Seriously.
"The Change You Deserve"?
No Excuses Bills?
Damn...
At least Tinklenberg gets it!
Yep, I said it. He gets it.
A "no more excuses energy bill"?
What's next?
A "No More Excuses Veterans Bill of 2008"?
A "No More Excuses Health Care Bill of 2008"?
A "No More Excuses in Iraq Bill"?
Please Congresswoman, no more "No More Excuses".
No more grandstanding.
No more gamesmanship.
We need solutions, not slogans.
Bachmann is plenty smart. She knows that the energy crisis we are in now is due to a decade of GOP control of Congress. At this point, we are feeling the terrible fiscal tails of flawed GOP policy. This policy is hurting working and middle class Americans, who have less disposable income.
Giving up Federal land for oil refineries? Seriously? We knew Republicans were in bed with the oil companies, but seriously!
If a lack of refineries was the actual problem, why didn't Republicans offer "no excuses" from 1997-2007? They had ample opportunity.
Carbon Dioxide tax credits are in the bill as well. CARBON DIOXIDE TAX CREDITS!
Carbon tax credits are linked to...GLOBAL WARMING!
Accordingly, a carbon tax is effectively a tax on the use of fossil fuels, and only fossil fuels. Some schemes also include other greenhouse gases; the global warming potential is an internationally accepted scale of equivalence for other greenhouse gases in units of tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Wow, did Bachmann even read this bill? Did Brian Davis read it? Both are staunchly opposed to any argument that global warming exists.
Or, did they just like the catchy name?
Let me guess, Marcus pulled out some old "No Excuses" jeans from the Donna Rice era and broke out his beatbox to his favorite Sir Mix A Lot jams...
I digress...
We need to decrease our reliance on foreign oil. Truscott gets it right. Chris worked for Bob Olson, I supported him at one time.
On Sept. 20, 2007, I tried to be even more “to the point” with a candidate whose heart and mind were clearly elsewhere:Gas prices. Gas prices. Gas prices. Gas prices. Gas prices. Gas prices. Gas prices. In a district like the 6th, nobody can get by without a car. They all feel the “pain at the pump.” To talk about transportation or energy without mentioning one of the few issues on which (almost) everyone agrees makes a candidate seem out of touch. (Footnote: See George H.W. Bush on the price of milk.)
But Olson was far more interested in lecturing on windmills (his expertise)—and eventually his campaign, for many reasons, became an exercise in tilting at them. Fortunately, DFL-endorsed candidate Elwyn Tinklenberg isn’t making that mistake.
While ExxonMobil-funded Bachmann is now trying to paint herself as the champion of Minnesota drivers (fuel consumers), Tinklenberg is exposing her breath-taking hypocrisy on the issue and offering common-sense solutions. His big-picture approach on a consensus issue isn’t just good politics, it’s good public policy.
A comprehensive approach is needed. Not a summer before the election excuse of a bill.
Voters are smarter than this, we see through the election year politics. This bill is politics and offers no solutions.
3 comments:
MPR has a picture or two of Bachmann's dog and pony show. She looks like she flew in from DC on her broom, but with the props - probably a traveling set of props, the NRCC ships from district to district, dog and pony separately shipped.
This link:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/06/16/bachmann_oil_exploration/
Elwyn the Dunce instead of going for alternative energy source development - green energy and trimming back shipping cash to the Saudis, is reported there to say it's insufficient to drill in ANWR.
Not that it's wrong and an environmental brain fart. Just that it would not make a difference.
Elwyn has real courage that way.
The stranglehold on the pump is the recently more concentrated vertical marketing chain, in this country, plus manipulation of refinery capacity.
When's the last new refinery been built? What about the rolling shutdowns, for alleged technical and mechanical reasons?
The bottleneck is refinery capacity in the US. And all the time the GOP ran Congress and the Whitehouse, it was the bottleneck then also. Then and still.
Perhaps I was harder on Elwyn than I should have been. This MPR quote, from the link given in the earlier comment:
"Tinklenberg, a former state transportation commissioner, said he doesn't think a return to $2 gas is possible unless there's a significant drop in oil consumption.
"His energy plan calls for the development of a more efficient transportation system, higher mileage vehicles, alternative fuels and greater conservation.
"A recent federal report also raises questions about the price impact of tapping new Alaska oil.
"The U.S. Energy Information Administration concluded last month that drilling in ANWR would at best lower the price of a $130 barrel of oil by $1.44. The report said the reduction could also be a small as 41 cents per barrel."
It’s a tricky path. On one hand voters will be upset with Democrats if they don’t think we are doing everything we can to increase oil production and on the other what the country needs is a new direction away from fossil fuels.
ANWR is not so much a solution as a symbol.
Should ANWR come on line it will provide only about 25% of the expected increase in US consumption.
We would still be required to increase our dependence on foreign oil by another 75% over the next ten years.
I wish someone (EL or the DFL) would call her out about lying about the Chinese’s drilling off Cuba, and that off the coast of Virginia is enough oil to offset Saudi imports.
Her weakness is not in calling for drilling in ANWR which I suspect most of the 6th agrees with. Her weakness is in her lack of any other measures to combat this and an appalling ignorance of facts about reserves and production.
I’m against drilling in the Keys or ANWR but if gas hits 5, 6, 7 dollars a gal the pressure will overcome the reality and ANWR could be a defining issue.
Post a Comment