Liberty's Blog

Dennis Hastard's New Blog

Speaker of the House Dennis Hastard, started his own blog. Pretty cool,

This is Denny Hastert and welcome to my blog. This is new to me. I can’t say I’m much of a techie. I guess you could say my office is teaching the old guy new tricks. But I’m excited. This is the future. And it is a new way for us to get our message out.

Most of you know me as a coach by nature so I hope this gives you some inside access to the Republican playbook.

The internet is changing the way we share information. My office has been talking a lot about some of the conversations going on in blogosphere. So I thought, hey, I should start one and give you unfiltered updates on Capitol Hill.

Let me start by first saying that we need to keep our thoughts and prayers with the victims of Hurricane Wilma. There has been a lot of damage. It’s in the billions of dollars I’m told. But we were better prepared this time so the loss of life and property damage was not as bad as it could have been.

You know, we’ve had a rough hurricane season. All of our hurricanes have dealt a serious economic blow to the U.S. And that means we’re going to have to do some belt-tightening – throughout the federal government.

Government leaders are going to find that the best way to get their message out to their constituents is through blogging. The advantage of blogging is that ones views can be expressed unfiltered, and well thought out. The disadvantage is that ones words can be subject to close scrutiny and critisism. The voter though is well served. Hastard did get some critisism and reponse by Matt Bramanti of The Lone Star Times. Hastard critisizes the oil companys expencive fuel prices, yet excellent 3rd quarter profits.

This is America. And Republicans don’t believe in punishing success. But what are these oil companies doing to bring down the cost of oil and natural gas? They haven't built a refinery here in America since the 1970's. They've built refineries overseas, but nothing here at home.

We want some answers and you folks out there in the blogosphere do too. When are new refineries going to be built here in America? When is the Alaska pipeline deal going to be signed so we can get natural gas to consumers quicker? Conoco Phillips has reached an agreement with the state of Alaska on the pipeline. Exxon Mobil and BP need to do the same. These companies need to invest in America’s energy infrastructure and resources. Until they do, we're going to be asking some tough questions.

The last sentence sounds pretty threatning, and Matt responds;

Hastert, you’re a Republican. Try rewording that statement with other commodities.

• "But what are these farmers doing to bring down the cost of sugar?"
• "But what are these lumber mills doing to bring down the cost of two-by-fours?"
• "But what are these gold miners doing to bring down the cost of gold?"

The speaker ends by threatening promising to send us more pearls of wisdom:

Matt has a valid point, What strikes me is that what is overlooked is that the oil companys are reluctant to go through the permit process which is an expencive process that can take 7 - 10 years, in that time market conditions can change dramatically. A government that complains about profits, and encourages reducing fuel usage is not going to get anyone to invest in building a refinary that could easily take 10 years before the first gallon of gasoline is produced.

posted by Liberty @ 10:26 AM