D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
August 2010
Tarred with the Same Brush
Congressional rivals Teague and Pearce are both buddies with BP and Big Oil.
Second District voters appalled by the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico after the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig can expect a different kind of oil slick on the ballot come November. If you're looking to support a Congressional candidate who'd help prevent future oil-company recklessness, you'll be as out of luck as those tar-covered pelicans in the Gulf's now-gooey wetlands.
Both Rep. Harry Teague and his GOP opponent, former Rep. Steve Pearce, are oilmen from the eastern, "oil patch" part of the district. In recent interviews with the Albuquerque Journal, both men defended BP's lackluster response to the oil spill and expressed concern, not about the environmental devastation, but about the effects of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on their pals in the oil industry. Both voiced opposition to the Obama administration's moratorium on deepwater drilling, characterizing BP's disregard for safety and lack of preparation for such a calamity as an anomaly.
In fact, it's not — at least not for BP. Recklessness in the pursuit of profits is business as usual at British Petroleum. In 2005, an explosion at a BP refinery in Texas killed 15 workers; federal regulators and a panel led by GOP stalwart and former Bush I secretary of state James A. Baker III concluded that cost-cutting was partly to blame. In 2006, a corroded BP pipeline in Alaska spilled oil into fragile Prudhoe Bay. Rep. Joe Barton, the Republican congressman from Texas most recently in the news for his ham-handed and quickly withdrawn apology to BP CEO Tony Hayward, bashed the company at that time for "seeming indifference to safety and environmental issues."
Yet Teague says, "I do believe that BP should be given the benefit of the doubt." He does concede that the company "should have shown a little more urgency" since the spill.
And Pearce, who received $1,000 from Barton's leadership PAC, has questioned the $20 billion fund that the Obama administration prodded BP into setting up to pay for the cleanup. (Barton, you'll recall, referred to pressure to establish the fund as a "shakedown.") There are "huge questions" about the administration and accountability of the fund, Pearce told the Journal.
Too bad he has no similar questions about the oil company responsible for the nation's costliest environmental disaster.
Instead, Pearce recently posted on his Facebook page what's essentially a commercial for the oil industry sponsored by Occidental Petroleum. "Have you ever considered how much your world depends on petroleum-based products?" the ad intones. It's true, the petroleum industry is vital for every facet of our modern world. But the right answer to that Facebook question is: "Too much!" Not that Pearce has lifted a finger in his Congressional career to help America wean itself from our addiction to oil.
We shouldn't be surprised, of course, that both Teague and Pearce would rather play footsie with the oil industry than force their friends to clean up their act. Both men made millions from servicing New Mexico's oil and gas industry — not that there's anything wrong with that, except when it skews your priorities. Donations to both men also come covered with oil: In the 2010 campaign to date, Pearce has raised more money from the oil and gas industry ($125,806) than any other source, while Teague's take ($69,100) is third behind contributions from leadership PACs and law firms.
Combining 2008 and 2010 contributions from individuals as well as PACs, oil and gas contributions lead the largesse for Teague's campaigns, totaling $186,250. Three of his top four individual contributors make their money from the oil and gas business.
In his losing 2008 Senate bid, Pearce raised $470,832 from petroleum interests, second only to donations from Republican and conservative PACs. Eight of his top 10 contributors came from the oil and gas industry. The last time he ran for re-election to the Second District Congressional seat, in 2006, Pearce raised $140,328 from the oil and gas industry — more than double contributions from any other sector.
This sort of Tweedledee and Tweedledum race — remember, Democrat Teague donated $2,100 to Pearce in 2006 and $1,000 in 2004 — isn't inevitable. In his losing bid against Pearce in 2006, Democrat Al Kissling raised only $2,100 from oil and gas interests. While Kissling's quixotic quest was hopelessly underfunded, it's worth noting that Tom Udall beat Pearce in 2008 for the Senate without being in the pocket of petroleum interests, which didn't rank even among the top 20 sectors in contributions to his campaign.
That ad on Steve Pearce's Facebook page is right: We need oil and gas to make our world run. But we also need to accelerate our efforts to develop alternatives to petroleum, and to insist that BP and its ilk put protecting people and the environment ahead of profits. When Second District voters must choose between two candidates busy "friending" Big Oil, that's no choice at all.
Arizona Anecdotes
Fears of a border crime wave are all wet.
