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It is time to rename the League of Conservation Voters to the Legion of Complicit Voters. They get to keep the same initials, but the lose all of their pretense of being an environmental organization.
Not long ago I got in a tangle with the California League of Conservation Voters after I mistakenly attributed to them the fact that the League of Conservation Voters 2009 Scorecard gave Sen. Diane Feinstein a 100% rating. That was my mistake, though I doubt that there was not some degree of communication between the two over exactly how this ranking was going to come out.
My outrage was over the fact that any Senator who has worked so hard to make both the Federal and California State Water Project work for the benefit of their corporate agriculture owning family friends, like Sen. Feinstein has done, would be given any recognition as an environmentally sensitive legislator. The last straw came when she tried to insert an amendment into a "jobs" bill that would has suspended enforcement of the Endangered Species Act. That has temporarily blown over, but the bad taste is still there with many environmentalists.
I put that away for a while, but returned to the Congressional Scorecard of the League of Conservation Voters today and was completely blown away. It would seem to me that they have an algorithm that sorts through votes until they find a patter that gives them the results that they want to see. There is no other way that I could explain even a comparatively low 86% rating for Congressman Nick Rahall (WV-03), Chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources.
The LCV's results are laughable. First, they count only votes for bills on the floor. Then they report all of the major committee chair and ranking member votes. This neglects to consider the great deal of power that a committee chair has in determining which bills even come up for a vote, or what language remains in the bill while still in committee.
Rahall has been a tireless advocate for the coal industry. While he leans on the producer over mine safety, he has successfully blocked every effort to restrict Mountain Top Removal (MTR) mining. Not only are the many coal fired power plants loading the atmosphere with CO2, MTR practices blocks rivers and clearly violates the Clean Water Act.
Clearly, the LCV has been too long in Washington and become just another fixture of the body politic, every ready to spin any story to it's benefit, especially when they can show a leading, powerful Democrat as a champion of the good. It will take a long time for me to learn to trust them again. Maybe, if they ever endorsed a Green over a Democrat, it might prove that they have regained some objectivity. I am not holding my breath.
