Jimmy Carter Should Be Praised

[samplegirl]

Energy Policy Brent Budowsky at The Hill makes an important point that is often overlooked: Jimmy Carter, unlike any president since, had it right on energy policy.

Nixon failed. Ford failed. Reagan failed. George H.W. Bush failed. Clinton failed. George W. Bush failed. Compared to the magnitude of the problem, Obama so far has failed. Democrats failed. Republicans failed. The House failed. The Senate failed…

When Carter said the energy crisis is the moral equivalent of war, he was absolutely right. Carter could have been a more perfect commander in the politics of passing an energy program. Yet the far larger fault lies with the generals, captains and foot soldiers in a war that demanded our support, a war we have never fought, a war we continue to lose today.

Perhaps with the price of oil rising to the skies again, our economic recovery threatened by the punishing price of gasoline, our decadent four-decade program of foreign policy threatened by instability in despotic oil-producing regimes and fears of nuclear meltdown arriving again, this could be President Obama’s moment.

President Obama should pick up where Jimmy Carter left off. Budowsky urges that we incentify car companies to produce vehicles than can get 100 miles per gallon. And…

Let’s fully upgrade the technology at the patent office and hire every employee necessary to fast-track patent approval for all major innovations, especially energy. It is ridiculous for the agency tasked to advance innovation to be a laggard in the world economy.

Let’s have a televised Davos-like summit in Washington to bring together inventors, engineers, entrepreneurs, CEOs, venture capitalists, private equity managers, labor leaders and consumer groups to develop investment, tax and spending policies to win the moral equivalent of war that we must wage and win together.

He’s right. So was Jimmy Carter.

http://alan.com/

[moondust]

1. Thirty years

of intense renewable fuels R&D would have probably reaped significant benefits.

Instead we got the Marlboro Man. :eyes:

[Bragi]

2. He should be canonized (in a secular way, of course) /nt

[Uncle Joe]

3. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, samplegirl.

[SheilaT]

4. Jimmy Carter is, in my opinion, the best president we had

in the second half of the twentieth century. He's been unfairly maligned and denigrated.

[frebrd]

5. +1