Smith has led a crusade against “rampant environmentalism” that has seen the House science committee, once a venerable and intellectual body, degenerate into a farcical circus run by science-denying Republicans who are perfectly willing to ignore facts and behave like absolute imbeciles in order to keep the money from the oil and gas industry flowing.

Over the course of his three years as chairman of the Science committee, Smith has fought what he calls the “climate-change religion” of the Obama administration, by which he apparently means facts. He’s launched a legal battle against administration over new air-pollution regulations that he claims are “not backed up by science,” despite the fact that they’ve been upheld by federal appeals courts, they’d save tens of thousands of American lives and produce more than $40 billion in health care savings, and, of course, they are in fact backed up by essentially universal consensus in the actual scientific community.

When the Supreme Court eventually overturned the EPA’s curbs on toxic emissions, a major part of Obama’s environmental plan, in June, the decision was not the result of any scientific misgivings but rather because the EPA had “failed to take into account the costs [of the regulations] to utilities and others in the power sector.” In other words, regulations that would make help to stop the poisoning of the planet and its inhabitants were overturned because they would cost the people poisoning the planet some money. Smith and his band of oil industry-financed lawyers and lobbyists were of course influential in lobbying the court to overturn the obviously beneficial legislation.

From that inauspicious beginning, Smith moved on to slash NASA’s budget for earth sciences and subject grant reviews at the National Science Foundation to extra scrutiny. He ostensibly supported these moves out of concerns for the budget, which has become a boogeyman nearly as powerful as Islamic terrorism that conservatives can use to eliminate anything they don’t like. However, given his support for increasing our already enormous military budget, anyone with common sense can see that such moves are merely meant to stifle the voices of those scientists who disagree with the delusional brand of climate-denial that the oil industry bosses in Houston tell him to peddle. And, given the general tendency of scientists to have brains and common sense, that has essentially meant that the House science committee is battling to keep scientists from publishing the truth, which, as former committee member and physicist Rush Holt (D-NJ) notes wryly, is “an interesting way to raise the profile of a science committee,” but not surprising given the “substituting of politics for evidence.”

Most recently, he has accused scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of manipulating data and rushing publication of a major study that refuted claims that global temperatures were stabilizing, all in order to “advance Obama’s extreme climate-change agenda,” extreme apparently meaning, in Smith’s mind, anything to the left of his own brand of lunatic conservative rejectionism. He eventually subpoenaed NOAA administrator Kathryn Sullivan and – surprise! – nothing amiss was found. That setback, however, hasn’t stopped him from issuing a subpoena to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy seeking her personal phone and text records that he somehow believes will reveal a malicious plot in the EPA’s new regulations on ozone emissions.

With such blatant idiocy and obstructionism coming from the head of the science committee, and with its meetings regularly descending into such kindergarten-level stupidity as claiming that snowballs disprove climate change and that melting ice caps aren’t a concern because melting ice cubes don’t cause a drink to overflow, one has to wonder whether these lawmakers are really this stupid or are simply acting on behalf of their donors, and willing to sacrifice their dignity and the good of humanity for a little extra cash. The answer, of course, is the latter, as the energy industry – or, non-euphemistically, the oil and gas industry – spends millions of dollars to put lawmakers in their pocket to protect their interests and bottom lines at the expense of tens of thousands of Americans and tens of millions of humans who will die from climate-change related causes in the coming decades.

Smith, whose home district in West Texas depends heavily on the oil and gas industry, is a prime case and point. Over the course of his career in Congress, Smith has received almost $650,000 from big oil and gas companies, making the industry his biggest financier and making him one of the largest recipients of oil industry buyouts in Congress. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), the notorious snowball Senator, has received almost $500,000 from the energy industry, twice as much as any other group, and Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX), of ice-melt-doesn’t-raise-water-levels fame, has received some $120,000 from the energy industry. It is an absolute travesty that such idiots have been allowed to take over a government committee overseeing what is perhaps the most dangerous issue of our time and run it like a joke, and yet that is exactly what a dangerous combination of unfettered corporate purchasing of lawmakers and delusional conservative anti-intellectualism have produced, and it is truly a tragedy for our country and for the planet.

