Lame Duck Legislation

The good news is; a whole bunch of corrupt politicians just lost their jobs. The bad news is; they still have their jobs till January.

That's right, a whole bunch of lame duck politicians will be looking for work come January... and they really want to impress their future employers – their present lobbyists. Be on yellow alert for some really bad spending bills in the next month.

I'll warn you about one: another Energy Bill.

In case you don't realize how bad the give away of our tax dollars to the big oil, coal, and nuclear companies the Energy Bill of 2005 was, click here. Guess what? Thanks to the Energy Bill of 2005; we got to pay them even more, right when the oil companies were making record profits.

This kind of Energy policy makes no sense whatsoever. Billions of our tax dollars subsidize fossil fuel corporations, they don't have to pay nearly their fair share of taxes and royalties, and they leave an ecological nightmare everywhere they go – for us to live with or clean up ourselves... and Bush just asked for even more for them!

In his recent address, “President” Bush has asked our lame duck congress to rush through another Energy Bill before the end of 2006. See if you can find his request buried in this fluff filled press release from Fox.

This is what information I have on the Energy Bill. It looks like they want to charge us $20 billion to make the big energy companies even richer.

... I'll let you in on a little secret. If they were competing on a level playing field, wind power would be cheaper than coal. (for more info, check my next entry)

In an ideal world, Congress' Energy Bills would support wind, solar, wave, and geothermal energy. In our world, we tax these technologies and subsidize their dirty, low-tech competition.