Mark Kirk Was Against Offshore Drilling Before He Was For It, And Was Against Investing in Alternative Energy Research Before He Was For It

Today's big news was that Eric Zorn got a retraction from Mark Kirk on his repeating of claims that China was drilling for oil off of Cuba. I was thinking about this a bit and re-listened to the audio originally posted on Progress Illinois wherein Kirk made the claim before he made it again on a telephone campaign call with Tenth District residents. On that audio, Kirk was shilling for offshore drilling. He said, "It makes no sense for us to allow the Chinese (lie lie lie blah blah blah)... without us tapping into the very same oil field."

That's funny because not only did he intentionally spread the lie as the good folks at Progress Illinois pointed out, but he changed his 2006 position when he voted for the Markey Amendment H.AMDT.1176 to the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act of 2006 that sought to maintain the 25-year moratorium on oil and gas drilling in environmentally sensitive areas offshore, including off Florida. It seems Kirk changed his mind when his party decided to use high gas prices as a sales strategy for offshore drilling leases wanted by the industry now that prices are high.

Kirk also showed his lack of commitment to moving away from the 2001 Cheney energy plan even ever so slightly when in 2007 he voted against H.R. 6 Creating Long-Term Energy Alternatives for the Nation Act (the bill that increased CAFE standards) three times (one, two, and three) before he voted for it. If republicans were in control of the House, it appears that Kirk would have voted against the bill.

Now Kirk is touting the Apollo Energy Independence Act of 2008. It's a bunch of tax credits to the energy industry as if they don't have enough of those already. Kirk likens it to Kennedy's launch of the space program. However, Kennedy's space program was not about tax credits to already profit heaving multinational corporations. There was a space budget created by Congress and administered by NASA, a government agency that employed very knowledgeable engineers and scientists. Kennedy's plan was goal oriented and is considered a famous problem solving example of working backward from a goal. You can take a peak at all the planning that went into the space program here. You won't see any mention of CEO salaries, manager bonuses for cutting staff and resources, stock options, dividend requirements or golden parachutes as we see in the energy industry and you won't see any cuts or downsizing strategies that reduced quality and risked results in favor of profits as we see in all corporate activity. Kirk isn't immitating Kennedy's space mission, he's paying profit laden multinational corporations run by overpaid CEOs to make their own budgets and quality decisions.

Mark Kirk wants to be on both sides of energy and environmental issues. He touts drilling when and where drilling is popular and claim he's against it to preserve his pro-environment claims. He wants to look like he's creating a new energy plan for this country, but continues to do nothing but subsidize profits for the industry.

Watching Kirk's energy and environment voting record is like watching a tennis match. My neck hurts.