Late last week, national Democrats announced they would be launching a campaign responding to laws across the country that may decrease access to the polls for many for the 2012 election.

U.S. News reports:

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz accused Republicans of launching a “full-scale attack on the public’s right to vote.” She said that GOP efforts in states to curb instant voter registration and early voting and require photo identification at the polls to fight alleged fraud could push minorities, especially Hispanics and African-Americans, away from voting. She claimed that repeated investigations into voter fraud have found very little evidence that it occurs.

…

The Republican National Committee rejected the charges, however. Officials said there is evidence of voter fraud. In just one popularized case, for example, they note that ACORN—the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now—in 2008 was accused of handling 400,000 fraudulent registrations.

The website, protectingthevote.com, states that “in 2011, a new movement to change the way we vote is under way. Unlike past reforms that sought to expand access to voting, this effort aims to restrict voting purely for partisan gain.”

The website runs through some of the most restrictive new laws in states across the country. The DNC points to laws that “target voter registration drives, cut early voting, repeal election day registration, and create citizen challenges” as the biggest culprits of voter suppression.

The website also has a link to a 73-page report written by the Voting Rights Institute, with help from the DNC. The report singled out Florida as passing some of the most restrictive voting laws, including one law that targets voter-registration drives and another that cuts early voting.

According to the report:

The GOP enacted restrictions on voter registration drives in Florida and Texas, and proposed similar measures in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, and Mississippi. The new legislation in Florida was by far the GOP’s most extensive effort. In 2010, Republican Governor Rick Scott rode a wave of Tea Party support to victory in the state’s gubernatorial race, joining Republican majorities in the Florida House and Senate. A pinnacle of their collaboration in this year’s legislative session was HB1355, a 158-page omnibus elections overhaul that—in addition to early voting cuts—enacted draconian restrictions on all nongovernmental entities that conduct voter registration.

Under HB1355, any group or individual that conducts voter registration must now (1) register their organization with the Florida Division of Elections prior to conducting registration activities and regularly file onerous reports on all their activities; (2) track and account for voter registration forms using a specially generated number for each document; (3) submit completed voter registration forms to the state within 48 hours (a significant decrease from the previous deadline of 10 days); (4) subject themselves to fines between $50 and $1,000 for registration forms returned to the state after 48 hours; and (5) submit to new enforcement authority from the Florida attorney general.

These restrictions encumber even large and experienced organizations; immediately after HB1355 was passed, the League of Women Voters of Florida suspended its voter registration activities. But these restrictions fall heaviest on small organizations that conduct neighborhood voter registration, lack the capacity to abide by the state’s reporting requirements and tight deadlines, and could be virtually bankrupted under this penalty structure. Already, there are reports of public school teachers who may face huge fines under the new law—all for the supposed offense of helping students register to vote without following each minute requirement of the new law.

Fewer voter registration drives mean fewer voters. But cutting back on voter registration drives does not have the effect of limiting the political participation of all citizens equally. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau demonstrates that African American and Hispanic voters are more than twice as likely to register through voter registration drives as are white voters in Florida.

Democrats have also sought congressional investigations in order to address these laws. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.,requested congressional field hearings into the new laws, asking Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to schedule them. Nelson also sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder requesting that the Justice Department launch an investigation into whether the “new state voting laws resulted from collusion or an orchestrated effort to limit voter turnout.”

Florida is currently waiting for a ruling on the most controversial aspects of H.B. 1355 from a court in the District of Columbia.

Photo: Flickr/hjl

The prepared statements issued by each are as follows:

Matt Strawn, Iowa — “The four santioned, early states have been very clear that we will move together, if necessary, to ensure order as outlined in RNC rules. If we are forced to change our dates together, we will.”

Wayne MacDonald, New Hampshire — “The New Hampshire Republican Party is proud to stand with Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina in honoring the rules of the RNC and the laws, traditions and beliefs of our respective states. We recognize that frontloading the political calendar is a disservice to the political process, our candidates and the voters. New Hampshire’s Secretary of State will make sure our state continues to play its critically important role in the presidential nominating process.”

Amy Tarkanian, Nevada — “Nevada remains committed to achieving excellence in our First in the West caucus and we are undeterred by the prospect of moving the date, which we will do if New Hampshire moves theirs, as we are bound by rule to hold our caucus four days after New Hampshire’s primary. Florida’s possible decision to move its primary is disappointing and, frankly, disrespectful of the other early primary states and the process as a whole. Nevada stands proudly with the other early states, Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina in protecting the established process and representing the West. This situation gives Nevadans the opportunity to showcase our ability to adapt and establish our state as a major player in national politics.”

Chad Connelly, South Carolina — “Our four states are committed to protecting the integrity of the 2012 nominating process and we refuse to let rogue states dictate the calendar. Elections held just after New Year hurt voters and candidates by short circuiting the nominating process. Republicans deserve the chance to get to know every candidate. We must choose the right person to defeat Barack Obama.”

In addition to issuing his statement, Connelly also announced a 2012 Presidential Preference Primary Task Force in South Carolina that will “oversee the primary, its fundraising goals, and work to ensure South Carolina’s first-in-the-south primary status in the future.”

Honorary leaders of the group are South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and U.S. Sens. Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, both Republicans. Several national and state lawmakers will also be serving as co-leaders for the project. The committee itself is comprised of several former party chairpersons, former members of Congress, state attorneys and local party leaders.

“South Carolina’s first-in-the-south Republican presidential primary focuses the eyes of the world on our great state,” said Haley. “We could be more excited that once again we have a chance to showcase our state as presidential candidates campaign in every corner of South Carolina and talk face-to-face with our voters and the most important issues facing our country.”

In other calendar news, the Missouri Republican State Central Committee held an emergency meeting on Thursday and voted unanimously to amend its call to convention and move to a caucus system for the 2012 election.

“The Missouri Republican Party is committed to ensuring that the Governor’s veto of the elections bill and the General Assembly’s failure to move our presidential primary will not disrupt the national nominating process,” explained David Cole, chairman of the Missouri Republican Party. “A caucus will continue to protect the rights of Missourians to select the Republican nominee for president — and any self-declared Republican who is registered to vote in Missouri has the ability to participate in the caucus process.”

The Missouri county caucuses are scheduled for March 17, 2012, but no national delegates will be selected at that time. Congressional district conventions are slated for April 12, 2012, where three delegates and alternates to the national convention and one presidential elector will be determined. The delegates and alternates will be required to declare allegiance to a candidate prior to voting and they will be bound to that choice. A state convention will follow on June 12 where 25 at-large delegates and alternates and two presidential electors will be determined. These individuals will also be required to bind themselves to a candidate.

