June 29, 2008
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Bush Pushes Oil Addiction
Thomas Friedman, New York Times News Service
Two years ago, President Bush declared that America was “addicted to oil,” and, by gosh, he was going to do something about it. Well, now he has. Now we have the new Bush energy plan: “Get more addicted to oil.”
Actually, it’s more sophisticated than that: Get Saudi Arabia, our chief oil pusher, to up our dosage for a little while and bring down the oil price just enough so the renewable energy alternatives can’t totally take off. Then try to strong-arm Congress into lifting the ban on drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
It’s as if our addict-in-chief is saying to us: “C’mon, guys, you know you want a little more of the good stuff. One more hit, baby. Just one more toke on the ole oil pipe. I promise, next year, we’ll all go straight.”
It is hard for me to find the words to express what a massive, fraudulent, pathetic excuse for an energy policy this is. But it gets better. The president actually had the gall to set a deadline for this drug deal:
“I know the Democratic leaders have opposed some of these policies in the past,” Bush said. “Now that their opposition has helped drive gas prices to record levels, I ask them to reconsider their positions. If congressional leaders leave for the Fourth of July recess without taking action, they will need to explain why $4-a-gallon gasoline is not enough incentive for them to act.”
This from a president who for six years resisted any pressure on Detroit to seriously improve mileage standards on its gas guzzlers; this from a president who’s done nothing to encourage conservation.
But, most of all, this deadline is from a president who hasn’t lifted a finger to broker passage of legislation that has been stuck in Congress for a year, which could actually impact America’s energy profile right now — unlike offshore oil that would take years to flow — and create good tech jobs to boot.
That bill is H.R. 6049 — the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008, which extends for another eight years the investment tax credit for installing solar energy, and extends for one year the production tax credit for producing wind power and for three years the credits for geothermal, wave energy and other renewables.
These crucial tax credits for renewables are set to expire at the end of this fiscal year. If they do, it will mean thousands of jobs lost and billions of dollars of investments not made. “Already clean energy projects in the U.S. are being put on hold,” said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association.
People forget — wind and solar power are here, they work, they can go on your roof tomorrow. What they need now is a big U.S. market where lots of manufacturers have an incentive to install solar panels and wind turbines. The more they do, the more these technologies would move down the learning curve, become cheaper and be able to compete directly with coal, oil and nuclear, without subsidies.
That seems to be exactly what the Republican Party is trying to block, since the Senate Republicans — sorry to say, with the help of John McCain — have now managed to defeat the renewal of these tax credits six different times.
Of course, we’re going to need oil for years to come. That being the case, I’d prefer — for geopolitical reasons — that we get as much as possible from domestic wells. But our future is not in oil, and a real president wouldn’t be hectoring Congress about offshore drilling today.
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The National Mall, Washington, DC, needs multi-millios for repairs. One of the fundamental problems we face in society is that our givernment entities don’t have adequate budgeting for routine and periodic repairs. This is why we see bridgs collapse, or find the local school board “suddnly” needs a bond issue of millions upon millions.
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From today’s Opinion Line: “It is all right if children are allowed to drive automobiles at 16. But I think they should be 21 before they are allowed to watch television.”
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BEWARE OF RHETORIC ABOUT COURT, RULINGS
Davis Merritt, Former Editor, Wichita Eagle
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling June 12 that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay may challenge their detentions in federal court focuses fresh attention on the possibility that the next president will appoint two, perhaps more, Supreme Court justices.
The day the 5-4 decision was announced, John McCain said it “obviously concerns me.” By the next morning, as conservatives reacted overnight with outrage, McCain had decided it was “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”
Thus it seems certain that the presidential campaign will focus on the court at a volume not heard since 1968 when Richard Nixon blamed the “runaway” court for everything from destroying America’s moral fiber to coddling criminals and communists.
The four conservative justices who dissented from the majority decision were kind enough to provide some of the rhetoric that we’ll be hearing.
Chief Justice John Roberts condemned “judicial activism” and “unelected, politically unaccountable judges” for “overreaching.”
Justice Antonin Scalia was, typically, even more hot-blooded, writing, “The nation will live to regret what the court has done today,” and, “It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.”
The problem for voters, and for McCain if he takes up the cudgel on this issue, lies in deciding just what those inflammatory words mean.
“Activist judges” is conservative code for “liberal judges.” As McCain put it recently, activist judges are “those who make law with disregard for the will of the people.”
But wait.
Justices Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the most ruggedly conservative (and thus presumably least activist) members of this court, are actually champions of activism.
In our system, McCain’s “will of the people” is expressed most fundamentally in the actions of the legislative branch.
In the period 1994-2005, Thomas voted 34 times to overturn federal legislation, and Scalia 31 times. The liberal (and thus presumably activist) Justice Stephen Breyer did so only 15 times. Thomas voted 23 times to overturn court precedents, Scalia 19 times. The four justices generally labeled as liberal did that 10 or fewer times each.
So beware of code words.
Likewise, do not be deceived by Roberts’ grumbling about “unelected, politically unaccountable judges,” which describes all federal judges, including Roberts. That independence is the core of the separation of powers that drives our system.
So beware of easy sloganeering.
Scalia’s dissent is remarkable in its opening section prophesying that Americans will be killed as a result of the decision, despite the fact that the ruling actually frees no one. He grimly details how at least 30 former detainees “have returned to the battlefield” to kill “innocent civilians.” He notes that they were freed because the military had determined that they were not enemy combatants.
If the military erred in releasing the 30, it can be equally wrong the other way, still holding some who never were combatants. That fact precisely confirms the court majority’s point that one cannot assume all detainees are combatants without a thorough process. Yet Scalia marches onward, writing that “the number of the enemy returned to combat will obviously increase.”
So beware of political point-making in court opinions.
Voters face a tough enough task in November without being diverted by such polemics.
