Sunday, November 11, 2012

We Could Be Stuck With Chu????




Guess What?   My worst nightmare may become reality.  President Obama may have to keep Steven Chu as Energy Secretary.  It is not because Mr. Obama is pleased with Dr. Chu’s job performance.  It is because the US Senate may not approve any other person the President nominates to replace Chu.  Talk about Hobson’s Choice where the choice is a free choice but only one option is offered.  Wiki tells us “The phrase is said to originate with Thomas Hobson (1544–1631), a livery stable owner in Cambridge, England. To rotate the use of his horses, he offered customers the choice of either taking the horse in the stall nearest the door or taking none at all.”


Old Hobson at least had some horsepower while Chu is simply a killer what of cluelessness. 



“In his first term, Obama had sweeping ambitions for the Energy Department, as signaled by his pick of Nobel physicist Steven Chu to lead the department. The idea was that Congress would pass a cap-and-trade climate-change bill and Chu would oversee a transformation of the once-backwater department into a driver of clean-energy development. Instead, cap-and-trade failed, a solar company called Solyndra got a $535 million Energy Department loan and went bankrupt, Chu was tarred with the controversy, and prospects for a climate bill are bleaker than ever. It’s widely known in Washington that Chu wants to leave his post, but people close to the White House say that the president may ask him to stay. One reason: In the fiercely partisan Senate, it could be tough to get a new secretary confirmed.

One candidate who might make it through that process is former Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. Respected by his Senate colleagues, the mild-mannered Dorgan formed many strong working relationships across the aisle. He's also steeped in energy policy and the inner workings of the Energy Department; he served for years on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee; and he chaired the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees Energy's budget. Although a big advocate of clean energy, Dorgan supports the oil and gas fracking boom that has brought an economic revival to his home state.

Also on the list are two former Clinton administration officials. One is Dan Reicher, who served as Clinton’s assistant secretary of energy efficiency and renewable energy, and from 2007 to 2011 was Google’s director of climate-change and energy initiatives. He currently heads the Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University, where Chu was once a professor of physics. Of all the possible candidates, Reicher would likely offer the strongest continuation of Chu’s legacy. The other former Clinton official is John Podesta, chairman of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, who was Clinton’s chief of staff. Their progressive pedigrees could be stumbling blocks to Senate confirmation for both of these men, but Podesta, certainly, would be well suited to navigating the political vagaries of the top Energy post, which was widely seen as Chu’s greatest failing.”

President Obama if Chu wants to leave please show him the door!!  I will write each and every US Senator to confirm whomever you nominate for energy secretary even if you choose Al Gore.  Actually if Al Gore became energy secretary he would do less harm to the world as he would actually have some constraint on the thermodynamic nonsense he espouses and he would have to expose all of his investments in companies that received US tax payers’ money.     Yeah I say Al Gore for Energy Secretary. 

Like a three year old I am reciting my ABCs over and over and it goes like this “Anybody But Chu, Anybody But Chu, Anybody But Chu,………….”

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