Cult of Global Warming Is Losing Influence

Religious faith is a source of strength in many people's lives. But religious faith when taken too far can prove ludicrous -- or disastrous.

On Oct. 22, 1844, thousand of Millerites, having sold all their possessions, climbed to the top of hills in Upstate New York to await the return of Jesus and the end of the world. They suffered "the great disappointment" when it didn't happen.

In 1212, or so the legends go, thousands of Children's Crusaders set off from France and Germany expecting the sea to part so they could march peaceably and convert Muslims in the Holy Land. It didn't, and many were shipwrecked or sold into slavery.

In 1898, the cavalrymen of the Madhi, ruler of Sudan for 13 years, went into the Battle of Omdurman armed with swords, believing that they were impervious to bullets. They weren't, and they were mowed down by British Maxim guns.

A similar but more peaceable fate is befalling believers in what I think can be called the religion of the global warming alarmists.

They have an unshakeable faith that manmade carbon emissions will produce a hotter climate, causing multiple natural disasters. Their insistence that we can be absolutely certain this will come to pass is based not on science -- which is never fully settled, witness the recent experiments that may undermine Albert Einstein's theory of relativity -- but on something very much like religious faith.

All the trappings of religion are there. Original sin: Mankind is responsible for these prophesied disasters, especially those slobs who live on suburban cul-de-sacs and drive their SUVs to strip malls and tacky chain restaurants.

The need for atonement and repentance: We must impose a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, which will increase the cost of everything and stunt economic growth.

Ritual, from the annual Earth Day to weekly recycling.

Indulgences, like those Martin Luther railed against: private jet-fliers like Al Gore and sitcom heiress Laurie David can buy carbon offsets to compensate for their carbon-emitting sins.

Corporate elitists, like General Electric's Jeff Immelt, profess to share this faith, just as cynical Venetian merchants and prim Victorian bankers gave lip service to the religious enthusiasms of their days. Bad for business not to. And if you're clever, you can figure out how to make money off it.

Believers in this religion have flocked to conferences in Rio de Janeiro, Kyoto and Copenhagen, just as Catholic bishops flocked to councils in Constance, Ferrara and Trent, to codify dogma and set new rules.

But like the Millerites, the global warming clergy has preached apocalyptic doom -- and is now facing an increasingly skeptical public. The idea that we can be so completely certain of climate change 70 to 90 years hence that we must inflict serious economic damage on ourselves in the meantime seems increasingly absurd.

If carbon emissions were the only thing affecting climate, the global-warming alarmists would be right. But it's obvious that climate is affected by many things, many not yet fully understood, and implausible that SUVs will affect it more than variations in the enormous energy produced by the sun.

Skepticism has been increased by the actions of believers. Passage of the House cap-and-trade bill in June 2009 focused politicians and voters on the costs of global-warming religion. And disclosure of the Climategate emails in November 2009 showed how the clerisy was willing to distort evidence and suppress dissenting views in the interest of propagation of the faith.

We have seen how the United Nations agency whose authority we are supposed to respect took an item from an environmental activist group predicting that the Himalayan glaciers would melt in 2350 and predicted that the melting would take place in 2035. No sensible society would stake its economic future on the word of folks capable of such an error.

In recent years, we have seen how negative to 2 percent growth hurts many, many people, as compared to what happens with 3 to 7 percent growth. So we're much less willing to adopt policies that will slow down growth not just for a few years but for the indefinite future.

Media, university and corporate elites still profess belief in global warming alarmism, but moves toward policies limiting carbon emissions have fizzled out, here and abroad. It looks like we'll dodge the fate of the Millerites, the children's crusaders and the Mahdi's cavalrymen.

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The Energy Efficient New Liberal Order

Last week, the American Council of Energy Efficiency (ACEEE) released their 5th annual report on energy efficient states at the National Press Club in Washington, DC in another futile and laughable attempt to bolster the liberals’ “new energy economy” with hot air rather than actual, um…energy.

Or jobs.

Jobs seem to be not just optional, but unnecessary when it comes to the New Energy economy the New Liberal Order is creating for us all.

In the New Energy economy they probably want to “people” the jobs with energy efficient robots that will vote the straight union ticket and take a paycheck that goes to 100 percent to union dues.

