We tend to think of the Bush administration as beginning on 9/11. Things obviously happened before then, but it all seems inconsequential. The future at that point seemed pretty clear; Bush was a not very smart guy who was going to misspeak a lot and give late night talk show hosts nightly material. And Dick Cheney was going to be...Well, pretty much exactly what he is now. Secretive, way more powerful than any vice president should be, and in the hip pocket of big oil. That much became clear when Dick put together an energy task force in 2001. He met with zero environmentalists personally and spent months with executives and lobbyists from oil and energy companies.
The conclusion of the task force was that we had to drill in the Arctic Refuge, where there was about five minutes worth of oil, or America was doomed. By April 2001, the new energy policy was clear. Cheney gave a speech in Toronto, where he said that we should burn every damned thing that we could get our hands on, that there was plenty of stuff left to burn, and that "conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy." The new policy was buy fossil fuels, burn fossil fuels, and -- if at all possible -- feed fossil fuels to kids in free hot lunch programs. The new energy policy could be summed up in your choice of three words -- 'extract and consume' or 'buy, buy, buy.'
That didn't go over very well. Cheney's made a habit of underestimating the american people and this was the first instance of it. Just about everyone knew this was ridiculous crap, that this new energy policy had been written by corporations, and that Dick had no shame. People started calling for information about the task force -- specifically, who was on it -- but VP Secret Squirrel insisted that who had actually written the people's government's energy policy was not the business of the people or other branches of their government. This fight went on until the White House's pet Supreme Court ruled in favor of Cheney in 2004. The secret was secure.
That is, until yesterday...
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