The signature campaign of the excellent and effective grassroots libertarian lobbying site Downsize DC is their Read the Bills Act. While still far from introduction much less passage, it is having significant influence on congressional comment and, now, on conduct.
I happened to click the C-SPAN Senate channel a few hours ago partly because I knew they were considering the horrendous Kyoto are US CO2 cap and trade bill. (Go to Downsize DC to e-lobby your reps and sens against it.) The Repubs have cleverly taken the notion of the RTBA and forced the reading of Barbara Boxer’s substitute amendment by the clerk. Actually, it’s taking 2 of them in shifts — they’ve just passed the 6 hour mark.
What a great innovation. Now you can filibuster a bill just by insisting it be read!
The arrogance of this bill from this representative of that paragon of practical energy policy California, is mind boggling. Anybody who is not scared libertarian by this performance needs to have their brains rinsed.
The chutzpah of this bill is particularly astounding given the continually mounting proof that the notion that CO2 can change the mean temperature of the planet is piled cow pucks . On the other hand, Plants love CO2. I happened to catch part of a presentation by the socialist from North Dakota, Byron Dorgan, confirming this. He was describing a proposal for a coal power plant exhausting its CO2 into algae growing greenhouse ponds producing biomass which can be efficiently converted to biodiesel. Of course he can’t leave such a practical notion to the profit motives of capitalism, it needs tax subsidies.
This notion of using the waste CO2 and heat from powerplants to grow algae is not new. A good illustration of the State’s insistence to either subsidize something or prohibit it is the rejection last year by Kansas of a coal plant which would have included just such an experimental algae process.
Well, we’re about to hit 7 hours.