SB 722 Bars entities that invest in the energy sector in Iran from contracting with the state and political subdivisions
Sponsor: Lamping
LR Number: 5353S.03I Fiscal Note not available
Committee:
Last Action: 1/31/2012 - S First Read--SB 722-Lamping Journal Page:
Title: Calendar Position: 97
Effective Date: August 28, 2012
Current Bill Summary
SB 722 - This act creates the "Iran Energy Divestment Act" which bars entities that invest in the energy sector in Iran from contracting with the state and political subdivisions. Entities wishing to make public contracts shall certify that they are not investors in the energy sector in Iran. Entities that falsely certify shall be subject to a penalty equal to the greater of $250,000 or twice the amount of the contract. In addition, contracts may be terminated by the awarding body and the entity shall be ineligible to bid on and enter into such contracts for three years.
It's all in how you define things. From the bill [pdf]:
...(2) "Energy sector", activities to develop petroleum or natural gas resources or nuclear power....
It appears that a few things were left out. Batteries maybe?
It would be interesting to see the effect of channeling public investment in the United States into wind power technology rather than petroleum and nuclear.
Via Think Progress, Rick Santorum (r), the surging candidate in the Iowa caucuses, on Meet the Press this past weekend:
Rick Santorum (r): ...Finally, I would be working openly with the state of Israel and I would be saying to the Iranians, you either open up those facilities, you begin to dismantle them and, and make them available to inspectors or we will degrade those facilities through air strikes. And make it very public that we are doing that. The President has done none [crosstalk] of this...
David Gregory: So you would lay out a red line, and if they passed it, air strikes by a President San, Santorum.
Rick Santorum (r): Iran will not get a nuclear weapon under my watch.
David Gregory: Well, two previous presidents have said that. You would order air strikes if it became clear that [crosstalk] they were gonna...
Rick Santorum (r): Yes, I, that's, that's the plan. I mean, you can't go out and say, this is, this is the problem with this administration. You can't go out and say, this is what I'm for and then do nothing. You become a paper tiger and then people don't respect our country and our allies can't trust us. That's the problem with this administration....
Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Kit Bond appeared with Senator Diane Feinstein, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to discuss the disclosure of a second, secret Iranian uranium enrichment facility:
Bond's demeanor during this interview illustrates the dilemma that faces erst-while moderates in the age of radical fringe Republicanism. On the one hand, he is not a total ideologue so he strives for the appearance of rationality:
... I think that the election riots and the continuing unrest in Iran shows that there's a significant body of Iranian people who don't like the direction that they're going.
And that's why I think that strong economic sanctions, which have to be applied by the world community, not just us - we can make an impact - are the best way to go.
[Senator Bond] That will cause a change in the regime's attitude, or a regime change, because they're short of refined petroleum.
Iran is indeed short on refined petroleum, and there's been some congressional support for trying to cut off refined petroleum exports to Iran in order to exert pressure on the Iranians to stop their nuclear program. But I can't imagine a more direct way of "proving" to those Iranian people sitting on the fence that the reformists are American puppets than to threaten a US-led blockade on the Iranians in order to effect "regime change".
...And the phrase "Jaw, jaw is better than war, war" was actually coined by Harold Macmillan in 1958 when he misquoted Churchill's 1954 comment that "meeting jaw to jaw is better than war..."
...Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom...
...States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic...
[emphasis added]
What a difference seven years and unemployed neocons make. President Obama to the people and leaders of Iran:
From the master, Joseph Heller, comes a passage about a WWII bombardier who has been pushed past the limit and is refusing to fly more missions for his selfish commanding officers, who've been, for their own advancement, demanding more missions than they have a right to:
"Won't you fight for your country?" Colonel Cheney Korn demanded, emulating Colonel Cathcart's harsh, self-righteous tone. "Won't you give your life for Colonel Bush Cathcart and me?"
Yossarian tensed with alert astonishment when he heard Colonel Korn's concluding words. "What's that?" he exclaimed. "What have you and
Colonel Cathcart got to do with my country? You're not the same."
"How can you separate us?" Colonel Korn inquired with ironical tranquility.
"That's right," Colonel Cathcart cried emphatically. "You're either for us or against us. There's no two ways about it."
"I'm afraid he's got you," added Colonel Korn. "You're either for us or against your country. It's as simple as that."
"Oh, no, Colonel. I don't buy that."
Colonel Korn was unruffled. "Neither do I, frankly, but everyone else will. So there you are."
Catch-22, p.433
I couldn't help thinking of this passage when Scott Ritter began his talk at the Ethical Society Friday night by reminding us that just such a technique was the heart of the Bush/Cheney plan to neutralize any opposition to their war fever when we attacked Iraq. Any dissent automatically made one unpatriotic.
The other propaganda ploy they used was painting all Muslims with the same brush. We were shown a dark skinned man with bushy eyebrows and a hooked nose and told to fear him: whether it was bin Laden, Saddam Hussein ... or Ahmedinejad. Bush/Cheney/Colonel Korn used American fears to meld all Muslim men with 9/ll, ignoring the distinctions between Sunnis and Shias and counting on the ignorance of most citizens in that regard. Our neoconservative neomilitarist leaders counted on us not to know that our attackers on 9/11 were all Sunnis and that Iraq and Iran, being predominantly Shiite, would hate al-Qaeda.
