10 Things You Didn't Know About Harry Reid

I like Harry Reid a lot. His biggest fault, though, is the fact that, like President Obama, he hasn't been forceful enough in a few instances when he had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate and allowed the republicans led by Mitch McConnell enough time to gain a position with the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts to be able to block legislation that is sorely needed and supported by the American public. A perfect example is the "American Power

Act" which had passed the House 18 months before with a comfortable bi partisan majority, and was supported, according to a Gallup poll, by 85 percent of the American voters. Several republican senators supported the bill including Orrin Hatch, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Lindsey Graham of S.C., until McConnell cracked the whip and forced all of them to pull their support. There were problems with the bill, according to McConnell. First, it would force big oil to pay the cost of cleanup for "accidents" rather than forcing American taxpayers to pay for their mistakes, as had been the policy allowed under "W" Bush, which set a $75 million liability cap for big oil. The BP spill will end up costing at least $30 billion, and taxpayers can thank President Obama for summoning BP Chairman Tony Hayward to Washington and extracting $20 billion for starters from BP placed into escrow. Dick Cheney met with Big oil executives early in 2001 in a secret meeting at Camp David and allowed them to write the energy bill as they saw fit, as a "thank you gift" for their millions in "contributions" donated to the Bush campaign, including the unlimited use of the Enron corporate jet as a campaign plane. Had Obama not gotten the $20 billion form BP, the American taxpayers would have been on the hook for the cost of the BP Horizon disaster. Republican leaders were OUTRAGED at the time, saying that it was "only fair" that taxpayers, not BP, pay the cost of the cleanup. If I were running Obama's campaign, I would play those comments about 5,000 times just before the election, because it tells, in a nutshell, who the republicans are REALLY working for. McConnell's opinion that the energy bill needed to be blocked was strengthened by the fact that big oil had just given him a $500,000 contribution, and the coal lobby kicked in another $50,000. Both of these lobby groups wanted to stop the energy bill, because it would promote alternative energy and reduce dependency on OPEC. Exxon, Shell, BP, Marathon and others make money off our dependency. While $5.50 gasoline was destroying our economy, Exxon was netting $40 billion per year. The energy bill provided help for converting the nation's trucking fleet from Diesel to Compressed Natural Gas, which would eliminate HALF our oil imports within 5 years, but would cost big oil trillions of dollars in profits. CNG sells for $1.39 per gallon vs $3.75 for diesel,saving truckers $4,000 per mo. and it's 100% American made with 1/4 of the CO2. Big oil wins, America loses!

K Mac Gardner of OK 3:38PM September 09, 2011