The Pickens Sentinel - U.S. Senate Candidate Bob Conley Visits Upstate

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The Pickens Sentinel - U.S. Senate Candidate Bob Conley Visits Upstate

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Bob Conley wants to win Sen. Lindsey Graham's seat - but the commercial pilot doesn't want to hold it forever.

"We need folks who are going to go up there, fight for what's right, fight for the working man, and then come home after a period of time," Conley said. "This idea that folks want to go home there and stay forever, that was really antithetical to what Jefferson and all the founding fathers thought."

Conley was in Pickens County Wednesday and sat down with the Pickens Sentinel for an interview.

Conley has never held office before, but doesn't see that as a disadvantage.

"If it's experience, getting one's palms greased by K Street lobbyists, I don't think that's experience that I want."

Conley is running for U.S. Senate to help "knock out these warmongering corporate fascists who've been running the show up in Washington."

"We've got to bring this Iraq thing to an end and all this corporate welfare, and letting our jobs go overseas," Conley said.

America entered the war in Iraq under false pretenses.

"We were told Iraqi oil was going to pay for it, we were told it was going to be a cakewalk," Conley said. "Right now we're more than five years past the date we heard 'Mission Accomplished.'

"Yet 97 percent of our casualties have occurred since that date," he continued. "And now we have John McCain saying he wants to be over there for a century."

The continued American presence in Iraq cannot solve that country's problems, Conley said.

He would support bring all the countries in the Middle East to the table to help solve the problem, he said.

"It's their backyard and I really believe they'll be able to come up with a solution working together with us being gone," Conley said. "We need to provide the leadership to bring that together."

Gasoline in Iran is "a quarter a gallon," Conley said.

"Right now we are paying private contractors $42 a gallon to deliver oil in Iraq," he said. "That's obscene."

Wealth is transferring from the middle class over to the "petrol plutocrats," Conley said.

To bring down the price of oil, Conley said he would support alternate energy research.

"That number one, would bring down our gas prices, and number two, keep our energy dollar from going abroad and keep good jobs in the process."

Corn ethanol is not the solution, but is being driven by corporate agribusiness, Conley said.

"It's driving up the price of food, both here and abroad," he said.

Conley said he would support Alaskan oil drilling, with "proper oversight."

"If we can bring gas to $2 a gallon," he said. "American people are hurting and suffering."

Regarding climate change, Conley said the United States shouldn't "hop on a bandwagon but we could take a look at some things."

The mindset of limiting development in responses to climate change

"We need to do the best we can in terms of conservation in all areas," Conley said.

"Waste bothers me. We could be doing a lot of better job there, in terms of putting out incentives for more efficient energy usage.

Entering the Kyoto Accords would "doom the United States in terms of economic growth," Conley said.

"That would make the job situation a whole lot worse," said.

To bring jobs back to the state, Conley would "reevaluate some of these trade agreements."

"From some of them, we should withdraw," he said. "If we can move forward with some of the progressive energy proposal, those will be good jobs for the 21st century. We're going to need energy."

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