tagged w/ Murkowski
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Republican Joe Miller said he wont stand in the way of incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski being certified the winner of Alaskas U.S. Senate race, but he vowed to continue his legal fight over the states handling of the vote count..
http://www.indiareport.com/India-usa-uk-news/ap/National/70870Republican Joe Miller said he wont stand in the way of incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski... more
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Sen. Lisa Murkowski on Wednesday declared victory after apparently becoming the first U.S. Senate candidate in more than 50 years to win a write-in campaign, defeating her Tea Party rival after a painstaking, week-long count of hand-written votes.
The victory is a remarkable comeback for Murkowski, who lost to political newcomer Joe Miller in the GOP primary, and a humbling moment for Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor, 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate and Murkowski nemesis whose support was not enough to get Miller through an election in her own backyard.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40240913/ns/politics-decision_2010/Sen. Lisa Murkowski on Wednesday declared victory after apparently becoming the first... more
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Alaska Sen. Murkowski claims victory in re-election bid
By Shannon Travis, CNN Political Producer
November 17, 2010 10:40 p.m. EST
Murkowski: 'We made history'
Washington (CNN) -- Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska Wednesday declared victory over fellow Republican Joe Miller in the nation's last Senate race, saying the result of her write-in candidacy was a "miracle."
"Against all odds, we as Alaskans together made history," Murkowski told cheering supporters in Anchorage.
If she prevails in a potential challenge, Murkowski would become the second person to ever win a write-in bid for the U.S. Senate.
Murkowski's statement was the climax in the state's bitter and prolonged Senate battle. It was essentially a triumphant declaration of beating back a three-pronged attack: from Miller, from the Tea Party Express, and from Sarah Palin.
"We've said all along, we'll wait for the votes to be counted," Murkowski Campaign Manager Kevin Sweeney told CNN.
"By any standard, this was a clear victory. This was a whuppin'," Sweeney added.
Currently, Alaska's Division of Elections is counting 100,868 votes for Murkowski versus 90,448 for Miller. By that count, Murkowski leads by 10,420.
However, 8,153 of Murkowski's votes have been contested by the Miller campaign. If, as Miller's side would like, all of those contested votes are thrown out -- an almost impossible scenario to many election and legal observers -- Murkowski would still win the race with the uncontested votes alone.
"You can see that the numbers just won't add up," Sweeney told CNN, referring to Miller's hopes of pulling out a win despite the rising tide against him.
The Associated Press has called the race for Murkowski. If the outcome stands in the face of legal challenges, despite a count of any outstanding ballots or a potential recount from Miller, it would be only the second time a person won a write-in campaign for the Senate. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina won a write-in campaign in 1954.
At this point, Miller is conceding nothing.
In an interview with Neil Cavuto on Fox News, Miller said he is "less cautiously optimistic" given the vote tallies. But Miller was emphatic about ensuring the integrity of the vote-counting process, asserting that the difference was "less than 1 percent."
He said he may request a recount, that he wants to ensure that some military ballots were mailed out, and that the difference between his votes and Murkowski's may shift if a "consistent standard" for evaluating the write-in ballots is applied.
Evaluating the write-in ballots has been controversial. As Alaska's Division of Elections tallied them, some ballots that contained misspellings or variations of "Lisa Murkowski" have been credited as votes for her.
That issue of evaluating a "voter's intent" has infuriated the Miller campaign, prompting it to launch a federal lawsuit in hopes of annulling the count of misspelled or incongruous ballots. Miller's campaign blasted the Division of Elections' standards as "extraordinarily ambiguous."
A Miller loss would be a huge slap to Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Express. Palin endorsed Miller over Murkowski for the state's GOP Senate primary, and the national Tea Party group followed suit. Murkowski lost the primary in August -- and conceded the race. Shortly after, Murkowski launched a write-in bid to retain her seat.
Murkowski was first appointed to her post by her father, then-Gov. Frank Murkowski, in 2002. Palin defeated him in the 2006 GOP gubernatorial primary.
CNN's Kristi Kreck contributed to this report.Alaska Sen. Murkowski claims victory in re-election bid
By Shannon Travis, CNN... more
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See, if their situations were reversed and Miller was the write-in it would be much easier to spell! It would be over sooner.
