Democratic President Bill Clinton on the TOP 10 Vetoes on Oil

Nancy Pelosi loves to blame President Bush for all of the countries problems but here are the facts about the Democrats and the last Democratic President Bill Clinton on the TOP 10 Vetoes


10) ANWR If Bill Clinton had signed into law the Republican Congress's 1995 bill to allow drilling of ANWR instead of Vetoing it ANWR could be producing a million barrels of (non-Opec) oil a day--5% of the nation's consumption. Although speaking in another context, even Democrat Senator Charles Schumer no proponent of ANWR drilling, admits that "one million barrels per day," would cause the price of gasoline to fall "50 cents a gallon almost immediately," according to a recent George Will column.

9) Coastal Drilling (i.e., not in my backyard) Democrats have consistently fought efforts to drill off the U.S. coast, as evidenced by Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's protestation against a failed 2005 bill: "Not only does this legislation dismantle the bi-partisan ban on offshore drilling, but it provides a financial incentive for states to do so."
A financial incentive? With the Chinese now slant drilling for oil just 50 miles off the Florida Coast, wouldn't that have been a good thing?

8) Insistence on alternative fuels One of the first acts of the new Democrat-controlled congress in 2007 was an energy bill that "calls for a huge increase in the use of ethanol as a motor fuel and requires new appliance efficiency standards." By focusing on alternative fuels such as ethanol, and not more drilling, Democrats have added to the cost of food, worsening starvation problems around the word and increasing inflationary pressures in the U.S., including prices at the pump.

7) Nuclear power Even the French, who sometimes seem to lack the backbone to stand up for anything other than soft cheese, faced down their environmentalists over the need for nuclear power. France now generates 79% of its electricity from nuclear plants, mitigating the need for imported oil. The French have so much cheap energy that France has become the world's largest exporter of electric power. They have plans in place to build more reactors, including an experimental fusion reactor.

The last nuclear reactor built in the United States, according to the US Dept of Energy, was the "River Bend" plant in Louisiana. Its construction began in March of 1977.

Need I say more?

6) Coal "The liquid hydrocarbon fuel available from American coal reserves exceeds the crude oil reserves of the entire world," writes Dr. Arthur Robinson in an article on humanevents.com. The U.S. has approximately one-fourth of the world's known, proven coal reserves. Coal would be a proven, and increasingly clean, source of electric power and--at current prices--a liquified fuel that would reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Yet Dems and their enviro friends have fought, and continue to fight, both coal-mining and coal plants.

5) Refinery capacity "High oil prices are still being propped up by a shortage of refinery capacity and there is little sign of the bottleneck easing until 2010," according to Peak Oil News. And, while voters in South Dakota have approved zoning for what could become the first new oil refinery in the United States in 30 years, the Dems' environmentalist constituency vows to oppose it, just like environmentalists opposed the floodgates that could have saved New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina.

4) Reduced competition With consolidation in the oil industry, has come reduced competition. Remember, most of the major oil company mergers -- Shell-Texaco, BP-Amoco, Exxon-Mobil, BP-ARCO, and Chevron-Texaco -- happened on Clinton's watch. The number of oil refiners dropped from 28 to 19 companies during Clinton's two terms.

3) The Global Warming Myth At a Group of 8 meeting this week, host and Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Akira Amari "described the issues of climate change and energy as two sides of the same coin and proposed united solutions ... to address both issues simultaneously". As a result of Global Warming hysteria, the Al Gore-negotiated Kyoto Protocol created a worldwide market in carbon-emissions trading. Both 2005 --the year that trading was initiated--and this year --when the trading expanded dramatically -- saw substantial and unexpected price spikes in the cost of oil, leading us to reason Number...

2) Speculation "Given the unchanged equilibrium in global oil supply and demand over recent months amid the explosive rise in oil futures prices ... it is more likely that as much as 60% of the today oil price is pure speculation," writes F. William Engdahl, an Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. According to a June 2006 US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report, US energy futures historically "were traded exclusively on regulated exchanges within the United States... The trading of energy commodities by large firms on OTC electronic exchanges was exempted from (federal) oversight by a provision inserted at the behest of Enron and other large energy traders into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000." The bill was signed into law by Bill Clinton, in one of his last acts in office.