Image credit to ThinkProgress

The post No Science Here: Big Oil Has Turned The House Into Their Private Lobbying Agency appeared first on Occupy Democrats.

The potential to increase their power in the wake of the resignation has left Republican House members foaming at the mouth like a pack of wolves circling the carcass of good government. A list of potential Boehner replacements almost as long as the menu of Republican presidential candidates has emerged, but among the top contenders are Representatives Paul Ryan (WI), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA), Jeb Hensarling (TX), Tom Price (GA), and Kevin McCarthy (CA). All of these representatives have recently been reaching out to their fellow House members seeking support for a speakership bid in the event of Boehner’s ouster, although of course they are all quick to deny such reports and announce their support for Boehner.

Kevin McCarthy, the House Majority Leader since Eric Cantor’s primary defeat last year, has emerged as the frontrunner in the campaign to replace Boehner. Despite his status as a relative “moderate”, he has recently attracted increased support from more conservative representatives and there had been talk in recent weeks of a deal being hashed out in which the right-wingers would support McCarthy as the next Speaker in exchange for more moderate members’ supporting Boehner’s ouster. Much like Boehner before him, McCarthy has frequently been characterized as bland, colorless, and uninspiring. While his policy positions are not extreme, Daniel Horowitz’s description of his policy and personality as “soggy white bread” seems pretty apt. And, moreover, if he moves to become Speaker with right-wing backing, that soggy white bread will undoubtedly become even less appetizing.

Currently in second place in the informal race to replace Boehner is Paul Ryan, the 2012 Vice Presidential candidate and former Budget Committee chairman who is among the country’s most widely known Republican House members. Like McCarthy, the former Tea Partier Ryan has attracted criticism from the far right for being insufficiently conservative, in spite of all the evidence of his voting record. He has been staunchly anti-civil rights and anti-gay rights, anti-abortion, anti-gun control, anti-environment, anti-healthcare, anti-public education, anti-immigrant, anti-sentencing reform, anti-welfare and pro-tax breaks. All of these positions he has taken with the characteristic self-righteousness and intractability of modern Republicans. If Tea Partiers think Ryan isn’t sufficiently conservative, let’s just be glad at their increasing irrelevance and hope that Ryan doesn’t finagle his way into the Speakership.

Even more unabashedly right-wing than Ryan is Cathy McMorris Rodgers; the representative from Washington’s conservative interior has supported the dismantling of medicare, medicaid, and social security, and voted to severely curb the power of labor unions, drastically cut SNAP benefits that provide food to children and the disabled. She has come out strongly against the Violence Against Women Act and opposed efforts to ensure equal pay for women while opposing access to contraceptives. Rodgers is, in short, an extreme conservative nut whose Speakership would undoubtedly be a disaster.

Next on the list of ridiculous Speaker-hopefuls is Jeb Hensarling of Texas, who has been a staunch supporter of gun proliferation, the militarization of the border with Mexico, and the idea that life begins at conception. He has been one of the leaders behind the House’s interminable efforts to repeal Obamacare and has sought to extend tax breaks for the wealthy while curbing welfare programs for the needy. He has been characterized as “lying, stupid, and insane,” a charge we can hardly refute.

Then there’s Steve Scalise of Louisiana, who gained notoriety for his stubborn anti-immigration and anti-climate change policies, his refusal to make Martin Luther King Day a holiday in his state, and was discovered to have given speeches to white supremacy groups.

Finally there is Tom Price, a Georgia representative with Tea Party leaning whose policies barely warrant mentioning because they fall nearly perfectly in line with the extremist positions of the other conservative fools lining up to be the primary obstacle to governing in the coming months and years. Price has attracted significant support from grassroots conservatives as a purported champion of the common man in spite of his own enormous fortune. His decision last year to remain in the House rather than seek Georgia’s then-vacant Senate seat has led many to believe that he seeks further advancement to consolidate his power in the House, and Boehner’s ouster could be just the chance he has been looking for. For the sake of the country, however, we certainly hope that whoever ends up in the Speakership can at least make an effort to compromise and govern rather than grandstand with their rigidly intolerant conservative beliefs, as Republican House members have recently been so wont to do.

The post Meet The Republicans In The Running To Replace Boehner As Speaker Of The House appeared first on Occupy Democrats.