Before 9-11, the rationale for expanded oil drilling was sustainable energy for an expanding economy. Then, after 9-11, it became an anti-terrorism measure. Most recently, Cheney rose the alarm that we had to start drilling because the Chinese are coming. He insisted that Chinese were drilling under contracts with Cuba 60 miles of the Florida coast. He has now admitted that that is false and his office explained that his source was George Will. I thought that was the Vice President and the President’s reigning energy expert. Yet, he gets his industry intelligence from columnists?
Cheney’s alarming call was made before a friendly and alarm-ready crowd: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He warned “Oil is being drilled right now 60 miles off the coast of Florida. We’re not doing it, the Chinese are, in cooperation with the Cuban government. Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply.”
The argument that we needed a thin black line of rigs to hold off the Chinese hoard was a theme of other leading republicans.
House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio — “right at this moment some 60 miles or less off the coast of Key West, Fla., China has the green light to drill for oil.”
Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a leader of a GOP energy task force: “Even China recognizes that oil and natural gas is readily available off our shores, thanks to Fidel Castro.”
Next week: drilling is needed immediately to employ teenagers for the summer to decrease teenage pregnancies and crimes.
For the full story, click here
rcampbell:
Come on rcampbell shouldn’t we use regimes who trample their own students with tanks as our role models. Bindo obviously does.
Bindo
Let’s get something clear. We on the left will NOT take any fiscal, economic or budgetary advice from the right. Those policies have failed. The conservative movement has failed. It’s even laughable to suggest that if the Chinese do start drilling for oil off Cuba, that we should attack our own environment, compromise our standards and stoop to the level of conservatives who have demonstrated complete willingness to sacrifice our Constution and our environment for money.
Dheney was right:
China, Cuba reported in Gulf oil partnership
U.S. firms stand by, prohibited from bidding on contracts; lawmakers propose opening up U.S. coast for drilling.
May 9, 2006: 10:12 AM EDT CNN
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – Plans for foreign oil companies, some from India and China, to drill off the cost of Cuba within the next decade are prompting calls from lawmakers to ease environmental restrictions that prohibit coastal drilling in most of the U.S., according to a report Tuesday.
At a time of rising soaring gasoline prices caused partly by a lack of supply, legislators are fuming that Cuba is opening up its continental shelf for oil and gas exploration while most of the U.S. continental shelf outside the Gulf of Mexico, which extends 200 miles from shore, has been off limits for drilling since the early 1980s, the New York Times reported.
Firms from China and India will be drilling for oil off the coast of Cuba perhaps as early as 2015, but U.S. companies are prohibited from bidding on the contracts, according to a recent report.
The Chinese will be greeted as liberators.
More REAL crooks:
Two U.S. senators, two former Cabinet members, and a former ambassador to the United Nations received loans from Countrywide Financial through a little-known program that waived points, lender fees, and company borrowing rules for prominent people.
Senators Christopher Dodd, Democrat from Connecticut and chairman of the Banking Committee, and Kent Conrad, Democrat from North Dakota, chairman of the Budget Committee and a member of the Finance Committee, refinanced properties through Countrywide’s “V.I.P.” program in 2003 and 2004, according to company documents and emails and a former employee familiar with the loans.
Other participants in the V.I.P. program included former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala.
More than a year & a half after Congress pledged to curb pork barrel funding known as earmarks, lawmakers are gearing up for another spending binge, directing billions toward organizations and companies in their home districts.
Earmark spending in the House’s defense authorization bill alone soared 29 percent last month, from $7.7 billion last year to $9.9 billion now, according to data compiled by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group in the District.
The Senate bill includes an increased number of earmarks.
Lawmakers had promised to cut back on earmarks and mandated better disclosure of them after steady criticism that they were funding programs with little debate or oversight.
Democrats wininng platform in 2006 called for an end to earmarks.
uh, cheney was righ:
China, Cuba reported in Gulf oil partnership
U.S. firms stand by, prohibited from bidding on contracts; lawmakers propose opening up U.S. coast for drilling.
May 9, 2006: 10:12 AM EDT CNN
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – Plans for foreign oil companies, some from India and China, to drill off the cost of Cuba within the next decade are prompting calls from lawmakers to ease environmental restrictions that prohibit coastal drilling in most of the U.S., according to a report Tuesday.
At a time of rising soaring gasoline prices caused partly by a lack of supply, legislators are fuming that Cuba is opening up its continental shelf for oil and gas exploration while most of the U.S. continental shelf outside the Gulf of Mexico, which extends 200 miles from shore, has been off limits for drilling since the early 1980s, the New York Times reported.
Firms from China and India will be drilling for oil off the coast of Cuba perhaps as early as 2015, but U.S. companies are prohibited from bidding on the contracts, according to a recent report.
Uh… when ‘people’ speak of the Chinese drilling in Cuba “right now”, they’re lying.
…” Cheney’s alarming call was made before a friendly and alarm-ready crowd: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He warned “Oil is being drilled right now 60 miles off the coast of Florida. We’re not doing it, the Chinese are, in cooperation with the Cuban government. Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply.”… “
Uh, when people speak of the Chinese drilling in Cuba, what they are saying is the Chinese government has done the preliminary work, signed the contracts, and ordered the tooling so it can commence in a few short years.
What a bunch of loonies here.