In America, today, there are three kinds of drivers: those who look at the other gas pumps down at the ol' gas station and think: "Oh my God, I can't believe how much that guy's spending on gas", those who look at their own pump down at the ol' gas station and think: "Oh my God, I can't believe how much I'm spending on gas" - and those who are doing both at the same time.
Naturally, this has brought the Sarah Palins of the world back out in public, and once again the mantra of "Drill, Baby, Drill" can be heard all the way from the Florida coast to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
But what if those folks have it exactly backwards?
What if, in a world of depleting oil resources, the last thing you want to do is use yours up?
To put it another way: why isn't all our oil part of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
Yesterday the Interior Department announced an updated strategy for offshore oil and gas leasing that bans drilling in federal waters off the Atlantic Coast and the Eastern Gulf of Mexico for the next seven years.
"As a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill we learned a number of lessons, most importantly that we need to proceed with caution and focus on creating a more stringent regulatory regime," said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. "As that regime continues to be developed and implemented, we have revised our initial March leasing strategy to focus and expend our critical resources on areas with leases that are currently active."
Noting that oil reserves off the coast of Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and northern Florida amount to just three months of supply at current U.S. consumption rates, the Southern Environmental Law Center praised the decision.
Cross-posted from a story by Sue Sturgis on Facing South.
The oil industry is pushing back against the Obama administration's recently-announced plans to conduct an environmental study of new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster.
On Nov. 4, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE, formerly known as the Minerals Management Service), announced that it would begin work on a supplemental environmental impact statement for the remaining Gulf oil and gas lease sales scheduled in the latest five-year plan for drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf. The study is one of the steps BOEMRE is taking to gather public input on the environmental impact of the BP spill.
Cross-posted from an article by Sue Sturgis on Facing South
There was a big turnout for the Environmental Protection Agency's public hearing yesterday in Charlotte, N.C. on proposed coal ash regulations, with about 250 people delivering testimony in proceedings that lasted from 10 a.m. until 11 p.m. Held at a Holiday Inn, it was one of eight coal ash hearings planned nationwide, with others having already taken place in Arlington, Va., Denver and Dallas, and more planned for Chicago, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Ky., and Knoxville, Tenn.
The EPA is considering two basic alternatives for regulating coal ash, the toxic-laden material left over after coal is burned to produce electricity. The stricter approach would treat coal ash as a special hazardous waste under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act's Subtitle C with federally enforced regulations, while the other approach under RCRA Subtitle D governing nonhazardous wastes would simply set federal guidelines for how the material should be handled, leaving enforcement up to lawsuits by citizens and states. The EPA is also weighing what's being called a "Subtitle D Prime" approach, which would additionally exempt utilities from having to install protective liners at existing surface impoundments.
Appropriately enough, the hearing opened with testimony from a resident of Roane County, Tenn., where the catastrophic collapse of a coal ash impoundment at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston plant in December 2008 brought the issue of coal ash regulation to national attention and spurred EPA to take action. Steve Scarborough, who owns investment property along the ash-laden Emory River that he's now unable to sell, talked about how utilities' short-sighted efforts to cut costs by relying on risky ash impoundments have hurt him and his neighbors.
It's been a while since we had to have a real heart-to-heart, the Obama Administration and I, and last time it was because Rahm Emanuel had been a bit snippy toward those of us who are carrying the water for this Administration.
We need to have another one of those conversations today; this time the circumstances are a lot more positive-in fact, if the Administration follows my suggestions here, we have a real chance to put the Democrats on the road to victory, not just this November, but also in 2012.
What I'm proposing will create hundreds of thousands, if not millions of jobs, and it will stimulate millions more as we create a national source of discount electrical power that can be used by business and consumers alike.
Here's the best part: it's no "pie in the sky" promotion I'm offering here; we've already done the same thing before, it's been working out well for almost three quarters of a century...and even better than all that...my idea first pays for itself, and then...it actually makes the Federal Government a profit, forever after.
