Deep In Denial, Smokey Joe Barton Unleashes Dirty Energy Plan
Deep In Denial, Smokey Joe Barton Unleashes Dirty Energy Plan
Our guest blogger is Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch.
Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, today unveiled a cynical Republican alternative to the clean energy jobs legislation being developed by committee Democrats. Barton is arguing that his legislation is a “viable alternative to a mandatory cap and trade plan” that sets economy-wide standards for global warming pollution.
In reality, it’s hardly a viable alternative — only something that can be presented as one. This is basically a PR stunt aimed at conning the public to stay stuck in the same dirty energy rut that is destroying our economy and environment.
The Barton plan summary I’ve reviewed includes such choice items as:
– Repealing the Supreme Court decision which said the US EPA could limit greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
– Preempting state authority to reduce climate-related emissions. This is a direct attack on California and other states that have sought to avert the threat of catastrophic global warming and create green jobs.
– Providing regulatory and financial rewards to coal-burning power plants that use “currently available technology.” In other words, more dirty coal-fired plants that kill and sicken our children and grandparents.
– Providing new subsidies for hazardous nuclear power plants.
– Defines nuclear power and advanced coal technology as “renewable.”
– Repealing “decoupling” mandates that reward utilities for reducing wasted energy.
– Promoting more oil drilling off the coasts and Luntzian “environmentally sensitive American energy exploration” in the Arctic wildlife refuge.
– Subsidizing climate-killer fuels produced from coal, oil shale, methane hydrates, and tar sands.
While not quite ignoring the threat of climate change, Barton’s bill does spit in the face of science. The bill includes a provision that establishes emissions performance standards for new coal plants — but “all existing generating facilities are grandfathered.” Unsurprisingly, Barton’s proposed standards are laughably weak, onlying require coal plants to be as efficient as less-polluting natural gas plants by 2030. This proposal, combined with the incentives for new drilling, the reversal of fuel economy standards, and promotion of highly polluting alternative fuels, would guarantee that U.S. emissions would continue to increase without bound for the foreseeable future.
Barton is just blowing smoke: new subsidies for oil, coal, and nuclear, rollbacks of environmental standards, Orwellian language, and denial of the science of climate change. Wasn’t eight years of planetary and economic destruction enough?
Download the summary of the Barton dirty energy plan.
Rep. Barton, who’s received millions in campaign contributions from electric utilities and the oil and gas industries in recent years, has introduced a bill that’s nothing short of bailout for big polluters. We don’t need more fat paychecks for oil executives – we need clean energy jobs for Main Street. Americans don’t want a return to failed Dick Cheney-style energy policies. They want a new direction -- one that repowers America's economy with millions of clean energy jobs, breaks our dependence on oil and reduces the carbon pollution that causes global warming.
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Can you can connect- Healthcare, Healthcare Fraud, SEC Fraud, Bankruptcy Fraud, Financial Fraud and Mortgage Fraud- all for “market driven healthcare” in America?
Currently there is a one man media blitz- Richard Scott (aka Rick) – probably using monies stolen from the same American people he is now attempting to exploit–once again.
Ironically his logo for the ‘non-profit’ – Conservatives for Patients’ Rights is “CPR”- ???
2009 – The Wall Street Journal reported that Richard Scott, “the former chief executive of HCA Inc,” had formed the non-profit organization Conservatives for Patients’ Rights as part of a “lobbying campaign to derail or modify” President Obama’s health care proposals,…
The wrath of Richard Scott (aka Rick) and associates” fraud is still affecting main street America.
Let us look at what the market driven healthcare in our country has done for our future.
Step back a few decades to begin the journey of Richard (aka) Scott.
July 26, 1997, Los Angeles Times article:
A controversial deal maker whose hard-nosed business tactics have reshaped the medical industry resigned Friday as scandal engulfed the vast hospital empire he had assembled over the last decade.
Richard Scott — sometimes called “the Bill Gates of health care” — quit as chairman of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. amid a massive federal investigation into the Medicare billing, physician recruiting and home-care practices of the nation’s largest for-profit health care company.
Columbia/HCA is a partnership of financier Richard Rainwater of Ft. Worth and lawyer Richard Scott. Scott was recently terminated by Darla Moore, the wife of Richard Rainwater .
Rainwater also owned a large stake in Magellan Health Care which controls Charter Medical. Magellan, run by Darla Moore, is the largest network of psychiatric hospitals in the country. They are becoming more and more involved in obtaining government money for services formerly not covered as health care, according to Fortune Magazine.
1997 – Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. – the nation’s largest for-profit health care company
Note: Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) was acquired by Columbia in 1994.
Balanced Budget Act of 1997- Home health – which was struggling under the Balanced Budget Act of 1997; about 1,400 agencies closed nationwide in 1998.
On Sept 8, 1998 Standard and Poors downgraded the bonds of Charter/HCA to negative bases on poor earnings. Looks like Rainwater and his Crescent Cos’ have finally stumbled.
Columbia just decided to sell its home health-care business and its head announced she is forming a company of her own. The home care unit is valued at $ 450 million.
http://WWW.USDOJ.GOV
HCA Inc.
formerly known as Columbia/HCA and HCA – The Healthcare Company)
LARGEST HEALTH CARE FRAUD CASE IN U.S. HISTORY SETTLED; HCA INVESTIGATION
Rick Scott was recently terminated by Darla Moore, the wife of Richard Rainwater and according to Fortune Magazine, the “Toughest Babe in the Business”. Moore created the corporate bankruptcy finance tool, DIP, debtor in possession while at a Chase bank. (1997, Fortune) Darla Moore, titled “The Toughest Babe in Business.”….
In 1997, as part of Richard Scott’s severance package from Columbia he was paid $5.13 million and given a five year consulting contract at $950,000 per year.
1997 + 5 = 2002
In 2002 FBI raided the offices of National Century Financial Enterprises in Dublin, Ohio
“This case is one of the largest corporate fraud investigations involving a privately held company headquartered in small town America,” said Assistant Director Kenneth W. Kaiser of the FBI Criminal Investigative Division.
Guess where ALL of those Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. – home-care units were? National Century Financial Enterprises- “…largest corporate fraud investigations involving a privately held company…”
11 Executives found guilty-one acquittal, James K Happ.
While Richard Scott was at Columbia in 1997 – James K Happ was CFO of Columbia Homecare Group, Inc.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:37 pm