(Editor’s note: This post originally ran under the headline, “Early state GOP chairmen sound off on 2012 calendar,” and has since been updated. Our apologies to Nevada Chairwoman Amy Tarkanian.)

Kobach envisions bills similar to Alabama’s spreading across the country, and was profiled in a Politico article Monday saying as much: “It’s likely that Missouri will raise its standard up to the Arizona or Alabama level… and there’s a good shot that something might pass in Pennsylvania. It’s hard to predict too far out in the future, but those are probably the two best bets.”

The headline of the Politico article is “Swing states face immigration fight,” but the author, Reid J. Epstein, offers no corroboration for Kobach’s claims, instead merely quoting national-level opponents and proponents of the “attrition through enforcement” laws already in existence.

Carlos Gomez, president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Greater Kansas City, told TAI that a Missouri version of the immigration law in next year’s legislative session is possible but, “it just depends on the community and how they’re going to react.” He points out that Kobach’s ideas met with strong opposition when they were proposed in Kansas and ultimately failed in this year’s legislative session.

Mike Hethmon, a colleague of Kobach’s at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, mentions Florida and Texas (only one of which is a swing state) as states where “you tend to see fairly high-profile… media efforts but [you] haven’t seen the appearance of a legislator who is both willing to focus on the technical issues and keep pushing the issue through multiple sessions.”

But it’s hard to see how Kobach’s claim that his laws will be spreading to swing states is any more substantial than the unfocused efforts of media-focused politicians that his colleague criticizes.

According to the Associated Press, Missouri’s legislation– which will now be sent to the governor to sign– “would remove a general exception for a woman’s health from an existing law against aborting viable fetuses.” If the the governor signs the bill into law, a late-term abortion will only be allowed “when a woman’s life is endangered” or if the pregnancy poses a “serious risk of a permanent physical impairment.” #

This distinction between a serious health risk and one that is “life threatening” or a “serious risk of a permanent physical impairment” was debated during Florida’s recently-ended legislative session. #

Some Florida legislators tried to add language to a ban on public funding for abortions that would allow an exception for women who face a “serious health risk.” Such attempts failed more than once. State Sen. Stephen Wise, R-Nassau, said during a senate committee debate that that such language was “too broad” and could possibly justify exceptions beyond those stipulated in the Hyde Amendment. The Hyde Amendment provides exceptions for cases of rape, incest or a threat to the mother’s health. #

According to the Guttmacher Institute, exceptions provided in late-term abortion bans are varied throughout the country. #

Florida, for example, provides exceptions to the state’s late-term abortion ban for women who face a threat to their lives and health risks – an exception not consistent throughout the country. #

From the Guttmacher report: #

• “32 states permit abortions to preserve the life or health of the woman.”
• “3 states permit abortions to save the life or physical health of the woman.”
• “3 states permit abortions only to save the life of the woman.”

According to the Associated Press, Missouri’s law also enacts very steep penalties against any doctor violating these restrictions. Doctors found to be in violation could face fines of  “up to $50,000” and lose their medical licenses. Hospitals and surgical centers violating the restrictions could lose their state licenses. #

“We’re going to have to make some hard decisions to tackle our national debt, but this isn’t one of them,” Walz said in a statement Tuesday. “Closing this tax loophole restores the Mortgage Interest Deduction to its original purpose: helping middle-class families realize the American Dream through home ownership.” #

Walz introduced the bill along with fellow Democratic Reps. Mike Quigley of Illinois and Gary Peters of Michigan. #

“We need to get the deficit under control, and that means simplifying the tax code and eliminating special interest tax giveaways like the Yacht Loophole,” Peters said. “Home ownership is part of the American Dream and we should encourage it, but yacht owners don’t need any special handouts, especially in the middle of a budget crisis.” #

Loopholes for yacht owners also exist in state law and, in general, Republicans have resisted efforts to close those loopholes. In California, Republicans rejected a similar effort in 2008. In 2010, in Missouri, a bipartisan bill was offered to repeal tax breaks for yacht owners, but the Republican-controlled legislature adjourned without taking up the bill. Republicans in Texas this year have proposed a tax break for yacht owners and it’s already passed key committees. #

Closing the federal loophole has been tried before: Republican Sen. John Danforth of Missouri offered a bill in 1987 to close it, but was not successful. #

A 2004 estimate of the cost of the tax breaks was more than $1 billion. #

The documents are used ostensibly to inform newly diagnosed HIV-positive persons of their legal responsibility under Michigan law to inform sexual partners of their status or face possible felony charges. But those documents came under fire when a Michigan Messenger investigation published in February revealed that the documents not only misstated the HIV disclosure law, but had been used as evidence in criminal proceedings around the state.

“The Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) does not endorse or encourage the use of ‘Client Acknowledgment Forms,’” wrote Amna Osman, director of the Division of Health, Wellness and Disease Control. “We do not support or endorse any practice or policy which may contribute to stigmatizing HIV or associated risk behaviors as this may serve as a deterrent to individuals seeking testing to learn their HIV status, or from seeking care, if they know they are HIV-infected.”

Osman also indicated in the letter that such forms are not required under Michigan law.

“We strongly encourage LHDs (local health departments) that are currently using Client Acknowledgment forms to review this practice immediately,” Osman wrote.

This is not the first time such documents have come under fire. In 2007, the Ingham County Health Department came under fire for documents called “HIV contracts.” The Michigan Department of Community Health said then such documents were not required under Michigan’s laws. Michigan law says only that those who test positive for HIV are to be informed of Michigan’s felony disclosure law, which requires disclosure of an HIV-positive test result prior to sexual penetration “however slight.”

The news was greeted warmly by activists who had raised concerns about the documents in February.

“This is strongly worded and hopefully will dissuade local health departments from continuing the practice of using these forms,” said Jay Kaplan, staff attorney for the ACLU of Michigan Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Project.

“The Michigan Department of Community Health should be applauded for stepping up and doing the right thing. HIV positive Michiganders have civil rights, and just like every other person in this state, is owed protection from policies that would infringe on those rights,” said David Holtz, executive director of Progress Michigan. “This move will protect the rights of an estimated 18,000 HIV positive persons in Michigan, and will go a long way toward chipping away at the unfair stigma assigned to folks fighting this disease.”

“The response from MDCH, we think, is appropriate,” says Rene Bennett-Carlson, managing attorney at the Center for HIV Law and Policy in New York City. “We appreciate their acknowledgment that these policies discriminate and stigmatize against the HIV-positive community in Michigan. We look forward to seeing what alternatives the local health departments engage in to eliminate these practices and how they adopt best practices for the people they are serving.”

Carlson, said the MDCH letter was a bold move that should be copied wherever HIV-positive people are being required to sign documents related to their HIV status and the state’s criminal laws. She specifically identified Missouri, where activists have noted a significant increase in the number of criminal prosecutions under that state’s HIV exposure laws.

