George Bush would like us to blame ourselves for being addicted to oil. Maybe we are. Then again, just like in the drug world, maybe it’s time to lift the scales a bit and take a look at the pusher. Isn’t handing out hundred dollar bills to feed our addiction just a bit like a dealer fronting a baggie? I’ve never really understood upper class kids who complain about parents who just throw money at them as an answer to all life’s woes. But I do now because this is all these Republicans know how to do. Ignore people stranded on roof tops? Oops, throw a debit card at them. Create policy that cripples people’s ability to earn a living? Here, have a hundred bucks. Sure, I’m guilty of using a piece of candy to quiet a crying child - when they were crying about a scraped knee, not broken legs!
Do they think we’ll forget that these same people passed an Energy Bill less than a year ago that was supposed to put us on the path to Energy Independence? It’s déjà vu all over again. Even before Hurricane Katrina, fuel prices were hitting hard. It was on August 10, 2005, that truckers were lined up in Florida and the Pacific Northwest, demanding action on soaring fuel prices. Oh for the good old days when oil was just $60 a barrel, or the really good old days of 2004 when gas prices were expected to “skyrocket” to $1.83 a gallon!!
For years Bush and the Republican Congress have blamed every blip or jolt in energy prices on the lack of an Energy Bill. Year after year, Bush whooped and hollered, “we need an energy bill, …one that encourages conservation and helps us become less dependant on foreign sources of energy.” They even went so far as to distort John Kerry’s energy policy by falsely stating he opposed alternative energy because he opposed the Bush-Cheney big oil give-away. Finally, despite dissent by many Democrats, the President signed the Republican Energy Bill on August 8, 2005.
So it is a complete bafflement to me that, not even a year later, that same Republican led Congress is now scrambling to pass more energy laws. What does this say about the promises of energy independence for the future, that they proclaimed the 2005 Energy Bill would deliver?
Shouldn’t the 2005 Energy Bill have contained incentives to purchase fuel efficient cars?
Shouldn’t it have provided full funding for research for alternative fuels? Did Bush and the Republican Congress seriously pass a landmark Energy Bill and NOT include this obvious need?
Did it not at least include increased CAFÉ Standards??
Obviously not, or not nearly enough, which nearly every Democrat tried to tell America at the time. Senator Kerry in an interview with Electroindustry, “the versions of this legislation that have been produced by this Congress have badly skewed the priorities and incentives in the legislation in ways that will hurt consumers, provide unnecessary subsidies, and fall far short of making meaningful progress and improvements to our national energy policy.”
The Bush-Cheney oil regime isn’t interested in getting us off oil or they would quit pretending Artic Refuge drilling is any sort of solution. They aren’t interested in real renewable energy policy or they wouldn’t have to rewrite energy laws that were just passed 9 months ago. And they sure aren’t interested in tax fairness, or there wouldn’t be billions of dollars of oil industry tax breaks for them to cut. They just flat are not interested in governing for the people and they most certainly are the bums that need to be thrown out in November.
LINKS:
http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/
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