[jeffkrol]

OH lets not let the enviromentalists off the hook so easily now two examples from my neck of the woods the Cape Cod wind farm project was held up in the courts by the enviromentalists and the rich people that can afford a view of cape cod sound to prevent enviromentally safe wind power from being created.

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Certainly is bipartisan..............

So when the numbers didn’t work for you, you went political. The Kennedy family leapt into the fray, with Ted pulling in chits from senatorial buddies. You got Mitt Romney on your side, as well as Bill Delahunt, former attorney general Tom Reilly, and even spanking-new Senator Scott Brown. They went about trying to subvert a process that was supposed to be fact-based, and they did quite well. New agencies got involved, new actors appeared, and ever more esoteric objections were raised. Delay, you knew, was your ally. Gordon had money, but not an unlimited amount, and if you could just stretch things out you might bankrupt him or perhaps just exhaust him.

But to the beginning:

Let’s admit it. It’s never really been about the birds and the fish, has it? Neither has it been about air-traffic patterns, sacred Wampanoag burial grounds, or oil in the turbines’ transformers. Exploitation of a precious natural resource? Save us the big tears. Most of you have been doing that for years, fishing and boating in the water and building outsize eyesores perched far too close to the water’s edge. And surely your cries over the fact that Cape Wind Associates was a for-profit venture were contrived, too. (I mean, having oil billionaire William Koch, your cochair and a major funder, complain about someone making a dime off energy production is one audacious piece of hypocrisy, isn’t it?)

So what’s it really been about? The views. If they happen to be your views (in other words, if you’re one of the lucky folks situated on the beach looking out on the sound), they’re invaluable. If they’re not your views (which is to say, pretty much everyone else), then they have little, if any, value.

Memo to Cape Wind foes: Enough already - The Boston Globe
Had to add some Cheny/Bush bashing for George

MAYBE HE'S STUCK IN AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION.... About a month ago, the lead story at The New Republic had a provocative headline: "Is Dick Cheney To Blame for the Oil Spill? Signs Point to Yes." The fairly brief piece raised some important points, which still tend to go overlooked, including the fact that the Deepwater Horizon rig did not have a remote-control acoustic shutoff switch, routinely used by rigs elsewhere, because Cheney's secretive energy task force decided the $500,000 price tag was too great a burden on BP.
Major media outlets have generally been reluctant to dwell on Bush/Cheney administration failures and how they relate to the oil spill disaster, but the fact that Cheney has received at least a modicum of blame should have been enough to inspire the former V.P. to schedule a few media interviews.
Indeed, what usually happens in a case like this is predictable -- Cheney faces criticism, Cheney calls Politico and/or Fox News, Politico and/or Fox News run lengthy pieces with scathing Cheney quotes attacking the U.S. leadership, run without scrutiny or fact-checking.
But Ravi Somaiya notes that we just haven't heard much from the former vice president lately, even after some limited public criticism.
Frank Rich, in The New York Times, pointed out that the Interior Department degenerated into a "cesspool of corruption," under Bush and Cheney, and that the pair bequeathed Obama "a Minerals Management Service as broken as the Bush-Cheney FEMA exposed by Katrina." .......................Cheney's bound to pop up one of these days, attacking the nation's elected leaders for something or another, though his silence of late is kind of interesting.
But I'd just add that of all the possible explanations for Cheney's absence from the political stage, there's simply no way the claims being "too substantial to refute" is part of the explanation. This guy has manufactured his own twisted reality for years; there's no reason to think now would be any different.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_06/024237.php
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/10/why-haven-t-we-heard-from-dick-cheney-on-the-oil-spill-.html
One of the "replies" I found interesting

TNR article links to (well, sort of, I had to go find it) Inspector General Devaney's Sept 2008 report to former Interior Sec'y "DIRK!" (as my son in Idaho calls the former ID governor) Kempthorne (he of the luxury bathroom) about the corruption at MMS:
http://www.doioig.gov/images/stories/reports/pdf//RIKinvestigation.pdf
I haven't had time to read it (it will have to wait until after work), but in the second paragraph of the letter accompanying the report, Mr. Devaney says the investigation took two years and cost taxpayers $5.3 million.
As the daughter of a retired Dept of the Interior engineer (at USGS), the rogue behavior of the MMS makes me sick. My dad worked hard as did his fellow USGS'ers. I hope people know that most gov't employees are not corrupt like those Mr. Devaney investigated at MMS.
And Cheney belongs in prison for what he has done to this country.

TIMELINE:
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/06/10/timeline-how-dick-cheney-caus...-bp-oil-spill/
http://blog.seattlepi.com/morningeconomist/archives/208604.asp?from=blog_last3

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Last edited by jeffkrol; 06-14-2010 at 01:52 PM.

[Ratmagiclady]

Seems pertinent things that Driver3 posted got scrolled off in the process here.


While, no, you can't plausibly blame environmentalists, or even Ted Kennedy for this, (despite his frankly unacceptable behavior about Cape Wind, make no mistake, he's just not that powerful, nor did he originate all the delays about all green energy everywhere... even off Nantucket.... He was little more thnan an ill-timed speed-bump compared to *corporate* pposition.)

I guess we're agreed that environmentalist positions are right, if Keenedy was wrong for opposing them?


Great.