Pelosi and Boxer Need Some Tough Discipline

Recently the US Bureau of Land Management proposed to treat solar energy like other forms of energy in the way of requirements and time delays for environmental impact studies. Suddenly, the "constituency" was up in arms, and the policy change was quickly reversed. But in terms of US oil policy--which is where the rubber meets the road in today's energy prices (rhymes with crisis), where is the constituency willing to raise hell over government mismanagement?

While stunning, the BLM’s announcement illustrates the nightmare of U.S. energy policy. Or is it? That the ban could be reversed so quickly is a good sign that the old law on the books can be overwhelmed when enough people stand up and shout. On the other hand, when looking at the crude oil speculators driving oil prices up there are shouters on both sides that can keep the obvious policy move locked down. The difference is that the plants and creatures will get attended to, but the consumer will have to wait until the lenders putting up some 93% of the money to keep the oil futures market going will have a day of reckoning that might be a catastrophe. Imagine oil went down precipitously and lots of those borrowers can’t make the margin calls. Do you suppose the taxpayers will be cornered into bailing those lending guys out too? Just wait and see.

Let’s be sanguine about this and salt the concept with a dash of reality. Policy in the democracies is a market, too. Write that down. As noted above the shouting can come from lots of places and the power measured in money and the old boy network plays a powerful hand against the invisible individual voter. Just to keep things completely confused the media is busily making like they can write intelligent stories to guide us to think properly.

It enough to make the well informed mind swim in its own confusion. __NewEnergyandFuel

Everything rests at the food of the US Congress. If Congress cannot get its act together to adjust policy to meet the needs of its constituency, then Congress needs to get the boot, and hard!

Two congresspersons who are particularly obstructionist over energy policy, and causing more than their share of hardship, are Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi. If there was ever any redeeming social feature from either of them, it has long since passed them by. By promoting energy approaches that will take decades to replace current infrastructure--at the expense of supplying current and near/intermediate term needs--Boxer and Pelosi (and the usual suspects) are painting the US economy into a corner.

I know what you are saying, that booting them back to the dying south-left coast is too easy on them. You are saying they should be drawn, quartered, burned, hung, then pulverised with a heavy mallet. You have a point, but there may be more important things to attend to than mere payback. High oil prices are killing economies around the globe, from inflating costs of doing business, and destroying consumer reserves.

Boxer and Pelosi are true believers in "global warming catastrophe". In order to save the planet from climate change, they are willing to sacrifice the economy of the US and the rest of the developed world. They are creating a "political peak oil", which is a self-fulfilling form of peak oil that is hard to argue with. If political cronies such as B and P make it impossible to drill for new oil and develop oil equivalents such as shale oil and newer coal technologies, then peak oil becomes something of a tautology. Even the borons at the peak oil sites can pat themselves on the back for their perspicacity.

No need for revenge. Just send them back to caw-lee-forn-ya, and Oynklent Green [OTC:OYNK] will weigh the pros and cons.