Wednesday, June 18, 2008

I fell victim to a GOP talking point

I must confess that, until this morning, I bought into the whole dialogue McCain and the GOP has been pushing about lifting the "ban" on offshore drilling. I thought it was a stupid idea, for many reasons. But I still bought into the fundamental proposition that we were talking about whether there should be a "ban" or not.

Well, this morning I heard on the Thom Hartmann program that there is, in fact, NO "ban" on offshore drilling. I've been snookered.

What we have, actually, is a moratorium on new leases for such drilling. But what is obscured by this "ban" talk is the fact that the Oil companies already have leases for drilling thousands of acres with potentially millions of gallons of oil, yet they aren't acting on those leases. In other words, if there is any fault to be laid in this issue it is the OIL companies that are blocking future development of these properties.

This dKos diary provides more detail on this.

I suspect many other prominent Democrats don't realize that this is yet another example of a misleading GOP talking point. They, like myself, are being snookered.

This harkens back to the days of Bush's attempt to privatize Social Security. Democrats fought that back by repeating the mantra "there is no crisis". They should fight this back by repeating the mantra "there is no ban".

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