TED STEVENS AND THE ENRON LOOPHOLE

-by Phil Munger

In one of the most deplorable performances in his career, Senator Ted Stevens explained, last Wednesday in Anchorage, why he continues to support the shredding of our constitutional rights every chance he's given to vote on taking them away, as he rubber stamps George Bush's criminality.

Between addled stutters, and tripped up speech, bordering on sheer impedimentia, Stevens said, when asked about the Patriot Act and Real ID, "Re, uh, read, uh the book, America Alone. A lot of people com, uh, complain about that book, uh, but look, uh, he's a democraee, uh, uh. Look at, uh, the demographic concepts, uh, of that book."

OK, Ted. I already did. The book to which our rapidly aging Senator-for-life refers, is America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, by Canadian writer Mark Steyn. In the book, Steyn alleges that white people in Western Europe and North America need to have more babies, and need to attenuate, however possible, the high birth rates of browner people, especially Muslims, who want to either convert us and steal our women, or kill us. Or both.

The book has bothered a lot of us. We've, as the Senator says, "complained," too. Perhaps the most cutting observation about Stevens' endorsement of a book that recommends genocide, was made by David Neiwert, one of the country's leading experts on hate groups and hate literature. Neiwert compared Steyn's views on European Muslims to those of David Duke's on America's Latinos.

Steyn is profoundly anti-multicultural, openly speaking about "Japs," "Chinks," "Wogs" and "Gooks" in his right-wing columns. He was one of, if not the basic originator of the Obama madrassa smear.

Stevens was blathering like the doddering old fool he's become, at a press conference in which he made a rare joint appearance with Alaska's popular Governor, Sarah Palin. He was there, making fools of the mainstream Alaska press corps. They appear to have swallowed Ted's most recent tall tale, hook, line and sinker. He was casting out his so-called "Energy Blueprint" for Alaska.

His proposal is to drill in ANWR (The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), drill in the Arctic, Chukchi and Bering Seas, and target oil speculators who buy and sell barrels without ever intending to use them.Stevens says this practice has inflated gasoline prices.

He should know. Back in December, 2000, Stevens and his partner in crime, Sen. Phil Gramm, shoved through legislation, now known as the "Enron exception." The Alaska Report's Dennis Zaki described how this happened:

"As headlines across the country decry oil speculation as the cause for the pain at the pump, Senator Ted Stevens is playing election year politics as he claims to be rescuing consumers by suddenly supporting regulation for energy futures market. However, Stevens has repeatedly done just the opposite. In fact, in 2000, Stevens was Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee when he allowed a provision to deregulate energy futures to be added to his appropriations bill without undergoing the typical committee process.

"With the current weakening of the housing market, many investors pulled money out of real estate and put it instead into commodities, like oil. This has led to a flurry of unregulated market speculation in the oil futures markets, thus driving gas prices to record highs."

Zaki goes on, using information provided to him-- and every other reporter in Alaska-- last week by the Alaska Democrtic Party:

In December 2000, as Stevens oversaw the Consolidated Appropriations Act, a provision written by Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), which recently has received quite a bit of negative attention in the presidential campaign, was added at the last minute to the final 11,000 page bill to deregulate the energy markets. Commonly known as the "Enron Loophole," the Commodity Futures Modernization Act exempted electronic energy trades from federal regulation. The provision bypassed the usual committee hearing and vote process and was streamlined into the legislation by Stevens.

Stevens has been a long time advocate for deregulation of energy futures. In 2002, Stevens voted against an amendment that would have provided regulatory oversight of energy trading markets. [Roll Call 61, S.AMDT 2989, 4/10/2002] In 2003, Stevens voted against an amendment to protect electric ratepayers from manipulation and contrivance of the energy market and an amendment that would have ensured that consumers and competitive markets are protected from false and misleading information. [Roll Call 439, S.AMDT 2087, 11/5/2003, Roll Call 436, S.AMDT 2083, 11/5/2003]

Just this month, Stevens continued his streak of voting against consumers by helping to block the Consumer-First Energy Act. The legislation needed 60 votes in the Senate to move forward but only received 51. The Consumer-First Energy Act would have taken several immediate steps to lower out-of-control gas prices, which now average more than $4 per gallon nationwide. [Roll Call Vote #146, 6/10/2008]

Over the long weekend the campaign of Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, Stevens' most likely opponent in November, has been mulling over how to attack Stevens on his duplicity on this issue.  While Alaska's economy and state government rely very heavily on revenues from in-state oil production, which is declining, villagers off the road system (Alaska, as immense as it is, has far less roads than Rhode Island) are paying prices as high as $12.00 per gallon for fuel and heating oil. The upcoming winter will bankrupt thousands.

As I wrote, in an open letter to the Alaska press, last week, "Stevens' role in the story you refuse to cover is depopulating villages, causing economic hardship, domestic violence and suicides! It is reducing our fishing fleets to being tied at the dock. Thanks to your enabling of this robbery, these fishers might just as well turn their boats into aquaculture projects, harvesting kelp, mussels and algae from the decaying bottoms of their their immobile hulks."

Sen. Stevens like to characterize himself as "The Hulk." But his outright deception about his role in the high price of fuel here and across the USA, makes him appear to be more like some comic book villain. The "Penguin," perhaps?