Some thoughts on the Political Climate in the US

[mrstickball]

HappySqurriel said:

BTFeather55 said:
@happysquirrel, I was making $8.00 an hour at my old job, and having to drive 60 miles 5 days a week to work with gas prices as they were under Bush was really putting me in a tight spot.

High energy prices put a lot of people in a tight spot, but there isn't anything that the federal government in general (or the president in particular) could do to lower energy prices in the short term ... Even then there were a lot of people who were highly critical about George Bush's energy policy and were wondering why there wasn't more nuclear powerplants, coal to liquid fuel facilities, and domestic oil/natural gas exploration & drilling; on top of that people were (and still are) highly critical of the corn-ethanol subsidy that was introduced durring his term, because it would have a negative impact on the price of food and not produce enough fuel to make a difference.

If your wondering why we haven't furthered our drilling & exploitation of American sources of energy:

• http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2003/2003-03-19-11.asp
  
• http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid={BEB9B292-BA87-4CE1-972F-169C02C15736}&siteid=mktw
• http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2008/2008-11-18-10.asp
• http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE51O78020090225
• http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jun/18/bushs-oil-shale-call-draws-critics/

Few good resources. Bush tried to get oil shale and ANWR available for exploitation, but it was prevented by the Democrats in the case of ANWR, and since Bush has been out of office, it seems Obama's govt. doesn't really have interest in it. Shame, because there are 800 billion barrels of oil available in the rockies via oil shale - enough to power us for years.