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04/25/2005: "US Now starting to pay the piper for electing W to second term"
Bush Faces Hurdles on Energy Agenda
Blogger note: If you think this is bad.. just wait! This is exactly why we did not need a backward thinking.. non thinker in the white house.. The US should be leading the world in alternative energy.. Like Kerry had said. AND it would be driving our economy, and creating millions of jobs. (This would have replaced Clinton's tech boom of the 90's) Instead we get more drilling in Alaska and off of Calif. coast to get enough oil to power our country for a couple weeks..... pathetic! Now Japan or China or Europe will kick our ass and leave us in the dust.. to work our crappy oil wells... And to cap it off all of us trying to build up a nest egg will see our net values erode as Bush's 7 trillion dollar debt starts to erode the value of savings, real estate, stocks, 401k's etc. Well, can't say we weren't warned! : ) Enjoy....(See bottom of article for proof re: US losing.. very interesting)
Mon Apr 25, 7:19 AM ET Politics - AP
By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Running for president five years ago, George W. Bush pledged to jawbone energy-exporting nations to keep oil prices low and to win passage of legislation to spur more domestic energy production.
Delivering on either count has proved difficult for the Texas oilman.
Soaring oil and gasoline prices are beginning to take a toll on U.S. economic growth and on Bush's approval ratings. To get his long-stalled energy agenda passed, the president is putting more of his political prestige on the line.
The House voted 249-183 last week for White House-backed legislation that would give tax cuts and subsidies to energy companies and open a wildlife refuge in Alaska to oil exploration.
At a meeting Monday at his Texas ranch, Bush is promising to press Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, to do more to help ease global oil prices.
Still, the president acknowledges that there is little that he or Congress can do to quickly lower gasoline prices, which have climbed past $2.20 a gallon nationwide.
Critics also claim that Bush's energy bill does little to promote conservation or alternate energy approaches, and that he has done little of the lobbying of oil-country leaders that he promised during in his first presidential campaign.
Robert Ebel, an energy analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said nothing that Bush is proposing "is going to have any immediate, or even near-term impact" on prices.
He said Bush is responding politically to consumer concerns that "gasoline prices are high, we haven't yet entered the summer driving season, and what is the president going to do about it?"
Ebel said increasing world demand for oil, particularly from fast-growing China, and lack of new refineries in the United States will exacerbate the problem for years.
With his Social Security overhaul plan winning few converts, Bush may find that promoting his energy agenda has a more immediate political payoff for jittery Republicans.
In a speech last week, Bush said high prices are "like a foreign tax on the American dream." He challenged Congress to send him an energy bill by August and described the proposal as making energy "more affordable and secure" in the future.
Similar legislation passed the House twice in Bush's first term, only to bog down in the Senate under a Democratic filibuster that was waged, in part, to protest possible exploratory drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
Crude oil prices have risen 40 percent in the past year. But finding ways to curb them pose a particular dilemma for Bush — complicated by his own actions.
The war in Iraq, for instance, limited Bush's influence among Persian Gulf oil-producing nations.
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Excerpt from a recent Forbes article talking about the nanotechnology revolution going on in Asian companies.. meanwhile the backward thinking country bumpkins in charge in the US will continue to subsidize the oil companies as we fall further and further behind... Thanks Dumbya!
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Hirokazu Sugihara, the general manager of the Bioelectronics and Molecular Electronics Group at Matsushita's Nanotechnology Research Lab gave the day's final presentation. Sugihara's talk focused on the convergence of three fields of study--quantum physics, molecular molecular chemistry and life sciences--that together form the basis of Matsushita's more far-flung electronics research.
One application he described involves a novel new invention referred to as the solar-bio fuel cell, which Matsushita is developing as a sustainable alternative to ethanol-based cells. The company proposes that it works as follows: sunlight triggers an electrode to emit electrons that then interact with enzymes and use sugar that is recycled from food waste to produce an electromotive force. The company maintains that such a device could eventually be integrated into portable electronic devices.
However Matsushita still has a large stake in the lithium ion battery business, so it is still innovating with existing technology. In fact, Matsushita Battery Industrial Co. recently claimed to have achieved the industry's highest energy density with its recently developed large-capacity Li-Ion secondary battery, which it plans to commercialize as an energy supply for mobile phones and digital cameras. Nanoscopic surface finishing on the nickel acid lithium positive electrode is what gives the battery its high energy density. Production is expected to begin in October of this year.
On one level, these types of conferences are mostly about hype and rallying up investors, potential alliance partners, clients and journalists about the prospects for an industry or sector. However I must say that I was taken aback by Japanese commercial enthusiasm for the prospects of nanotechnology. Asians don't seem to be as hung up as Americans are with stock hype, IPO's or Street buzz. There was no question of nanotech's validity at this conference.
These giant companies are squarely focused on leading the globe in new technologies and processes that take advantage of our ability to manipulate matter at the molecular level. The conference highlighted Japan's exhaustive, bottom-up approach to research, with an emphasis on ongoing collaborations between industry, academia, and government. As I have said in previous issues, the Asian's have fully grasped the power and potential of nanotechnology and are determined to lead the world in its industrialization.
================ Thanks for sealing our fate Dumbya supporters ! =
================= We all owe you geniuses ! ==================
