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If the hundreds of people sardined into the lobby of the Dole Institute were hoping to be inspired by a determined visionary, they might have been disappointed.
Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens has spent millions of dollars amassing an army of Americans to back his plan for replacing foreign oil with homegrown power sources, like wind and natural gas. Yesterday he stumped at the University of Kansas, preaching about his "mission" in the raspy voice of an over-extended 80-year-old and the attention span of someone with one ear open for his next boarding call.
Sure, Pickens had his charming moments and his ideas have certainly shot energy issues to the top of the national agenda. But Pickens was clear that he isn't an environmentalist. He doesn't really give a damn about global warming. He doesn't like taxes, so he dismisses any talk about a cap-and-trade system. And, if he gets a question from the audience he doesn't like, well, he just brushes it off.
"Don't tell me you don't like my plan, unless you have a plan," he told the crowd somewhat derisively.
In concept, Pickens ideas sound inspiring. In person, the oil man came off as the arrogant, overbearing, obsessively patriotic grandfather that nobody likes to sit next to at the dinner table. And the disinterested environmentalist who loves America and hates taxes had the perfect partner at his side: Kansas U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback.
Before a rambling introduction from former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, Brownback took the podium, working the crowd with basketball talk and holding up some T-shirt made out of soybeans that he promises doesn't smell like wet dog when it gets damp. Then he launched into familiar rhetoric about how Kansas could be the Saudi Arabia of renewable power and play a critical role in America's energy future. "At the root of all this is our need to get off foreign oil," Brownback said in his introduction. "Harvesting the wind in Kansas and getting it to markets where it's needed is critical."
But the Senator's voting record on critical energy issues is mixed, at best.
For instance, in 2005 the Senator voted against a bill to "to improve the energy security of the United States and reduce dependence on foreign oil imports by 40 percent by 2025."
He did score some points that year, though, breaking with his party to vote for a "renewable portfolio standard," requiring utilities to get 10 percent of their generation from green energy sources by 2030.
Of course, when a bill on Renewable Energy Subsidies that set out billions for clean energy projects was on the table in 2007, Brownback was off campaigning for the presidential nomination and didn't show up for the vote. (He did stick around long enough to support a bill authorizing offshore drilling in Virginia the week before, though.)
Last year Brownback showed his support for renewable energy by opposing a bill that would have capped carbon emissions and curbed global warming pollution 70 percent by 2050.
On the most important energy vote of 2009, Brownback was on the wrong side of the roll call, again. At a press conference after the town hall meeting, Pickens told reporters the most tangible progress toward energy independence was the passage of the economic stimulus package earlier this year, which contained billions in funds for renewable energy.
Brownback voted against it.
Another reporter asked Brownback if he thought his voting record reflected support for renewable energy. "Yes, yes," Brownback said without blinking.
Both men emphasized the need for a national energy plan and support for a bill that avoids tough issues, like global warming or carbon emissions.
"Sen. Brownback is big in this deal," Pickens said. "I believe we'll have a very clean bill, not connected to climate or cap-and-trade to take it through there, so we can get on our own resources as fast as we can."
"We'll have an energy bill this year," Brownback added. "We're in discussions right now."
During his public address, Pickens promised the crowd he was ready to pounce on any legislator not on board with his plan and paint that politician as a lover of foreign oil. "We're tracking everybody in Congress," he said. "We're watching very closely."
Hopefully, Pickens will have an eye on his buddy Brownback, too.
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