Possible alternate spellings:
merkowski
mercowskie
moocowski
mercedes mccambridge
michelin man
mandarin duck
managua
manilow
In other news, Barry Manilow and Mercedes McCambridge were apparently deferated in the Alaska senate election.See, if their situations were reversed and Miller was the write-in it would be much... more
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Once upon a time a person's word was their bond. Apparently that does not apply to Lisa Murkowski, who said she would support whoever won the Republican primary election in Alaska and then when she lost, started a write-in campaign.
If Murkowski wins the write-in vote and returns to Washington, will the Republican Power Elites give her a position of influence or relegate her to a place befitting the shame she has brought to the GOP and Alaska by going back on her word?Once upon a time a person's word was their bond. Apparently that does not apply... more
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The wife of the campaign manager for U.S. Senate Candidate, Joe Miller, threatening people at our table at an official campaign event.
She knew that she was on video, she approached our table without solicitation. The guy with the camera also knew that he was on video. The guy with the camera is a pr person for Joe Miller. The guy with the camera attempted to fight members of our party when they went outside to make a phone call.
I have zero, I repeat zero involvement with the Murkowski campaign. I was not asked to take or post this video by any group or individual.The wife of the campaign manager for U.S. Senate Candidate, Joe Miller, threatening... more
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by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Joe Miller, Sarah Palin’s choice candidate for one of Alaska’s Senate seats, does not believe in climate change. That didn’t bother Alaska voters: this week, Miller bested Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the state’s Republican primary.
If that weren’t worrisome enough, it also emerged that the fossil fuel industry spent eight times more than environmental groups on lobbying in 2009, the year the House passed the climate change bill. It’s been a bad year already for environmental causes, and as the November election edges closer, progressives might want to start working overtime to regain momentum on climate and energy issues.
Murkowski was solidly against the idea of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulating carbon. But she was willing to talk about cap-and-trade programs, and at the very least, she was willing to admit climate change was happening. Depending on how November’s election shakes out, the shift towards climate-denial in Congress may only worsen. A slew of Republican candidates are convinced that, as one put it, “only God knows where our climate is going,” as Care2 reports.
A tougher tomorrow
Current political trends bode badly for the planet. If Congress couldn’t pass climate legislation while are in Democrats control of the House and Senate, there’s little hope that lawmakers will step up when facing opponents who don’t believe in climate change.
Carla Perez has a few ideas about how progressives and environmentalists can fight back — and they begin with accepting that, yes, giving up fossil fuels would mean sacrifice, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Perez, a program coordinator at social justice group Movement Generation, appeared recently on National Radio Project’s Making Contact and imagined how life would look without fossil fuels:
No iPods. No iPads. No plasma TVs. No motorized individual vehicles. No plastic bags. No pleather boots for $9.99 from Payless…. Then again, no island of plastic twice the size of Texas. No plumes of sulfuric acid over Richmond, California. No skyrocketing rates of cancer and diabetes concentrated in native and people of color communities all over the world. No spontaneous combustion of flames off of contaminated rivers.
“How bad would it be?” she asked.
Target practice
To move from iPods to environmental justice, though, people like Perez will have to keep politicians like Joe Miller out of Washington. In an interview with Yes! Magazine, Riki Ott, a marine biologist and Exxon Valdez survivor, makes a good point about the challenges that environmental advocates face.
“This BP disaster, like the Exxon-Valdez, is more than an environmental crisis—it’s a democracy crisis,” Ott says. “Right now we’re playing the game: Going through regulatory arenas, tightening some laws. But that’s not good enough. The real question is, how do we get control of these big corporations?”
Electing politicians that don’t take corporate money or listen to industry lobbyists will help. Another way to move away from the dominance of fossil fuel companies is offering real alternatives to using their products.
Brave new NOLA
In New Orleans, in the five years since Katrina hit, the people rebuilding the city have worked to create greener alternatives, as Campus Progress reports. Here’s just one example:
Go Green NOLA encourages homebuilders to think small, since smaller homes use less energy. The group also makes suggestions such as installing windows and insulation systems with special attention to local weather and climate — think: humidity, and lots of it—and using shade trees and other landscaping to help beat back the southern sun.
Change can happen without devastation preceding it. In Massachusetts, the Green Justice Coalition worked to ensure that environmental justice provisions made it into the state’s $1.4 billion energy efficiency plan, The Nation reports. What’s more, the coalition made certain that Massachusetts citizens would feel the impact of the new plan directly:
There will be a financing plan to make energy-saving home improvements more affordable. Many of the 23,300 jobs to be generated by the plan will go to contractors who pay decent wages and meet “high road” employment standards. Finally, four pilot programs across the state will test a radically new outreach model by going door to door and mobilizing low- and moderate-income families in building greener neighborhoods.
