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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

“That Pelosi Woman Is Nuts”

Drill Here (in my back yard). Drill Now. Pay Less.

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  August 14th, 2008 at 11:56 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

This, ladies and gentlemen, is must see TV.

This also ties in directly with this new polling data that suggests the GOP is having a serious impact on the issue and the Democrats are feeling the heat.

Six out of 10 Americans (61%) say Congress should return to Washington immediately to vote on lifting the ban on offshore oil drilling, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. But voters overwhelmingly expect Congress to adjourn this year without taking action.

Even more (67%) recognize that Republicans are the ones pushing for offshore drilling, and 77% say the issue is important to them in terms of how they will vote for Congress this November. Forty-five percent (45%) of voters say it is Very Important. Voters see a clear difference between the political parties on this issue as 61% perceive that congressional Democrats oppose offshore drilling.

There is no reason for the Gang of 5 GOP Senators to be throwing the GOP under the bus with this issue. I interviewed Saxby Chambliss this morning, and even he admits that they don’t know how they are going to pay for the $80 billion plan. Likewise, the plan claims to do a lot, but actually does very little.

The plan does not even scrap ethanol import tariffs to reduce the costs of ethanol.

Here is just an example of how bad the plan is. $20 billion will be dedicated to an “Apollo Project.” $7.5 billion will go to R&D for new technology. $7.5 billion will go to automakers. $5 billion will be used to give consumers ” up to $7,500 per vehicle to incentivize [the] purchase [of] advanced alternative fuel vehicles (those that run primarily on non-petroleum fuels) and up to $2,500 to retrofit existing vehicles with advanced alternative fuel engines.”

The math does not add up. This would help the purchasers of 666,667 vehicles. There are 250 million registered vehicles in the US. So this revolutionary legislation, designed to convert 85% of the vehicles in the country to “non-petroleum fuels” in 20 years would assist buyers of 1/375th of the vehicles registered in the US.

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  • NightTwister

    It’s promoted as the The Solution to whatever currently ails us, but actually makes us worse off.

    There’s a reason why the majority of Americans would prefer that Congress take a 52-week vacation each year.

  • Rod_Patrick

    this is becoming really a new sense of “radicalism” on the part of the reps/cons.

    We should have been doing this since Day 1… aggresive in telling our case to the people instead of just keeping the good ideas within ourselves.

    Drill Oil Now! Drill Here!

    And all Americans sign in!

  • Rod_Patrick
  • aaronbg

    that would be just enough money to pay off my 2005 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, then I could finally afford a lift kit and some new tires and maybe even some rockers. Maybe we should rethink this Erick…daddy needs a rock crawler…;^)

  • Rod_Patrick

    This is really the case against direct subsidies. Government has no arm in checking whether the subsidy is used as intended, or alternatively, the cost of monitoring would be high.

    As you’ve said, Aaron, this could be a blessing in disguise.

  • E_Pluribus_Unum

    and my Prelude, leaving enough extra cash to get the hardened bottem-end goodies for my MKIII Supra to bring the boost up from 15psi to 27 or so — bringing the whp up from a pedestrian 325 whp to more like 500.

    I agree, I feel very good about this incentive thing.

  • aaronbg

    …I am sure with $10,000 I could probably at least double the money….lol

  • LibRick

    the issue has been framed that drilling is no solution because it will take too long. Yet, there is nothing said about how long alternative energy options would take to come on-line and be integrated into our infrastructure.

    How about: Short term (10 years) elimination of environmental roadblocks, drill for oil now, build nuclear plants, and develop better solar/wind/battery/automobile technology… all with significant tax advantages and no subsidies.

    It’s not about some “Apollo Program,” just about freeing business to work. Geez, I’m sounding like a Republican!

  • Mord

    I used to think that I was a Liberal….until I found out what Liberals stand for. I thought I was a Liberal because I think there are far too many laws curtailing harmless activity (4-wheeling in my case…it’s illegal in Mass to drive a car on any land that isn’t an actual “road”).
    One day I was listening to talk radio and I had an epiphany. Liberals are the ones writing so many laws that even the govornment can’t give an accurate count of how many laws and statutes there are in the US. Republicans are all about personal liberty and responsibility…something I hold dear, and mistakenly attributed to democrats.

    The US govornment should just get out of the damn way!! Most problems would be solved pretty quickly if there were any kind of free market incentive instead of a govornment program or mandate. Our entire drilling problem would vanish on October first if the govornment just collectively sits on it’s thumb.

    Protect the borders and deliver the mail, then get out of my way.

  • Vladimir

    n/t

  • Haley37

    He doesn’t know how they are going to pay for their energy compromise yet in their view it’s a good deal because something is better than nothing?

