Some Key Conservatives Uneasy About Bush

The Herald (Miami) ^ | Jul. 11, 2004 | SCOTT LINDLAW

[junta]

No, the only voice we need to hear is of GWB when he says to conservatives what it is that he wants to conserve. Frankly speaking the man is not an inspiration and if he did not have the WOT he would be about 25% in the polls right now. Good luck to him, even though here in the Illinoistan I'm voting third party (He will lose by 20 points anyway).

[hobbes1]

No, Stefan Halper is hardly what one would call a key conservative.


And certainly not one that portends trouble for the Administration. Halper is a Dovish Republican, that wrote a book with an Isolationist from Cato.

Positions about which reasonable people can disagree, but the Media is playing him up to be something he is not.


Imagine if they had listed him as a member of the Ford, Nixon, or Bush 1 teams (He Was.)

The Article is only effective by labeling him as a Member of the Reagan Administration.

[ravingnutter]

He did foot drag on the gay marriage issue.

I beg your pardon...

Feb 2004 - Bush calls for ban on same-sex marriages

I will also point out he has yet to accomplish anything in regard to this.

Good grief...I can't believe that some people have forgotten what I learned in elementary school...the President does not pass laws, he proposes them...Congress passes laws. If you have a gripe about no accomplishments, I suggest you write your Congressman.

[Badeye]

Halper? HALPER?

Oh my gosh, could we find somebody more obscure?

This is laughable on so many levels, there isn't the bandwidth to list it all.

I suspect this is offered up in much the same way as the "Replace Dick Cheney" stuff from the past two weeks.

Oh well, gotta talk about something, I guess....

[AmericanVictory]

We've done far more than write. We've briefed staffers, supplied information on the technology that can be applied to solve the crisis and informed members on both sides of the aisle in both houses. They resolutely do nothing. Seveal examples. Several years ago I briefed a staffer for Representative Thomas, bringing in an inventor with technology that, when we do apply it, will make his district a production center greater than Kuwait. The staffer grew quite excited. Rep. Thomas has resolutely done nothing. My guess is he called a pal at an oil company who assured him that there was nothing to it. I wonder if it was one of the ones that has spent large sums unsuccessfully trying to back engineer and steal this particular technology.

Rep. Gephart (Sp.?) spent quite a lot of time discussing the fuel invention and technology we are working with with its inventor and clearly understood it and its benefits. But he was too busy wooing the ethanol interests to do anything about it, even though, at this point we are looking at a cheaper, cleaner fuel that would increase mileage across the board up to 25%.

With one of the patronage apointments of Rep. Hansen of Utah, a man who had obtained a masters degree in geology from Utah in a paper on producing the Utah tar sands, I spent a couple of hours, working with an inventor who has developed a technology that is the only one that will enable production of those sands (the hot water process used in Canada will not work on those sands). We briefed him completely. He seemed interested. Along the way we told him true stories of attempts by several large oil companies to steal the technology without success. At the end he warned us not to tell those stories because these companies had given to just about every member of Congress. We told him that they were true stories to illustrate our points. He repeated his mildly threatening warning. Not too long afterwards he ramrodded a subcommittee hearing on energy and, pointedly, left out anything about oil mining and surface deposit production.

I repeat, if you want leadership on doing something to solve the energy problem, don't look to Washington. The only interest here in either the Executive or the Legislative branch, is in subsidizing the problems, not solving them. With the notable exception of the Supreme Court, the same is true of the Judiciary, particularly the Federal Circuit. Witness the Talbert-Unocal litigation. It's all "yes, your bigness," and "how can we change the law to help you, Mr. Big?" Even Arthur Miller of Harvard, though he prevailed in the Supreme Court, has been unable to make a dent in the culture of helping big oil, whose reign has been far longer than that of the railroads and the big steel companies whose dominance preceded theirs. Having any industury be so dominant for so long where its premises underly foreign policy and go unchallenged is unhealthy. And don't look to the lefties and the enviro-nuts. They love to talk against big oil but have no "solution" except more and more inefficient central-command government control and scarcity. Because they are redistributionists they basically have no interest in actual solutions and the only inventor/entrepreneurs they will support are long haired guys trying to make solar powered bicycles.

[ravingnutter]

The only interest here in either the Executive or the Legislative branch, is in subsidizing the problems, not solving them.

You cite legitimate problems with the Legislative branch, but still blame the Executive branch. Once again...the President proposes, Congress disposes...that is just the way it works. The President has done his part by putting in a proposal and has repeatedly urged Congress to pass an energy bill, which includes an R&D budget. He has no direct control over their actions or inactions.

[AmericanVictory]

You are ignoring the point. His proposal would solve nothing, it would continue the displacement of actual solutions by continuing to subsidize the large corporations in energy, ethanol, auto and other areas that are resisting and blocking the solutions. When I and others have briefed or informed those who know the President, starting back before his election, it goes through the same cycle of consultation with those who immediately assert that "there is nothing to it," while their own organizations assure that the solutions will not be implemented unless they can appropriate and control them. When interviewed several years ago by a WND reporter about one of the technologies of which I speak, an Exxon spokesperson replied that she thought that Exxon-Mobil was working on something like that. Correct, they, for several years, employed some 37 researchers trying to back engineer and appropriate the technology. They failed. The Bush administration is incapable of penetrating this culture to get at actual solutions. What oil companies seek to take without paying for unsuccessfully they are not going to tell Bush and his close advisors about.

The eecutive branch, and particularly the White House and the DOE, are locked in a culture where it is impossible for them to even see solutions, must less implement them. The preservation of the blocking institutions is more important to them than solving the problems. History is full of such behavior on the part of seemingly wsrld dominant governments.