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[electricland]

The Cunning Realist is pretty freaking bitter about Bush's speech last night:

Next: energy. This is where the intellectual honesty meter got a real workout; perhaps I had it set on too sensitive a level. The President repeated several times tonight that the nation has "had no energy policy for 10 years." I had assumed that once the election was over, we wouldn't hear Bill Clinton blamed for anything else. I was wrong. It is the height of hypocrisy for this President to blame Clinton for our energy woes. Bush has been President now for almost half a decade. For most of the twenty years before he became President, oil was extremely cheap and not an issue for the economy; the hard-luck histories of Arbusto, Spectrum 7, and Harken Energy are testimony to that. But for almost the entire time he has been sitting in the Oval Office, the price of oil has been an issue--and 9/11 made our reliance on foreign oil an issue of national security as well. That was almost four years ago. And for all those years, this President's energy policy can be summed up in one sentence: "Tell Congress to pass my energy bill."

Comments

[lietya.livejournal.com]

You know what got me? They're talking about closing a sub base in my state. This has caused me to hear the latest plan for how to use the ex-base.... Bush would like to turn it into an OIL REFINERY. Yeah, that's a responsible energy policy.

[lawgeekgurl.livejournal.com]

hey now, you may not necessarily get an oil refinery. you may get a nuclear reactor instead!

[lietya.livejournal.com]

I live in CT - we already *have* the Millstone Around Our Necks. :) (This is the home of Millstone I and II nuclear power plants; my FIL works at one of them, and his reports of safety violations are hair-curling. One was closed down for years because it was so dangerous.... but re-opened a while back. Great.)

[lawgeekgurl.livejournal.com]

but see, Bush is going to have his congress create national nuclear reactor insurance! That way, instead of actually making reactors safe and having federal inspections on a routine basis, they can just have money to pay for the hideously deformed people who were exposed when the meltdown occurs!

[lietya.livejournal.com]

Erk. Somehow, I find this less than reassuring! (I hadn't heard that one; lovely.)

[electricland.livejournal.com]

you are scaring me!

Somehow it all relates to smaller government, I'm sure. It's better for your moral fibre to be hideously deformed than to have all that nasty government oversight!

[lawgeekgurl.livejournal.com]

yeppers. Don't know know the mantra? The market will govern itself! See, the insurance companies will make sure that nuclear reactors are safe, if they're insuring them! Of course, it will probably be through a national risk pool and the insurers themselves will have virtually no control over accepting the risk or imposing company standards on the reactor companies, and you know, they aren't the NRC and don't really know what they're looking for, but never let it be said that the GOP lets facts get in the way of economic propaganda.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

I would love to think it stems from a clear-eyed, childlike belief in the power of the free market and the rational economic actor.

Sadly, I cannot talk myself into believing this.

[lawgeekgurl.livejournal.com]

It stems from a wild-eyed, tight-fisted desire to shield big business from its own negligence. Did I forget to mention that any fund would have caps on liability and opt outs for direct action lawsuits?

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Encouraging energy efficiency couldn't POSSIBLY work better than that!

[lietya.livejournal.com]

Well, true - those of us living in the new-oil-refinery states (and the badly-regulated-nuclear-power states) do have rather more of an incentive towards efficiency now. :) And to vote against people who support this shit!