Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Pinheaded, Fuzzy-Minded, Arrogant...

When Carol Shea-Porter, my representative to Congress, emailed me a questionnaire about energy policy I was irritated at its deceptiveness. It fell into the category of "Do you think it would be better to conserve energy or just use less? Should we punish the oil companies or the auto manufacturers harder? Carol Shea-Porter is interested in your opinion!"

I doubt that last statement strongly. She sent back a reply - I don't mind that it was a form-letter, I just mind that it was an unthinking party-line form-letter.

And thus a reply to the reply, including a quote from her letter in bold:

"...oil supplies diminishing, exploration and development of oil fields off coastal waters and in our protected lands is not a long-term solution."

Sure it is. Why the hell not? Sez who? (And make the subject agree with the verb, willya?)
Can I make that any clearer? If you only allow one type of solution, you only get one type of answer. The desire for conservation-based solutions is purely aesthetic and romantic - it is, in a very real way, imposing private values on the populace far more than any religious group dreams of.

BTW, the email you sent back to me was truncated on both sides because of poor formatting. I had to guess at the complete quote.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have yet to see or hear a CSP opinion that did not appear to be vetted by the DNC prior to release. Can you say knee-jerk liberal? I'd like to hear an original thought emanate from her mouth at least once before her first (and last?) term ends.

Anonymous said...

Why am I not surprised to see a biased a questionnaire from a politico?

Several years ago I received a questionnaire from the Democratic National Committee. Not surprisingly, it also solicited funds.

I was surprised why the DNC sent it to me- twice- as the last time I voted for a Democratic presidential candidate was the Bicentennial year.

The questionnaire had only one question on Iraq. It had to to with time to withdraw from Iraq. Two years, six months, etc. None of the choices pinpointed my stand: "until we win, and even then to keep a residual force, just as we did in Korea and Germany."