More Energy Bushit

Republican Washington has managed to grant its friends in the Energy Bidness another 9 billion dollars taken directly from our pocket for what amounts to a scam. I'm referring to production of synthetic oil.

For those of us old enough to remember the seventies, the time of one of only two Presidents with an approval rating less than our Shrub, we remember the oil shocks as U. S. domestic production finally lagged behind use. During that time, in an act of seeming foresight, it passed laws granting tax credits for development of synthetic fuels from coal. In a case of unintended consequences perhaps exceeded only by the Clean Air Act - I'll get to that one in a bit - companies that are now doing little more than spraying raw coal with diesel fuel or binding mining waste into briquettes are raking in massive subsidies under the law.

The law had a phase-out clause in case the price of oil rose to the point where companies could be profitable on their own, a price that has yet to be reached. So, friends and neighbors, we are collectively paying $9 billion for coal briquettes.

Do you think Republican Washington would eliminate such an obvious swindle in the face of huge deficits? This is the energy bidness we're talking about here. The Shrub and Shotgun Cheney both came from that milleu. Energy money finances a number of campaigns and we're talking about an administration and a congress that won't even mandate higher fuel efficiency, instead wait for some miracle to give us unlimited, clean, expensive energy. Indeed, the Republicans even buried an earmark into the Tax Relief Act of 2005 that set the required energy price to eliminate the subsidy to that prevalent in 2004. I doubt we'll ever see that oil price again. Efforts by Democrats to repeal the measure have met with Republican resistance as they scratch the backs of those who pay their bills. Want to know who put it in the bill?

Sen. Rick Santorem, R. Pa. Tax relief indeed. This bill expires in '07. That's another nine billion dollar reason for Democrats to take back at least one of the houses of government.

I promised a few words on the Clean Air Act. That's another one passed for good reason but perverted into something beyond the writers' worst nightmares. It was passed to clean up coal burning power plants. Utilities, faced with emissions standards they couldn't meet, switched to burning natural gas. Hence, today, you can't afford to heat your home.

It's called the Law of Unintended Consequences, the law of the land in Republican Washington.