Baton Rouge (FNS)-Facing both a massive oil slick from a sunken offshore drilling platform and a second year of declining tourism revenues along the Louisiana Gulf Coast caused by high gas prices, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal today introduced a new tourism promotion that he reports is going to "...make lemons into lemonade".
Jindal, flanked by British Petroleum's Director of Marketing Dick Timoneous and the Executive Director of the Louisiana State Tourism Board, Jenna Talia, announced that the "All The Oil You Can Carry Festival" would officially commence today just east of New Orleans, and last at least through the month of May.
We're diving deep into "geek world" today with a story that combines economic hardball, the periodic table of the elements, and a barely noticed provision of the Defense Authorization Act that seeks to break a monopoly which today gives China near-absolute control over the materials that make cell phones, electric cars, wind turbines, and pretty much every other tool of modern life possible.
If we successfully break the monopoly, we'll be able to create millions of new manufacturing jobs in this country-and if we don't, somebody else owns the 21st Century.
Ironically, the global warming we're trying to fight with new green technologies might be an ally in our efforts to make those very same green technologies happen.
There's a revolution in industrial processing going on, rare earths are at the center of it all...and in today's story, the revolution will be televised.
(While I do not recall fondly the high gas prices I paid working for the Lamont for Senate campaign in '06 in CT, I am unsure if drilling is the only answer. I realize it may be part of the answer, but we also need to do more than just drill ... such mandating higher gas mileage (40 mpg minimum by 2010) from Detroit automakers, investing in alternative energy sources (such as solar, wind, and biofuels), among others. I do not believe that nuclear power is the answer, as we will have to deal with radioactive waste, and where to store it. That's a headache I'd rather not argue over. - promoted by ryan)
Has America become so homogenized that we are thinking more alike regardless of what part of the country we come from? We all get the same evening news, the same TV shows, and the same radio talking heads telling us what, in their opinion, our opinion should be. Are Louisiana's interests and priorities along the same track as those expressed by locals along the east coast? I decided to take a look ...
I make it a habit of taking a road trip somewhere around the country every few months, to get a sense of outside perspectives on Louisiana, and what we do or do not have in common with other parts of the country. In New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts this week, I found the same issues on the front burner that concern many Louisianians, but often different opinions.
Katrina and Rita were catastrophes that have faded from memory, and are stories for the history books for most of these easterners. They had "moved on" from any major concern a long time ago. This might well be as much a reflection on Louisiana leaders who failed to develop a major public relations effort to keep the hurricane protection problem on the front burner.
Today's Advocate published an article with all of the candidates for the run-off talking about how they would vote on bills related to stimulating our economy if elected to Congress. The Advocate set it all up with this:
The Federal Reserve recently bailed out the nation's fifth-biggest investment firm. Housing foreclosures have skyrocketed, and the number of jobless in America is at a five-year high. Gas prices have soared past the $3-per-gallon mark.
We'll start off with the Democratic candidates, going alphabetically:
Don Cazayoux
Cazayoux told the Advocate he had "concerns" about the recent bailout of Bear Stearns, but also said that it may have been necessary. He also expressed support for looking into helping folks who are at risk of losing their homes:
We've reached crisis levels, so we do need to look at the process of intervening," Cazayoux
said.
I have those same concerns - why the hell should the government bail out the money managers who made some incredibly stupid bets and not the folks affected by the banks attempting to cover their incredibly stupid bets?
That's what playing the stock market is ... betting. And with sub-prime mortgages, the riskiest types of mortgage out there, the banks attempted to leverage their risk by selling groups of the mortgages on the stock market. When the banks couldn't cover the When the mortgages weren't being paid, due to the rising cost of the mortgages ... the banks couldn't cover their bets. Hence the bailout of Bear Stearns.
I would be very concerned if Cazayoux said that we can bail out the banks, which is unprecedented in American history, but not the people affected by the rising mortgage costs. My understanding of the mortgage crisis is that folks are being hit with rising monthly payments, and would rather lose the house than stop eating or paying for medical prescriptions and the like.
I LOVE this idea:
Cazayoux would encourage alternative fuel use by offering tax incentives to companies and people who use alternative energy sources.
