which was posed to me by my attorney, who is the most intelligent and well educated person I have ever had the good fortune to meet.
How is it that Bush & Co. are blabbing to anyone and everyone who will listen, all around the globe, on every TV station, in every publication, all the reasons and strategies and plans for going to war (allow me to repeat: WAR. The word is being bandied about so casually perhaps we should take a moment to consider what it means.) with Iraq, but our country’s energy policy needed to be conducted behind closed doors, with no one but * energy executives * in on it?
Doesn’t that strike anyone else as nothing less than bizarre? And can anyone explain the reasoning? (I would be referring to the reasoning that explains it as something other than nefarious and self-serving, those explanations I can provide.)
But seeing as how energy policy is a domestic policy that affects us all, would it not have been more logical for the meetings that decided this policy to have been open and public? Of course, if Bush had held open meetings on energy policy, where the whole country could see that it was composed only of energy executives, there might have been some serious questioning of the whole procedure.
What would you suggest, Olentzero? Should the meetings have taken place at an amphitheater? Broadcast on TV? In general, most meetings that involve Bush and his cabinet take place in private. Hasn’t it pretty much always been this way? I don’t see anything sinister about it.
Also, I seem to recall that the meetings weren’t composed of “only energy executives.” Executives, of course, were consulted, because they are considered experts in the field of getting energy to people. The EPA, and other groups, were also consulted at various times.
At any rate, I see little reason to have these meetings made public. By keeping them private, the members are likely to be more candid than they would be if they knew 300 million people were going to be looking over their shoulders.
Yes, but we know who is in Bush’s cabinet. We don’t know who’s input the VP sought (much less what that input was) and he’s gone to great lengths to keep us from even that. I’d say that’s being overly secretive and one thing it does is diminish the policy.
Speaking of the Iraqi war and energy / oil policy, here is an interesting article from The Nation suggesting that the two might be linked even more closely than most folks believe: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021007&s=klare
I’m not sure if I completely buy into the thesis, but the Bush Administration’s apparent discomfort with the idea that the Iraqis might allow the U.N. weapon inspectors back in does make one wonder about the weight of the different motivations to seeing Saddam out of there.
Not only do I buy the thesis, I marvel, given the administrations’ behavior, that anyone would NOT buy it.
I continue to stand amazed that anyone swallows these guys at all. It boggles the mind. Of course, bullshitting about blowjobs is so much worse than lying about why you plan to kill innocent people and risk the lives of Americans.
Are “energy executives” the wrong people to be consulted about energy policy? And is there a cite as to exactly what the composition of the cabinet was?
And given the fact that an “energy executive” is likely still working in the industry, would it make sense to expose their company to nuisance and frivilous lawsuits by people, or to threats and bans and boycotts? Or even death threats from eco-terrorists?
Or, what if you were an “energy executive” of BP-Amoco, and your recommendation to the President was “invest in domestic production of bio-synfuels to reduce our dependence on foreign oil”, or even “Mr. President, the truth is, you must invest in renewables” - would your stockholders and other corporate officers necessarily agree with you? Could you lose your job and be “blacklisted” in the industry?
Just some alternate explanations and qualifiers. I don’t know if they are correct, but they are not infeasible.
I do know that if I was asked to speak on coal resources by the President, I sure as hell would not want my name bandied about; otherwise I would either have to turn it down, or I would not be free to speak what I think.
The Forward to the official report lists all the members of the National Energy Policy Development Group, all the usual suspects like Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation, Interior, Treasury, EPA, OMB, FEMA (No clue why they’re there), etc. It’s on Page 4.
Absolutely not. But they aren’t the only people that should be consulted about energy policy. Maybe they’re not. Nobody knows and Cheney did his darndest to not let anybody find out.
I don’t buy this “won’t be able to be candid” argument. If you’re a captain of your particular segment of the energy puzzle and you were selected by the VP to represent that segment, and you do anything less than offer up your most considered thoughts, then you’re not representing your industry and you’re giving the VP bad information.
Any top executive that would shy away from having their name associated with a particular policy - what does that say about the policy?
There is an important distinction between what is best for the country and what is best for your company. Stockholders and those who would take your position within your company can make a serious issue for you if you threaten the well-being and livlihood of your own firm, especially when the entire energy sector of the economy has been woefully depressed for more than a year now.
When you have a job where you are important enough that others will do anything to usurp your position, you understand these things. It’s not right, but it’s the way that things are.
FWIW, I kept trying to catch up with my own thread (from two weeks-10 days ago) on the same subject now reported on by ‘The Nation’ but, damn…it’s not easy (lesson learned again: Don’t start threads unless you can keep up)
Anyway, as Goosey will confirm my ‘Emperors New Clothes’ thread has already dealt with the Saudi question and goes beyond. However, it’s nice when the media gets within a couple of weeks of the SDMB.
