Jerry McNerney, who holds two patents in wind energy technology, has an engineer's attitude towards things. We got a problem? Let's see what we can figure out to fix it. And he understands the scientific method, where you consider all the evidence and make decisions based on facts.
This distinguishes him from Republican Richard Pombo (R-CA), whom he is challenging for the Congressional seat in California's District 11. In fact, the two men couldn't be more different. Pombo got an "award" for science-based policy from a greenwashing industry front group. McNerney got a PhD in mathematics.
This diary also has a postcript about Pombo on immigration, because there aren't enough days left to give it a separate diary. Cross-posted to ePluribusMedia.
Scroll to the bottom for Pombo's stand on immigration. Currently, he's on the Sensenbrenner bandwagon as a loyal party lieutenant. Back in the 1990s, he failed to pass his own immigration bill - one that, shall we say, César Chavez would not have been enthusiastic about. Nor would the Minuteman crowd, for that matter. But first, to our main topic.
SCIENCE-BASED PUBLIC POLICY
Pombo's hometown paper, the Tracy Press has its own version of "Cheers & Jeers" which they call Barbs and Bouquets. Last May 8, it included the following item:
BARB: To the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Policy, for appearing to be a defender of natural resources, when it is oneo f the many industry funded groups created to spread misinformation about such issues as global warming, air pollution and toxic health hazards. This spring it honored Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, for his owrk as chairman of the House Committee on Resources. One of the center's chief contributors is oil giant ExxonMobil, which contributed more than $700,000 to the organization between 1998 and 2004.
Other awardees of the Annapolis Center are Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and Joe Barton R, TX-06). When I think about scientific prowess, these are not the guys that pop to mind for me. Rep. Jerry McNerney - there's a guy we actually can count on to promote rational, science-based public policy.
Salon ran a story on the actual event. Worth a look in its entirety:
The price tag of this year's Annapolis ceremony has not been disclosed, though the official program did list the 10 corporations, trade groups and industry fronts that sponsored the event. These included some of the nation's most vociferous opponents of stricter pollution control, like Exxon Mobil, the Southern Co., the Edison Electric Institute, General Motors and the National Coal Council. Chemical producers Bayer and Clorox pitched in, as did Altria Corporate Services, a division of the cigarette company once known as Philip Morris.
The spectacle of such lavish award banquets has become a cornerstone of the Washington hotel industry. The nation's moneyed interests are always looking for ways to ply their favored pols with expensive meals. In their wisdom, congressional leaders have carved out a specific exemption for corporations that want to express their fealty to politicians. Members like Barton, Inhofe and Pombo are free to accept "food, refreshments and entertainment" in connection with awards, according to the ethics rules, even though those same gifts would be against House rules if a lobbyist simply took the Congress members out for dinner.
ENERGY & GLOBAL WARMING
Bill Clinton, one of the smartest guys around, came to Stockton to campaign for McNerney this week. From the Contra Costa Times:
At a rally Wednesday night in Stockton, Clinton said McNerney's background as a wind-energy consultant is exactly what's needed to help reduce the country's dependence on oil. "We ought to have one person in the House that actually knows about it, that actually knows how to do it," Clinton told the 1,000 or so people who attended the event in the rain at the Stockton airport. .
In a profile called Being Jerry McNerney, the Tracy Press reported this past Saturday:
"I believe that mankind has a destiny that hasn't yet been fulfilled," said McNerney this week. "I think mankind has a much higher role to play than fighting wars and having squabbles. We have to get along or we're going to destroy ourselves, and we've got some immense problems that are facing us."
McNerney listed global warming as one of the biggest threats to California and the world economy that needs to be addressed.
"We're going to be facing a real serious crunch with oil shortages, and we need to find new ways to create energy and become sustainable," he said. "Those are immense challenges, and I don't think we're facing those challenges yet. I think we can make the world a heck of a better place if we do face those challenges."
I've read numerous complaints that Pombo runs his hearings on Endangered Species a lot like the White House runs their "public appearances". Anyone who's going to testify, including "scientific experts", have to be vetted first. If their testimony isn't agreeable to Pombo, then they don't get to testify.
OCEANS & FISHERIES
There's also a renewal of Magnuson-Stevensfisheries bill that has marine scientists worried. It's another bill, like offshore drilling, that will be before the lame duck Congressional session after the election. That, along with the offshore drilling bill that even Gov. Schwarzengger opposes. Ironically, the Governator's coat-tails could save Pombo's seat for him in this statistical dead heat. From Inside Bay Area, 9/5/06:
Pombo's role in the drilling legislation currently being debated in Congress drew out the Ocean Champions Voter Fund, which ran newspaper ads, sent out mailers and placed telephone calls in the past couple weeks.
Mr. Pombo has taken on the oceans as agressively as he has taken on some of the terrestrial issues such as the Endangered Species Act and selling national parks, said David Wilmot, co-founder of the fund and the Oceans Champions group, which dubbed Pombo Ocean Enemy No. 1.
If we are going to protect our oceans and environment, Mr. Pobo has to be released from Office, he said.
Dr. David Wilmot's no New Agey feel-good type. He knows his stuff.
EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH
This is another issue separating the two candidates in CA-11. Pombo voted to uphold Dubya's first and only veto, against embryonic stem cell research. McNerney supports it, which puts him in step with the district, which voted 55-45 in favor of California's stem cell initiative.
Pombo's on the wrong side of four of the five science-based public policy issues discussed in a recent article in The New Scientist entitled Decision Time for America, 10/28/06. Those five are:
- Environment
- Stem Cells
- Evolution
- Global Warming
- Energy
He may be on the wrong side of the evolution question, too. I've not seen any public statements on that one way or the other.
SCIENCE, SI! POMBO, NO!
Our country's gotten too used to government by dogma, by ideology-mongers wilfully ignorant of the facts. Jerry McNerney's approach to problems, and his expertise are sorely needed in Congress. And he's still accepting contributions, and there's opportunities to volunteer too, no matter what part of the country you're in.
POSTSCRIPT on IMMIGRATION
Pombo's family (Portuguese, not Hispanic extraction) have been big landowners in the San Joaquin Delta for 100 years or so. He knows his class interests on this issue. The main points of Pombo's "guest worker" amendment (introduced twice in the 1990s) shouldn't be surprising in that light:
- Employers no longer required to prove inadequacy of available workforce, removing "regulatory burden"
- Employers no longer required to provide housing for migratory workers
- As an incentive for workers to return to their home countries, 25% of their pay would be withheld, to be sent to them after they leave the U.S.
That last one's a doozie, isn't it? I figure those "deportees" so heartbreakingly memorialized in Woody Guthrie's
Plane Wreck at Los Gatos could well have been working at a Pombo operation. Woody Guthrie was a lot fiercer in his class loyalties than that sanitized version of
This Land is Your Land taught in America's grade schools:
Plane Wreck at Los Gatos
The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again
CHORUS:
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"
...
Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.
...
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?
For McNerney: contribute and/or volunteer - no matter where in the country you are.