After all the talk and threats of boycotts, our next-door neighbor¹s controversial SB1070 — officially called the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act — was finally about to go into effect in Arizona on July 29. Then a federal judge blocked most of SB1070 — which will no doubt be appealed, meaning the debate will rage on.
Whatever your opinion of the wisdom and constitutionality of a state taking immigration enforcement into its own hands, since passage of SB1070 one thing has become clear: A fundamental premise behind Arizona's illegal-immigration crackdown is dead wrong.
Never mind what Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said in signing the law about border violence and surging crime linked to illegal immigrants. Forget Sen. John McCain's claims about Phoenix ranking second only to Mexico City in kidnappings or that border violence is "the worst I have ever seen." Both Brewer and McCain face tough primary battles this month and are tacking rightward so hard they long ago capsized the truth. (McCain in particular has evinced a willingness to say anything to salvage his political career. He now denies having ever called himself a "maverick" despite the fact that his book Worth the Fighting For is subtitled in part, "The Education of an American Maverick." If he'd been this flexible when a POW in North Vietnam, we would have seen him posing with Ho Chi Minh.)
What about Rush Limbaugh, who said President Obama was "fit for the psycho ward" when the president asserted the US-Mexico border "is more secure today than at any time in the past 20 years"? Rush is, as usual, the one who should be measured for a straitjacket.
The problem — besides politicians all too eager to engage in self-serving fear-mongering — is the confusion of anecdotes with statistical fact. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, was all too right when she called slain rancher Robert Krentz "the face behind the violence at the US-Mexico border." Krentz' death at his ranch in southeastern Arizona in late March dramatized concerns that the very real violence from Mexico's drug war — a horrific mess we recently explored in-depth in "The Nightmare Next Door" (May 2010) — would spill across the border.
But one rancher's murder, however tragic, does not a crime wave make. In May, the Arizona Republic published an exhaustive report drawing on FBI and local police statistics that concluded crime in the state's border towns has been "essentially flat for the past decade." As if echoing President Obama, the Pima County sheriff stated that "the border has never been more secure."
In Nogales, Ariz., for instance, the year 2000 saw 23 rapes, robberies and murders. Last year, despite nearly a decade of population growth, that number actually fell to 19 such crimes.
Statewide, according to FBI crime statistics, the rate of violent crime declined from 532 incidents per 100,000 residents in 2000 to 447 per 100,000 Arizonans in 2008. That makes Arizona about as safe as the nation as a whole, given the US average of 455 violent crimes per 100,000 people.
Sure, it's possible a crime spree has erupted since the most recent statistics were compiled. But that's not what local law-enforcement officials report.
Even more baseless is Gov. Brewer's claim on local TV news that "our law-enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded." The Arizona Guardian website asked medical examiners in border counties how many immigration-related beheadings they'd seen. Zero was the answer.
What about Sen. McCain's claim that Phoenix "is the number-two kidnapping capital of the world" (a statement he's since edged away from, now citing "media reports" of this supposed fact)? According to the fact-checking website Politifact and the Phoenix police, it's not true. Kidnappings are actually declining, but the fact that local police were focusing on the problem — rather than trying to hide it — thrust this half-truth into the news.
Surely, though, illegal immigrants are responsible for much of whatever crime there is across the Southwest? (Aside from the crime of entering the US illegally, that is.) The fact that Arizona's violent crime rate dropped during the biggest surge of illegal immigration in the state's history suggests otherwise.
Jack Harris, the Phoenix chief of police who opposes SB1070, reports that about 13% of his department's arrests are illegal immigrants — roughly equal to their estimated proportion of the area's population. The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, headed by SB1070 booster Joe Arpaio, says 19% of its inmates are in the US illegally.
Scott Decker, a criminologist at Arizona State University, recently told The New York Times that several studies have suggested illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes, lest they get caught and deported. Many Mexicans here illegally, he added, come from small villages with low crime rates, so big-city crime is alien to them.
None of this is to diminish the tragedy of murders like Krentz' or the very real dangers just across the border. Moreover, Mexican drug cartels are indeed operating in the US — not just in border towns but as far away as Atlanta — and the risk of internecine violence is genuine.
But to premise a radical departure in law enforcement like SB1070 on a supposed crime wave led by illegal border crossers is a bad foundation for an already iffy public policy. As we've reported in-depth in these pages several times, America desperately needs comprehensive immigration reform and sustainable border security. Irrational fear does nothing to promote either goal.
David A. Fryxell is editor of Desert Exposure.