1) Defeat of President Bush's 2001 energy package According to the BBC, "Key points of Bush('s 2001) plan were to:

-Promote new oil and gas drilling

-Build new nuclear plants

-Improve electricity grid and build new pipelines -$10bn in tax breaks to promote energy efficiency and alternative fuels



A New York Times article, dated May 18, 2001, explained:


May 18, 2001
Bush, Pushing Energy Plan, Offers Scores of Proposals to Find New Power Sources
By DAVID E. SANGER with JOSEPH KAHN NEW YORK TIMES
Check out the Times Click Here article
NEVADA, Iowa, May 17 — President Bush began an intensive effort today to sell his plan for developing new sources of energy to Congress and the American people, arguing that the country had a future of "energy abundance" if it could break free of the traditional antagonism between energy producers and environmental advocates.
Mr. Bush's plea for a new dialogue came as his administration published the report of an energy task force containing scores of specific proposals — many that he can impose by executive order — for finding new sources of power and encouraging a range of new energy technologies.
His critics swarmed over the specifics, noting that the plan set no targets for improved energy efficiency, offered no short-term relief for out-of-control electricity prices in the West and provided only modest financing for research into clean energy technology.
The president appeared at a highly efficient heating and cooling plant near St. Paul that burns a variety of fuels, including oil, coal and waste wood, to sound a theme he plans to repeat day after day. The parties in the energy debate have "yelled at each other enough," Mr. Bush said. "Now it's time to listen to each other."
"Too often Americans are asked to take sides between energy production and environmental protection," Mr. Bush added, before flying here, to a farming town north of Des Moines, to continue his argument at a small biomass plant that makes power by burning materials derived from animal waste and plants. "As if people who revere the Alaskan wilderness do not also care about America's energy future; as if the people who produce America's energy do not care about the planet their children will inherit."
Mr. Bush appeared to be weaving a careful political thread, arguing that if America failed to act now, "this great country could face a darker future, a future that is, unfortunately, being previewed in rising prices at the gas pump and rolling blackouts in the great state of California."
Mr. Bush also said rising energy prices had put an intolerable burden on families and farmers. But some of the statistics in his own report seemed to undercut that claim. One chart showed that the share of disposable household income spent on energy had declined to less than 5 percent today from 8 percent during the early days of the Reagan administration. (That percentage has begun to rise again, but only to the levels of the mid-1990's, before a sharp drop in energy prices.)
Mr. Bush talked not only of blackouts but of blackmail, raising the specter of a future in which the United States is increasingly vulnerable to foreign oil suppliers. He argued, for example, that the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, which he wants to open to drilling, can produce 600,000 barrels of oil a day for the next 47 years. "That happens to be exactly the amount the United States now imports from Iraq," he said.
Opening the Alaskan refuge to drilling is just one source of contention with Democrats and some moderate Republicans, many of whom argue that the Bush administration has put undue emphasis on increasing supplies of fossil fuels at the expense of the environment.
Critics say that although the report seems designed to suggest a balanced approach, it minimizes the potential role of alternative sources of energy and the possibility of reducing future demand through efficiency and conservation.
"America must embrace the promise offered by new technologies," said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut. "The energy crisis is not an excuse for creating an environmental crisis."
Republicans offered far more support for the president. Senator Frank H. Murkowski of Alaska, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, said he planned hearings next week to begin consideration of 25 recommendations in the Bush report that require legislative action.
"Not everyone is going to like this plan," Mr. Murkowski said, "but at least now we have a plan to kick around."
He said the previous administration had failed to grapple with the nation's energy sources through a comprehensive plan. Clinton administration officials disputed the assertion and blamed Congress for failing to enact energy legislation.
Yet even Mr. Murkowski sounded a note of caution about Mr. Bush's approach. He said the report offered few immediate remedies for California's electricity crisis or for rising gasoline prices. He said Republicans might have to consider a gas-tax rollback or the temporary suspension of some environmental provisions to address supply bottlenecks.
Mr. Bush was praised by many groups for laying out a long-term energy policy. His report contained 105 initiatives — although many of them are endorsements of actions already in place. And while in his public comments he always started with talk of conservation, the report itself was much more specific when it came to tapping new supplies.
"No matter how much we conserve, we're still going to need more energy," he said here this afternoon. "The State of California is the second best state at conservation, and yet they are still running out of energy."
Among those who took a different view was former president Jimmy Carter, who wrote in The Washington Post this morning that the United States did not confront an energy crisis comparable to those of 1973 and 1979.
"World supplies are adequate and reasonably stable, price fluctuations are cyclical, reserves are plentiful," he argued. Mr. Carter said "exaggerated claims seem designed to promote some long-frustrated ambitions of the oil industry at the expense of environmental quality."
Some chapters of the energy plan resemble the annual reports issued by energy companies, with color photos of bears living happily in the wilderness, forests that can absorb carbon dioxide and fly-fishermen wading in pristine water, practicing the favorite sport of the report's main author, Vice President Dick Cheney.
While the report clinically assessed all the available sources of energy and promised to encourage development of those that do the least environmental damage, it fell far short of describing the moon-shot approach to efficiency and renewable energy that was an ambition of the Carter years.

