Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zoltan! who wrote (226495)	2/12/2002 11:23:39 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Speaking truth about energy Mort Zuckerman newsandopinion.com -- AMONG the critical national security challenges now on America's agenda, few are more important than reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Yes, pursuing terrorists and shoring up our homeland defenses are vital. But protecting ourselves against politically inspired and unanticipated disruptions in oil supplies from abroad is crucial to the smooth running of our economy. It is no secret that the world's major oil reserves lie beneath the burning sands of the Arab Middle East. It's also no secret that that same region is the most unstable in the world. But how to wean America from oil imports? Short term, the answer is building up America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve. With oil prices relatively low, now is the time. Long term, we must reduce the nation's thirst for energy. But this doesn't mean, as some suggest, doing without. Energy contributes much to our quality of life. It is not profligacy that increases energy demand, but progress. Conservation, of course, is part of the answer. But with oil prices roughly half what they were 20 years ago, this won't be easy–consumers have little incentive to change their ways. Still, we have managed to keep per capita energy use the same as it was in the early 1970s. But we cannot change the fact that we have 75 million more people today than we had back then. The requirements for new energy in a growing society are real. We should not feel guilty about this. Environmentalists believe we can resolve the issue with a win-win approach. We can save more oil through energy efficiency, they say, than we can ever drill. They emphasize tougher fuel efficiency standards for passenger vehicles, the so-called CAFE standards originally enacted in 1978. But with several hundred million vehicles on the road, it will take years before most cars show improved fuel efficiency. Realism also dictates phasing in higher fuel efficiency standards over a number of years so as not to impose unbearable costs on manufacturers and purchasers. Improving fuel economy, in other words, will be a long, slow process. And even then, higher efficiency standards will amount to less than a fifth of the oil we'll import until the new standards are in place. If improved fuel efficiency alone isn't the answer, what is? Energy development, obviously. But there's a rub. Environmentalists say they're not opposed to development. But they seem to find different reasons to oppose it nearly everywhere. The result is that virtually everything is placed out of bounds. We have no new power plants, no new drilling, no new refineries. It has been 25 years since a major oil refinery was built in the United States; 37 have closed since 1992. Energy use and production are obviously not without their unappealing side effects. As with all other forms of production activity, however, we can contain and minimize those effects through intelligent management and engineering. That's life. Perhaps nowhere are the naysayers more vociferous than on the question of drilling. But the facts here, once again, intrude. New technologies have dramatically reduced the infrastructure needed to extract oil from the ground. Even with older technologies, wildlife preservation has occurred successfully side by side with petroleum extraction. In Louisiana alone there are over 1,600 oil and gas wells in areas that include fragile wetlands, home to migratory birds and other delicate animal species. Arctic drilling. Such examples show why, despite environmentalists' objections, it's worth exploring for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Only about 2,000 acres would be affected. That's about the dimension of a fair-size airport–a fraction of the more than 19 million refuge acres. Offshore drilling is another area of contest. The public impression is that offshore rigs are incompatible with ocean purity, marine health, and clean beaches. Yet today there are some 4,500 offshore platforms supplying 10 percent of our oil and 25 percent of our natural gas. Most of the platforms bestride America's richest marine-life zones and cause no damage to the environment. There is irony in the opposition's argument, but it is not funny: If we don't allow this kind of drilling, we will have to import a lot more oil. The many tankers we'll need to deliver that oil pose a far greater threat of spills and environmental damage than drilling. The need for energy independence has been spotlighted as never before by the war against terrorism. But Democrats and Republicans are at loggerheads over how to proceed. The Bush energy plan gives too much of an impression of focusing solely on increasing energy supplies. Democrats in the Senate place too much emphasis on improvement of fuel efficiencies. The Democrats essentially argue that we can do without new exploration. Republicans do not adequately emphasize conservation. Both are wrong. The country deserves to be told the truth about energy policy–namely, that we cannot conserve our way out of the problem. Nor can we drill our way out of it. We need production and conservation. The current deadlock must be broken. newsandopinion.com

To: Zoltan! who wrote (226495)	2/12/2002 11:37:33 AM
