2006

The Best Bit of the Speech

The Mercury restrictions. Jack Darin covered it over at the Sierra Club blog . Mercury pollution is a pretty straightforward problem of, if it costs more to remove it, then those using the power should pay more to remove it. The technology is there and doing it in short order makes a lot more sense than 2018. Frankly, if the specific plants can’t be retrofitted, it’s time to build new plants.

It also produced the best quote of recent weeks from Steve Rauschenberger:

“I like clean air, but…

And it didn’t get better in context:

….I’m not sure what he’s talking about is practical or affordable,

The question isn’t whether it is practical or affordable, but whether it is important to protect human health. Practical or affordable goes to methods to reach a goal, not what the goal should be. That is the basis of the Clean Air Act and the State of Illinois is clearly going to have to move ahead since Bush seems to think a twelve year phase in is reasonable.

It’s not the revolving door–it’s using lobbyists to analyze policy impacts

Rich’s column is good this week pointing out that the close relationship to lobbyists and politicians isn’t that unusual and the G-Rod Administration isn’t much different from others–other than the Governor’s penchant for claiming to be different and ending politics as usual. I’d generally agree, though my take on the Keno story is that using estimates from a company that would be a leading bidder for the contractor, even while saying the administration didn’t take the numbers seriously, is the greater problem.