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.