I Love My CongressCritter: PWNing Polluters Edition

No dose of health care reform stupidity today, my darlings.  I refuse to take my medicine.  I'd rather cheer on my Rep instead.

First, he delivered the spanking that Jon Stewart should have done:

During today’s forged letter investigation hearing in the House, Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) rebuked the authors of SuperFreakonomics for participating in a “continuing effort to deceive the American public” on the science of climate change. Inslee condemned the coal industry’s effort to “hoodwink, defraud, and deceive the American public now to cover up the toxicity to the world environment” of global warming pollution. Inslee then pivoted to authors Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, criticizing them for “absolute deception” in their work on global warming:

The second thing I want to note is this is not the only continuing effort to deceive the American public. I want to note a book called Freakonomics, or SuperFreakonomics, that some authors wrote, that basically said or asserted we don’t have to control CO2, we’ll just pump sulfur dioxide up into the atmosphere and that will solve the problem. They purported to quote a scientist named Ken Caldeira from Stanford who’s one of the predominant researchers in ocean acidification to suggest that Dr. Caldeira didn’t think we should control CO2. Which is an absolute deception. Dr. Caldeira I’ve spoken to personally. He’s told me we have to solve ocean acidification. You can’t solve ocean acidification without controlling CO2 and yet people are still trying to write books to deceive the American public. And we ought to blow the whistle on them, we’re blowing the whistle on one today, we’ll continue to do it, because ultimately science is going to triumph in this discussion.

Then he delivered a sound spanking to Bonner & Ass.:

Now Inslee is pressing Steve Miller of the ACCCE to admit that his group is responsible in part for the fraud perpetrated by Congress. Inslee reads the phone script that Bonner sued, on ACCCE's behalf, to solicit support for the coal lobby's campaign. (We posted the document here.) It suggests that electricity bills will double if global warming legislation passes.

Inslee is making clear how misleading the phone script was, calling it "wholly wrong and fraudulent."

Bonner now points out that this was a training document for callers, rather than the script itself. Same difference, says Inslee.

Now Miller of the ACCCE is saying the doubling of rates issue came from Bonner, and ACCCe had no idea Bonner was sayig that. To which Inslee says that Miller reminds him of the guy who hires a hit-man and tells him, don't tell me if you use a knife or a gun.

Beauty!

Of course, the shysters perjured themselves in front of him:

As the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has reported, ACCCE President and CEO Steve Miller lied under oath when he told the committee that his organization has never opposed clean energy legislation.

Later during the hearing, Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) asked Miller about the purpose of ACCCE. Miller replied that in addition to grassroots lobbying (astroturfing) and state-based lobbying, his front group has only began federal lobbying in “April of 2008″ in its “16 year history”:

INSLEE: Your entire goal of your organization is to influence Congress. Is that right?

MILLER: We do work at the state level, we do regulatory matters, we do general education to the public. So, the federal, direct federal lobbying has only been part of our portfolio since April of 2008 with a 16 year history of the organization.

[snip]

Miller’s claim is another example of the coal industry’s perjury under oath. In a six month period of 2007 alone, ACCCE, under its previous name of Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, spent $2,660,000 lobbying the federal government. Senate disclosures show that the organization has spent millions more lobbying since 2001.

This may be why Jay decided a little poetic justice might be in order:

Rep. Inslee is now telling Steve Miller of ACCCE that as "penance" for the forged letter fiasco, his group should tell Sen. James Inhofe that we need to take serious efforts to limit global warming legislation.

And that they should run an ad that says at the top: "We need CO2 regulation in America and we need it fast."

Miller, unsurprisingly, is unwiling [sic] to do this.

Love that little dig at Inhofe.  Love love love.  But I love the fire he lit under Steve Miller's arse even more.

Yup.  Still proud to be represented by Rep. Inslee.  Especially when he's on the warpath.