June 21, 2012

“Senate defeats bill to drop new rules on coal emissions”

Coal in America is now all but dead. Which means Obama will have kept his promise that the cost of electricity will necessarily skyrocket — and it will do so in an economy already stagnant.

So growth in America — and the potential for a private sector recovery — is also now all but dead.

But all that was to be expected: after all, Obama told us he was going to do these things, but some of us were less interested in what he was saying than they were with patting themselves on the back for (ironically) concerning themselves not with the content of his character, but with the color of his skin.

Historic President!, they told us. And I voted for him! Look at me!

All of which pales in comparison to the actions of several Republican Senators who crossed over and voted with the Democrats to kill off coal in the US — to stifle growth, to further burden those already struggling with the loss of equity in their homes, to ensure that the economy remains moribund, all for the cheap grace of pretending to support a cleaner environment.

Because not only did these GOP Senators — Lamar Alexander, Scott Brown, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Kelly Ayotte — cross over to help the Democrats defeat the Inhofe bill, the fact that they crossed over allowed several Democrat Senators up for re-election to themselves cross over and pretend to be conservative and pro-growth without costing their Party the vote.

This is why it isn’t enough to elect someone just because he or she plays for “our” team; Republicans can be statist wannabe dictators, too. And when the rolling blackouts and brownouts start, I hope the first states to beg for relief aren’t those whose Senators voted to hurt their own constituencies — not to mention the US economy and rule of law as a whole.

Posted by Jeff G. @ 11:49am
21 comments | Trackback

Comments (21)

  1. Squid says June 21, 2012 at 12:07 pm

    The blackouts can’t come too soon for my liking. Let people sit around wishing for lights and air conditioning this summer. When the power comes back on, you can be damned sure that we’ll have some commercials on prime time letting them know who to thank for their third-world lifestyle.

  2. Ernst Schreiber says June 21, 2012 at 12:09 pm

    Other than Manchin, which Dems crossed over to vote with Inhofe?

  3. happyfeet says June 21, 2012 at 12:21 pm

    time to shut down the goddamn TVA and let the gap-toothed welfare-whore state of tennessee steep in its own pile of shit I think

  4. motionview says June 21, 2012 at 12:23 pm

    A graphic depiction of the white guilt vote of 2008 melting away from Obama in 2012.

  5. Pablo says June 21, 2012 at 12:31 pm

    Kelly Ayotte? That’s surprising.

  6. happyfeet says June 21, 2012 at 12:33 pm

    Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Mark Warner and Jim Webb of Virginia were the five Democratic senators voting for Inhofe’s resolution.*

  7. Blitz says June 21, 2012 at 1:40 pm

    Wish I’d never voted for Brown. Tell you what though, like Jeff? I’m sitting this one OUT…..A fake Repub or a fake Cherokee. No contest, no vote.

  8. John Bradley says June 21, 2012 at 2:11 pm

    Interesting that Sen. Casey didn’t vote for Inhofe’s resolution…

    But then I suppose coal isn’t of much importance to Pennsylvania. In a year when Casey is up for re-election.

    Perhaps that seat is another potential Team R pickup — for whatever purpose that might serve.

  9. palaeomerus says June 21, 2012 at 2:41 pm

    “The blackouts can’t come too soon for my liking. ”

    In some regions it will mean dead kids and elderly people.

  10. LBascom says June 21, 2012 at 2:42 pm

    We’re doomed.

    Here’s an old speech by Malcolm Muggeridge, The Great Liberal Death Wish, that I’ve trotted out before, and was reminded of today.

    my favorite part:

    I recall in their yellow jackets a famous collection in England called the Left Book Club. You would be amazed at the gullibility that’s expressed. We foreign journalists in Moscow used to amuse ourselves, as a matter of fact, by competing with one another as to who could wish upon one of these intelligentsia visitors to the USSR the most out-rageous fantasy. We would tell them, for instance, that the shortage of milk in Moscow was entirely due to the fact that all milk was given nursing mothers – things like that. If they put it in the articles they subsequently wrote, then you’d score a point. One story I floated myself, for which I received considerable acclaim, was that the huge queues outside food shops came about because the Soviet workers were so ardent in building Socialism that they just wouldn’t rest, and the only way the government could get them to rest for even two or three hours was organizing a queue for them to stand in. I laugh at it all now, but at the time you can imagine what a shock it was to someone like myself, who had been brought up to regard liberal intellectuals as the samurai, the absolute elite, of the human race, to find that they could be taken in by deceptions which a half-witted boy would see through in an instant. I never got over that; it always remained in my mind as something that could never be erased. I could never henceforth regard the intelligentsia as other than credulous fools who nonetheless became the media’s prophetic voices, their heirs and successors remaining so still. That’s when I began to think seriously about the great liberal death wish.

  11. Squid says June 21, 2012 at 3:44 pm

    In some regions it will mean dead kids and elderly people.

    Please tell me you’re not pulling a “THINK OF TEH CHIDRENS!” here at PW.

  12. LBascom says June 21, 2012 at 3:54 pm

    To be honest Squid, I kinda had the same thought. When there really are power shortages, and there’s going to be, it’s not going to be pretty.

    We have evolved a huge dependency on electricity, as we should have being it’s amazing stuff that’s greatly advanced civilization, and that temporary politicians are attempting to artificially smother energy production is criminal in my opinion.

  13. newrouter says June 21, 2012 at 4:18 pm

    Now we know the first open Senate race of 2014: Jay Rockefeller’s West Virginia seat.

    Already the subject of speculation that he will not run for a sixth term in two years when he will be 77, Rockefeller’s stunning coal-industry-needs-to-face-reality speech Wednesday seemed to confirm the rumors.

    By taking to the Senate floor to oppose an effort to block an Obama administration rule targeting mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, Rockefeller managed to buck his colleagues in the state delegation, stick it to West Virginia’s vital industry and signal his political intentions all in one fateful act.

    link

  14. BurtTC says June 21, 2012 at 4:34 pm

    “All of which pales in comparison…” RAAAAAAAAAAA…

    I don’t need to finish that. Come on, Jeff, even my cats can hear that dog whistle.

  15. BurtTC says June 21, 2012 at 4:38 pm

    But seriously, I do think these kinds of votes, where Senators reach around across the aisle to allow them to appear less “extreme” (and both sides do it) are more transparent, now that it shows up on the internet almost the instant they do it.

    I know some people around here don’t have much hope for the eventual Romney administration, with these clown in congress, but I really do believe it’s at least POSSIBLE for us to hold them more fully accountable. We have to do our part too.

  16. Dan_H says June 21, 2012 at 6:21 pm

    To be fair, he lied about everything else, so we figured he was lying here, too….

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