“We would recommend in any situation where there are forms that they should be eliminated and the local health departments should not continue stigmatizing and discriminatory practices that single out HIV positive people because of their status,” Carlson said. “Documents that make people acknowledge their HIV-positive status and sign that they can be prosecuted because of their HIV positive status are significant barriers.”

Jacqueline Lapine, communications director from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, did not immediately return inquiries from Michigan Messenger as to whether or not the state would follow Michigan’s example.

“The National Association of People With AIDS (NAPWA) applauds the Michigan Department of Community Health for protecting the rights of people living with HIV. No newly diagnosed individual should have to endure the indignity of having their humanity challenged and called into question in such a disrespectful manner. No other patients with health conditions, infectious or otherwise, are forced to sign away a part of their human rights,” said Vanessa Johnson, executive vice president of NAPWA, a national organization that advocates for people living with HIV. “Fortunately, there appears to be a movement afoot by state health departments to review these types of offensive documents. For this we applaud the Positive Justice Project for its leadership on this issue and the National Association of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD) for the issuance of a statement advocating for the repeal of HIV criminalization.”

NASTAD issued a statement in March criticizing laws which criminalize HIV-positive people. MDCH’s Osman serves on NASTAD’s Board of Directors and is in line to become the group’s new board chair later this year, said NASTAD’s Communications Director Terrence Moore.

“Our hope is that more states will move in the direction that Michigan has and treat the disease instead of penalizing the person for having the disease,” Johnson said, echoing Bennett.

“The Michigan Department of Community Health’s (MDCH) mailed directive to county health departments to cease and desist the inclusion of inaccurate requirements on HIV disclosure forms went above and beyond what Equality Michigan asked of the Department,” said Emily Dievendorf, policy director for Equality Michigan, an Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender rights advocacy group based in Detroit. “We are thankful for this recently demonstrated commitment by MDCH to balancing the public’s right to both justice and good health.”

“The letter speaks more accurately to the impact of stigma on HIV positive people,” said Mark Peterson, director from the Michigan Positive Action Coalition. “I think the language is also speaking more appropriately to what local health departments are mandated to do and not go beyond with their philosophical issues. I was glad to see that.”

According the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, HIV is not transmitted via biting; but Missouri’s decades old HIV-exposure law makes biting a felony nonetheless.

That law, as well as documents being used by the state for HIV-positives, are coming under scrutiny by national advocates who say the state’s legal assault on HIV-positive people is escalating.

Since January, the Center for HIV Law and Policy (CHLP) in New York City has identified five criminal actions — including Bishop’s case — in Missouri. Jacqueline Lapine, communications director for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, says the department does track how many cases are filed each year.

“The Bishop case illustrates the extent to which continuing, unaddressed public ignorance about the routes and actual risks of HIV transmission informs policy making at every level and burdens the lives of people living with HIV,” says Rene Bennett-Carlson, managing attorney at CHLP. “This young man may lose 15 years of his life to a prison cell for being HIV positive. If he hadn’t gotten an HIV test he wouldn’t be facing these penalties.”

The Missouri Law

Like Michigan, Missouri passed its HIV-specific criminal law in 1988. But unlike Michigan’s law, which criminalizes only sexual behavior without disclosure of an HIV-positive status, Missouri’s law outlines a series of behaviors which the state identifies as reckless exposure:

(a) Through contact with blood, semen or vaginal secretions in the course of oral, anal or vaginal sexual intercourse; or
(b) By the sharing of needles; or
(c) By biting another person or purposely acting in any other manner which causes the HIV-infected person’s semen, vaginal secretions, or blood to come into contact with the mucous membranes or nonintact skin of another person.

Lawmakers felt that was not enough, and in 1997 amended the law to make it easier to prosecute HIV-positive persons without a victim. The amendment allowed evidence of other sexually transmitted infections to stand as proof of reckless exposure. The law specifies primary or secondary syphilis infections, gonorrhea or chlamydia as evidence that an HIV-positive person has broken the law.

“This Missouri statute legalizes a witch hunt,” says Bennett-Carlson. “This is a bit severe in terms of language but Missouri is incredibly zealous in their prosecutions of HIV-positive people and added a statute a few years back that one can be prosecuted under the HIV exposure statute if, after an HIV-positive test result, the defendant tests positive for syphilis, gonorrhea, or chlamydia. These positive test results are used by officials to prove that HIV-positives are “recklessly” having unprotected sex and negate the need for witness testimony.”

Julie Scofield of National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors says, “NASTAD is extremely concerned about state laws related to the transmission of HIV that are not based on sound science and public health practice, such as the law in Missouri that suggests HIV can be transmitted by biting.

“Stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS are fueled by policies, laws, and public health practice that are not solidly grounded science and must be changed if we are to make needed progress in fighting the epidemic in states across the nation,” noted Scofield.

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On top of this law, HIV-positive people are asked to sign a document (PDF) in which the patient is acknowledging his or her status and Missouri law. Signing those documents, Missouri DHSS’s Lapine says, is part of gaining access to medical case management and AIDS Drug Assistance Program.

“A signature is collected when one enrolls in Ryan White medical case management and/or the AIDS Drugs Assistance Program,” Lapine says.

Medical case management has been shown in studies to assist HIV-positive people maintain better health outcomes by assisting them in coordinating care with several doctors as well as nutritional care.

The AIDS Drug Assistance Program, or ADAP, provides access to life saving anti-retroviral medications. Those drugs are able to prevent the virus from replicating in the body, and prevent irreversible damage to the immune system. However, those medications are exceedingly expensive, costing as little as $15,000 a year to as much as $40,000 or more a year.

ADAP also provides medications as a prophylaxis drugs to prevent HIV-positive people from contracting opportunistic infections because of their weakened immune systems. Those medication interventions can reduce the long term costs associated with living with HIV by thousands of dollars annually and prevent having to hospitalize people.

“Prior to signing any such document acknowledging receipt of Missouri’s idiotic information about HIV transmission, a person with HIV should consult a lawyer,” says Sean Strub, founding publisher of the publication POZ Magazine and a senior fellow for the Center for HIV Law and Policy. “Too many people sign these things minutes after being told of their diagnosis and while in a state of semi-shock. In some cases they may also be unwittingly signing away important rights. It is abusive for the state to imply the person must sign them.”

Strub is not alone in challenging the documents.

“Thirty years into the epidemic it is maddening that health departments continue to put the seal of approval on this type of gross misinformation,” says Bennett-Carlson. “The development and use of this form by government health officials contributes to the perpetuation of stigma and the HIV epidemic as a whole.”