That would be even easier for Obama to rule over than his expressed desire to rule over the Chinese.

The ACEEE report showed that for the first time Massachusetts knocked California off the top of the list as the most energy efficient state. Also making the top ten were New York, Oregon, Vermont, District of Columbia, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Connecticut and Maryland.

The states that ranked worst in energy efficiency were South Carolina, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, Kansas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, South Dakota, North Dakota and Wyoming.

“Clearly, 2011 has not been kind to our economy, but energy efficiency remains a growth sector that attracts investment and creates jobs,” said Michael Sciortino, ACEEE senior policy analyst and the report’s lead author.

Investment maybe, thanks to an out of control federal government writing checks to any donor who promises to write a check back to the Democrat war chest.

But jobs? No.

Because when you look at the average unemployment numbers of the most efficient and least efficient states, the stats show that the more energy efficient states lag their lesser efficient brethren by 1.1 percentage points in unemployment.

The least efficient states enjoy average unemployment rate of 7.48 percent while the most energy efficient states have an average rate at 9 percent joblessness, right around the US average. That’s a 12 percent advantage in jobs for the big energy users; and more than just statistical noise.

“A sour U.S. economy, tight state budgets, and a failure by Congress to adopt a comprehensive energy strategy have not slowed the growing momentum among U.S. states toward increased energy efficiency,” said the accompanying press release by the ACEEE.

This shows the complete disconnect that Democrats have when it comes to creating an energy policy that actually, um…works.

And here’s more evidence:

“Illinois is a purposeful leader in the area of sustainability, investing more than $600 million in energy efficiency projects over the last four years alone,” Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity Director Warren Ribley told the ACEEE with apparently a straight face.

Illinois, under Democrat Pat Quinn, ranks 17th in energy efficiency according to ACEEE presumably because the president subsidizes the state with much of his own hot air.

Illinois is tied at 17th with Michigan in the ACEEE rankings.

The folks in Peoria, however, have to be wondering how the state can be spending $600 million on energy efficient programs when facing an $8 billion budget deficit- $5.5 billion of which is just unpaid bills- despite raising corporate taxes by 45 percent this year with personal income taxes going up 66 percent.

Companies such as Motorola, Caterpillar, Jimmy Johns, US Cellular and even the Chicago Mercantile Exchange have threatened to leave Illinois over rising government costs. Remember: Illinois is a "purposeful leader." [Cough, hack].

Illinois ranks 41st in unemployment in the US, coming in at a 10 percent rate, while fellow energy efficient state Michigan ranks 48th at 11.1 percent joblessness.

But it’s not just the false New Energy Economy that’s a culprit here. Not one of the top ten most energy-efficient-greatest-in-the-world-states is a right-to-work state, while the seven of the 10 most energy-draining-scowl-faced states are right-to-work states.

It’s funny how efficient you can be when you let the free markets work. Free markets are operative in both energy and employment.

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End Energy Subsidies, Jumpstart Tax Reform

It is time for our leaders in Congress – the ones lifted into power by a conservative wave – to take a bold, principled stand and put an end to energy subsidies. These subsidies distort private sector investment, waste taxpayer dollars, and allow the government to pick winners and losers. The subsidies exist not because they work, but because of the corrupt nexus between the Washington Establishment and the Bigs - Big Wall Street, Big Government, Big Labor and Big Business.

By one estimate, the direct cost of energy subsidies to taxpayers is $18.6 billion per year. Subsidies can take on various forms: direct payments, mandates, loan guarantees and tax gimmicks. Since comprehensive tax reform is a hot topic in Washington and around the country, let’s focus on the energy tax subsidies.

Here are just a few examples:

A $1.00 per gallon subsidy for biodiesel blenders for pure biodiesel, agri-biodiesel, or renewable diesel blended with petroleum diesel;

An additional $0.10 per gallon subsidy for small agri-biodiesel producers;

A $0.50 per gallon subsidy for various liquefied alternative fuels, which includes natural gas, petroleum gas, biomass and others;

A $0.50 per gallon subsidy for mixing various liquefied alternative fuels;

A $0.45 per gallon subsidy for ethanol blenders;

An additional $0.10 per gallon subsidy for small ethanol producers; and,

A $2,500 to $7,500 subsidy for purchase of qualified plug-in electric vehicles.

