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The
The INDEPENDENT, February 15, 2012
INDEPENDENT
Published on the first and third Wednesdays of each month
by The Independent, LLC, 725 Bridge St.,
Vernonia, OR 97064. Phone/Fax: 503-429-9410.
Deadline is noon the Friday before each issue.
Publisher Clark McGaugh, clark@the-independent.net
Editor Rebecca McGaugh, rebecca@the-independent.net
Printed on recycled paper with vegetable based dyes
Opinion
Money = political speech
If you thought the number of political ads were ex-
cessive during the Bonamici/Cornilles campaigns for
Congress, you’re right. Unfortunately, you ain’t seen
nuthin’ yet!
It’s been only two years since five of the nine jus-
tices of the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to a
flood of money in elections, but we have already felt
the impact of the rollback of campaign finance reform.
The 2010 midterm election was the most expensive in
history, and corporate special interests spent hundreds
of millions of dollars trying to elect people who would
further line the pockets of big business.
The case of Citizens United vs. the Federal Election
Commission didn’t even ask the Court to rule on polit-
ical speech; it was about the FEC regulation of the
time period before an election when a corporation’s
political action committee (PAC) could publish political
ads. The justices had to go far afield and overturn
decades of established law to turn that limited question
into a First Amendment ruling that corporations must
be treated the same as people regarding political
speech.
A corporation can now make unlimited campaign
contributions from their general fund, allowing them to
spend their customers’ and shareholders’ money on
campaigns without consent or notice. We’ve seen out-
of-state groups spend millions of dollars to campaign
against issues that don’t fit their agenda, like the to-
bacco industry’s campaign against an increase in the
cigarette tax. Now they can do so with nearly total
anonymity and no longer need an in-state organization
of any kind.
Corporations serve an important purpose, but telling
people how to vote isn’t one of them. Before Citizens
United, they raised funds for their PAC’s from people
who knowingly donated for that purpose. Now they can
totally ignore the views of their workers, their cus-
tomers, their shareholders, and everyone else whose
decisions they affect — for good or bad.
Since Citizens United, attacks on state laws banning
direct corporate contributions are underway in Iowa,
Minnesota, Montana and Texas, and there are dozens
of challenges to state disclosure laws, many led by
James Bopp Jr., the lawyer who brought Citizens Unit-
ed to the Supreme Court. Speaking of money in poli-
tics, yesterday Mr. Bopp endorsed Mitt Romney.
Out of My Mind…
by Noni Andersen
You’ve
undoubtedly
heard the Republican
presidential candidates
claim that by vetoing the
Keystone XL pipeline,
President Obama also
blocked lower gasoline
prices. Then they double
down by claiming that his
administration has made
it impossible for oil companies to expand drilling
and production.
They’re wrong.
According to Bloomberg, the U.S. has re-
versed a two-decade-long decline in energy in-
dependence, increasing the proportion of de-
mand met from domestic sources over the last
six years to an estimated 81 percent through the
first 10 months of 2011. That would be the high-
est level since 1992.
The business statistics-laden Bloomberg is
definitely not a left-leaning organization, so why
would they publish such information?
It’s quite simple: One reason Americans spent
a record amount on gasoline this year is that
supplies that might have helped lower prices
here were shipped abroad. Mythical lower prices
don’t exist because U.S. refineries exported a
record amount of refined fuels in 2011 to mar-
kets in South America, Central America and Eu-
rope.
In 2007, U.S. fuel exports held steady at 1.24
million to 1.25 million barrels a day, according to
Energy Department statistics. But by November
and December, 2011,U.S. fuel exports averaged
between 2.77 million barrels a day and 2.89 mil-
lion barrels a day, the highest ever.
Meanwhile, U.S. drivers paid an average of
about $3.50 a gallon for gasoline during the
year, also the highest ever.
The increase in fuel exports isn’t even a sur-
prise, it was predicted in January, 2011, by ana-
lysts with the Energy Information Administration
(EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy, in a
presentation to the 2011 Argus Americas Crude
Summit in Houston. Joanne Shore, a research
analyst at the EIA, and colleague John Hack-
worth said that U.S. refineries had found lucra-
tive overseas markets, even as they were shut-
ting down domestic facilities due to decreased
demand.
Additionally, for the first time since 1997, the
United States in 2010 imported less than 50 per-
cent of the liquid fuel it consumed.
Three primary elements led to this reversal:
the mandate to use an increasing percentage of
biofuels, a drop in demand beginning in 2008
that was caused by the economic downturn and
higher mileage standards, and an increase in
U.S. crude oil production, reversing a decline
that began in 1986.
The EIA also projects a decline in total im-
ports of liquid fuels from about 49 percent of to-
tal consumption today, to only 36 percent by
2035. That’s a rosy picture, if you’re concerned
about oil imports. (Not so much if you’re con-
cerned about the environment – but that’s a top-
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