Rand Wacker

I’ve been pretty busy lately, so I haven’t kept up with current events as much as I normally like to. Something came across the bow recently is already too late to stop. The massive pork barrel energy bill architected by Vice President Cheney and his energy-industry compatriots has already passed in the House “with ease”, and it looks like the Senate will give it the OK before Thanksgiving.

Frustration set in for me tonight when a friend pointed me at an excellent article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (yes, that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he’s been fighting for the environment for quite some time now). It’s a comprehensive story; I was amazed that Rolling Stone would publish something so long, but then I remembered that their pages are really damn big. It talks to many points of Bush’s oxymoronic environmental policy, and details their all out war on any regulation which keeps our air clean. A point which hit particularly close to home:

As if to prove that point, Republicans simultaneously eliminated the tax credit that had encouraged Americans to buy gas-saving hybrid cars, [kind of an odd move for an administration so enamored with tax cuts] and weakened efficiency standards for everything from air conditioners to automobiles. They also created an obscene $100,000 tax break for Hummers and the thirty-eight biggest gas guzzlers. Then, adding insult to injury, the Energy Department robbed $135,615 from the anemic solar, renewables and energy-conservation budget to produce 10,000 copies of the White House’s energy plan.

UPDATE: I’ve been challenged on the elimination of the tax credit, and can’t find anything to back that up. There is actually a tax credit for hybrid vehicles in the new energy bill (proposed by Dick Cheney). I guess a stopped clock really is right twice a day.

But really this isn’t what got me frustrated. I started to delve into the new energy bill a bit more. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to review all 1400 pages of text; and it appears that neither did House Democrats. Apparently this bill has been debated by all-Republican committees for the past several months and then released in it’s entirety to the rest of the House with only 48 hours before the vote (the only faster bill passing of this size was the PATRIOT act, and we all know how well that worked out). At a time when our country is running massive deficits, basic social services are being cut left and right, and we’ve embroiled ourselves in an international conflict which is going to take several years and TRILLIONS of dollars to extricate from, how can we afford to pass off massive subsidies to the already well-to-do energy sector. (From the Economist article):

This is a ghastly bill, which, by the calculations of Aileen Roder of Taxpayers for Common Sense, could cost taxpayers $96 billion over the next decade.

The tax breaks for industry form the bulk of the package: $13 billion for the oil and gas industry; $5.4 billion for coal; $4.2 billion for producers of the corn-based fuel ethanol; and $1.4 billion for nuclear power.

Back to the Kennedy article and issues close to home:

After one meeting with Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, Cheney dismissed California Gov. Gray Davis’ request to cap the state’s energy prices. That denial would enrich Enron and nearly bankrupt California. It has since emerged that the state’s energy crisis was largely engineered by Enron. According to the New York Times, the task-force staff circulated a memo that suggested “utilizing” the crisis to justify expanded oil and gas drilling. President Bush and others would cite the California crisis to call for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Tax cuts for the energy companies here at home, massive overcharging to the taxpayers by energy companies in Iraq. HOW IS THIS A GOOD IDEA?!?