Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption are Undermining America by Arianna Huffington

Author:Arianna Huffington [Huffington, Arianna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307590497
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Published: 2009-04-11T05:00:00+00:00

The Energy Task Force

Then, of course, there’s the sorry excuse for administration outreach known as Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force. In early 2002, after more than a year of stonewalling by the administration, the membership of the taskforce was finally disclosed. It was instantly clear that it was the oil, coal, and gas lobby that had been doing all the thinking, taking over both long-term policy-making and day-to-day environmental decisions. The result has been a massive regulatory rollback and juicy profits for industry fat cats. Cheney effectively privatized the nation’s energy policy.

Along with doing everything in its considerable power to find a way to realize its obsessive dream of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Bush administration, cheered on by an all-star team of lobbyists, has also worked tirelessly to promote an energy plan that is long on building new power plants but pathetically indifferent, even hostile, to the idea of conservation. It doesn’t even address the single most obvious and effective step we can take to conserve energy: increasing auto fuel-efficiency standards.

Instead of supporting the effort by senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) to gradually increase fuel standards over the next 13 years, in March 2002 the White House and 62 senators joined in an unholy alliance with carmakers and autoworker unions to kill the plan, which would have saved about 2.5 million barrels of oil a day. That, roughly, is the amount we currently import from the entire Middle East. Isn’t the terrible cost of our oil dependency on the Middle East obvious enough to justify standing up to the auto industry?

Remember the wide-eyed walk the president took in 2001 through a Department of Energy showcase of energy-saving devices, including that triumph of American ingenuity, a state-of-the-art cell-phone charger? After the tour, he grandly announced over $85 million in grants to encourage the development of renewable-energy technologies. Sure, it sounded good, but it was classic Bush zero-sum grandstanding—it simply restored the $85 million in funding for renewable energy the president had previously recommended cutting. It was like a carjacker wanting the key to the city for returning one of the two cars he just boosted.

It was also a drop in the bucket when compared to the roughly $1 billion in tax incentives, credits, and other deductions handed out to the president’s buddies in the oil, coal, nuclear, and gas industries since he took office. To announce those, by the way, there was no press conference.

It’s more than a little ironic that, in his private life, President Bush is actually a leader in consumer conservation. His Crawford, Texas, ranch has been described as “an environmentally sensitive showplace” designed with “state-of-the-art energy efficiency.” The house is filled with energy-saving devices, while the lawn and orchard are irrigated with recycled water.

Isn’t it time that Bush starts preaching to the nation what he practices back at the ranch? And isn’t it time that the members of Congress who betrayed the health and safety of their country are punished? On election day voters have the opportunity to elbow aside the lobbyists.

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