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Republicans vs. the free market
Rich Lowry has a good piece on NRO about how Bush's energy bill is a lobbyist's dream but ignores how markets work. For example, re drilling in the Alaska wilderness:
- Then, there’s the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Allowing drilling there is the most controversial part of Bush’s energy plan. Overheated environmentalists claim it will despoil pristine wilderness. Actually, ANWR is a vast, desolate bog. But put that aside. ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobil, BP and ConocoPhillips all have backed off their support for drilling.
Let it never be said the administration is slavishly beholden to Big Oil. The proceedings of Vice President Dick Cheney’s notorious energy task force might have gone something like this. Cheney: “We want to drill in ANWR.” Cigar-chomping oil executive: “Mr. Vice President, there might not be as much oil there as first thought, and when you consider the costs of drilling through permafrost and the long distances involved, it probably makes no economic sense.” Cheney: “Well, tough.”
The main backers of drilling are the state of Alaska, which will get oil royalties; unions, which will get jobs; and conservatives for whom sticking it to hyperventilating enviros is a matter of principle. But oil companies aren’t in the mix. “If the government gave them the leases for free they wouldn’t take them,” an administration official recently told the New York Times.
A desolate bog can be pristine wilderness, but otherwise he's right on.
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“It was fortunate that so few men acted according to moral principle, because it was so easy to get principles wrong, and a determined person acting on mistaken principles could really do some damage." - Larissa MacFarquhar
Last edited by Tyrone Slothrop; 05-03-2005 at 02:34 PM..
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