Bail Mary

Senate approves bailout bill with renewable-energy tax-credit extensions 5

Muckraker: Grist on Politics

The Senate just passed the financial bailout plan by a vote of 74 to 25. The measure includes a tax package that contains extensions for renewable-energy tax credits, which may hold it up in the House.

Right now, it looks like the House is going to vote on the plan, with the tax package, on Friday.

Kate Sheppard is Grist’s political reporter.

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  1. Tasermons Partner Posted 1:26 pm
    01 Oct 2008

    Is it the original House version......that strips out tax incentives for oil shale, tar sands, and coal-to-liquid fuels.
    'Cause if so, it's a good thing.
    But if the Senate revised it again, I doubt it'd be as worth much.
  2. Kate Sheppard's avatar

    Kate Sheppard Posted 1:47 pm
    01 Oct 2008

    For Tasermons ...It's the Senate version, with the oil shale, tar sands, and CTL provisions. Also, it doesn't have all the pay-fors from the House bill.

    Kate Sheppard
  3. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 2:16 pm
    01 Oct 2008

    A Mac Revolution!

    Hey, I just thought of the best way for "Greens" to fund alternative energy.
    It seems like a lot of "Greens" like Al Gore and Bono spend their time hawking Apple products.
    Now, as well all know, Apple products cost about 10 times more than a similar device that does the same thing.
    How about if instead of buying an iPod you buy a cheapo USB thumb drive with audio from China and then take the difference and put it in a "Green Fund".   Or buy a Linux powered ASUS eee instead of a Macbook and use the extra $4000 for reducing warming?  

  4. stevenearlsalmony Posted 10:53 pm
    01 Oct 2008

    Unheed warning from The King of kings.................... Ozymandias.
    For a long time, I have been haunted by the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) that are emblazoned in a sonnet about Ozymandias.
    " I met a traveller from an antique land

    Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

    Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

    Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown

    And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

    Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,

    The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.

    And on the pedestal these words appear:

    "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

    Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

    Nothing beside remains: round the decay

    Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

    The lone and level sands stretch far away. " --Schelley
    What was the "colossal wreck" this "king of kings" observed and how had it happened? What caused the destruction of the world?
    The calamity Ozymandias witnessed may not have been more or less than the incredible consequences of human greed having exceeded limits to its growth. That is to say, the adamant and relentless greediness of kings and self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe precipitated the gigantic, distinctly human-driven catastrophe to which The King of kings makes reference.
    A billion members of the human family exist on resources valued at less than one dollar per day. Africa is suffering from "slow drip" problems. Europe is getting warmer fast. Arctic ice is retreating and the arctic coast of Alaska is eroding.
    Where are the new ideas, the financial backing, and the innovations needed to address these problems? There are tens of trillions of dollars in the global human economy. Where has all that money gone?
    The front page of the NYTimes tells the family of humanity that we are on the verge of a global economic catastrophe. Are the taxpayers, acting alone, to become responsible for the problems now presented to the human community by the greed of a small group of rich and powerful people worldwide?
    Why are an astonishingly small number of greedy people, holding hundreds of billions of dollars of ill-gotten gains from what are now recognizable as patently unsustainable business models and Ponzi-like financial schemes, not taking responsibility for their avarice?
    Who are the people behind the forbidding financial disaster we see splashed across the front pages of newspapers around the world this morning? Perhaps they need to be named, shamed and held to account.
    Some greedy people are easy to identify. They are ones who have proclaimed themselves "Masters of the Universe" or Bohemians or the Greedy Boys of Greenwich or the Bilderbergers or members of The Trilateral Commission or the many too many outrageously enriched `experts' and politicians who say and do anything to enhance wealth and power of themselves and their benefactors.
    At least to me, it appears the problems in the global economy we are seeing today are the results of greed having reached its limits or, to put it another way, having "hit the wall" of unsustainability. That is to say, greediness of self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe and their minions has reached the point of greed's unsustainability. The global economy can no longer support the conspicuous, patently unsustainable behavior of a small segment of the family of humanity.
    Yes, definitely yes, something new and different needs to be done. Bold action is needed; but, more of the same, old business-as-usual behavior appears insufficient. Limits need to be placed on patently unsustainable behavior. People who are responsible for the global economic mess need to account for their behavior.
    The family of humanity is not responsible for the world's economic mess; but at the moment taxpayers worldwide are being held solely accountable. There is something not quite right about such unfair and inequitable circumstances.
    Steven Earl Salmony

    AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001

    http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php

  5. Tasermons Partner Posted 5:22 am
    02 Oct 2008

    Thanks Kate......but unfortunately, unless the House changes it again, that means the bill isn't worth much, I'm afraid.
    Let's hope it either doesn't pass, or that the House changes it.

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