The End of a Presidential Term

Why is it that at the end of every Presidential term weather Democrat or Republican both parties throw out any since of decency when making decisions that will win favor for themselves once they leave office.

Here one of many scandals with the President Bill Clinton leaving office

By DAVID JOHNSTON AND DON VAN NATTA JR.
Published: February 23, 2001 New York Times Article

The furor over President Bill Clinton's pardons intensified today as Congressional investigators focused on Roger Clinton and his efforts to win pardons for friends and associates from his half brother.
In discussions with Bill Clinton, Roger Clinton sought clemency for about 10 people, although he had not been paid for his efforts, said Julia Payne, an aide to the former president. Ms. Payne added that all of the requests had been denied. Congressional officials said they were investigating Roger Clinton's assertions that he had pressed for the pardons without pay.
As Congressional investigators broadened their inquiry in Washington, federal prosecutors in New York in the office of United States Attorney Mary Jo White expanded their criminal inquiry to determine whether efforts were made to buy pardons in some cases, the officials said.
While the investigations rapidly accelerated beyond the initial inquiry into Mr. Clinton's pardon of the fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters today that she played no role in any of the dozens of pardons that her husband granted. She expressed chagrin that her brother Hugh Rodham accepted a large fee as a pardon lobbyist. [Excerpts, Page A15.]
In another development, Clinton aides said today that Mrs. Clinton's Senate campaign treasurer helped obtain last-minute pardons for two convicted felons from President Clinton. The treasurer, William Cunningham III, a New York lawyer, is the law partner of Harold Ickes, an adviser to the Clintons.
In an interview today, Mr. Ickes said a friendcame to him in January, and asked him to help obtain pardons for James Manning and Robert Fain, who had been convicted in 1982 on tax evasion charges. Mr. Ickes said he told the friend that he was not practicing law, and so referred him to Mr. Cunningham, a former assistant United States attorney. A lawyer knowledgeable about the case identified the friend as Harry Thomason, a television producer and Arkansas friend of the Clintons.
Mr. Cunningham, who is with the firm of Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein in Mineola, N.Y., drew up the paperwork and on Jan. 16 sent it to the pardon office at the Department of Justice. Mr. Ickes's partner at the Washington firm of Ickes & Enright, Janice Enright, sent the pardon applications to the White House, Mr. Ickes said.
Mr. Ickes said that he had had no discussions with President Clinton or Mrs. Clinton about the pardons and that he had received no money. He said Mr. Cunningham charged the men on an hourly basis, receiving a total of about $4,000.
Roger Clinton's lobbying became known one day after Hugh Rodham, President Clinton's brother-in-law, agreed to return a fee of $400,000 that he had beenpaid to help two men who received a presidential pardon and a grant of clemency on Jan. 20, Mr. Clinton's last day in office.
Former White House aides said tonight that Roger Clinton had given the president a list of pardon candidates in 1998 and another list in December or January, when he made a personal appeal to his brother. None of those people received pardons.
The pardons, along with expensive gifts that the Clintons took with them as they left office, have clouded Mrs. Clinton's effort to establish herself as the new Democratic senator from New York. Even so, she swept into a Senate office building and coolly responded to reporters' questions.
''I was just heartbroken and shocked by it,'' she said of the payment to her brother. ''And, you know, immediately said it was a terrible misjudgment and the money had to be returned.''
Mrs. Clinton suggested that had she known in advance of her brother's lobbying effort, she would have tried to stop it.
Congressional investigators have asked Mr. Rodham to explain his role in the successful effort to obtain pardons for Carlos Vignali, a convicted drug dealer, and Almon Glenn Braswell, an herbal supplement marketer convicted of fraud and perjury. Prosecutors for Ms. White, the United States attorney in New York, are also investigating the pardons.
