Louisiana Drug Treatment

Mor Inof
http://www.softonlinesoft.com

OTOH … ???

(Entrenched Politicians) + (Heavy Lobbying from Big Oil) = (Shameful Filibuster of HR 6049) – according to Liquidporkgun.blogspot.com

It’s the end of Solar Credits and the word of doom to many fledgling alternative energy companies – others who can afford it will move their operations to other countries.

republicans filibuster renewable tax credit legislation again

By a 52-44 vote, the Senate failed to achieve cloture on the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008 (H.R. 6049), the tax package that included extensions of the renewable production tax credit, energy efficiency incentives, and a suite of other tax credit extensions. This version included an Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) patch without any offset.

Sen. Reid (D-Nev.) cast a procedural vote with the Republicans and Sens. Clinton, Kennedy, McCain, and Obama did not vote. Sens. Collins, Coleman, Corker, Smith, and Snowe voted with the Democrats (Collins, Coleman, and Smith are up for re-election). The voting was otherwise entirely on party lines.

From Thomas L. Friedman’s column [the first link, above] – But our future is not in oil, and a real president wouldn’t be hectoring Congress about offshore drilling today. He’d be telling the country a much larger truth:

“Oil is poisoning our climate and our geopolitics, and here is how we’re going to break our addiction: We’re going to set a floor price of $4.50 a gallon for gasoline and $100 a barrel for oil. And that floor price is going to trigger massive investments in renewable energy — particularly wind, solar panels and solar thermal. And we’re also going to go on a crash program to dramatically increase energy efficiency, to drive conservation to a whole new level and to build more nuclear power. And I want every Democrat and every Republican to join me in this endeavor.”

That’s what a real president would do. He’d give us a big strategic plan to end our addiction to oil and build a bipartisan coalition to deliver it. He certainly wouldn’t be using his last days in office to threaten Congressional Democrats that if they don’t approve offshore drilling by the Fourth of July recess, they will be blamed for $4-a-gallon gas. That is so lame. That is an energy policy so unworthy of our Independence Day.

But, yes, that sounds intriguing. I’ll finish reading this article later tonight.

Using food crops to make ethanol is a terrible idea – on many levels.

And, yes. Closing the Enron Loophole is the only way we’ll see the gas/oil prices drop. OTOH, this may be the final straw that wakes up that old American inventive spirit.

Why don’t we have a “two-fer” on publicly-owned lands out west (the desert ones)…solar panel and cyano-bacteria farms?

This would be a match made in heaven.

A portion of the energy generated by the solar panels could be used to distill the sugars generated from the cyano-bacteria into alcohol.

With this “two-fer” process in place on publicly-owned lands, there’d be energy pouting into our nation’s electricity grids while at the same time non-corn-based gasohol would be decreasing our dependence on foreign oil. A win-win for all U.S. citizens, except maybe for the oil companies and their shareholders, who represent a small minority of U.S. citizens.

Moreover, what’s so great about this “two-fer” proposal is that while the solar panels draw power from the Sun’s energy, the cyano-bacteria can be irrigated with salt water, thus completely removing pressure from freshwater supplies out west.

Of course, it will take having a liberal, progressive as president and a wider liberal, progressive majority in Congress to get this renewable-energy ball rolling.

In the meantime, one thing that might bring gasoline prices down by a $1.00 or $2.00 within thirty days is completely closing the so-called “Enron loophole” and re-regulating on-line energy trading, vigorously reinstating the energy market regulations that had been in place for 70 years before former Sen. Phil Gramm helped create this regulatory loophole in late 2000, which directly led to Enron gaming West Coast energy markets in 2001, causing rolling blackouts and doubled/tripled monthly utility bills…kind of like what we are experiencing today with grossly-, artificially-inflated high gasoline prices…with high monthly utility costs sure to follow nationwide.

Jindal was asked about the environmental effects of the hurricanes on offshore platforms. The report you linked to concluded the following:

DNV evaluated the available failure reports and industry practices and has concluded that the vast majority of GOM offshore pipelines performed well during the passage of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Public and personnel safety experience with respect to the offshore pipeline operations has been excellent. Evacuations of non-essential personnel, and other operational precautions taken prior to hurricane events, including training, planning, spill response exercises, and industry alliances provided results that have protected life as the first priority. The impact to the environment has been minimal in hurricane events, primarily due to the design features, and industry practices intended for protection of life that are also focused on minimizing releases to the environment through planning, preparedness and response. The most significant impacts appear to have been the disruption of the oil and gas supply, and financial losses from the oil and gas infrastructure damage. While these are not desirable outcomes, the overall goal of prioritizing protection of life and the environment is clear in the demonstrated performance of the industry, meeting two of the major goals of the MMS for personal and environmental safety.

The damage in your Chronicle link was mostly to do with spills from onshore tanks. Good job conflating two separate issues in order to smear a potential VP candidate. Well done!

Hey. Energy is THE national-security issue in the USA. Bar none.

That’s why, I gather, we should leave it in th’ hands o’ good, honest Enron-style hustlers rather than trust the damn’ gummint.

Especially right-wing gummint.

Then again, in a democratic republic, to whom SHOULD it be trusted?

US population is 303,824,646 [July 2008 est. from cia.gov library factbook ]

Divided by 4 = 75,956,161.5 [guesstimate of number of US homes]

Times $10,000.00 – guesstimate of cost to fit with solar voltaic panels

Equals – $759,561,615,000.00

Savings to inhabitants of earth? Priceless.

2008 Pentagon budget – $504 billion

http://www.truemajority.org

According to Wiki:
In common parlance, “devolution”, or backward evolution is the notion a species may evolve into more “primitive” forms.

Jindal don’t set off my gaydar as fiercely.

Then again, he’s still a media midget. ;)

Solar Company Says Its Tech Can Power 90 Percent of Grid and Cars

Lots of additional links within the article above.

Cut him a break, willya? He’s a conservative. He ain’t supposed to have brains.

Before bureaucrats slammed the door for almost two years on new solar plants on 119 million acres of federal land they manage in six western states, they might have mentioned it to Harry Reid.

“We read it in (Wednesday) morning’s paper,” Reid spokesman Jon Summers wrote in an e-mail, referring to a Sun story about solar developers protesting a delay they say could break the back of the nascent industry here and in the rest of the Southwest.

But – here’s the hopeful part:

“As far as discussing or debating the merits of a freeze with the congressional delegation before we took that administrative action, I am fairly certain that did not occur,” Resseguie [The manager of the Bureau of Land Management’s environmental impact study, Linda Resseguie] said.

She said it is possible the BLM would reconsider the freeze.

“Policies can always be influenced,” she said.

Anyone interested in changing this policy should contact the appropriate people.