Similar documents in Michigan came under fire earlier this year when Michigan Messenger uncovered their use. Civil rights officials said they were prepared to investigate them, and the Michigan Department of Community Health issued a statement telling local health officials to cease using the documents, or at the very least, make sure they properly cited Michigan’s law.

Number of Criminal Cases Unknown

While the law has been in effect since 1988, Missouri health officials do not track the number of cases brought in state courts. Missouri’s DHSS says it is aware of fewer than 10 cases.

But the Center for HIV Law and Policy says it is aware of 19 such cases in the state, including five brought since January of 2011. Those records are based on media reports of the cases.

Perhaps the most publicized criminal prosecution involving HIV was brought in St. Charles County in 1998. There, prosecution officials charged Brian Stewart with first-degree assault for allegedly injecting his then 11-month-old son with HIV. Stewart was a phlebotomist at the time, and prosecutors said he injected the child with the virus in order to avoid paying child support.

The child was allegedly injected in 1992, and was diagnosed with AIDS in 1996. While he was expected to die at the time of Stewart’s trial, the child is alive today.

In 1999, Stewart was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Ironically, while the exposure law was an option in the case, authorities chose to use traditional criminal law to pursue justice.

The Bishop case

While media reports from Missouri indicate Bishop was identified as HIV-positive after further investigation, St. Charles County Prosecutor Jack Banas tells Michigan Messenger that, in fact, the disclosure was made to officers in another way.

“The officers were told by the defendant that he was HIV positive,” Banas said in an email. “They also confirmed that he was HIV positive with a caregiver that was assisting him and he had medications consistent with a person that is HIV positive.”

Some of those disclosures may have violated Missouri state law on the confidentiality of HIV records. Missouri law strictly limits the information and who can access it, and under which situations. In fact, in order for law enforcement to be informed of Bishop’s HIV-positive status by the caregiver, law enforcement was obligated under law to get a court order. Missouri law makes such judicial orders difficult to obtain and extremely limited.

While the law under which Bishop is being charged specifically identifies biting as reckless exposure, there are questions as to whether this is even accurate. The CDC in Atlanta has documented one case wherein HIV was allegedly transmitted via biting. That is one case in one million identified HIV infections. But that case is frowned upon by many experts because it was a case involving a sex worker and her client. The sex worker allegedly bit the client, and he claims that is how he was infected with HIV. But the sex worker in interviews said she bit the client because he declined to pay her for the sexual activity the two had just engaged in.

For its part, Missouri’s DHSS says it has no cases of documented transmission of HIV via biting, spokesperson Lapine says.

Regardless if that one case is accurate, the fact remains that it is one case out of one million in the U.S., meaning the risk of HIV transmission via biting is exceedingly rare. The CDC has opined that for there to be an actual risk, the biter’s mouth must be suffering extreme trauma, and thus bleeding, at the time of the bite. The bite has to break the skin, and have no barrier between the biter’s mouth and the victim’s skin.

But Banas, the prosecutor, dismisses those concerns in a statement.

“The statute prohibits a person knowingly infected with the HIV virus to recklessly expose an individual to the virus by biting them,” Banas said in an e-mail (emphasis in the original). “It is conduct specifically addressed by the statute.”

“How can we expect the public to understand the real risks and routes of HIV transmission when the state of Missouri itself is a leading purveyor of stigmatizing falsehoods?” asks Strub.

Banas declined to answer questions about the impact on public perception and public health impacts of prosecuting HIV-positive people for reckless exposure to HIV for allegedly biting another person.

“The Missouri statute is just wrong on multiple levels. It is not unusual in these types of cases that the first person to know his HIV status is the first person to face prosecution regardless of whether HIV is transmitted or who exposed or infected whom,” says Bennett-Carlson. “It is selective prosecution and persecution that is completely out of proportion to any risk of transmission or actual potential harm. And only HIV is singled out — not HPV, not other diseases that can be particularly risky for people living with HIV.”

In early August, an obscure measure called Proposition C — which prohibits the government from mandating the purchase of health insurance — passed overwhelmingly in a Missouri referendum and soon became national news. While seen by many legal scholars as a largely symbolic act of defiance, the new statute will likely lead to yet another legal showdown over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and was seized upon by conservatives as a sign of growing disillusionment with the president’s agenda.

[Congress1] When the White House tried to downplay the measure as a “vote of no legal significance in the midst of heavy Republican primaries,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) used the response as further evidence that the Obama administration was out of touch with the American people. “This sheer arrogance and political tone deafness from the Obama White House is simply astounding,” the senator said in a statement. “Their disregard for the votes that were cast by 667,000 Missourians as ‘nothing’ is startling.”

But was Proposition C a spontaneous show of grassroots discontent or a carefully orchestrated political ploy? Clouding the picture is the close involvement of a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative 501(c)(3) nonprofit that brings together state legislators and representatives of major industries to craft “model legislation,” including an item called the Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act, upon which Proposition C was based. Missouri state Sen. Jane Cunningham, who sponsored the legislation to refer Proposition C to the ballot, serves as an ALEC board member, and state legislatures in Arizona and Oklahoma, which have referred similar bills to the ballot for November, also enjoyed the support of ALEC-affiliated state representatives.

“What ALEC does is they’ll get members to simply announce they’ll introduce the legislation and then claim they have a national grassroots movement of 40 states opposing health care reform,” said Charles Monaco of the Progressive States Network, which works on progressive legislation at the state level. “Industry groups saw early on that the mandate would be the place to hit comprehensive reform because it was one of the least popular aspects of the law to voters, even though it’s one of the provisions that will benefit [industry] the most.”

There are conflicting accounts of how the measure came to be introduced in 38 state legislatures, and enacted in six. One side will tell you that the health care industry — particularly the pharmaceutical companies that sit on ALEC’s Health and Human Services task force — is taking potshots at reform by manipulating state representatives; the other describes grassroots anger bubbling up to the attention of legislators. Both contain a measure of truth. Told together, they provide a window into how groups like ALEC, which are obliged by tax law to work for charitable — not private — purposes, nonetheless exercise influence on behalf of private industry over statehouses across the country.

The story of the Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act starts in Arizona, with a lone doctor who decided he’d look into health care reform “as a hobby” and never imagined his ideas would go so far.

*****

Dr. Eric Novack, an orthopedist from the Phoenix area, claims he was never too interested in politics until a number of state governments turned their attention to reforming the system around the middle of the last decade.

“We need health care reform, but seeing where the winds were blowing I felt we also needed some basic protections for patients and families to ensure that it’s kept out of the hands of politicians, their cronies who can lobby them and these so-called ‘experts,’” Novack said.