He authored a bill in the state Legislature that would have provided tax incentives to homeowners who bought energy-efficient appliances. The measure didn't pass.
The tax breaks for alternative-fuel developers could be paid for by rolling back tax breaks for the top 1 percent of the nation's income earners, Cazayoux said.
"We're an innovative country, and we need to encourage alternative energy," he said.
I think we can find other ways to pay for this ... like bringing the troops home? Eliminating or reducing the tax breaks we give to oil companies, as they are making record profits?
Michael Jackson
Mr. Jackson also expressed concern about the recent federal government bailout of Bear Stearns:
"I feel very uncomfortable with the government stepping in because that's not the way business should be conducted. But it's probably the only way to stem the tide."
Mr. Jackson goes further than Mr. Cazayoux in saying that he would support the Democratic proposals in the House and the Senate (I believe in the Senate it's a bill written by Senator Dodd of CT) that would provide help to those with home mortgages that are in danger of foreclosure:
"Home ownership is the foundation of the economy. It's the least we can do to provide a backstop for owners to retain their homes."
Mr. Jackson also supports providing incentives to those who would help wean our economy off of foreign oil:
"You have to offer some incentives. It would be rational of us to ask companies that a portion of their profits go to developing alternative fuels."
Now for the Republicans ... Lord, they just don't get it. They still believe in voodoosupply-side tax cut-o-nomics. This is the mistaken belief that tax cuts to the wealthy, which is essentially what the Bush Tax Cuts both in 2001 and 2003 were, help stimulate the economy because those people provide the jobs. More often than not, those people just stick the money in their savings account, or go buy a foreign-made goods, so the American worker never sees the benefit of their spending. We've had 20 years to see how their tax cut-o-nomics works - 8 years under Reagan, 4 years under Bush, and 8 more years under Bush II - and at the end of the first 12 years (as Bush I followed Reagan), we needed a Democratic President to come in and clean up the mess left by the Republicans. Now, after 8 more years of tax-cut-o-nomics, we need a Democratic President to come in and clean up the mess yet again. Can we please stop voting for Republicans to occupy the White House?
The issue with tax-cut-o-nomics is that all Republicans everywhere believe in tax cuts for economic stimulus. This is evident when you see a country-club Republican like Laurinda Calongne and a Bible-thumper like Woody Jenkins agree on the need for tax cuts.
Let's start with Laurinda Calongne:
Ms. Calongne sees the stock market's bounce in the wake of the Bear Stearns bailout as proof that the bailout was necessary:
"It encourages people to invest."
However, she agrees with Republican nominee John McCain that there should not be any help whatsoever for ordinary Americans caught in the housing mortgage crisis:
"A mortgage, by definition, is backed by the value of your home. Everyone involved in the housing situation needs to take responsibility."
I see that compassionate conservatism is back with a vengeance these days. But I digress. Here comes the tax cuts plan:
Calongne, who owns a consulting firm, said making the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts permanent would be particularly helpful to small businesses like hers. Small businesses, she noted, provide most of the nation's jobs.
Calongne said the tax cuts can be paid for by reducing wasteful government spending. She said she recently saw a report by the federal Office of Management and Budget that listed 100 wasteful federal programs.
Does that report by the OMB list all the wasteful spending to the private security groups like Blackwater???
Woody Jenkins
Ahh, we have a free marketer here ... in discussing the bailout of Bear Stearns, he states:
"It's unprecedented, and we may be going down a slippery slope. Ultimately the free market has to be allowed to work."
He's also a compassionate conservative ... as he does not believe in helping those hit by the mortgage crisis. But he is for making the Bush Tax Cuts permanent:
"Making the Bush tax cuts permanent would be most helpful. That's going to do more to stimulate the economy than anything."
So, can the two Republicans running explain to me just what happened after President Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy 1% all the way back in 1993? Was it a disastrous thing to do, as claimed by every single Republican in the Congress back then, who all voted against the Clinton plan? Or did it lead the biggest peacetime expansion of the economy this nation has ever seen? You tell me.