From: DMaA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Martin Sabo ( D. MN - Liberal Pig ) Voted against forcing a vote on Shays/Meehan bill. Jim Ramstad ( R. MN - Liberal Pig ) Voted FOR forcing a vote on Shays/Meehan. Remind me again why it's so important to elect Republicans? Pressure builds over campaign finance overhaul Greg Gordon Star Tribune Published Feb 11, 2002 WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Declaring that the Republican Party is facing "Armageddon," House Speaker Dennis Hastert says he will do all he can to block the biggest overhaul of federal campaign finance laws in a quarter-century. Backers of the bill, trumpeting the now-bankrupt Enron Corp.'s $1.6 million in soft money donations in 1999-2000 as a prime exhibit, are lobbying furiously to hold together the fragile coalition needed to win passage. Once again, the battle over how to regulate the money behind national politics has been joined. After months of delay, House floor votes are scheduled for midweek. "Now's the real show," said Rep. Jim Ramstad, R-Minn., who is among 20 Republicans who joined Democrats in signing a petition that forced the vote. The bill would ban unregulated soft money donations, which in 1999-2000 totaled nearly $500 million to the national parties. And it would prohibit the broadcast of thinly cloaked "issue ads" that identify candidates in the weeks before a primary or general election. How high are the political risks for those who vote against the bill, no one really knows. What kind of impact the overhaul would have is also a subject of debate. But nearly everyone agrees that after years of work led by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russell Feingold, D-Wis., the bill has never had a better chance of passage. And President Bush continued last week to send strong signals that he will sign it. Swing legislators, including some of the 43 Republicans who voted for a similar bill when it passed the House two years ago, are feeling the heat. Rep. Sue Kelly, a fourth-term Republican from New York with aspirations of a GOP leadership position, stood in the cloakroom adjoining the U.S. House last week, lamenting being caught in a political buzz saw, a GOP colleague said. Kelly voted for the bill two years ago, but did not join the bare majority of 218 House members who signed the discharge petition that forced Hastert to bring it to the floor. Back in her Hudson River Valley district, consumer groups that support the legislation had aired radio ads and arranged a barrage of phone calls in hopes that voters will pressure Kelly to vote "yes." But on Capitol Hill, the colleague said, Republican leaders warned her that absent a "no" vote, she could forget about a plum assignment, such as a seat on the Ways and Means Committee. "I've never seen pressure like this," said the Republican House member, who insisted upon anonymity. Kelly's office did not respond to phone inquiries. Votes in play With rhetoric intensifying on both sides, similar political dramas could unfold among dozens of other Republican and Democratic legislators as debate begins Tuesday night. Ramstad said that "both parties are addicted to soft money." While the legislation "isn't going to totally clean up campaign financing," he said, "it's going to eliminate the biggest cancer on the system -- soft money." Ramstad said he's had no pressure from Hastert because the speaker knows that voters in his suburban Minneapolis district favor the legislation. The votes of at least two other members of Minnesota's House delegation -- veteran Democratic Rep. Martin Sabo and freshman Republican Rep. Mark Kennedy -- apparently remain in play. For different reasons, each has voiced strong reservations about the bill. Neither has said how he will vote. Similar measures cosponsored by Reps. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and Martin Meehan, D-Mass., passed easily in 1998 and 1999. But those votes were considered to be cosmetic: Legislators knew that Republican Senate leaders planned to kill the companion McCain-Feingold measure. Last April with Democrats controlling the Senate, the McCain-Feingold bill passed 59 to 41, with amendments that doubled to $4,000 the donations that an individual can give to a senator and that allowed soft money donations to state parties. Since then, McCain, Feingold, Shays and Meehan have agreed on a few revisions to avoid a House-Senate conference committee. Ramstad said "the whole ball game" this week will revolve around blocking a series of "killer amendments" that would change the House version enough to require a conference committee. If that occurs, he said, "the House leadership will appoint openly hostile conferees" and the bill will die. Hastert had kept a relatively low profile until he met with the House Republican caucus last week and, according to people present, likened passage of the bill to "Armageddon" for Republicans. Hastert fears that the courts will strike down limits on spending by outside groups and that the soft money ban will remain intact, so weakening the political parties that Republicans would lose their slim House majority in future elections, said his spokesman, John Feehery. Hastert thinks that with weaker parties, Democrats would gain an edge because "labor unions are much more aggressive than our business allies" at organizing and mobilizing voters, Feehery said. Doubts Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., charged that the bill "will destroy our Republican majority, and that's precisely what it's designed to do." He said he is looking for amendments that would divert it to a conference committee. But Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political science professor, said Hastert and the Republicans "may be shooting themselves in the foot . . . by drawing a line in the sand. "The easiest way to neutralize this issue, as Republicans have done in the Senate, is to find common ground and pass something," Jacobs said. While polls show that campaign finance is not a top-tier issue with voters, he said, it could become "a powerful campaign theme" in key races. University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato, coauthor of "Dirty Little Secrets," an expose on the campaign finance system, said he doubts that voters will punish foes of the legislation. And if the overhaul is enacted, he contended, it won't make much difference, because special interests and politicians will "just move the money from one box to another." Backers of the legislation, Sabato said, have "set people up for real disappointment. When you make those promises and the legislation passes and not much happens . . . that's what deepens cynicism." startribune.com