American Petroleum Institute Uses Stock Photos Of ?Americans? To Defend Oil Subsidies
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on March 11th, 2010 5:39 am by HL
American Petroleum Institute Uses Stock Photos Of ?Americans? To Defend Oil Subsidies
Big Oil is using fake “Americans” to defend billions in tax subsidies. The American Petroleum Institute is running full-page ads in Politico and Roll Call that attack Congress for “new energy taxes”: Congress will likely consider new taxes on America’s oil and natural gas industry. These new energy taxes will produce wide-reaching effects, and ripple through […]
Big Oil is using fake “Americans” to defend billions in tax subsidies. The American Petroleum Institute is running full-page ads in Politico and Roll Call that attack Congress for “new energy taxes”:
Congress will likely consider new taxes on America’s oil and natural gas industry. These new energy taxes will produce wide-reaching effects, and ripple through our economy when America — and Americans — can least afford it.
These unprecedented taxes will serve to reduce investment in new energy supplies at a time when most Americans support developing our domestic oil and natural gas resources. That means less energy, thousands of American jobs being lost and further erosion of our energy security.
Our economy is in crisis, and we need to get the nation on the road to economic recovery. This is no time to burden Americans with new energy costs.
The target of this ad is the Obama administration’s effort to remove $36 billion in loopholes and subsidies for the oil industry. As it turns out, the “Americans” presented in the ad are stock photos from Getty Images:
Americans are paying the price for these subsidies with our tax dollars, our health, and our national security. Removing these subsidies would “ripple through the economy” by unleashing a clean-energy future.
This is just the latest in a stream of polluter front groups using stock photos in Astroturf campaigns against clean energy policy. API was recently caught trying to add diversity to its dirty ads by photoshopping minorities into stock photography. West Virginia’s “FACES of Coal” turned out to be from iStockPhoto.com. And Virginia’s “Coalition for American Jobs” is a stock-photo front group for the American Chemistry Council.
Cross-posted on the Wonk Room.
CNN?s Crowley Suggests Democrats Debated Afghanistan Exit Strategy To ?Make The Massa Story Go Away?
Today, the House of Representatives is debating H. Con Res. 248, a privileged resolution brought to the floor by Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Walter Jones (R-NC), and others that required Congress to debate whether or not to continue the war in Afghanistan. During one point in the debate, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) delivered an impassioned […]
Today, the House of Representatives is debating H. Con Res. 248, a privileged resolution brought to the floor by Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Walter Jones (R-NC), and others that required Congress to debate whether or not to continue the war in Afghanistan.
During one point in the debate, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) delivered an impassioned speech against escalating in Afghanistan and condemned the media for its wall-to-wall coverage of the scandal surrounding former Rep. Eric Massa while ignoring the Afghanistan debate in Congress:
KENNEDY: What is shameful is our policy that puts them in harm’s way when they don’t need to be … Finally, if anyone wants to know where citizens are, there’s two pres people in this gallery. We’re talking about Eric Massa 24-7 on the TV, we’re talking about war and peace, $3 billion, 1,000 lives and no press, you want to know why the American public is fit? They’re fit because they’re not seeing their Congress do the work they’re sent to do. It’s because the press, the press of the United States is not covering the most significant issue of national importance and that’s the laying of lives down in the nation for the service of our country. It’s despicable, the national press corps right now!
Watch it:
Soon after the speech, CNN host Rick Sanchez asked State of the Union host Candy Crowley to comment on Kennedy’s media complaint. Crowley mused that it could be argued “one way or another” whether the Massa scandal was as important as debating the war in Afghanistan, and even suggested that Kennedy made his speech because “the Democrats in particular and certainly…Kennedy would like the Massa story to go away“:
CROWLEY: I think think it is one that — what he is arguing — is that it is one of perspective and [he] obviously believes that Massa’s been given too much attention where the war in Afghanistan is not. You know, we could argue one way or the other, but it is very clear that he –the Democrats in particular and certainly Congressman Kennedy in specific would like the Massa story to go away.
Watch it:
Given that 895 American soldiers have died in combat in Afghanistan and the U.S. is spending $101 million a day on the war — which has lasted longer that World War II — there are plenty of good reasons for Congressional Democrats to be debating an exit strategy from Afghanistan other than to distract from a minor scandal.
