tribes:

The sell is a plan to 'form an army'. This army will, of course, be formed by the Scanlon-Abramoff team and will consist databases and campaigns created via targeted polls, databases, mailings, and 'grassroots' efforts. In the Abramoff model, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, and even Dick Armey were the go-to people for grassroots. One example used Reed's Christian Right groups to oppose one tribe's efforts to open a casino so Abramoff and Scanlon could pick up the pieces and convince that tribe to turn the verdict around using their services.

Here's one of their schemes with Grover Norquist in the center:

The money would then flow through non-profits to the pockets of Abramoff, Scanlon, Reed, Grover Norquist, and Dick Armey. Here's an excerpt outlining Grover Norquist's requirements for supplying grassroots support:

When pressed for details by the client on what a $50,000 contribution to Grover's organization will buy, Abramoff responds: "everything they need for him to do to win."

How noble of these slimy characters not to want to tip their opponents to think they're trying to buy the taxpayer movement even while admitting they are doing that very thing.

The FreedomWorks Model

From ThinkProgress again:

Slide 14 lists the groups involved in doing grassroots outreach. Under “affiliated groups,” FreedomWorks — a right-wing “grassroots” group that helped plan the tea parties and continues to lobby aggressively against clean energy reform — is listed along with the 60 Plus Association, the American Conservative Union, and others. U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute are some of the trade associations involved. Slide 14 also shows that BP is one of the member companies supporting the campaign.

Not a lot of difference between the two. Ralph Reed routinely rented out the Christian Right for Abramoff's causes. Now Dick Armey does it for his own causes. It would be interesting to know how much of Freedomworks Foundation's 2007 donations of $4 million were from BP. Or the percentage of the almost-$3 million donated in 2008. Of course, if they waited until 2009 to make the payoff, we might have awhile to wait before we know.

This is how right-wing grassroots armies are made. One dollar at a time.

The Shock Doctrine move by Conservative goons is on the move.  They re using the fear of rising gas prices to push the ridiculous notion that all will be saved if we drill in ANWR. If it didn't pass with the White House controlled by a conservative and Congress controlled by conservatives, how will it ever pass? I think the real reason they didn't get it pushed through before the 2006 election is because drilling for oil is very expensive and Cheney's blood brothers in the oil field really didn't want to spend the cash. Why bother with record profits lining their pockets...

AP Via Yahoo:

A federal appeals court has ordered Shell Oil to stop its exploratory drilling program off the north coast of Alaska at least until a hearing in August.

The order, issued Thursday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, comes after the federal Minerals Management Service in February approved Shell's offshore exploration plan for the Beaufort Sea.

Opponents contend that the Minerals Management Service approved Shell's plan without fully considering that a large spill would harm marine mammals, including bowhead and beluga whales. They say polar bears could also be harmed, and they question whether cleaning up a sizable spill would even be possible in the icy waters.

Company officials are obviously disappointed, said Shell spokesman Curtis Smith. Read more...

As a Californian and an environmentalist, this was a race I watched very closely. Despite our reputation as being the "far left," it is truly amazing how conservative California becomes as we move away from the shore. Pombo was considered a "safe seat" and his actions have done more to put California backwards environmentally than any other elected official in memory. Pombo's defeat was the sweet cherry on top of the Democratic majority in the House.

Alternet:

Rep. Richard 'Dick' Pombo is a Rep. no more.

Continue reading »

"House leaders late Wednesday abandoned an attempt to push through a hotly contested plan to open an Alaskan wildlife refuge to oil drilling, fearing it would jeopardize approval of a sweeping budget bill Thursday---The actions were a stunning setback for those who have tried for years to open a coastal strip of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, to oil development, and a victory for environmentalists, who have lobbied hard against the drilling provisions. President Bush has made drilling in the Alaska refuge his top energy priorities. read on"

This is another huge defeat for President Bush and shows his waning influence on issues that matter most to him.

Among Other Nicknames for Our Greatest Embarrassments

The Rittenhouse Review

Herewith continues a recent Rittenhouse Review series about the most recent votes of Pennsylvania’s twin -- and I mean that -- embarrassments in the upper chamber of the U.S. Capitol, collecting data from the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Sunday issue, “Area Votes in Congress,” from which these votes, by Sen. Gets It Wrong Every Time (R-Pa.) and Sen. Gets It Wrong Almost Every Time (R-Pa.), were culled:

Arctic drilling. Senators rejected, 51-49, a plan by Democrats requiring a higher hurdle for the Senate to approve drilling for oil and natural gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. This vote, which took place during debate on the federal budget (S. Con. Res. 18), will allow drilling approval on a simple majority vote; in previous years, supporters needed 60 votes to authorize drilling. A yes vote was to make it more difficult to approve drilling in the Arctic wildlife refuge.The Rittenhouse Review

Herewith continues a recent Rittenhouse Review series about the most recent votes of Pennsylvania’s twin -- and I mean that -- embarrassments in the upper chamber of the U.S. Capitol, collecting data from the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Sunday issue, “Area Votes in Congress,” from which these votes, by Sen. Gets It Wrong Every Time (R-Pa.) and Sen. Gets It Wrong Almost Every Time (R-Pa.), were culled: read on

LA TIMES: CANYON LAKE, Texas — A family tragedy unfolding in a Texas hospital during the fall of 1988 was a private ordeal -- without judges, emergency sessions of Congress or the raging debate outside Terri Schiavo's Florida hospice. The patient then was a 65-year-old drilling contractor, badly injured in a freak accident at his home. Among the family standing vigil at Brooke Army Medical Center was a grieving junior congressman -- U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas....read on
Sorry for your loss Tom. Please give us the same courtesy of doing the same. It's apparent that we all face these same challenges or will face them. (Update) Even Brother Paul has felt similar pain and made the same decision.

Jon Stewart traces the roots of off-shore drilling from Bush 41's initial ban, to both candidates' realistic and sensible positions against it, to both candidates' public opinion-pandering flip-flop in support of it.

Download | play Download | play

You really have to marvel at how the GOP is able to transform a problem they're primarily responsible for creating into an issue that they base their entire 2008 strategy on. What's worse, they somehow manage to convince a majority of Americans in the process that their so-called "solution" -- which is nothing other than a Big Oil land giveaway that would have ZERO short-term impact -- is somehow a great idea. It really is a classic example of what Naomi Klein has coined the "Shock Doctrine."