Will John McSame never tire of shooting himself in the foot?
During the primaries, we saw McSame as champion of the "Gas Tax Holiday" which was soundly rejected by experts and voters alike as idiotic and ineffective. When you're paying $60 a week to fill your tank, a vague promise of $30 back over the course of the summer is worthy of ridicule, if not rancor. The fact that this moronic proposal had no provision to stop oil companies from keeping the extra cash for themselves is just the cherry on the crap sundae. Of course, oil companies will give up their cash! Hasn't every recent piece of history shown this to be overwhelmingly true!? bueller?... bueller???
In his latest flip-flop, his 10th in the last 3 weeks!!!, McSame and his merry band of energy "experts" (read energy lobbyist schills) have joined with the Worst. President. Ever.TM in calling for offshore drilling as the way to reel back oil prices.
Senator Bob Menendez lays the smackdown:
It's hard to imagine that John McCain was too happy today when President Bush echoed his call for drilling up and down our nation's coastlines. He was having a hard enough time trying pass the laugh test when claiming that his plan would have any effect on gas prices anytime soon. Now this over-hyped plan has the stamp of approval from the one person you want to avoid -- a president who is not only an oil man but has also been wrong on just about every issue over the course of eight years.
Even without the Bush kiss of death, however, most people could see through this nonsensical idea. To hear John McCain or George Bush talk about it, you'd think that gasoline was going to be pipelined straight out of the ground and directly into your gas tank.But people understand that, in an area devoid of the appropriate infrastructure, it takes a long, long time to build the derricks that would line our shores, along with the pipelines to reach land and the refineries to process the oil. And people also understand that the type of production McCain and Bush are talking about is a drop in the bucket -- or a drop in the barrel -- compared to what this nation consumes.
And Raymond Learsay calls for a national Oil Trust to help fund research in renewables:
The offshore federal lands belong to the public. Their potential is enormous. The federal Energy Information Agency estimates that roughly 75 billion barrels of oil in the United States are off-limits to development and roughly 16 billion barrels are covered by the offshore moratorium.We are also a nation who for good or bad have lost our trust in the oil industry to develop our national patrimony in a way that benefits all Americans. Certainly their policies to date are veering the nation toward environmental and economic disaster. Just imagine the extraordinary benefit that would accrue if the net proceeds of an oil trust would be directed to a massive national program developing alternative fuels and alternative energy programs rather than the bottom line of additional billions for Exxon Mobil, Chevron, et al. To calculate the values at stake one could fairly estimate development costs of $30 a barrel (and that is probably very high) to be deducted from today's $130/bbl price, times 16 billion barrels offshore alone -- well you do the numbers. A staggering amount of wealth that belongs to the nation's citizens rather than ceding it to the oil companies at giveaway conditions and buying it back at extortionary prices at the pump.
Its clear that as in every past energy issue the Bush Administration has condoned, from deregulation through the Iraq War and beyond, this is another example Enron politics at its worst. It's another giveaway to the Big Oil companies who certainly have as much right to make money as we have not to prostitute our precious national resources to them.
Bush and McSame - big oil giveaways packaged as compassionate conservatism. More of the same. Enough is enough.
The real kicker here is that Big Oil has been sitting on drilling leases on millions of acres of public land in order to maximize company profits in the long term, rather than drilling now to increase production to meet demand.
Today's papers report that Big Oil is about to be awarded no bid contracts for Iraqi oil fields. Maybe voters can now guess what the invasion of Iraq was really about all along?
McCain's plan to build more nuclear plants may actually make some sense (if the waste storage issue can be resolved). France uses nuclear plants to produce nearly 80 percent of its electricity needs. Obama has in the past been open to encouraging greater reliance on nuclear generation of electricity.
But a long-term solution must also include higher fuel efficiency standards and substantial investment in wind power and solar power generation. Denmark, for example, now produces about 20 percent of its electricity from wind turbines and hopes to increase that number to 50 percent by the year 2025.
It can be done--as long as Big Oil is not allowed to call all of the shots and suppress alternative technologies--especially those involving efforts to reduce our carbon footprint.
Warner re-introducing this legislation is not a surprise. But what is shocking is that the bill is being co-sponsored by Senator Jim Webb, D-VA.
Fortunately, most Democrats in Congress are against off-shore drilling, citing the fact, correctly in my opinion, that off-shore drilling will do nothing to lower prices at the pump.
Senator Webb's office released a statement supporting Senator Warner's legislation:
"Our national security requires that we work responsibly toward energy independence, and Sen. Warner's legislation offers a preliminary step toward exploration and development of one of our domestic energy sources."
Very disapointing - will this wreck Webb's chance of becoming the V.P., nominee?
This bill could wreck the tourism industry and the environment in Virginia and all the way up the Atlantic coast, and it does nothing to cure our addiction to foreign oil, lower gas prices, etc.
Why is there such opposition to developing alternative energy sources at almost every level of government?
What in the hell were Republicans thinking when they nominated this guy? I mean, I'd be wondering if he had the stuff to even finish his term in the Senate. Let along have the physical stamina that the 24/7 job of being President demands.
We did this once before. Elected a pretty old guy as President. And Reagan was younger than McCain is. Look what happened - we now know that Ronald Reagan had Alzheimers disease during his last few years in the White House. The risk of putting someone like that in command of the American nuclear arsenal is chilling.