Women lead the way
Progress doesn’t happen on its own, of course. At RH Reality Check, Kathleen Rogers suggests that female leaders make all the difference. “Women get the connections between climate change, public health and economic growth, because climate change is disproportionately affecting women,” she writes. “A new generation of women entrepreneurs, leaders and civil society, have demonstrated the potential for being the solution to the climate crisis. But they must be mobilized and given an opportunity to influence government and business.”
Rogers is right. Leaders are out there. Just listen to the whole of Carla Perez’ comments on Making Contact. The Green Justice Coalition’s Phyllis Evans also gets it. And even Sen. Murkowski was willing to work on climate change compromises, on some level.
Of course, it’s not just women who can lead the country and the planet away from current environmental and democratic crises. Paths forward are emerging; anyone can follow them.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Joe Miller, Sarah Palin’s choice... more
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Senate Democrats rejected a GOP-led effort Thursday to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
Sen. Lisa Murkowsk, R-Alaska, backs a proposal to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
CAPTIONBy Mark Wilson, Getty ImagesThe Senate voted 53-47 against a motion to proceed to a resolution by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, that would bar the EPA from issuing such climate-changing regulations under the Clean Air Act.
"We need to be growing our economy, not paralyzing it," Murkowski said on the Senate floor, warning that regulations could kill jobs and increase costs, reportsThe Hill.
Her resolution, supported by business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, also won the backing of six Democrats: Indiana's Evan Bayh, Louisiana's Mary Landrieu, Arkansas' Blanche Lambert Lincoln and Mark Pryor, Nebraska's Ben Nelson and West Virginia's Jay Rockefeller.
The White House threatened to veto the measure and environmental groups such as the Wilderness Society opposed it. They argue that the EPA has the power to regulate harmful carbon emissions.
Speaking for them was Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who's in a tough re-election battle with GOP candidate and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. A recent Fiorina ad belittled Boxer's concern for climate change by calling it "the weather."
"Big oil backs the Murkowski resolution. So whose side are we on?" said Boxer as she displayed photos of birds covered with oil leaking from the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to The Hill. Boxer chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
The American Public Health Association applauded the Senate's vote, saying current levels of the six key greenhouse gases cited by EPA pose significant public health threats, including increased likelihood of more frequent and intense heat waves and degraded air quality.
"Climate change is as much an environmental issue as it is a leading public health concern," said the group's executie Georges C. Benjamin, in a statement.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has indicated he wants a broad energy bill on the floor next month, but Democrats are struggling to craft one that will pass. Last month, Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., proposed a sweeping climate change bill, but it's yet to attract GOP support.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/06/senate-rejects-effort-to-strip-epa-of-power-to-regulate-greenhouse-gases/1Senate Democrats rejected a GOP-led effort Thursday to strip the Environmental... more
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When PolluterHarmony.com launched last month, it quickly became the #1 online matchmaking site for polluters, industry lobbyists, and politicians.
The site made its first match for Senator Lisa Murkowski and industry lobbyist Jeff Holmstead. But lobbyists for the coal industry aren't the only ones getting their way with policymakers these days; oil company CEOs are getting lots of love too.
The latest video (above) from PolluterHarmony.com lets Senators know what they can expect from a relationship with Big Oil.
The video exposes the truth about the Drill Baby Drill mantra to open up drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf and other public lands to oil companies in the futile quest for oil independence. Oil execs know that America will always rely on oil from foreign countries. Take when George W. Bush spoke about the US addiction to imported oil during his 2006 State of the Union address. Immediately, Big Oil kicked him in the shins for having the nerve to talk about oil that way. An Exxon exec characterized getting off foreign oil as "simply not feasible."
In reality, oil CEOs want to open our coastlines and public lands to oil drilling for their own profit even though they know it will never result in "energy independence" for the United States. Until we get off of oil, we won't get off of 'foriegn oil'. Period.
But the oil companies are working their magic at the state level and on Capitol Hill... "Rex" led all Big Oil donors to "Bob's" campaign in Virginia. Governor Bob talks about the proposed drilling being "out of sight" 50 miles offshore... Has anyone else noticed that 50 miles offshore of Virginia is also 50 miles off of Maryland and North Carolina and Delaware and about 75 miles off New Jersey...? Hmm, whose ocean is it to give away?