In 2006, he teamed up with Dr. Jeffrey Singer, a surgeon and expert at the conservative Goldwater Institute, to craft a state ballot proposition designed to preserve the right of patients to purchase health care directly (which did not appear to be threatened) and to prevent the state from mandating the purchase of health insurance (as then-governor Mitt Romney (R) had just done as part of Massachusetts’ comprehensive reform plan).

“They got the measure on the ballot in 2008,” said state Rep. Nancy Barto (R-Ariz.), who would later reintroduce a reworked version of the proposition in the legislature. “It took them a couple years and a lot of funds and signatures to get it on the ballot. They were outspent by a measure of five to one but still lost by only 8,500 votes.”

It was at this point in late 2008 that ALEC took notice, said Barto, who regularly attends the group’s conferences.

“Their legislation is patterned after our language in 2008,” she explained. “They called and asked about it, took our language and put it on their website as model legislation and saw we were getting real traction and started using it in their state conferences. In 2009, [ALEC HHS Task Force Director Christie] Herrera came and spoke at our Health and Human Services committee meeting in Arizona when we were moving the bill. She came and testified.”

Even before Herrera came and spoke on her bill’s behalf, however, Barto was thrilled when ALEC officially adopted the Arizona proposition as model legislation in December 2008.

*****

When asked about the role representatives of the pharmaceuticals industry, which holds three of the seven seats on ALEC’s HHS task force, played in promoting the bill, Novack insists that it became model legislation, if anything, in spite of their opinion.

“From what I heard it managed to get through because no one paid it any attention,” said Novack. “When people start and work backwards and look at who provides money to ALEC they think it was that the health care industry [that’s behind the model legislation], but it was more an issue of insignificance to them, and if they’d recognized that it’d be sweeping the country, then it’d probably not be sweeping the country. I mean, the major health insurers are the major backers of mandates!”

But since ALEC adopted model legislation for the Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act, the group has played a key role in trumpeting iterations of the bill in various states over the past year. ALEC’s Herrera has offered guidance to lawmakers in more than a dozen state legislatures on the issue. The group brags on its website that “as anti-freedom health policy — such as an individual mandate, an employer mandate, and the ‘public plan’ — surface at the state and national levels, ALEC’s Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act has become an essential tool in securing the rights of patients to make their own health care choices.”

ALEC’s task forces are better known for crafting legislation that coincides, rather than conflicts, with the interests of its private-sector members. Famous for hosting lavish conferences for state legislators who possess no staff of their own, the group pampers lawmakers while providing them the opportunity to collaborate on legislation often previously researched and introduced by the policy shops of its corporate members.

“Their conferences proceed in a very orchestrated manner with legislation that was effectively already designed before [state representatives] get there,” noted Rodger Schlinkeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife, an environmental group that has differed with ALEC on state legislative priorities in the past. “Representatives are having a good time, playing golf. There’s no heavy lifting on the legislative side so they don’t have to do much. The ALEC staff and industry reps hold their hand and out pops this model legislation with various corporate interests in mind.”

In one case, noted by Mother Jones, ALEC drafted model “truth in sentencing” legislation that restricted parole eligibility, effectively ensuring longer prison terms for inmates. A pivotal member of the task force that crafted the bill’s language? The Corrections Corporation of America, the leader in the private corrections management industry, which stood to benefit directly from longer prison sentences.

*****

When it comes to the role of the health care industry in crafting the Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act language, however, the outsize presence of the pharmaceuticals industry on the drafting HHS committee is somewhat counterintuitive. The drug companies, represented by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), are better known of late as the first major private health care interest to enter into an agreement with the Obama administration over comprehensive health care reform, pledging to promote reform in exchange for only a nominal knock to its bottom line and protection on other issues like drug importation and generics.

The Private Sector Executive Committee for ALEC’s HHS task force is staffed entirely by government affairs and state policy representatives for Bayer, Johnson & Johnson and PhRMA, while the Private Enterprise Board of ALEC, as a whole, is also filled with high-ranking representatives of Bayer, GlaxoSmithKleine, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer, as well as PhRMA, which represents them all.

“The American Legislative Exchange Council is one of many legislative organizations with whom we have relationships, and in no such relationship is it ever expected that we will always agree about every topic,” noted Jeffrey Bond, Senior Vice President of State Government Affairs at PhRMA, in a statement in response to an inquiry regarding the pharmaceutical coalition’s relationship with ALEC’s health care nullification language. (Spokespeople at Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer did not respond to requests for comment.)

Others, however, see in the pharmaceutical industry’s material support for Freedom of Choice in Health Care legislation a subtle realignment of priorities within an industry that was never fully on board with the Obama administration’s reform agenda in the first place.

“Within PhRMA there was division over backing the bill to begin with,” said Paul Blumenthal of the Sunlight Foundation, which tracked the industry group’s deals with the administration during the health care reform debate. “[Then-PhRMA chief] Billy Tauzin and Jeff Kindler at Pfizer were driving the process of backing the bill and the administration, and Tauzin was ultimately driven out of PhRMA as a result. You could be seeing some of that equilibrium shift back.”

Yet apart from a degree of buyer’s remorse, health care consultants note that the drug industry’s schizophrenic actions seem less like a calculated plan than a struggle to reconcile their free-market tendencies with the fact that aspects of reform like the individual mandate stand to improve their bottom line.

“You can look at it as a mass deception by the pharmaceuticals industry,” said Peter Harbage, president of Harbage Consulting, a Sacramento-based health policy consulting firm. “But it’s not so much deception as mass confusion when you think of it from an industry point of view and the nature of something like heath reform.”

“The insurers and PhRMA folks and others — they stand to make a lot of money from coverage, even though ideologically they’re opposed to government regulation,” Harbage added. “What you’re seeing is a real push and pull in which the industry is trying to reconcile their business interests with their ideological interests. You have the large established interest groups like PhRMA tacitly accepting reform but maybe there’s a company that disagrees and might want to play it both ways. Organizations [like ALEC] create an avenue to take their shots without being public about it.”

And even though the pharmaceuticals industry promotes a lot of legislation through ALEC that benefits its bottom line, there can be a price to doing business with conservative groups, according to one industry insider.

“On this kind of thing in some ways it’s a two-way street,” said the industry insider, who declined to be identified because he represents pharmaceutical clients. “The mandate to buy insurance and the tax penalty is good for the industry. This is one place where you wouldn’t necessarily see the industry advocating. But if you’re lying down with conservative members, your funding goes to support what they’re doing as well as what you want to do.”

Indeed, ALEC’s HHS task force lists sixteen pieces of model legislation on its website that tackle issues favorable to the pharmaceutical industry, such as limiting the importation of prescription drugs, reducing drug liability, abolishing price controls on drugs, lowering state taxes on drug samples, and promoting coverage for experimental drugs. When considered from the perspective of the industry’s relationship with ALEC as a whole, one potshot with scant legal prospects against the administration’s individual mandate begins to look like a small price to pay.

