A bit about Barbara Boxer

By Carol Gee

California's Senator Barbara Boxer must have had a high level to patience to have gotten along for the past three years with her Ranking Member, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, on the Environment and Public Works Committee. She is tough but fair, warm and inclusive and scary smart. California's environmental leadership history has shaped her well for this most important time partnering with the Obama administration on its next big push -- energy and climate change legislation.

How long could the leadership of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee paper over their vast differences? Now that it is time to mark up a climate change bill, Republicans on the committee have boycotted the planned meetings. Through their spokesman, Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio), they announced on Tuesday that they cannot be in the same room with their Democratic colleagues until they get another EPA cost analysis of the bill. That process would take about five weeks.

Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif) did not agree to Voinovich's demands, leaving the committee at an impasse for the moment. Democrats on the committee are in agreement that they all have enough information to mark up a bill. The bill would put a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and set up a market for trading the government issued pollution allowances, the so called "cap and trade" system. Reluctance to wait stems from the fact that this bill will eventually have to be blended with several other climate change bills in the Senate, just like Senator Reid is doing with the health care reform bills right now. And, in the same way, the blended bill would be costed out by the Congressional Budget Office before it comes to the Senate floor. To quote Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), according to the Congressional Quarterly :

We are very close to a completely accurate estimate. People might say, ‘Why not wait?’ Because as soon as you amend it, you change it again. What are they going to do, wait five weeks to analyze each amendment?

Senator Boxer may go ahead and move the bill through the committee without the Republicans. Committee Ranking Member James Inhofe (R - OK) calls this a "nuclear option." If you remember, this is the same man who has had serious doubts about the very idea of global warming's very existence.

In a related matter, CQ Politics also reports that Carly Fiorina will run against Senator Boxer in 2010. To quote:

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, is expected to formally launch her long-awaited Republian campaign against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer sometime this week.

. . . Fiorina is considered the desired nominee by party insiders in California and Washington, D.C. Fiorina is being feted at a Capitol Hill-area fundraiser next month headlined by a list of notable senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Among the others Republican senators listed as hosts of the Nov. 17 event at Bistro Bis are John McCain of Arizona, whom Fiorina served as a top surrogate in the 2008 presidential race, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. . .

It is probably safe to say that Senator Boxer's Senate seat is pretty safe. It is also safe to say that she will find a way through this morass of Republican obstructionism and report out a good bill that will fit in with other similar legislation that will eventually be passed and signed into law. It just seems destined.


(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Craziest Republican of the Day: Joe Barton (for his idiotic "Carbongate" crack)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yes, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), for suggesting that Obama has a "Carbongate" to rival Nixon's Watergate. And why? Because, if you haven't been following the story -- and it's the right that has been making much ado about nothing -- the EPA refused to release a global warming denialism study by one of its economists, one Al Carlin. Here's TPM's Pete Martin:

[Carlin's] cause has become a favorite of right-wingers, who suddenly believe science to be sacred, and are charging that the Obama administration is "suppressing" a report whose conclusions it dislikes. The anti-regulatory Competitive Enterprise Institute first publicized Carlin's report last week. Since then, Carlin has discussed his "findings" with Glenn Beck on Fox News, and on Monday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) called for a criminal investigation into the issue.

Now, Rep. Joe Barton is taking the outrage to a new level. [Yesterday] morning on America's Newsroom, the industry-friendly Texas Republican accused the EPA of suppressing the report, and declared that "just as Nixon had Watergate, Obama now has Carbongate to deal with."

(Note that Barton called Carlin "a scientist at the EPA." In fact, Carlin has worked for the agency since months after its founding in 1971, but he does not hold an advanced degree in any natural science, and he has always worked as an economist.)

So just to compare: Watergate involved the cover-up of a criminal enterprise directed from the Oval Office. "Carbongate" involves the EPA ignoring a scientific study by a non-scientist that it never commissioned and which hasn't been published in any scientific journal.

Of course, these denialists don't give a shit about science. Their industry-driven propaganda is at odds with what is a remarkable consensus among the world's leading researchers. Unable to win on the facts, they're resorting to smears, to allegations of some Obama-led cover-up, touting as science what is really just ideological deception.

It's all so predictable, and all so pathetic, and all so popular on the right, and, alas, all so prevalent, still, with an American public that in large numbers has been taken in by the propaganda.

As for Barton, it seems that Inhofe now has a challenger to his title of Most Deranged Denialist.