The list of subsidies goes on…and in the near future, Congressman Mike Pompeo (R-KS) will introduce legislation to end these and many other energy tax subsidies.

Slowly but surely, good conservatives inside Washington are standing up and taking wasteful energy subsidies head on. Earlier this year, nearly thirty conservative organizations, including Heritage Action for America, sent a letter to Congress saying it was time to end energy subsidies.

Congressman Pompeo introduced a resolution declaring it was time to “end all subsidies aimed at specific energy technologies or fuels.” Congressmen Tom McClintock (R-CA), Raul Labrador (R-ID) and Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) joined the effort and many more voiced support.

Of course, the lobbyists, accountants, politicians and bureaucrats who comprise the Washington Establishment have a stake in maintaining the status quo, which they are able to manipulate to their advantage. For that reason, big, politically connected energy interests will fight tooth and nail to keep their handouts.

We know about Solyndra, but just look at John Bryson, President Obama’s new Secretary of Commerce. He is the founder of the radical environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council and was most recently the chairman of BrightSource Energy’s board. BrightSource is a California-based solar company that received a $1.37 billion loan guarantee from the stimulus.

It’s an anecdote that perfectly captures the problem with the Washington Establishment. By going after energy subsidies – even just the expiring tax subsidies – lawmakers could demonstrate a seriousness of purpose, a real determination to ending the status quo and bringing about a flatter and fairer tax code.

The Heritage Foundation explains the importance of an improved tax code. Tax cuts spur economic growth because they reduce “government's influence on economic decisions and allowing people to respond more to market mechanisms, thereby encouraging more productive behavior.”

History is our guide. President Reagan’s tax cuts ushered in seven years of uninterrupted economic growth that saw the creation of nearly 20 million jobs. In the six quarters before President Bush’s 2003 tax cuts, economic growth was a paltry 1.7 percent. In the six quarters after, the growth was 4.1 percent.

For job-creating tax reform to become a reality, lawmakers must be willing to take on the corrupt nexus between the Washington Establishment and the Bigs. Of course, the current political dynamic in Washington will not allow for the type of fundamental tax reform our country needs as President Barack Obama and his allies in the Senate are totally committed to a class warfare strategy that divides the country by taxing success.

But that does not mean our leaders in Congress should back away from the legislative fight. If lawmakers really want a flatter and fairer tax system, they have to be willing to take on special interest subsidies. By taking on energy subsidies, they can show American people they are principled and committed.

To be clear, enacting comprehensive tax reform jeopardizes the very existence of the Washington Establishment. We can jumpstart that process by ending energy subsidies.

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"Clean" Energy's Dirty Secret: Cancer

Abound Solar is Colorado’s homegrown Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) solar panel manufacturer. With more than $400 million in taxpayer-funded loan guarantees and tax incentives, Abound employs roughly 350 people with plans for another 850 to 1000 employees in an Indiana facility sometime in 2012 or 2013.

GE’s entry into the Colorado market comes on the heels of its acquisition of Colorado-based PrimeStar Solar, culminating in plans to develop a $300 million project that promises those 355 jobs—at a cost of $28 million in municipal and state-based incentives.

What kind of solar panels will GE’s Colorado plant manufacture? Cadmium telluride, the same as Abound Solar, which the New York Times declared would put the loan guaranteed Abound—and by extension, taxpayers—“at risk.”

All of these solar panel producers have something in common; they need raw materials, specifically rare earth minerals, to manufacture their products. The U.S. currently does little mining or processing of rare earths.

When the Denver Post fawned over the taxpayer-subsidized GE solar manufacturing plant coming to Colorado, it concluded with the typical appeal to “energy independence.”

But solar energy does not equate to “energy independence” because it relies upon other countries, namely China, for the necessary supply of rare earths. Late last year, the Department of Energy (DOE) acknowledged the problem and published a report titled “Critical Materials Strategies” which focused on rare earths used in the production of various “clean” technologies.

‘Current global materials markets pose several challenges to the growing clean energy economy. Lead times with respect to new mining operations are long (from 2–10 years). Thus, the supply response to scarcity may be slow, limiting production of technologies that depend on such mining operations or causing sharp price increases. In addition, production of some materials is at present heavily concentrated in one or a small number of countries. (More than 95% of current production capacity for rare earth metals is currently in China.) Concentration of production in any supplier creates risks for global markets and creates geopolitical dynamics with the potential to affect other strategic interests of the United States.’

