Part II - Partisan Politics and Energy Policy

    Opportunities to create and secure dependable domestic supplies of crude oil have been repeatedly eschewed over the last 37 years. And forget about logical efforts to convert to nuclear energy.  Even obscure and remote places have been placed off limits to production due to the impractical, yet effective actions of American environmentalists. A tiny minority of activists, who continue (conspicuously) to drive their automobiles to work every day, have managed to create the illusion that drilling on otherwise invisible land at ANWR near the Arctic Circle, is actually a greater risk than deep sea drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
    ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, is a place that continues to be unseen by 99.99999% of the world's inhabitants. It is a geographic location that alternates between a few weeks of being a thawing mosquito infested swamp, and many months of hopelessly frozen arctic tundra.
    ANWR could easily be a rich source of domestic crude oil. And tapping into ANWR’s vast crude oil reserves would be so simple. However, instead of using ANWR as a temporary bridge source of energy, while America paves the important long term road to the inevitable nuclear conversion, one U.S. Congress and President after another has manipulated the alternative energy industries. Developers of non-nuclear alternatives have been forced by Senators and House Members to make annual (or bi-annual) campaign contribution pilgrimages to Washington D.C. In exchange for re-election campaign contributions, temporary tax-credit incentives have been handed out........piece meal of course. And this thinly disguised bleeding and milking process has insured the re-election of many congressional incumbents in both parties. Sadly, this process has also guaranteed that NO substantial investments in nuclear energy or automobile battery technology have been made.

    Long before 2010, neither major domestic political party has had an ethical leg to stand on. When Republicans have held the bulk of the political power in Washington there have been modest improvements in our nation’s ability to produce domestic energy; but never any long-range planning for permanently renewable energy. Alternatively, when Democrats have held the bulk of power, there have been efforts to improve temporary tax-credits offered to investors in alternative energy supplies….non-nuclear of course. However, with Democrats in charge, ZERO long range planning for the domestic reserves required during the transition period has ever been considered.  And thus we have an America destroying stalemate.
    In the final analysis, energy policy with Democrats and Republicans is always the same old story. It is just a different cow that gets milked by the respective political machines. Re-election, rather than problem-solving, is the only true goal or the partisan.  No wonder the gulf is being flooded with a massive deep water crude oil leak causing human lives and wildlife to be destroyed.  Republicans and Democrats are still in charge.

Part II - Partisan Politics and Energy Policy