Full blog post at:
http://members.greenpeace.org/blog/greenpeaceusa_blog/2010/03/25/thanks_to_polluterharmony_oil_company_ceWhen PolluterHarmony.com launched last month, it quickly became the #1 online... more
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The EPA seems to be under attack from all angles when it comes to greenhouse gas regulations — House members seeking to overturn its authority to regulate greenhouse gases, senators calling for delays on regulation, states and industry groups attempting to sue.
These maneuvers are drawing national attention and dividing Democrats in Congress. However, their chances of actual success appear slim. ...
http://solveclimate.com/blog/20100303/epa-s-authority-regulate-greenhouse-gases-comes-under-fire-all-anglesThe EPA seems to be under attack from all angles when it comes to greenhouse gas... more
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I suppose it might be sad to say that we were and were not surprised to hear this week that two dirty energy lobbyists helped craft the effort to neuter the Clean Air Act, which could next appear as an amendment to the Senate’s debt ceiling vote next week.
If you missed it, the Washington Post confirmed on Tuesday that lobbyists from Bracewell Giuliani and Sidley Austin helped write an amendment from Senator Lisa Murkowski that will strip Clean Air Act and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) authority to regulate global warming pollution. Check out the Washington Post follow-up on it here, here and here.
Who are Bracewell Giuliani and Sidley Austin? Oh, only lobbying firms that represent Southern Company, Duke Energy, Progress Energy, and other major coal supporters. And the specific lobbyists who ghost-wrote this amendment, Jeffrey Holmstead and Roger Martella, held EPA positions during the Bush Administration.
If you recall, last month EPA declared that global warming pollution endangers human health and welfare and announced plans to limit emissions from big polluters. The decision is a long-time coming and is crucial in controlling the global warming pollution from the coal industry – which contributes 30% of total U.S. global warming emissions.
This amendment may come up for a vote on January 20th, and its passage would mean that big polluters will be bailed out by blocking President Obama and EPA from taking action to limit emissions.
After years of research, scientific debate, court cases, public hearings and comments, Senator Murkowski is suggesting that we simply choose to "un-learn" that global warming is happening and that it will be dangerous to human health and welfare.
But EPA is merely doing what the Clean Air Act already requires--and what it was ordered to do almost three years ago by the Supreme Court. And last month, more than 400,000 Americans submitted comments in favor of EPA's proposal to limit pollution from the biggest global warming polluters - among the highest number of comments ever submitted in favor of any proposal.
These big polluters – including the coal industry - are using the same tired old arguments, too. Suggestions that this EPA action means the agency plans to regulate farms, schools, hospitals, cows, and Dunkin' Donuts are simply false - EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said as much on numerous occasions. In reality, EPA plans to limit the new common sense, economically feasible regulations to only the largest polluters. Those statements attempting to scare small businesses are merely misleading smears designed to derail any limits on polluters.
We cannot continue to let Big Coal push for loopholes and weakened pollution rules so they can keep making money.
Instead of looking for ways to delay action, senators need to finalize comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation as soon as soon possible - and more important in the short-term, they must say no to this amendment or any other attempt to weaken the Clean Air Act.
You can urge your senators to do as much - tell them to vote no on any amendment blocking EPA action on global warming emissions from the largest polluters.I suppose it might be sad to say that we were and were not surprised to hear this week... more
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would be prohibited for one year from clamping down on some new carbon dioxide pollution under legislation being crafted on Tuesday by Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski.
The "time out" would stop EPA from issuing regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from utilities and factories, the Republican senator said.
The Obama administration is urging Congress to pass a bill that would reduce smokestack emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global warming.
The U.S. legislation is designed to be part of a global effort aimed at climate control steps to be discussed in Copenhagen in December.
More than 30 environmental groups wrote to senators urging them to oppose Murkowski's amendment if she offers it. The measure, they said, "would delay America's progress toward a clean energy economy that would create jobs, increase America's energy security, and cut pollution."
The Alaska senator said that she had not yet made a final decision on whether to pursue such an amendment to a bill now being debated by the Senate, which would fund EPA activities in the fiscal year starting October 1.
Murkowski said that she would not try to stand in the way of new EPA rules to reduce automobile emissions or collect information on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
In remarks to reporters, Murkowski said that problems related to climate change needed to be addressed, but not through EPA regulation.
"Congress does need to act on climate change," Murkowski said, adding that EPA regulations could "poison" attempts to pass legislation.The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would be prohibited for one year from... more
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