Democrats perpetrate the same scam over and over on their own supporters, and this illustrates perfectly how it’s played:

Politics Daily, October 4, 2009:

Jay Rockefeller on the Public Option: “I Will Not Relent”

Jay Rockefeller has waited a long time for this moment. . . . He’s [] a longtime advocate of health care for children and the poor — and, as Congress moves toward its moment of truth on health care, perhaps the most earnest, dogged Senate champion of a nationwide public health insurance plan to compete with private insurance companies.

“I will not relent on that. That’s the only way to go,” Rockefeller told me in an interview. “There’s got to be a safe harbor.”

President Obama often says a public option is needed to drive down costs and keep insurance companies honest.  To Rockefeller, it’s both more basic and more vital:  The federal government is the only institution people can count on in times of need.

The Huffington Post, yesterday:

Rockefeller Not Inclined To Support Reconciliation For The Public Plan

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) threw a wrench into Democratic efforts to get a public option passed through reconciliation, saying that he thought the maneuver was overly partisan and that he was inclined to oppose it. . .

“I don’t think the timing of it is very good,” the West Virginia Democrat said on Monday. “I’m probably not going to vote for that” . . . In making his sentiment known, Rockefeller becomes perhaps the most unexpected skeptic of the public-option-via-reconciliation route. The Senator was a huge booster of a government run insurance option during the legislation drafting process this past year.

In other words, Rockefeller was willing to be a righteous champion for the public option as long as it had no chance of passing (sadly, we just can’t do it, because although it has 50 votes in favor, it doesn’t have 60).  But now that Democrats are strongly considering the reconciliation process — which will allow passage with only 50 rather than 60 votes and thus enable them to enact a public option — Rockefeller is suddenly “inclined to oppose it” because he doesn’t “think the timing of it is very good” and it’s “too partisan.”  What strange excuses for someone to make with regard to a provision that he claimed, a mere five months ago (when he knew it couldn’t pass), was such a moral and policy imperative that he “would not relent” in ensuring its enactment.  

Continue reading Now that Healthcare reform can pass with 50 votes, the corporate Democrats drop the public option →

Gas well foes vow to fight Rendell

A caucus of 37 “green dog” and “hunting dog” legislators is barking mad about a Rendell administration budget proposal that would seek to raise $180 million by leasing more state forest land for Marcellus shale gas well drilling.

State Rep. David Levdansky, D-Forward, said the pro-environment and pro-hunting Democratic legislators in the conservation caucus are strongly opposed to leasing what could be another 50,000 to 80,000 acres of the state’s forests for deep gas drilling beginning in July and will not compromise that position in upcoming budget negotiations.

Continue reading State Democrat Legislators Oppose Destruction of State Forests by Gas Drillers →

ERIE, Pa. — The U.S. Forest Service wants a federal judge in Erie to reverse his December ruling, which temporarily lifted a ban on oil and gas well drilling in the Allegheny National Forest.

U.S. District Judge Sean McLaughlin’s ruling says Forest Service officials were wrong to ban drilling in April until an environmental assessment could be done. The Forest Service agreed to the ban to settle litigation brought by environmentalists.

Meanwhile, oil and gas companies who stood to lose millions of dollars under the ban have asked the judge to make his December order permanent.

McLaughlin has scheduled arguments on both requests March 9.

In the last two years, energy companies with a stake in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying and making campaign contributions to legislators, congressmen and the governor, partly in hopes of postponing a tax on the extraction of natural gas.

They also are laying the groundwork for future political battles. Range Resources Energy Independence PAC, for example, donated $5,000 each to Republican Attorney General Tom Corbett and to Democratic Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato, both gubernatorial candidates, in the waning months of 2009.

Continue reading Major PA Polluter Range Resources Donates to Dan Onorato, Jack Wagner, and Tom Corbett →