From the Denver Post (links mine):
Colorado congressman Doug Lamborn is one of nine House members asking that funds be yanked from programs that finance the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden.
[...] because they “have failed to live up to their supposed potential.”
Actually, I know what Rep. Lamborn is thinking. He’s thinking of the miniscule campaign contributions that he’ll have to take from the dirty energy corporations to help get him re-elected. Because $31,750 in his account is worth more to him than 5,500 highly skilled, well-paid Americans or the $714 million boost to Colorado’s economy that NREL provides (yes, he sells out Coloradans for less than a luxury vehicle. awesome.). As a wild-eyed ideologue, those hard numbers don’t mean a thing. Because his ideology says he needs to whore himself out to corporations on the cheap.
Rep. Lamborn would rather: wreck the stable climate our species has evolved in; keep Americans deployed across the world ensuring regions remain unstable enough to paradoxically justify their deployment; we remain enslaved to carbon-based power using a system that’s over 100 years old instead of de-centralizing and de-carbonizing.
But if you thought the above quote was lunacy, wait until you read this one:
The letter, written by California U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, says: “We should not follow the president’s poor planning in increasing the funding for these anti-energy boondoggles.”
What in the world is an anti-energy boondoggle? Perhaps the biggest problem with Republican Teabaggers is because they’ve never been forced to think things through clearly, they live in a world where stringing together talking points sounds good to them. Built on top of this problem is the corporate stenographer problem: do Yesenia Robles and The Associated Press think simply parroting this insipid quote qualifies as doing their job? Apparently so. The Iraq and Afghanistan invasions/occupations? No, those weren’t boondoggles. NREL is a boondoggle according to McClintock and dutifully parroted by Robles and the AP. The ease with which our democracy is subverted is nauseating.
[Update]: I sent the Post article to a friend. This is part of their reply (I wish I had thought to write it):
Let’ see, where could we begin with NREL’s future impact analogy?…..how about the Internet (NSF), wireless technology (DOE), Polio vaccine (NSF-DHS).
While it’s true that NREL’s potential hasn’t been fully realized as of today, just imagine if we had listened to idiots like Rep. Lamborn in the past. There are good reasons why 1650 wasn’t such a great time.