So the country that is challenging the U.S. economically and is the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt also controls the very materials needed to ensure our “energy independence.”

Rare earths are needed for more than just solar panels. They are used for wind turbines and hybrid car batteries. And if our “energy independence” comes from renewables such as solar, they will have to compete with iPods, cell phones, computers, batteries, and more.

The myth that green energy is “clean” energy

Manufacturing solar panels isn’t clean. Two of the three solar companies profiled earlier, GE and Abound, already produce or plan to make Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) thin film photovoltaics (PV). CdTe is a compound formed from Cadmium and Tellurium. While Tellurium is rare, Cadmium is a highly toxic human carcinogen. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the compound CdTe is also a carcinogen. Depending on the level of exposure, health effects range from kidney damage, fragile bones, lung damage, and death.

Because the U.S. doesn’t mine these much of these elements here, U.S. manufacturers look elsewhere. Sadly, individual tragedy in China’s “cancer villages” reveals the dirty secret of “clean energy.”

‘Yun Yaoshun's two granddaughters died at the ages of 12 and 18, succumbing to kidney and stomach cancer even though these types of cancers rarely affect children. The World Health Organization has suggested that the high rate of such digestive cancers are due to the ingestion of polluted water.

The river where the children played stretches from the bottom of the Daboshan mine…Its waters are contaminated by cadmium, lead, indium and zinc and other metals.’

Mining in China has turned towns and hamlets into “cancer villages.” Rivers run murky white to shades of orange. Fish and ducks are dead. And villagers bury friends and neighbors who die of cancer in their 30s and 40s reports Intellasia.

Another eye-opening news report on rare earth mining and processing from the Channel 4 in the United Kingdom claims, “it doesn’t look very green, rare earth processing in China is a messy, dangerous, polluting business. It uses toxic chemicals…workers have little or no protection.”

We still don’t know how large solar installations covering thousands of acres in the desert over long periods of time will affect the ecosystem.

To answer our earlier question, is the taxpayer “investment” in solar power worth the cost to achieve “energy independence” with “clean” power sources? It’s a trick question because solar is neither a domestic product nor a clean one.

The bottom line is that all energy sources come with some type of risk and to assume that solar panels are an economic and environmental panacea is wrong, despite what the Denver Post and other New Energy Economy cheerleaders would like us to believe.

If we are going to continue on the path of alternative energy, we should do so with out eyes wide open.

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Going Green with Shady Deals

Madness in Rhode Island

We all know about Solyndra. We are learning about Fisker, the start-up electric car company, which received a $529 million loan from the Department of Energy. Touted by Vice President Biden as “a bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs,” the cars are being manufactured in Finland. These are big stories being covered by the major media outlets. And these are only two such stories out there.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about two smaller stories from little states where shenanigans, at the least, and possible outright corruption, at the worst, were engaged in attempting to push through supposed green-energy projects. While researching those, another shady story surfaced: Rhode Island’s Block Island Wind Farm Project.

Back in 2004, in a different political and economic world, the RI General Assembly passed a Renewable Energy Standard that states: “fossil fuel prices are extremely variable and created economic hardships for employers and families, and increased use of renewable energy can both lower and stabilize energy cost.” The ratepayers of RI were sold a bill of goods that renewable energy can lower energy costs.

Republican Governor Donald Carcieri wanted to make RI the first state in the country with an offshore wind farm. In 2008, he pushed the Block Island Wind Farm project. It may give him a longed-for legacy—but it will not “lower energy costs.” The RI Public Utility Commission rejected the project as “commercially not reasonable.”

Undaunted, Carcieri and the General Assembly, in a late-night session, rushed to change the law, mandating that the PUC reconsider its rejection—a decision that would ultimately guarantee the project’s approval.

Within the plan, hatched by then-Governor Carcieri’s administration, is a guaranteed 3.5% price escalation for Deepwater Wind Inc., the New Jersey-based company developing the project—pricing starts at 24.4 cents/kwh, which will become 47 cents/kwh in 20 years. However, earlier this year, because of a drop in natural gas prices—the source fuel for most of RI’s electricity generation—the RI PUC approved a rate decrease from 9.4 cents/kwh to 6.9. Wind power rates nearly quadruple current prices logically should have sunk the Block Island project.

