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to revisit Free Trade Agreements, and start inserting real Environmental and Labor protections into all of them?
Instead of doing that, once he took office he appointed a republican to be his chief trade negotiator, never brought an existing free trade agreement up for renegotiation, and began negotiating a new free trade agreement using the old agreements (with NO environmental protections or labor protections) as a basis and a template.
He once talked about Hard Caps on CO2. Not Cap and Trade. Cap and Trade turns CO2 into just another market that Wall Street can manipulate, with the value of CO2 credits the thing they bet on. CO2 markets would drive up prices of everything produced in any industry that produces CO2, producing bubbles throughout the manufacturing world for Wall Street's profit and gain while destroying the rest of the economy and all of our lives, again.
Real Environmentalists have been saying for years that Cap and Trade would be a disaster. It is only Corporations that keep saying that Cap and Trade is the only workable solution. It is only Corporations that keep promoting Cap and Trade until many, many people believe in it without knowing better. Obama used to know better. He used to be able to say so, very clearly. So why is he now only pushing Cap and Trade as an eventual solution?
Obama used to talk about reinstating government regulations. He used to believe that government regulations were a good thing. They were government's way of protecting all of us from corporations that can't be trusted to regulate themselves, and he said so. So why is it that he is now BP's best friend in the Gulf? Why aren't chronic violators and murderers like Mining companies being regulated in new ways that really might force them to comply? When does the effort begin to start protecting the American People with all those strong and vital regulations he talked about?
Obama talked a lot about weening ourselves off of our oil addiction too. But investments in alternative energy have been disappointing. They are better than what we would get from any republican, but nowhere near what we were led to expect from Obama. Why are we still giving billions in subsidies to the oil industry while they are at the peak of their profitability? Aren't they making enough profits already that they don't need billions in public money on top of it? Why aren't all of those $Billions going towards renewable energy development instead, where that money would do us all much more good? Why are we still subsidizing corn for Ethanol when we know that this is environmentally destructive, a waste of agricultural land, an inefficient fuel, and nothing more than a PR effort to brand gasoline and falsely environmentally friendly? Why is he supporting this? All of that money could also be better spend elsewhere.
And most of all, why are we STILL fighting 2 wars for OIL? And why is he preparing to widen one of those wars to now go to war with Pakistan? How do these wars, and the trillions of dollars spend, and the millions of lives lost and maimed, all for oil, help to ween us off of our addiction to fossil fuels?
New, comprehensive energy policies, across the board, would really be a good thing for America. In fact, it would be a good thing for the entire world if Obama could get on board with the Energy Policies he talked about during his campaign.
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