Energy Independence Or Self-Serving Scheme?
Alex B., in Pegasus News, tells us that T. Boone Pickens' energy plan may be just a self-serving scheme. A natural gas company Pickens founded is promoting a ballot initiative in California to put $5 billion of California taxpayer money towards alternative energy initiatives. Natural gas figures to be one of those alternatives, which would benefit Pickens financially.
Two reactions. First, d'oh. Why should it be surprising that a businessman promotes public investment in areas in which he himself is invested? We've done that for decades with the oil business. Why should the natural gas business be any different? You can't do away with conflict of interest. The best you can do is regulate it and police it. So, Pickens is in the clear here.
Second, natural gas is a distraction. The strategic problem our country faces is our addiction to fossil fuels. Oil is a fossil fuel. So is natural gas. We need to focus our attention and our investment on alternative sources of energy - solar, wind, nuclear - and on conservation - public transportation and electric and hybrid vehicles. This is where Pickens misses the target. At best, you can say natural gas can help tide us over as we transition to alternative sources of energy. At worst, Pickens lures us into a trap, swapping one fossil fuel for another.
Do You Recognize This Man?
Tara Ross, in a Dallas Blog opinion column, tells us she's at a loss for something to say, then spends a thousand words proving it. She's not happy with her choices for President this year. She dislikes John McCain and she hates Barack Obama. At least she hates the straw man she puts up and calls Barack Obama. The fictional candidate she hates:
"seems to think that he can simply sit and talk with these dictators and make the problems of the world go away. Just as naively, he believes that terrorists should be treated no harsher than the average felon in the U.S. justice system. Oh, sure. That will work."Of course, Obama doesn't believe any such thing. It's too bad that Ross has sunk to this. She probably has intelligent objections to Obama's actual foreign policy positions, but she concedes the debate by default by not challenging any position Obama himself actually holds.
Her bitterness about the Republicans is just absurd. She says John McCain wouldn't be the Republican candidate if
"Mike Huckabee, in a display of false modesty, refused to bow out gracefully for the good of his party, leaving conservative voters split between him and Mitt Romney."Ross doesn't consider the possibility that it was Mitt Romney who left the voters split. Or maybe that Mike Huckabee preferred McCain to Romney. Or that candidates have a right to run for president and let the voters decide, not drop out to appease wingnuts like Tara Ross.
But don't start thinking that Ross won't loyally traipse to the polls in November and pull the lever for John McCain. She will. In the end, she and the conservatives have more in common with George W Bush and John McCain that she cares to let on in public.
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