Few Americans know that Iran was the first Muslim nation to condemn the 9/11 attacks. Few know that Iran, because it hated al-Qaeda for killing Iranian diplomats and their families in Afghanistan, offered not only approval of our invasion of that country, but also "search-and-rescue help, humanitarian assistance, and even advice on which targets to bomb in Afghanistan."
Scott Ritter, speaking at the Ethical Society of St. Louis Friday evening, laid into the Bush administration for its constant lying about Iran. His point was that attacking Iran would be as unnecessary, counterproductive, and crackbrained as attacking Iraq was. Considering that he was the chief weapons inspector in Iraq for seven years and that he argued before the attack there that Iraq had no significant WMDs, he has, at the very least, a 100 percent better track record than President 24 Percent.
Bush's mantra is that Iran poses the single greatest threat in the world for Americans, and that claim balances on two myths he has promulgated: that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons and that Iran is the greatest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Indeed, if Bush's claims are true, Iran is a terrible threat.
But Ritter deconstructed those claims. Deconstructed? Demolished would come closer. And this posting will show you the rubble of the argument that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.
During an interview with Craig Unger about his new book "The Fall Of The House Of Bush", Amy Goodman of Democracy Now (transcript here) refers to comments made by Dick Cheney in September 1992 after the first Gulf War, in a speech at the Economic Club of Detroit explaining why the George H. W. Bush administration did not go on to Baghdad after Saddam then.
Cheney's comments in the speech show clearly that they knew irrefutably in 2003 before the invasion, not only that Saddam Hussein was no threat militarily to any country, much less to the United States, but that they also knew exactly what the conditions in Iraq likely to be produced by an invasion would be, and that they did it with eyes wide open, with conscious and full intention of producing the humanitarian crisis and chaos and death that has followed.
And knew that the responsibility for it would be theirs.
Cheney's speech begins at about 3 min 50 sec into this Democracy Now Craig Unger interview video:
Parts two and three of the Democracy Now Craig Unger interview follow here:
My father, a World War II veteran, instilled in me an appreciation of our armed forces, and the young men and women who have done so much to protect the freedoms we cherish. He taught me to appreciate the gravity of warfare, and that war should be pursued only when there are simply no alternatives available.
The Iraq conflict represents the unfortunate result when these principles are ignored, and I will continue to do everything in my power to force the President to change course. But Congress must be equally vigilant to ensure that new flashpoints in the Middle East do not follow the same failed course as our Iraq policy.
In particular, I have been concerned with the Bush Administration's provocative rhetoric on Iran, and I am using my seat in the United States Senate to remind the President that military action requires the express consent of Congress. I have resisted efforts to provide what I would call "backdoor" approval for military action in that country. Last month, the Senate considered an amendment that would categorize Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a "foreign terrorist organization". To me, adoption of this amendment could essentially provide approval of military action against Iran, especially by this Administration. I am also concerned that this amendment was debated without the benefit of a single hearing in the Senate Armed Services Committee, of which I am a member.
I voted against the amendment, and this month joined Senator Jim Webb and other Senate Democrats in a letter to President Bush stating, "We wish to emphasize that no congressional authority exists for unilateral military action
against Iran."
If Iraq has taught us anything, it is that we must be aggressive and vigilant in stopping President Bush and Vice President Cheney from dragging us into new military quagmires. I will continue to do everything in my power to prevent this from happening.
On November 1, 2007 30 senators signed a letter [pdf] sent to dubya on the subject of Iran. Claire McCaskill was one of them.
Dear President Bush:
We are writing to express serious concerns with the provocative statements and actions stemming from your administration with respect to possible U.S. military action in Iran. These comments are counterproductive and undermine efforts to resolve tensions with Iran through diplomacy.
We wish to emphasize that no congressional authority exists for unilateral military action against Iran. This includes the Senate vote on September 26, 2007 on an amendment to the FY 2008 National Defense Authorization Act. This amendment, expressing the sense of the Senate on Iran, and the recent designation of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, should in no way be interpreted as a predicate for the use of military force in Iran.
We stand ready to work with your administration to address the challenges presented by Iran in a manner that safeguards our security interests and promotes a regional diplomatic solution, but we wish to emphasize that offensive military action should not be taken against Iran without the express consent of Congress....
[T]he only times you put weapons on a plane is when they are on alert or if you are tasked to move the weapons to a specific site.
Then he told me something I had not heard before.
Barksdale Air Force Base is being used as a jumping off point for Middle East operations. Gee, why would we want cruise missile nukes at Barksdale Air Force Base. Can't imagine we would need to use them in Iraq. Why would we want to preposition nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations?
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I couldn't help thinking of this passage when 
Scott Ritter, speaking at the Ethical Society of St. Louis Friday evening, laid into the Bush administration for its constant lying about Iran. His point was that attacking Iran would be as unnecessary, counterproductive, and crackbrained as attacking Iraq was. Considering that he was the chief weapons inspector in Iraq for seven years and that he argued before the attack there that Iraq had no significant WMDs, he has, at the very least, a 100 percent better track record than President 24 Percent.