FWIW, if one remembers the oil price hike of the early 70’s and the implications of that for Western economies and stock markets, this is not at all an unreasonable. If the Saud’s fall without an alternative – and even with the Russian, Venezuelan, etc supplies - the potential for economic blackmail is enormous. And besides, even if the Saud’s hang on and the West gets Saddam’s oil anyway, it’ll be handy having another non-OPEC supplier in the pocket (as any future Iraqi Administration would be). And I’m sure they’ll find a use some other time for that spanking new enormous US military facility in Qatar
Absolutely. We should all have the opportunity to be informed and to debate policies like this among ourselves as these policies are made and not have to rely on the Justice Department to force the information out of Cheney.
It’s called “democracy”. Maybe you’ve heard of it?
There isn’t anything sinister about it. Anti-democratic, definitely. The whole message this administration is putting across - and not just on energy policy - is “We can decide what to do and we don’t need to listen to you or tell you about it afterward.” It’s a complete lack of accountability towards the general populace. But that’s been obvious since November of 2000.
It’s known that Enron executives met with the task force six times and that there are 17 items in the energy policy that are in lockstep with Enron’s positions.
Other than that, I disagree that only energy executives were included in the task force, (so whoever made that assertion will have to provide the cite) but since some of the VP’s recommendations were put forward by an entity that’s largely been discredited, then I think the policy loses credibility.
Ah yes, Mack cites to the extraordinarily stupid Waxman report. The same report that, among other things, notes that (horror!) the Bush Energy Plan recommends encouraging wind power and hydroelectric projects and that (gasp!) Enron made wind turbines and owned both wind and hydroelectric plants.
The Democratic party is supposed to be the friend of the environment. That’s what the party literature says, right? So why is Waxman not applauding those provisions, instead of exploiting them in a cynical attempt to use “Bush” and “Enron” in the same sentence?
In fairness to Waxman, there is a throwaway line in the executive summary to the effect that Enron didn’t benefit from the plan exclusively and that some parts of the plan may have independent merit. But that begs the question: the positions that benefited Enron would have benefited any company engaged in the businesses of energy trading, production and distribution. The Energy Policy recommendations are certainly unrelated to the financial shenanigans at Enron. Why single out Enron, if not to impugn Bush via guilt by association?
Waxman is a grade-A asshat.
A policy – any policy – should be judged solely on its own merits. It matters not who recommended it. I could give two shits if Satan himself made policy recommendations that went on to be adopted so long as those recommendations represented good policy on their own merits.
And Olentzero – your implication that non-public meetings are both antidemocratic and unique to this administration is beyone silly. It is foolish to suggest that every policy idea must be made in a fishbowl from beginning to end. No administration could long survive if every cockamamie idea uttered by an adviser was immediately made public.
There is nothing wrong with an administration getting a plan together, putting some spit-n-polish on it, and then presenting it to the public for approval. The Bush Energy Plan did not become law upon its publication. Its provisions will see public debate, both in Congress and in the regulatory bodies that implement those provisions. There is nothing antidemocratic about that.
What, do you think all the children in Afghanistan that died in the bombings or starved to death when the food aid programs got cut off were Al Qaeda operatives? How about the thousands of children who died because of the sanctions in Iraq over the last decade? Were they Ba’athist militants?
Dewey, nowhere did I say that these “closed-door” meetings were unique to the Bush administration. Even if Congress and the relevant regulatory bodies get to debate the plan, it’s still not democratic enough. We all are the ones who have to live with the results of these policy decisions, we should have much more of a hand in making them. Excluding the voices of the citizens who have to live under a country’s planned policies is anti-democratic, plain and simple.
Stoid:“Of course, bullshitting about blowjobs is so much worse than lying about why you plan to kill innocent people and risk the lives of Americans.”
Mojo:“Stoid, mind telling me which innocent people the US plans to kill? I’ve heard nothing of these plans.”
Stoid:“Iraqi civilians.”
Stoid I want to let you know from the bottom of my heart how much I appreciate you reminding me of all those orders I got from commanding officers about forgeting what the military objectives were of our opperations and that our first and foremost priority was to slaughter civilians. :wally I just wish you were here in person so I could show you how much I appreciate it.
You owe both present and prior military members an apology for that cute little remark.
Saddam Hussein is solely responsible for all these deaths. His flagrant violations of his own agreements provoked the sanctions. He continues to spend huge amounts of money building an arsenal of WMDs and rewarding Palestinian terrorist families, rather than use that money to feed Iraqi children. The step that will most benfit Iraqi children is regime change.
