Fortune and fantasy on Africa's oil frontier
I managed to sit through several speeches from the Conservative Political Action Conference. With each speaker aiming to demonstrate that he was more conservative (read extremist) than his predecessor, it was a painful spectacle. “Throwing red meat to the base,” as the pundits say. And at every toss the hungry crowd erupted in raucous applause and cheering.
I don’t usually write about U.S. politics, but I’m making an exception for the completely over-the-top speech by Newt Gingrich. (Don’t you love how this ethically impaired candidate has become a sort of Tea Party darling?) He didn’t talk about his moon colony, but many of his proposals were just as outrageous.
It’s no secret that all of the G.O.P. candidates are cheerleaders for big oil – and Obama isn’t much different – but Gingrich went all out to rally the base around proposals to gut financial and environmental regulation and give the industry the lower tax rate it deserves (to create American jobs…ha!). Gingrich also promised to have the Keystone pipeline project shovel-ready on his first day at the White House.
Dodd-Frank? The oil companies won’t even have to worry about that troubling legislation — he’ll throw it out!
From the CPAC website: Gingrich said his first priority as president would be repealing Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and Sarbanes-Oxley, which he said are killing jobs. He said his first executive orders would abolish White House czars and approve the Keystone pipeline, reinstate Reagan’s Mexico City policy banning spending federal dollars to pay for abortion in other counties. He also would eliminate the EPA, cut corporate taxes and maximize domestic energy production.
Christiane Badgley has been producing and editing documentary films for the past twenty years, with much of her work focused on the U.S. criminal justice system and post-colonial African politics and history.