Mr. Rodham's lawyer, Nancy Luque, has said her client did nothing wrong.
Today, Sheriff Lee Baca of Los Angeles County issued a statement saying Mr. Rodham telephoned him in January during the effort to obtain a pardon for Mr. Vignali. Sheriff Baca said Mr. Rodham told him that he would soon receive a call from an unidentified ''staff assistant.''
When the staff assistant called, the sheriff said, he was asked his opinion of Mr. Vignali's father, Carlos Vignali Sr., and whether the pardon should be granted. He said he replied that he was not familiar with the facts of the case.
In a letter sent to Roger Clinton today, investigators on the House Government Reform Committee asked whether he had been paid by anyone seeking a pardon or commutation from his half brother.
Specifically, investigators asked whether Roger Clinton had played any role in the pardons and commutations granted to four people. They are Mr. Vignali, a California first-time offender convicted in 1994 of conspiring to sell 800 pounds of cocaine; Mr. Braswell, a Miami businessman who was convicted of mail fraud and perjury in 1983; Philip Young, a Louisiana man convicted in 1992 of illegal transport of fish and wildlife; and Mitchell Couey Wood, who was convicted of cocaine possession charges in 1986 in Arkansas.
Congressional investigators said they had information that Roger Clinton received $30,000 from Mr. Vignali and $15,000 from Mr. Young. But the investigators cautioned that they had received no hard evidence of the payments. Mr. Young's lawyer, Gene O'Daniel, did not return phone calls to his office today.
A Clinton aide who spoke with Roger Clinton today said Mr. Clinton said that he did not know Philip Young, and that he had not received money in exchange for supporting applications for clemency. The pardon request for Mr. Young, the aide said, went to the Justice Department, then forwarded to the White House.
Mr. Wood and Roger Clinton were the subjects in a federal cocaine inquiry in Arkansas in the 1980's. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last month, Mr. Wood said he had applied for a pardon several years ago and had not ''seen Roger in 15 years.''
On Jan. 20, Roger Clinton, 44, himself received a pardon for a 1985 cocaine possession conviction for which he had served one year in prison. Last week, Roger Clinton was arrested and charged with drunken driving and disturbing the peace after an altercation in Los Angeles.
In developments related to the initial investigation, documents given today to the House Government Reform Committee confirmed that Denise Rich, Mr. Rich's former wife, made three contributions totaling $450,000 to the Clinton presidential library. The records also show that Beth Dozoretz, the former Democratic National Committee fund-raiser and friend of Ms. Rich, promised to raise $1 million for the library.
But the library foundation declined to comply with requests for a number of other documents, including a a list of individuals who donated or pledged more than $5,000.
The documents turned over to investigators were heavily edited, eliminating the identities of all the donors except Ms. Rich and Ms. Dozoretz. The documents also included letters to Ms. Rich and Ms. Dozoretz, which asked them for still more contributions and fund-raising assistance to the library foundation. The letters are dated Jan. 16 and were mailed as Mr. Clinton was deliberating the pardons.
''As the Clinton administration draws to a close, it is time to reflect upon the tremendous accomplishments of his presidency and to thank you again for all that you have done over the past several years in support of the president,'' wrote Peter M. O'Keefe, the library's director of development.
David E. Kendall, a foundation lawyer, said the request for documents violated the First Amendment rights of the contributors and represented an ''intrusion'' into the operation of a presidential library.
Representative Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican who chairs the government reform committee, said Mr. Kendall's answer was ''unacceptable.'' The committee made plans to subpoena Skip Rutherford, the president of the Clinton library.