*****

But what seems like a legal non-issue is still providing a lot of political fodder for partisans of comprehensive health care reform, on both sides of the aisle.

The courts will ultimately decide the limits of states’ rights when it comes to the question of the Obama administration’s new health care law, but in the meantime, Republicans are hoping it will energize conservative voters and stave off implementation in Arizona, Oklahoma and Colorado, where similar measures will be on the ballot in November.

“I guess it’s a low investment cost for a group to try to do that,” said Harbage. “You get to automatically have a conversation, and even if it ultimately loses you still had the proposition as a vehicle to motivate voters, and a lot of groups involved might think that’s a good day’s work.”

Tommy Sowers is vying for a seat in a conservative district in Missouri. (Tommy Sowers for Congress)

Born and raised in Missouri’s conservative, rural eighth district, Tommy Sowers served in the Army as a Ranger and a Green Beret, and then as a professor at West Point. Now the unorthodox Democrat — a critic of the bank bailouts and President Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan — is running for Congress against a Republican incumbent.

[Congress1] This year looks likely to be the worst year for the Democratic Party since 1994, at least. But Sowers remains undeterred. Since he started running, he has shaken enough hands and raised enough money to get noticed by the brass in Washington. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) named him to their exclusive “Red to Blue” program, making him just one of 29 upstarts the party figured might have a shot at turning a red district blue this year.

Besides conferring a degree of legitimacy, however, the program is mainly symbolic. With limited resources to spend and seemingly more and more Democratic seats once considered safe now becoming competitive, the DCCC has decided to mainly play defense, indicating it will spend nearly all its money to shore up embattled incumbents this cycle. But the consensus on that logic is far from clear: If you’re convinced Democrats are doomed, it makes sense to put your money on the natural advantages — name recognition, institutional support, sheer inertia — that incumbents enjoy. But if you believe that the anti-Washington pitch is so great that it’s incumbents, not Dems, who are truly in trouble, then backing credible challengers like Sowers might not be so bad a bet.

So far, however, Sowers is anything but a sure thing. A recent poll — taken by a GOP polling agency in early September – shows him trailing his opponent, Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) by more than thirty points. But it’s better than his numbers from April, in which he barely registered in voters’ consciousness, and it’s enough, apparently, to make Emerson sound a worried appeal last month for more cash, cautioning supporters in D.C., “I have seen candidates who celebrated in September and wept in November.”

So what’s a lonely Dem fighting an uphill battle in Missouri to do? Sowers spoke with TWI the other week when he swung though D.C., and the interview is lightly edited for clarity and length:

TWI: Democrats have been putting what limited resources they have into defending incumbents because that’s the conventional wisdom. How do you respond to that logic and what makes you think your campaign might be any different?

Sowers: Two millennia of warfare teaches you that you get your ass kicked on defense. You only win on offense. It’s a principle of war. And so I recognize and understand why incumbents get first crack on this but this is an anti-incumbent year, it truly is. Our plan all along was to win the race and do it on our own. I didn’t want to be one of those candidates, and I’ve met plenty, that say, “Oh, if only the state or national or some outside group had come in or gotten involved, we’d have won the race.” For us we’re focused entirely on the climate and the resources need to fight and win in the eighth district.

TWI: Running in a conservative state in a conservative district, you’ve taken some, well, conservative positions, most notably your opposition to [the Troubled Asset Relief Program]. Does it feel strange to be advocating a position that I more often hear coming from tea party candidates?

Sowers: I’m seeking to represent the eighth congressional district and they don’t see the fairness in a bailout where they don’t feel they had a cause in it, so it’s a position that both reflects the values of the district and also something that I believe.

TWI: So you personally believe the country would have been better off without TARP?

Sowers: Well, I think it’s much more than TARP. It’s the twelve pieces of legislation that led up to it. We’re talking about the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, so basically that process of creating a system that leads to a bailout is one thing that I’m going to fix.

TWI: In attacking your competitor for supporting the bailout, your race mirrors the heated Senate battle in your state between Secretary of State Robin Carnahan (D-Mo.) and Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). Is that a fair comparison?

Sowers: We’ve got a different race and a different opponent. What I’ve really seen out there is an anti-incumbent and really anti-establishment mood, and you don’t get more “D.C. establishment” than Jo Ann Emerson. She’s the daughter of the RNC chairman, she’s lived [in D.C.] almost her entire life, and she’s one of the five former lobbyists — there’s lots of future lobbyists in Congress — but she’s one of the five former ones. And what we see in this campaign is just the arrogance of establishment. She spent over $6,000 of her campaign election funds at Tiffany’s jewelry store over the last few years while purporting to represent the eighth-poorest district in America.

She’s also spent money at Neiman Marcus and W Hotels and Ritz Carltons and expensive tie shops in Italy. This was not a one-off event that she can blame on some staffer. What you can blame this on is the arrogance of being an established power, but this is a year where being as established power is more of a liability than an asset.

TWI: You also voted for Missouri’s Proposition C, which attempts to invalidate the personal mandate to purchase health insurance, a central component of Obama’s health insurance reform bill.

Sowers: I was one of the few rural Democrats out there to come out and support health insurance reform, but that doesn’t mean I’m for every provision of it. Proposition C was tightly constructed and it dealt with the individual mandate — and when you look out across the party, there’s a lot of folks out there that don’t believe in the mandate.

TWI: But it’s not as if you can take one piece out of health care reform and expect it to work as well. Without a mandate, you can’t reasonably demand that health insurance companies stop denying coverage for people with preexisting conditions. So how would you take this one piece out without letting the whole structure crumble?

Sowers: I don’t think [the personal mandate] should have been in there in the first place. You’re talking about the federal government mandating the purchase of a private product. The parts of health reform that I do like are the parts about creating competition. That’s one of the ways that you drive down costs, by setting up state-based exchanges. I think its one of your most effective ways to do that. And the credits to small businesses – I’m from a district with a lot of companies with less than fifty employees and there’s a lot of businesses that are going to benefit from those.

TWI: But is the Prop C measure even constitutional? Do you believe it can it nullify a portion of federal law?

Sowers: I’m not a legal scholar on this, but when it comes to the federal government mandating the purchase of a private product, this is something that doesn’t sit well in the eigth congressional district and lots of parts of America. So I think it’s going to be debated in the courts but ultimately it needs to be fixed in Congress.

TWI: The subject you tend to talk about most, however, is Afghanistan. It doesn’t seem to be the main issue that the electorate, at least nationally, is citing in the current cycle so I’m wondering why you’re bringing it up so much and what your position is.

