Cheney's Secret Energy Task Force List: The Players at the Table.

by: Libby Shaw

Wed Jul 18, 2007 at 04:27 PM CDT

The Republican will to power and lust for greed dominated the entire process as it always does (remember this happened during the Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff heydays) and so the party’s pay to play decree drove the process.  Those in big oil, gas and trade groups that were among the first to participate in Cheney's task force had all been major donors to the Bush/Cheney campaigns.

Gosh, maybe this is why we have so few options available to us in terms of alternative choices for fuel.  Are we therefore doomed forever to life long addiction to the pusher men in the Middle East?  Does this mean we are damned to life long wars to fight over the pollution producing evil crap that should have been rendered at least partially irrelevant to us at least thirty years ago?

Who are the winners in our national addiction to oil?  Guess.  It’s a no brainer…..It would be none other than Cheney’s best buds the Saudis, of course, and Dictator Greedy Dick too.  The Dictator is obviously addicted to money.  For himself.  Hmmmm… is this why we attacked Iraq and forgot about Osama boy?  Is this why Cheney would stop at nothing to hide his evil little list?

Excerpts from The Washington Post

Papers Detail Industry's Role in Cheney's Energy Report
By Michael Abramowitz and Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 18, 2007; Page A01

Cheney was not there, but so many environmentalists were in the room that introductions took up "about half the meeting," recalled Erich Pica of Friends of the Earth. Anna Aurilio of the U.S. Public Interest Group said, "It was clear to us that they were just being nice to us."

A confidential list prepared by the Bush administration shows that Cheney and his aides had already held at least 40 meetings with interest groups, most of them from energy-producing industries. By the time of the meeting with environmental groups, according to a former White House official who provided the list to The Washington Post, the initial draft of the task force was substantially complete and President Bush had been briefed on its progress.

One of the first visitors, on Feb. 14, was James J. Rouse, then vice president of Exxon Mobil and a major donor to the Bush inauguration; a week later, longtime Bush supporter Kenneth L. Lay, then head of Enron Corp., came by for the first of two meetings. On March 5, some of the country's biggest electric utilities, including Duke Energy and Constellation Energy Group, had an audience with the task force staff.

The list of participants' names and when they met with administration officials provides a clearer picture of the task force's priorities and bolsters previous reports that the review leaned heavily on oil and gas companies and on trade groups -- many of them big contributors to the Bush campaign and the Republican Party. But while it clears up much of the lingering uncertainty about who was granted access to present energy policy views to Cheney's staff, it does not entirely explain why the Bush administration fought so hard to keep it and other as-yet-unreleased internal memos secret.

Give me an I, a M, a P, an E, an A, a C, an H
Dick
Now

It’s time to do some time, Dick.