Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
The big news from July was: Senate's energy bill: What a disappointment (LA Times Editorial):
Amid tough fights over healthcare and financial reform, Obama's push for cleaner energy ran out of gas long ago. It looked like a losing battle anyway; with Senate Republicans universally opposing a cap-and-trade program or other efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, and some Democrats in heavy manufacturing states also opposed, it may have been impossible to round up the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster on a Senate energy bill as strong as the one passed by the House last year. But that doesn't excuse Obama or Reid for surrendering so easily, or so completely.
The strategy to stitch together a complex, multiple part, massive sprawling Energy Bill has failed in precisely the way its opponents intended it to fail: this is a big reason why Big Oil was so heavily invested in the fight against health care reform, to push the Energy Bill back into election year politics.
continued at Daily Kos...
