Photo by Gage Skidmore.
Mitt Romney’s proposed energy policy, released yesterday, focuses on giving states the ability to set their own resource extraction rules and to let them drill wherever they want — including on federal land. Even a conservative environmental organization took issue with that idea as reported by Politico: “These lands do not belong to individual states, any more than the Grand Canyon belongs to Arizona or Yosemite belongs to California.”
So where’d Romney get this idea, anyway? I mean, besides how nicely it blends the common conservative arguments for neutering the federal government and drilling everywhere everywhere now now now.
According to the New York Times, the idea came from oil executives.
An individual close to the Romney campaign said that Mr. Romney’s staff drafted the proposal in consultation with industry executives, including Harold Hamm, an Oklahoma billionaire who is the chairman of the campaign’s energy advisory committee and chief executive of Continental Resources, an oil and gas driller.
Just this week, the oil and gas industry gave nearly $10 million toward the Romney election effort in two fund-raisers.
I hope you have a defibrillator nearby to restart your heart which stopped due to the surprise of that statement.
We discussed Mr. Hamm a few weeks ago. In short: he wants to neuter the federal government and to drill everywhere everywhere now etc. etc. He has also invested almost $1 million in a super PAC dedicated to getting Mitt Romney elected. In theory, this should proscribe his also acting as a campaign adviser, but rules and laws are totally lame and besides I doubt Clarence Thomas would take a firm stand on this.
During the debates, Harry Hamm will be just next to the camera, holding up cue cards made of blank checks.