Nevertheless, it has continued forward.

The project’s viability was based on a politically motivated Power Purchase Agreement. After the PUC did ultimately approve the PPA, three groups appealed the decision to the Supreme Court: two businesses based on economic damage and irrational decision making, a conservation group who’d initially supported the project but became concerned about inappropriate process and backroom dealing, and the Attorney General who believed the project was bad for consumers.

The 2010 election brought about changes.

The new AG, Peter Kilmartin, was in the legislature at the time of the dead-of-night rule change that allowed the Deepwater Wind project to go forward. He’d voted for it. No surprise, as the new AG, he dismissed the former AG’s appeal.

Former Carcieri chief of staff Jeffrey Grybowski is now chief administrative officer for Deepwater Wind.

The Supreme Court heard the remaining two appeals despite a conflict of interest. Judge Maureen McKenna Goldberg’s husband, Robert, had received $100k as a lobbyist for Deepwater Wind. Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court upheld the approval of the PPA.

But more rule changes are in order. Within the PPA was an automatic termination clause if regulatory approval was not received by June 30, 2011—one year from signing. On July 1, 2011 the Supreme Court upheld the PUC’s approval. Logic would dictate that the contract is terminated. On September 29, Deepwater Wind filed a petition with the PUC to waive the termination clause. On October 15, Toray Plastics responded and filed an objection to the waiver.

Why would the former governor, the state legislature, and the Supreme Court go to such extreme measures to raise energy rates for the state of RI? Why would the EPA Administrator continue to issue one cost-increasing regulation after another? Why does the Energy Secretary want America’s gasoline prices on par with the European model? Why does President Obama believe that electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket?

As was illustrated a couple of weeks ago in the article about Toray Plastics, cost-effective energy is an important part of manufacturing and jobs in America. Energy is more than a jobs plan. Energy is about more than anti-terrorism. Energy is an integral part of the economy. Energy makes America great.

So why is there a campaign to block or restrict it? How will raising the price help business or the tapped-out household?

As we head into the 2012 election cycle, energy needs to be front and center. It needs to be a part of the presidential debates and a part of kitchen-table discussions.

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“Peak Oil” takes a deadly blow

Although he is a Leftist, HotCock gets some things right. He has an interesting point below

I’ve never believed in “peak oil.” (The notion held with religious conviction by many on the left here, that world production is topping out — and will soon slide, plunging the world into economic chaos.) There’s plenty of oil, with the constraints, as always, being the cost of recovery. Witness the vast new North Dakota oil shale fields. I regard oil “shortages” as contrivances by the oil companies, allied brokers and middlemen to run up the price. I fill my aging fleet of 50s and 60s era Chryslers with a light heart. The 59 Imperial ragtop and the 62 Belevedere wagon get around 18 mpg, which is still way ahead of the SUVs.

Contrary to the lurid predictions of declining U.S. oil production, disastrous dependence on foreign oil and the need for new offshore drilling, not to mention the gloom-sodden predictions of the “peak oil” crowd, the big crisis for the U.S. oil companies can be summed up in a single word that drives an oil executive to panic like a lightning bolt striking a herd of snoozing Longhorns: glut.


Let me wheel on a very useful report, “Exporting Energy Security: Keystone XL Exposed,” issued by Oil Change International, a “clean energy” advocate. The explosive sentences (underpinned by the latest figures from the government’s Energy Information Administration) come on Pages 3 and 4: “For the last two years, and for the foreseeable future demand (for oil in the United States) is in decline, while domestic supply is rising … Gasoline demand is declining due to increasing vehicle efficiency and slow economic growth;” meanwhile, “as a result of stagnant demand and the rise in both domestic (notably North Dakota) and Canadian oil production, there is a glut of oil in the U.S. market. Refiners have therefore identified the export market as their primary hope for growth and maximum profits.”

By the way, I’m by no means endorsing the rest of Oil Change International’s piously trendy “clean energy” platform. But I am full of admiration for whoever put this report together; in two pages they’ve brought out enough useful facts on the domestic oil situation to devastate a decade’s worth of Stakhanovite propagandizing by Time, Newsweek, The Economist, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the TV networks, the environmental mega-foundations and, of course, the entire spectrum of establishment think tanks from loony liberal to crazed conservative.

