Bush and the Magic Wand

[Dardedar]

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

The President Speaks

I watched the president's press conference yesterday. I must say the whole of it made me about as angry as I would have expected it to. His main thrust was that everything that's wrong today is the fault of Congress. He asserted in various ways that he's been unable to get several handy dandy bills through for about the last eighteen months or so. Now, by my math that means that he couldn't even get his own republican congress to help him out from November of 2006 to January of 2007, but I don't think he and I do math the same way.

Watching him, I was struck by how small his thinking is. Alternative energy is only nu-cu-lar and ethanol. Drilling in ANWR will solve our dependency on foreign oil and so on. Had John Kerry been elected we'd be nearly three and a half years into our "Apollo Program" for alternative fuel sources. One would hope these would be more than just those choices that benefit Monsanto, ADM and Cargill as well as GE and ConEd.

So in the midst of all his blather, I didn't pay much attention to the one sentence that became the news shows' soundbite. The President of the United States of America said to us "I firmly believe that, you know, if there was a magic wand to wave, I'd be waving it, of course.I've repeatedly submitted proposals to help address these problems, yet time after time Congress chose to block them."

Here's the funny thing. He has been president for over seven years. He could have done something. But let's recall that what was done in 2005 was to give massive tax breaks to the oil companies and other energy firms. We stopped charging royalties to oil companies who take crude from public land. Essentially, we are allowing oil companies to take from the commons for free. And each quarter these companies are setting record profits.

And, what did George W. Bush say in 2005 when he wanted to pass that wonderful energy bill that would bring down the price of gas, which then had soared to a shocking $2.28 a gallon? He said:

"I wish I could simply wave a magic wand and lower gas prices tomorrow," Bush told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "But we must act now to address the fundamental problem. Our supply of energy is not growing fast enough to meet the demands of our growing economy."

Three years ago he could have waved that magic wand to improve our mass transit infrastructure (my city is trying to add light rail-a forward looking idea that cons hate), could have extended tax credits to buyers of hybrids rather than Hummers, could have encouraged our auto companies to improve fleet efficiency. Rather, the news this morning in Wisconsin is that GM is laying off 750 people at the Janesville SUV plant. Yeah, who could have seen that coming?

And now, McCain and Clinton and others say that we should have a tax holiday for the summer to reduce the price of our gas by eighteen cents a gallon. Think about that: we give the raw product away, we've given billions in tax incentives to the oil companies and now as an answer, some would like us to forgo our own revenue - money that goes to US citizens for roads and infrastructure improvements, because oil companies are overcharging us? Insane.

Is now a good time to remind everyone that had we kept Jimmy Carter's CAFE standards in place we wouldn't need foreign oil?

LINK

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

And if the R-controlled Congress hadn't rolled back the 55-mph speed limit (attached to a "must sign" transportation bill), we at least not need nearly as much foreign oil. FYI-the Clinton "tax holiday" is paid for by an excess profits tax on the oil company and she only proposed it after a meeting with striking truckers who said even 10 cents would help. But yes, if we'd kept the Carter CAFE standards and the Carter renewables tax credits/rebates and had followed up on the Carter proposals for both efficiency and "green" energy at least at the federal level, we wouldn't be talking about foreign oil or global warming now, because we'd have already have dealt with the problem while the fix was easy(ier).

[Dardedar]

DAR
Galt likes to imagine that Bush cares about the environment, and points to Bush's energy efficient house. For too long I have listened to republicans (like Rush) mock even the idea of conservation, recycling, electric cars and renewable energy. It runs against their image of we're number one, leave the Hummer idling, damn everyone else.
Here is a clear example they set a long time ago. Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House. Reagan took them down. I wonder how much energy those panels would have created for the White House over the quarter century since then.

Oh, I see now they were solar water heaters which are much more efficient and cost effective than (70's era) panels that generated electricity. Extra dumb.

D.
------------------------------
Quote:

"Carter even had solar collectors installed on the White House grounds to heat the executive residence's water.

Then Carter lost re-election to Ronald Reagan in 1980. The solar panels at the White House eventually came down - and Reagan and his aides gutted the solar research program.

"In June or July of 1981, on the bleakest day of my professional life, they descended on the Solar Energy Research Institute, fired about half of our staff and all of our contractors, including two people who went on to win Nobel prizes in other fields, and reduced our $130 million budget by $100 million," recalls Denis Hayes, the founder of Earth Day, who had been hired by Carter to spearhead the solar initiative.

Reagan and Congress stopped aggressively pushing new auto efficiency standards, acceding to Detroit's desire to leave them at Carter-era levels. They let the solar tax benefit expire, and the nascent solar industry went belly- up."

LINK

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Well, most of the engineers of this travesty either died or will die rich. Isn't that supposed to count for something? These guys are making another biblical prophesy come true - blessed is she who is barren. They have cursed our grandchildren.