    What an idiot.

    And I don’t say that without citing Chambliss for the otherwise good voting record on most issues.

    What puts me in a rage (I don’t use that word lightly), is that even if he votes to lift the moratorium on oil drilling it won’t matter if this horrid Gang of 10 deal passes.

    It is so dishonest to say “I’ll still vote to lift the moratorium,” when you won’t get any votes from the other side and you KNOW it will go down to defeat because you already GAVE AWAY your bargaining power on a stupid bill!!!

    These kinds of semantic stunts by turn-coats on our side makes me want to vomit! They can claim “I voted the way you wanted me to vote” but it’s a meaningless vote because they knew that the vote they cast was after the fact and would give them political cover.

    Idiots and cowards!

    U.S. House GOP – Supporting the cause of Conservatism and their voters’ wishes.

    U.S. Senate – Screwing up everything from judges to oil exploration for the last 10 plus years.

    Can we just get rid of the Senate?

  • speciallist

    n/p

  • speciallist

    n/p

  • KC

    has to do it.

    That is holding onto the pure environmentalist (no logging, no nuclear, no carbon, just collective living off the land using solar and wind types) in the face of massive price increases for one of the most inelastic commodities we have.

    Obama said it best, he would have preferred that oil prices not rise so quickly as to stir up the rank and file — have to get to work– Americans and set them thinking about a world with ample (nuclear – electrical for fixed site needs, oil for non-fixed sites like cars, trucks, ships, and planes).

    Now Pelosi must balance on the edge or a drill or no drill position. She will end up with Drill but regulate and tax. And she will throw the tax bone to the environmentalists and more research into the perfect battery, the perfect energy storage system, and the perfect transmission line.

  • streetwise

    h1

  • mbecker908

    The “real” problem here is people who just won’t change their lifestyle to accommodate the survival of the planet. Some of the absolute worst offenders are those people who buy “carbon credits”. They take advantage of people who are actively “doing something” about the energy/climate change issues on a personal level and neutralize their efforts.

    So, how about a tax on carbon credits. Since the people who buy the darn things are basically rich polluters – no matter what their publicists say – we should be making the purchase of carbon credits very punitive in order to get them to reduce their overall consumption and the money could be used to help offset the construction of alternative energy projects like Cape Wind.

    Since the people who take advantage of carbon credits are, by their very nature, selfish pigs and fall into the “rich” category, I would suggest a tax of 1000%. In other words, when a fat guy uses his private jet to help destroy the planet and spends $1,000 on carbon credits to offset his selfish lifestyle, he would pay a tax of $10,000.

    Another idea for a new I could support would be a tax on advertising that attacks alternative energy projects. So let’s say an organization wants to stop the Cape Wind project because it might kill a bird or interfere with their view, they spend $1,000 on advertising, they pay a tax of $10,000. And we could roll in the supertax on legal fees that are incurred to stop energy projects, including nuclear. Write a check for $1,000 to a lawyer, pony up $10,000 in taxes.

    And a fun amendment would be to direct those tax penalties directly to the alternative energy project that the contributor/lawyer is trying to stop.

    So Algore, John Edwards, Michael Moore, Babs, Kennedy/Kerry, etal, get your checkbooks out. We’re coming for YOU!

  • aaronbg

    n/t

  • ObamaTookMyDollars

    Expose Obama’s economic agenda with the definitive bumper sticker of the ’08 political season:

    I’LL TAKE YOUR DOLLARS AND GIVE YOU CHANGE. www.OBAMAtookmydollars.com.

  • bs

    All together now….

    SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, Lovely Spam, wonderful SPAM!….

  • CV_Gas

    please be so kind as to get rid of this commercial drivel? It is annoying enough that I have to constantly weed through this kind of grawlix (thank you so much for the term Moe) in my e-mail, let alone have to deal with it here, where it pushes respectable diaries and comments off the list.

  • Moe_Lane

    NT

  • nod90

    …to come on line. People have been working on better batteries for a long time. Wind has taken about 30 years to get to where it is today.

  • nod90

    For example adding flex fuel capability to a gasoline engined vehicle is not all that expensive. Something like a few hundred dollars. So GM was building this capability into their SUVs in order to exploit an alternative fuels loophole in the fuel economy standard. I’m sure they would love to collect $7500 for that.

    Another possibility is adding a couple of small propane tanks to the vehicle in order to claim the credit.

    In practise people don’t run their vehicles on ethanol or propane because alternative fuels are hard to find.

  • bs

    When you blam someone in RS3, is there some way to tell that they’re gone?