We all know what Clinton did since then and now President George Bush is starting on his final exit with Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince like Presidents before them of both parties the First Bush / Reagan / Carter / Ford /Johnson and further on with every administration they all seem to throw there morals out the door for money.

Why is the president of the United States entertaining Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince, Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, at Camp David when his own State Department has singled out the Sheik’s homeland, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), for its continuing violations of human rights?Abu Dhabi is one of seven oil-rich — and anti-Israel states — in the United Arab Emirates. Using its massive sovereign wealth fund of over $875 billion, Abu Dhabi has been gobbling up American assets, buying considerable stakes in U.S. businesses like Citigroup, the Carlyle Group, Advanced Micro Devices, and Toll Brother and is now bidding on the Chrysler Building.

At the same time, the U.S. Department of State has singled out the U.A.E. for its continuing violation of human rights. Here’s what it said in its latest report for 2007:
“Citizens did not have the right to change their government. In some cases, security forces reportedly employed flogging as judicially sanctioned punishment. Arbitrary detention and incommunicado detention remained problems…”“The judiciary lacked full independence. The government restricted civil liberties, including freedoms of speech, press (including the Internet), assembly, association, and religion. There were limited reports of corruption, and the government lacked transparency.”“Domestic abuse of women remained a problem, and there were allegations that it was sometimes enabled by police. Trafficking in women and children and legal and societal discrimination against women and non-citizens also remained problems.”“The government severely restricted workers' rights, and the abuse of foreign domestic servants remained a problem…Political organizations, political parties, and trade unions are illegal.”Last year, Sheik Mohammed was dismissed from a Houston lawsuit brought by a former adviser to the U.A.E. royal family, alleging that he aided and abetted his brother Sheik Issa in brutal torture and false imprisonment. Without ruling on the merits of the plaintiff’s claims, the Court held that Sheik Mohammed had sovereign immunity and could not be tried because, among other things, such torture had not been demonstrated to be illegal in the U.A.E.And, apparently, torture it was: tapes provided to the Associated Press “showed a man who appeared to be Sheik Issa beating another man with lumber, firing an automatic weapon into the sand around him and forcing an apparent cattle prod into his anus. The victim also appeared to have been partly run over by a SUV and had salt poured on his wounds… Lawyers said the video also showed the victim's genitals being lit on fire. They said the abuse began because the sheik felt he had been overcharged in a grain deal.”The suit against Sheik Issa continues. After the release of the embarrassing tapes, the Embassy of the U.A.E. in the U.S. refused to comment on the lawsuit, since it is not actually against the government of the U.A.E., nor has the Embassy commented on the brutality of the documented torture. No action has been taken against the Crown Prince’s brother.The U.A.E. does not permit Israeli citizens to enter the country and gives special scrutiny to those with Israeli stamps on their passports. Here’s what the U.S. State Department reported on institutionalized anti-Semitism:“There was a small resident non-citizen Jewish population of unknown size. There were no synagogues. There were no reported acts of physical violence against or harassment of Jewish persons, however, anti-Semitism in the media was present in articles and editorial cartoons, which depicted negative images of Jews. These expressions occurred primarily in the government affiliated daily newspapers Al-Ittihad (government-owned) Al-Bayan (government-owned), and Al-Khaleej (pro-government, privately owned). The articles and cartoons appeared without government response.”So why is the Crown Prince at Camp David? Maybe they’re talking about the obscene price of oil. Or, if history is any guide, one outcome of the visit might be a big donation to the George W. Bush Presidential Library. If Bush follows Clinton’s example — and his own father’s — he’ll be spending a lot of time at Camp David with prospective rich donors in the next six months.One thing that is likely missing from the agenda is a discussion of human rights.

Trust me this will never end either. If McCain or Obama win the white house we will be talking about this again in 4 to 8 years. There is no party Exempt from being Stuck on stupied

Anthony Landaeta