Sowers: I’m not bringing up the issue. The people I’m seeking to represent are. I did 28 town halls over 28 straight days in July and I got asked about Afghanistan in every single town hall, and there’s a reason behind it. Even though you’re only talking about one percent of the population – or really less than that – that’s currently serving, it’s a much higher percentage in my district. There’s 70,000 veterans in my district and when I enter a room and I ask people how many of you are veterans or related to people who are serving, almost the entire room raises their hand. So this is an issue that has personal salience for the people in my home because it matters. It’s personal.

But more than that, it is tied to issues in 2010. Folks at home, they ask me all the time, “Why are we spending money overseas when we should be spending it here or we shouldn’t be adding more to the debt?” When we talk about where can we cut in terms of discretionary spending, right now we’re spending $400 a gallon – the taxpayer is – for every gallon of gas in Kabul, so it’s an area where there can actually be cost savings. And any soldier that is deployed – they’ve seen the waste, fraud, and abuse that occurs on military operations. So the stance on Afghanistan is very simply, we need to end fighting a conventional war because we’re fighting an unconventional conflict. […]

TWI: If Obama wanted to come and campaign for you in Missouri, what would be your reaction to that?

Sowers: There’s been no offer, and for me, we’re really running a campaign that’s focused on local issues. People in my district aren’t getting swept up in this whole national debate. They just want somebody that can come in and fix it. People say it’s a bad year, or potentially a bad year, for Democrats. Well it’s a bad year for a lot of people out there and it’s because of the economy. It’s because our jobs have been shipped overseas and it’s because we’ve bailed out places like Wall Street, and they understand that causal link. So they’re looking far more for a guy that’s actually from there, working his tail off in a campaign, who will work his tail off in Congress.

TWI: The only poll I’ve seen recently is something from Missouri State University that had you down 64 to 17 percent. Is that the latest?

Sowers: No we’ve got updated numbers and it’s looking good. We’re closing the gap – our name ID, which is what we’re tracking very closely, is much higher than we expected it to be. So this is a race that will ultimately break later, and we know that, but right now we’re reaping the benefits of, just frankly, working our tail off. We have a great field program in place, I’m out on the ground quite a bit, and now voters are meeting me for the second and third time, so I like where we’re at.

TWI: You did something where you ran through part or all of the district earlier this year?

Sowers: I marched 100 miles over Memorial Day weekend through 100 miles of yard sales, and when you walk up to a voter and say, “I just walked 80 miles to meet you,” which was a true statement, they’ve never seen anything like that before. I’m not trying to run this campaign, frankly, as an old guy. I’m running it as I am, which is as a 34-year-old, tobacco-using Green Beret straight out of the military who’s not the most finely polished stone out there, but who is sincere in his desire to fight for his home.

The Sierra Club has worked for six months to determine how to reduce the United States' oil dependence. (Flickr, The Sierra Club)

Despite the Gulf oil spill, a massive pipeline break in Michigan and broad concerns about global warming, ambitious climate-change and energy legislation is likely dead for the year. That poses a conundrum, going forward, for environmentalists: How to convince lawmakers of the need for legislation to sever the country’s decades-long ties to oil and to reform energy policy more generally?

[Environment1] The Sierra Club is in the process of trying to answer that question. For the past six months, it has worked on a massive study on how to reduce the United States’ oil dependence in an economically and environmentally beneficial way. The group is also building a coalition of environmental advocates and lawmakers to support the project, which will quantify potential oil-use reductions across every industrial sector.

“Over the next 20 years, how steep can we make cuts in oil consumption while allowing the economy to flourish and while creating more jobs rather than penalizing individual workers or communities?” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune asked. “So, this will be a major priority of the club over the next several years — to build a broad based coalition of organizations and elected officials who will want to stand up for a very thoughtful and pragmatic, but visionary and aggressive plan to get off oil.”

In an interview with The Washington Independent, Brune, who took over his post just one month before the oil spill started, outlines the organization’s oil study, talks about the prospects for energy legislation and previews the upcoming mid-term elections.

Here is an edited-down version of our interview:

What is the major issue going forward for the Sierra Club right now?
Our top issue remains fighting climate change in a way that increases the availability of clean energy like solar and wind, while also improving the public health benefits associated with decreasing our reliance on fossil fuels.

Is the focus now on Environmental Protection Agency regulations, Congress or both?
I would say both for sure. We see great opportunity in EPA rulemakings to increase public health benefits by forcing utilities in particular to account for the cost of their pollution. A top priority right now is organizing around EPA’s hearings on coal ash, to make sure that coal ash is treated as a hazardous waste. But, over the next couple of years, we’ll be looking at a whole series of rulemakings, many of which are focused on stationary sources like coal plants, but we’re also looking at EPA rulemakings to cut our dependence on oil.

Is there a serious concern about challenges to EPA’s regulatory authority under the Clean Air Act going forward?
Yeah, certainly many threats have been made to EPA’s authority to act under the Clean Air Act, attempts either to gut the Clean Air Act or eliminate EPA’s authority. So, we’re taking those threats very seriously. We also think that should there be a public debate about these issues that the public overwhelmingly supports strong, effective and cost-effective regulations that have come out of the EPA for the last 40 years under the Clean Air Act. We think there’s broad public support for retaining its authority.

In terms of Congress, it doesn’t seem that anything is going to happen on cap-and-trade any time soon. Is that your thinking as well?
Well, you know, I think it is difficult to predict too far into the future. We think Congress should act. We know that members were put into office with the expectation that there would be a meaningful, substantive response to climate change and that Congress would enact laws that would put a down payment on scaling up clean energy. So, we know that the demand is there. But whether or not senators in particular will respond remains to be seen.

Putting aside cap-and-trade, there’s been talk of a narrower energy bill. It looks like Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Sen. Brownback  (R-Kans.) are introducing a renewable energy standard that they are hoping to get passed. Is there a specific RES target that you would like to see or is it that the policy needs to move forward as soon as possible?
Well, let me make a general point. There was far too much of a focus earlier this spring on a single bill to address climate change economy-wide. And, in reality, there are dozens of things that Congress can do to fight climate change and to increase energy security in the country. In regards to this particular RES bill, our focus is primarily on keeping it clean. We want to see a renewable energy standard that is focused on truly clean energy and doesn’t have absurd giveways to nuclear power or so-called clean coal or any one of the other handful of options. And then of course to increase those investments as quickly as possible.

Is there a number that’s being thrown around among your members now?
Yeah, but it’s not something I really want to discuss in the public right now.

What other things are you focusing on in Congress?
I’d say the top thing is a plan to get off oil. We just experienced the largest environmental disaster in our country’s history and in response, Congress has done nothing. There’s not even a plan to fully reform what used to be called MMS and there’s not yet a plan to hold oil companies fully accountable and to lift the liability cap. And most importantly, there’s no effective plan right now to significantly reduce our dependence on foreign oil. So, if there’s one thing that Congress can do in the next couple of months, it would be to challenge the oil industry and deliver us a plan to get off oil.

