RAW
uncooked truth, beyond belief
Issue #280
April 3, 2009
By Josh Dorner
Some people will say literally anything to protect Big Oil, Big Coal, and the other agents of the dirty energy status quo. One of those people happens to be Representative John Boehner (pronounced as one sees fit), the leader of the embattled and increasingly unpopular House Republican Caucus.
As House Democrats, led by Sierra Club besties Henry Waxman and Markey, introduced their draft comprehensive clean energy legislation on Tuesday, Boehner and a brigade of buffoons began to spread one of the biggest whoppers about building the clean energy economy I've heard in some time. (I follow both Karl Rove and John McCain on twitter, so trust me, I hear LOTS of whoppers.) Boehner, citing a 2007 MIT study, accused Democrats of trying to impose a $3,100 "lightswitch tax" on every family in America (i.e. building the clean energy economy would drive up energy costs by that amount). The House GOP's campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, followed suit and issued press releases in dozens of districts accusing Democratic members of trying to kill jobs and hasten Armageddon, or something.
(Again, these same folks seem unconcerned by our current "energy tax" -- the one we all pay to support the corporate high-fliers of Big Oil, Big Coal, and the hostile foreign regimes that feed our addiction to oil.)
We all know rising energy prices have more to do with corporate greed than any supposed secret "energy tax" that environmentalists are reportedly so eager to impose. Well, lo and behold, one the authors of the cited study, John Reilly, was so incensed by the blatant distortions being put forth that he went to the media, telling PolitiFact "It's just wrong. It's wrong in so many ways it's hard to begin."
It turns that not only were Boehner et al wrong -- but they were told so in advance and still decided to keep spreading the blatant lie. Reilly said, "Someone from the House Republicans had called me (March 20) and asked about this. I had explained why the estimate they had was probably incorrect and what they should do to correct it, but I think this wrong number was already floating around by that time."
As more and more buffoons started repeating the false charge, Reilly then proceeded to write a personal letter to Boehner asking him to cease and desist. Boehner, being the consummate man of integrity, of course complied, right? WRONG! Just yesterday, Boehner twittered out the link to a strongly worded defense of his conduct, essentially arguing that he, John Boehner, the political hack, understood the MIT study and its economic implications better than the MIT professor who actually wrote it.
The phrase "how low can you go" seems appropriate in so many ways.
