Archive for March 31st, 2010

March31

Empty tank: Expanding drilling is bad deal for taxpayers

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The Obama administration should not lift the moratorium on offshore drilling that has been in place since 1982. Offshore drilling does not solve our nation’s energy needs and is a dangerous distraction from real solutions.

Making a bad situation worse, President Barack Obama’s plan to pursue a broad expansion of offshore drilling while failing to hold Big Oil accountable on royalty reform will leave taxpayers shortchanged by billions of dollars.

This would have been bad energy policy in the 1980s; it is intolerable in 2010.

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Posted in: Climate Change, Congress, Energy1 comments

March31

Obama's kidney punch to environmentalists

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Chris Bowers on Open Left says that Obama’s decision to expand offshore drilling is more  a move to gain support from conservative Democrats than an attempt to reach across the aisle. As Bowers sees it, Obama’s popularity among core Democrats and progressives is high enough to allow him to play the middle against the left:

Rather than trying to placate green groups, the President Obama is playing up how he is charting a unifying course of moderation in opposition to those groups.  Much like Blanche Lincoln, he protrays himself as an independent, nonpartisan voice standing up to environmental extremists on behalf of his constiuents.

Posted in: Climate Change, Energy0 comments

March31

When it comes to opposing financial reform, banksters' inconsistency is their consistency

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While Wall Street is spending millions opposing the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of TARP’s Congressional Oversight Panel, points out today in Politico that just a few years ago the American Bankers Association had argued just the opposite. In 2006, the ABA argued that consumer protection duties should not be given to banking regulators because it would create “confusion.” Those duties should be handled by a separate entity, the bankers said in a memo to federal officials. Warren calls out the ABA:

The lobbyists’ consistent theme is unmistakable: They oppose meaningful rules in the consumer credit market.

In 2006, they opposed any structure that might have produced rules to rein in subprime mortgage lending. In 2010, they oppose any structure that might rein in a broader array of tricks and traps.

Posted in: Congress, Consumer Protection0 comments

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