I just saw yet another new Chocola ad, this one countering the DNC's attack on Chocola's support for the Federal Energy Bill of 2005. Of course, it's one long exercise in bs, from referring to the DNC as "Donnelly's liberal allies" (meant to insinuate the intrusion of 527's and interest groups into the fight-- in fact, Chocola seems to have more of those on his side, including the US Chamber of Commerce and the American Healthcare Association and Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care that funded the disinformation ad on Medicare Plan D) to cynically referring to the bill as "the ethanol bill."
Because, ya know, it was all about ethanol, and the $5 billion in takeaways to the oil and gas companies that contributed so much to Chocola's reelection fund was just a minor detail!
The icing on the mendacity cake? One of the key parts of the energy bill was a provision protecting manufacturers of MTBE from damages for it soaking into our groundwater. MTBE, you may remember, is a gasoline additive that helps it burn, just like ethanol. Unlike ethanol, if it gets into the groundwater it can be disastrous to the public health. Ethanol and MTBE compete with each other, so protecting the makers of MTBE hurts the makers of ethanol (and, arguably, corn farmers). And this particular provision proved to be so controversial that it threatened to derail the entire bill.
Well, in July 2005 (HR 6, Vote #373, 7/14/2005) the Democrats introduced an amendment to strike that particular provision, holding MTBE manufacturers accountable for the environmental damage their product (which remember, kids, is in competition with ethanol) does. Guess which way Chocola voted on said provision? That's right, folks, he voted for protecting MTBE producers.
I guess that mean Chris Chocola was against ethanol before he was for it.
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