[cloud8]

I almost fell out of my chair when I read this quote from my Congressman-for-Life, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.): "But even Markey called much of the rest of the bill 'socialism.'"

[R. Scott]

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) did manage to get a monthlong extension of daylight-saving time (beginning three weeks earlier in the spring and extending one week later in the fall).

What good will that do? We gain an hour of light in the evening, but loose it in the morning. In this area clock punchers start work at 6 or 7 AM. Middle level executives start at 7 or 8 AM. It might save for retail – but they always have their light on anyway because windows are no longer used as light sources. Who benefits?
Is it a case of “Something – anything – being done”?

[CarlEOlsoniii]

You got Markey?, well, I have Willy Bellyhunt

[DameAutour]

Of course, the Boston Herald thinks the only good things were the elements that contained more "federal oversight" and more "mandatory standards".

[Carry_Okie]

What made passage possible was the omission of a House-passed provision that would have immunized manufacturers of the gasoline additive MTBE (now being phased out) from product liability lawsuits arising from groundwater pollution. It seems unfair to assert the product was defective when Congress effectively required its use in the first place, but an industry report that 96 percent of cleanup costs already are covered may limit plaintiff lawyer windfalls.

Executives from ARCO have admitted under oath that it was the petrochemical industry that pushed MTBE in the first place, as a response to the first oxygenate proposal from ADM (using ethanol). The oil industry's major stockholders have used their tax-exempt "charitable" foundations to fund the Natural Resource Defense Council as a front to get preferential regulations through government agencies. Their lawyers, hired as administrators, are particularly culpable, David Donager in EPA and Mary Nichols at the California Air Resources Board.

The oil companies knew MTBE carried a threat of groundwater contamination as a result of a spill in 1980 in Rockaway, NJ. That's the Congress indemnified the oil companies in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, signed by "the Environmental President," George Herbert Walker Bush.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

The energy bill doesn't address production, just more of the same corporate give-aways and failed Jimmy Carter-like conservation crap.

Maybe when people are freezing to deaths in below-zero weather and can't afford to pay their heating bills they'll get a clue.

[RightWhale]

About all Congress can do is authorize spending. They cannot decree nuclear fusion shall be used to generate municipal power. There is a logical disconnect. If they would fund solar power satellites they would at least be doing something.