It’s been sort of an uphill battle trying to get an oil spill response bill to pass, something that is incredibly popular with the American people. And you’re right, it seems like the bill is getting held up on this idea of liability, whether or not an oil company should be held 100 percent liable for spilling thousands of gallons of oil into the ocean. What are your thoughts on that?
We shouldn’t be privatizing the gain and sharing the risk with the public. If oil companies are going to be benefiting from oil drilling, they also have to be able to absorb any of the risks associated with drilling.

Do you expect that Congress will pass an oil spill bill this year?
We do.

I wanted to also touch on the mid-term elections. It’s on everybody’s mind right now. What is the Sierra Club doing in terms of working with individual candidates?
So, there’s lots that we’re doing. The Sierra Club has 1.4 million members and supporters, so over the next several weeks, a big job of ours will be to educate our supporters about what’s at stake Nov. 2., trying to get people out to the polls and to engage our members to become volunteers. So, the Sierra Club endorses specific candidates.

We get very heavily involved in local and state propositions. Arguably our biggest priority this year is to defeat Prop 23, which would undermine the Global Warming Solutions Act, AB32, that was passed in California a few years ago. With that, we’re doing a massive voter mobilization drive. Individual members will be calling voters to encourage them to get out. We are also part of a coalition of groups that is doing advertising, thought we’re not doing any ourselves.

Are there any other races that are of particular concern for you?
We’re looking at the Senate races in Nevada and Missouri. Obviously, Harry Reid has been excellent in fighting the coal industry as well as supporting big investments in clean energy. We are also looking at the Florida race. Democratic Senate candidate Meek has a 100 percent League of Conservation Voting score. He’s been strongly in favor of Florida’s solar bills as well as the ban on offshore oil drilling. There’s obviously dozens or even hundreds of races in which the environmental voice is an important one.

There has been a lot said by the oil industry and Gulf coast lawmakers about the Obama administration’s offshore drilling moratorium’s impact on jobs, though there was a report that came out last week that said job losses might not be quite what people estimated. What’s the Sierra Club’s position on all of this? Should the moratorium be lifted?
No, I think that a full moratorium should be put in place. We’re mindful of the fact that we need to make stronger investments in clean energy jobs so that those who work in the oil industry who want to put food on the table for their families have viable alternatives in growing industries that they can work in.

To be clear, we’re not advocating turning off the spigot in the Gulf. There are more than 4,0000 rigs operating in the Gulf right now and we are not saying there should be no oil drilling in the Gulf, not until we have a clear plan to get off oil. But what we’re saying is that since it’s been proven now that oil drilling offshore is dirty and it’s dangerous and it’s deadly, we need to tighten up the safety regulations to make sure that disasters like this don’t happen in the future. And we need to stop investing in exploring for new oil and instead explore much more carefully and aggressively investments in solar and wind so that we’re not poisoning our coastlines as we’re trying to keep our lights on.

On pipeline safety. There have been a couple major disasters this year. Of course, the natural gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, Calif. And before that there was an oil spill in Michigan from an oil sands pipeline. Looming over this you have a massive proposed pipeline project, the Keystone XL project, that is going to go from Canada to Texas. Has the Sierra Club been looking at the issue of pipeline safety through a new set of eyes now that we’ve had these disasters?
Yes, we have. There’s two things that we’re doing. Clearly, the cost of our reliance on oil — when you talk abut the Michigan spill, the Gulf oil spill and the Keystone pipeline — is so much higher than what we pay at the pump when you consider the foreign policy implications, the fact that our entire economy is held hostage to wild fluctuations in oil prices.

So, what we’ve done over the last six months since I started at the Sierra Club is to build out a much more aggressive, comprehensive plan for how our country can get off oil. Over the next 20 years, how steep can we make cuts in oil consumption while allowing the economy to flourish and while creating more jobs rather than penalizing individual workers or communities. So, this will be a major priority of the club over the next several years — to build a broad based coalition of organizations and elected officials who will want to stand up for a very thoughtful and pragmatic, but visionary and aggressive plan to get off oil.

And then, regarding natural gas, we don’t think we can simultaneously phase out coal, oil and gas at the same time. Gas will need to stick around for a while. But there the challenge is to have much higher and much tighter safety standards so we’re not in this disastrous position again and again and again where people are losing their lives due to an industry is ineffectively regulated.

On oil sands or, as some call them, tar sands. There were senators in Canada last week reviewing oil sands production in there. Is there a message you would like to send to them in terms of how oil sands should be treated? Because there’s an argument out there that it’s better to get oil from Canada, despite the high greenhouse gas emissions of oil sands production, because we’re no longer reliant on the Middle East.
I think that’s just misguided thinking. The Pentagon says that climate change is one of the top national security threats in the 21st century. We have to deal effectively with climate change. Importing oil from the tar sands is 2-3 times more greenhouse gas intensive than conventional oil. You don’t solve a problem by making it worse. So, I understand that the notion that we have oil that is under the sands of our neighbors to the north is attractive to people who think we can have a simply pipeline solve a lot of problems. But the reality is that if we rely too much on a different source of oil that is dirtier, that will accelerate climate change rather than reduce it’s impacts, we’re only going to be replacing one set of problems with an entirely different set of problems. The only effective way to address this problem systemically is to adopt a plan to get America off oil.

Can you be more specific about this plan?
We’ll have a plan that we can introduce probably in the next 3-6 months. It looks at every major industrial source of oil consumption, from the oil that’s used in medium- and heavy-duty trucks, light trucks, cars and SUVs, the oil used for pesticides and paints. Whatever the major source of consumption is, we’re looking at a major, comprehensive plan to phase it out where and whenever possible.

What’s the time frame of this phase-out?
The big challenge is political will. For example, clearly it is technically possible, one would presume, to produce nothing but plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles in the next couple years. Whether that’s politically possible, of course remains to be seen. If the United States were to mobilize as we did in World War II and completely transition the entire automobile fleet to produce a new technology, clearly that could be done.

What we need to do is measure the distance between what we can do and what we’re willing to do as a country and develop what we feel as responsible and pragmatic, but also aggressive tactics to achieve energy independence. To help inform that decision we would look at the cost of different decisions under different time scenarios, the benefits economically, environmentally or socially depending on our foreign policy and what would the oil savings be in real-world terms. Then we’d highlight a few different options. We’ll have the data shortly. Then we’ll figure out how to use it. We’ve commissioned this first study just as the Sierra Club, but we anticipate doing more with a broad coalition.