RMoney’s energy policy: Drill Baby Drill, allowing states to bypass those pesky Feds when it comes to being bought off by anyone who wants suck dinosaur wine* out of your neighborhood’s nice places.
Of course, there is nothing to see here but prudent and thoughtful policy making:
An individual close to the Romney campaign said that Mr. Romney’s staff drafted the proposal in consultation with industry executives, including Harold Hamm, an Oklahoma billionaire who is the chairman of the campaign’s energy advisory committee and chief executive of Continental Resources, an oil and gas driller.
Just this week, the oil and gas industry gave nearly $10 million toward the Romney election effort in two fund-raisers.
But of course, move along. Nothing to see here:
The Romney aide, who said she was not authorized to speak on the record about the plan, said that any consultation with industry officials was simply to tap their expertise and did not mean the proposal was being shaped to serve their interests. [Emphasis added.
Translation: We know what we are. We’re just haggling over price…and in fact 10 million against billions shows that we’re pretty damn cheap.
There seems to be literally no limit to how much cash RMoney can spend. Fortunately he remains Mitt Romney. Which is why we’re in with a chance.
Factio Grandaeva Delenda Est.
*Yes, yes, yes, I know (as I said before in this space) that dinosaurs and fossil fuels have nothing to do with each other. See Dan Jenkins Semi-Tough for the connection.
Image: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The Sofa, 1894-1896.
John O
Someone clever should write something clever about how nobody knows, in any meaningful way, how Romney will govern.
The man could win, most in his position economically do, and govern like a crazy leftist like, say, Romney’s fucking Dad.
Redshift
News stories about this policy announcement should have a headline about the ROI those industry contributors are getting. That’s the real story; it’s a hell of a lot higher than any of their other lines of business.
Tom Levenson
@Redshift: A-F**king-Men
Tom Levenson
@John O: Not willing to bet my kid’s future on it.
danielx
Yup. It’s not exactly news that American politicians are bought and paid for, the amazing thing is how cheaply they sell themselves. Ten mil for the oil and gas industry as a whole amounts to a rounding error. Talk about your ROI!
Xboxershorts
We really can’t drill much more than we already are.
Yutsano
@Tom Levenson: Even if it’s anthropoligically wrong, dinosaur wine is fecking brilliant!
SFAW
@Redshift:
Just proving that Mittens is truly a
Wealth_for_a_bunch_of_oil_company_executivesJob Creator. So cut Mitt some slack, instead of trashing his efforts to improve unemployment.SFAW
Makes perfect sense, because oil exploration and production is such a new industry, and there’s so little info about it in the public domain, and certainly no experts outside of oil company execs.
Catpause
TIL my gram-gram dressed like a French whore.
MikeJ
When I hear dinosaur wine I think Lilac Wine.
Quincy
@Redshift: You act as if oil companies were somehow unsavory like teachers unions.
Citizen_X
@Xboxershorts: This. We’re kinda maxed out already. A Romney administration might increase drilling slightly, by relaxing (Federal) regs, reporting requirements etc. The benefits would be marginal, and not at all realized equally across the industry. The alternative is continued (slow) broad economic growth under Obama, which would raise energy demand across the board. So the ROI actually sucks.
But, you know, wanna live like a Republican? Vote like a Democrat.
srv
So FL and CA are going to rush out and start beautifying their beach views with derricks?
Tom Levenson
@Catpause: Would have like to meet your ancestor.
YellowJournalism
@John O: That wouldn’t happen until the second term, just like how Obama is going to outlaw guns and establish Sharia Law if he’s re-elected.
? Martin
The big giveaway on Romney’s plan is the goal of energy independence that starts with completing the Keystone pipeline whose primary purpose is to import oil from Canada (uh, increasing imports is going to make us more dependent, not less) to refineries in the south. Oh, look! Romney is BFFs with the guys who own the refineries in the south!
? Martin
@srv: Yeah, don’t fucking count on that. We’re still trying to tear them down.
Besides, California oil is pretty shit. We’ve already pumped out the light stuff – what’s left isn’t really suitable for gasoline and diesel.
Besides, fuck y’all. Obama is going to win here by 20 points and we’re already doing that shit:
We’re the ones setting the emissions standards and the mileage standards for the nation. We don’t need Romney’s fucking help.
NotMax
There is almost no emptier phrase in the political arena than “energy independence.”
It’s been a boilerplate statement in presidential elections for 40 years now. And yet it keeps getting dusted off and trotted out each cycle.
jayackroyd
1) I vote for the R-MONEY version of the appellation.
2) I really think reporters might refuse to quote people who are only authorized to speak off the record. It’s reached a point of ridiculousness, like administration press briefings where there are dozens of people, that flacks get to be quoted anonymously. It’s like a conference call I was on, with Valerie Jarrett talking about I don’t remember what. It’s sorta newsworthy that the first talking point she mentioned was Obama’s commitment to reducing the deficit.
Xboxershorts
@jayackroyd:
And he has. By about 120 Billion. Do you realize how difficult that is while the GDP, employment numbers and tax revenues are all depressed?
If only congress would bother to look at his jobs proposals.
Hell, the infrastructure bank he proposed was budget neutral. But this fucking congress and its partisan bullshit wouldn’t even consider it.
Redacted
I wish someone would ask Romney to explain how producing more oil, a global commodity, can give the US energy independence. It’s a resource that goes to the highest bidder regardless of location. Wind and solar produced on our grid, stays on our grid. True, the same can be said for coal and natural gas, but oil? WTF dude.
jayackroyd
@Xboxershorts:
Um it’s stupid and deeply counter productive. Yeah, that’s their centrist talking point–hell yeah, we hate deficits, and we fucking mean it, too. We WILL cut spending on government jobs with an unemployment rate in the 8s. This is bad public policy, especially with a real interest rate of zero on public borrowing. We should be converting this “it’s raining soup” opportunity to physical infrastructure, hiring anybody and anybody to fix our bridges and pull fiber to our post offices and libraries.
Xboxershorts
@jayackroyd: Your point?
Austerity in the face of recession is well documented to make said recession even worse.
Every fucking congress critter who’s served at least 3 god damned terms knows this.
Your snark is both ill advised and quite telling of your ignorance of your own history.
Do open your snark bucket again, I am quite enjoying exposing the fallacies therein.