DISQUS

L. Bell · 1 year ago

Excellent points, made by Joy Overbeck.

The Democratic party has indoctrinated Americans that any industry that is 'big' and able to handle the huge risks that all companies face, is necessarily 'bad'.

Yet by their same logic.....(or lack thereof).....someone they conclude that a horribly 'big' government is somehow to be considered 'good'.

The result of their incessant indoctrination (using the media) has caused America to rapidly become a socialistic country, like those in Europe.
I don't see any people risking their lives to sneak into Europe.

We need to wke up and reject the deception used by the Democrats.

Oliver · 1 year ago

I believe GHW Bush first instituted the off-shore ban, and that COngress was under GOP control from 1994 until 2004.

Oil shale wasn't 'forbidden,' the market didn't support it; Shell, Exxon and other companies have retained vast tracts of land for oil shale, should there ever be a viable technology to produce it. That has still not been demonstrated as commercially feasible. In addition to the tens of thousands of acres of oil shale rich land that these companies own, tens of thousands of more acres of public lands have been leased (or set-aside as preferential lease rights once the technology is proven), including five such tracts in NW Colorado.

It's easy to demonize, apparently it's more difficult to use facts.

Mike · 1 year ago

L. Bell, so having some the highest standards of living on the planet is now a bad thing? http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/

What exactly is your problem with capitalist/socialist hybrid economies, isn't it obvious yet that pure unrestrained capitalism does not work for the majority of people?

And contrary to your assertion Europe does have a large Immigrant population, however they actually enforce their immigration laws, as opposed to the US which looks the other way as long as we can pay illegal immigrants 3 dollars an hour, and then turn around talk about how they are destroying the economy. It is one of the greatest Republican hypocrisies out there.

niko · 1 year ago

Joy: if you want the Democrats to live up to your standards, then the groups funding these sleazy, vicious and false attack ads on Udall need to abide by the same standards. The oil and gas industry is a major contributor to these attack ads. Where's the class in that demonization?

kmanlewis · 1 year ago

Udall has to make the oil industry look bad in order to justify why he has voted agains domestic oil exploration over and over again. He is doing nothing to end our dependence on foreign oil, so he has to demonize the oil industry . I found this clip that describes the situation pretty well. .

http://www.friendsoftheuschamber.com/issues/ind...

How can he do anything but criticize the industry when he has a record like that?

citizenchallenge · 1 year ago

"L. Bell, so having some the highest standards of living on the planet is now a bad thing?"
..........................................................................................
Well, if you are living way the heck beyond your means - that's a problem!
As a friend likes saying: "unsustainable living cannot be sustained!"

Republicans seem to live under this dream spell that we are still in the 50s with limitless opportunities in every direction. Look around at the world today.

Haven't you noticed that something very big, troubling and unprecedented is afoot?

I'm amazed that all the attention is going to the poor Wall Street crowd, when there are much more fundamental cracks in our grand economic experiment.
peak oil - peak fresh water - food shortages & distribution challenges - world diplomacy based on increasing military hostilities - ignoring global climate change realities, and on and on.

Basically, we've ravaged our resources, and put all our eggs in a greed is good paradigm. The longer we hold fast to Republican dillusions, the uglier it is going to get.

Richard Mercer · 1 year ago

All Republicans want to discuss is drill baby drill and build more nuclear plants. Neither of these is sustainable energy much less renewable energy.
The amount of oil estimated in California waters is enough to supply the U.S for about 16 months. Is that worth endangering the oceans ecosystems for ever? The debate, as T. Boone Pickens says, misses the point. The point is about the long term future of energy, no some bandaid to lower fuel prices for a couple of years. Republicans voted against tax credits for renewable energy eight times this year. What they don't want you to know about is the annual $84 billion in tax credits and subsidies given to the oil and gas industry. And those subsidies are only about a tenth of the total hidden costs of oil. SetAmericaFree.org is my source of these numbers and is also a source of A Blueprint for U.S. Economic Security. Check them out. And read the proposal in the Jan. 2008 article in Scientific American, "A Solar Grand Plan", both of which can be read online. The Republican party, along with the oil lobbyists, have been consistently misinforming the public about the potential of renewable energy like solar and wind.
We could power the whole country with solar power plants in the southwest, using less land than we now use for coal mining. And they would never use any fuel of any kind. No fuel to mine, transport, store, refine, burn or clean up the mess from.
Their calls for nuclear energy are misquided at best. Nuclear power has so many problems, it is hard to imagine anyone seriously considering it as a good alternative. One of it's biggest problems is water. Each reactor needs billions of gallons of constant water supply to cool the plants. Last summer, one reactor in Alabama had to be shut down because of the drought in the region.
To learn more about the dangers and liabilities of nuclear power, Google "The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy" which dismantles the whole argument for nuclear power.

Nuclear power doesn't give us energy independence because we import over 90% of our Uranium, with Russia being seen as a big future supplier.

Argonne National Lab says that an airliner crashing into a nuclear power plant could cause a complete meltdown, even if the containment building isn't compromised. Think the twin towers was a disaster?

Each nuclear power plant will cost about $500 million to dismantle when is is no longer useable.

Each nuclear power plant represents about $200 million in funding for Yucca Mountain.

There is nothing clean about the mining, transport and processing of uranium

Solar and wind are much quicker to get up and running than nuclear or coal plants.

Richard Mercer · 1 year ago

I would add that what is bad for America is the corruption and complete sell out of our democratic process to the oil companies. You think it is good for America to place oil company lobbyists in the positions of head of the EPA and head of the Dept. of the Interior? Is is good for America to deceive the public about the potential and benfits of renewable energy? Is it good for America to muddy the discussion about Global Warming with deceiving claims about how many scientists disagree with the IPCC findings on climate change? These have all been phony lists of skeptics. You may have heard Senator Inhoffe of Oklahoma read his list of 400 scientist who are skeptics. It was a phony list, one which one actuall climate scientist called both laughable and padded with TV weathermen, non scientists etc.
The same can be said of the "scientific" conferencees of skeptics in New York and elsewhere, where 1500 or so skeptics got together. These are not real scientific conferences. They are propaganda events, where skeptics are bribed with offers of $1,000 per speech and $10,000 per paper, paid for by the Heartland Insitiute, the right wing propaganda machine mostly funded by oil companies like Exxon/Mobile. To real scientists, these events are a joke, and have no similarity with real scientific conferences.