“Jess Zimmerman’ - Why Republicans are fighting Obama’s commerce pick
June 1, 2011 Jess Zimmerman
June 1, 2011
http://www.grist.org/list/2011-06-01-why-republicans-are-fighting-obamas-commerce-pick
President Obama nominated long-time successful energy executive John Bryson to be secretary of commerce yesterday, in a move representative Darrell Issa calls "deeply out of touch with our current energy challenge." Wait, what?
See, before Bryson was the president of the California Public Utilities Commission, or the CEO of Edison International, or the director of Boeing, or a trustee at CalTech, or the chairman of the board of BrightSource Energy (which built Google's solar farms), he co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council. A hippie! What do hippies know about our current energy challenge??
Issa's not the only one throwing shade. Jim Inhofe objected to Bryson on the grounds that the NRDC is a "radical environmental organization" -- and Inhofe knows from radical! Slightly less insanely, 44 Republican senators are saying that they will filibuster his confirmation, not because they have any problems with his record, but because they want to use their cooperation to blackmail Obama into ratifying trade agreements they favor.