Arctic drilling budget passes House and Senate

Late last night, both the House and Senate passed a budget with Arctic drilling language in it. The budget does not itself authorize drilling in the Arctic, but it directs lawmakers to come up with $2.4 billion in energy revenues. The pro-drilling crowd can use that to authorize Arctic drilling in the final budget. The good news is, the fight's not over. More to come...

Budget Will Trample the Arctic, Unless We Trample It

This Thursday, April 28, we'll probably see votes in the Senate and the House on the federal budget - a budget that currently contains a provision that would allow drilling in the Arctic Refuge.

U.S. PIRG has set up a free number that you can use to call where you'll be directly connected to your representative or senator's office, depending on which is a more important target. Please call now, and then email a link to this page to three friends or family members so we can generate as many calls as possible.

Here's the number: 1-888-8-WILDAK (1-888-894-5325)

After you call, please let U.S. PIRG know what the person you talked to said so they know where they need to focus their resources.

Report your call here.

It's not just the Arctic Refuge at stake in this budget battle. If drilling in the Arctic Refuge is allowed, pristine, untrammeled lands like Arches National Park and offshore areas like Florida's coast could all be at risk. House Majority leader Tom Delay said it best when he said about Arctic drilling that "It's about precedent." One of President Bush's major supporters, Houston energy industry investment banker Matthew R. Simmons, said, "If you can't do ANWR, you'll never be able to drill in the promising areas."

We are tantalizingly close to stopping this budget and stopping the oil industry's plans to turn America's pristine public lands into spider webs of oil rigs, roads, and pollution. Just four votes are needed in the House of Representatives and just two votes in the Senate.

Deconstructing Stupidity

James Boyle, a law professor at Duke, has written a very nice little article on why intellectual property law and policy as we know it is so stupid. He moves past the easy "corporate capture of the decision making process" explanation toward trying to understand the real reasons behind the unprofitable, public-domain damaging decisions we keep making regarding IP law. He rightly refers to these decisions as "stupid" because they are motivated by a lack of understanding and a systematic omission of evidence upon which to base any understanding. I've quoted this guy a lot in my own writings on intellectual property, especially as it relates to information and media. One of the few people who actually understands intellectual property law's raison d'être.