Finally, from a Republican, The Right Words

In a party that has sold Washington to the highest bidder, including Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush's favorites Big Oil, John McCain stands out in calling for alternative energy sources to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Let's face it, Iran is going to be a problem for a long time as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, weak to say the least, finally gives up its last vestiges of protecting rogue states from acquiring nukes. Venezuela, another top producer, is run by a shaky individual, to say the least. The Chinese are negotiating for the Alberta tar sands, probably the world's next best source of oil and our Congress, well, they're afraid the automakers will cut off their campaign contributions if they up the fleet standards and require SUVs be a part of the calculation.

"We better understand the vulnerabilities that our economy, and our very lives, have when we're dependent on Iranian mullahs and wackos in Venezuela," said McCain. The irony is that the conservation less open-minded Republicanoids so violently oppose (Bush: It would damage our economy) makes good business sense. California businesses have saved $58 billion since the state enacted tough energy standards. Even mandatory carbon controls save energy and thereby money. This does not account for the energy-saving technologies that could be developed and sold abroad, reducing our economic dependence on the Chinese and the Japanese who are financing our trade imbalance.

The President and the Classic Republican desire to find more domestic sources, i. e. the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, couldn't be more of a sell-out to Big Energy. We will never sell a barrel of Alaskan crude overseas. It will never reduce our trade deficit. If we were to get busy developing new ideas, we could manufacture and sell or at least collect royalties from the overseas manufacture of energy-saving technologies and perhaps reduce that deficit. We could certainly reduce our dependence on benevolent and cooperative states such as Iran and Venezuela but I don't see it coming. The Majority Party gets too much of their life's blood - campaign finance - from the Big Energy side of the argument and they're not likely to give that up.

Until we have public financing of elections, we're not likely to get too many statesmen of either party in Washington. They're not giving those contributions out of the goodness of their hearts, they're buying influence. In Republican Washington, we're seeing what happens when the Big Corporate Contributors and Lobbyists call in their chits. Until we remove the very possibility of them buying Congressmen through gifts and campaign contributions, we will never have a Congress that does the right thing.