A totally Repugnican Energy Bill
As the energy bill wends its way through the Greedy Old Pig-party controlled Congress, it’s rapidly shedding any vestige of public interest and looking more like the same-old same-old. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. (who heads up the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources) has managed to whack out the bill’s renewable portfolio standard (mandated that U.S. utilities purchase a meagre 10% of energy from renewable sources, eliminated a ban on toxic MTBE additives (and put in legislation to protect MTBE polluters from lawsuite), put back in the caribou-killing plan to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and open more protected federal lands to exploration and drilling.
For the one self-style Libertarian that peruses this blog (are you reading this Gun Buddy?) who doesn’t care much about nature and stuff, but always rails on about corporate welfare and government waste, The Greedy Old Pigs have sequestered themselves in a smoke-filled room behind locked doors to go about the business of slingin’ pork in earnest, including:
* $33 billion in tax credits and incentives for for oil, gas, nuclear, coal and electric utilities
* $1.1 billion for making a hydrogen fustion reactor (what’s 1 billion more after we’ve already =http://www.cnn.com/US/9704/05/fusion.confusionwasted $10 billion[/url] on perpetually ‘around the corner’ fusion energy?)
* $800 million in ‘targeted pork’ to build a Minnesota coal-burning power plant (watch Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn flip-flop and vote yes to drilling the ANWR now. )
* $125 million in loan guarantees for Healy Clean Coal Plant – to retrofit the failed ‘clean coal’ experiment back to a traditional coal plant!!!!
* $1.3 billion in new loans to the money-losing Bonneville Power Administration – sure, enterpise is ‘free’ when the taxpayers foot the bill!
* price subsidies (of as-yet unknown cost) for the to-be-developed Alaska Gas Pipeline
Energy Bill? Energy Scam is what this is! Trash the America of tomorrow – today!
Tags: caribou, Energy Bill, gop, MTBE, Pete Domenici, renewable energy