The current focus of debate on whether America is oil-rich or oil starved is the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline extension — a $7 billion project to bring heavy, “sour” crude oil extracted from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, down through Montana and the Plains states to refineries on the Gulf Coast, notably in Port Arthur, Texas. There were fierce protests outside the White House last month, led by Bill McKibben, about the proposed pipeline, which is prospectively guilty of many sins, led by its putative enhancement of the theory known as anthropogenic global warming. The protesters have now furled their banners and headed home, or maybe they’re “occupying Wall Street,” this month’s whack at capitalism and greed.

Now the Obama administration will decide whether to issue a presidential permit for the object of last month’s protests. There’s a ninety-day review period. If federal agencies aren’t unanimous, then the final say-so is up to Obama. It’s a political hot potato and a “yes” from Obama will cost him a bit among the greens, but where are they going to go?

It’s a sound bet that Obama will issue approval. Would the ductile president risk a thrashing from Republicans for putting birds ahead of jobs? Undoubtedly, the prime rationale put forward by the president will be security of supply and energy “independence,” meaning in this instance supply from the fine, upstanding Calgary-based, Trans-Canada Corp., as opposed to “not secure and reliable sources of crude oil, including the Middle East, Africa, Mexico and South America.”

We saw this bait-and-switch game a generation ago amid the battles over oil in Alaska, where the North Slope drilling and pipeline were approved by Congress only because the oil was intended to buttress America’s energy independence. Congress required the oil companies operating on the North Slope to refine the crude in the United States, with no exports permitted.

In fact, the oil companies had as their long-term strategy the aim of exporting Alaska’s crude to Asia, thus ensuring that home heating fuel prices in the Midwest in winter would stay high.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton, extended Lincoln bedroom sleeping privileges and a Rose Garden birthday party to Arco’s former CEO Lodwrick Cook. In exchange for campaign cash, Clinton signed an executive order OK’ing foreign sales of Alaskan crude.

This time, there will be no 25-year pause. From day one of the Keystone XL scheme, the oil companies’ plan has been to take the heavy crude from Alberta, refine it in Texas and then ship it out in the form of “middle distillates” — diesel, jet fuel, heating oil — primarily to Europe and Latin America.

Enter San Antonio based Valero Energy, the largest exporter of refined oil products in the United States and a big-time retailer of gasoline in this country through its Valero, Diamond Shamrock and Beacon stations. As Oil Change International’s report emphasizes, the Keystone XL pipeline would “probably not have gotten off the drawing board” if it hadn’t been for Valero. The company has the biggest commitment to the pipeline, guaranteeing a TransCanada Corp. purchase of at least 100,000 barrels a day, 20 percent of Keystone XL’s capacity, until 2030.

Valero’s CEO and chairman, Bill Klesse, doesn’t keep his firm’s business plan a secret. The big overseas market is diesel because Europeans, Latin Americans and others like the more fuel-efficient diesel engine. Valero’s Port Arthur refinery can process cheap heavy crude from Canadian tar sands into high-value, ultra-low sulfur diesel. Better still, since the refinery operates as a “foreign trade zone,” it won’t pay tax and custom duties on exports or on any gasoline imports from its Welsh refinery.

In fact, there’s no national need for the Keystone XL extension. It spares TransCanada the task of trying to send the tar sands oil to Canadian terminals through fractious First Nations north of the border. It feeds big oil’s bottom line. It’s an environmental nightmare — mainly because of the certainty of corporate penny-pinching in maintenance and the equally appalling (and deliberate) lack of government safety enforcement.

Money talks, of course. Obama received $884,000 from the oil and gas industry during the 2008 campaign, more than any other lawmaker except John McCain. Valero throws money around. Across 2008, 2010 and thus far in the 2012 campaign, it ranks in the top six contributors from the oil and gas industry — favoring Republicans by 80 percent or more. Between 1998 and 2010, Valero gave $147,895 to Rick Perry, outstripped only by Exxon. Surely, one way or the other, Bill Klesse can hope for a night in the Lincoln bedroom.

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