All this and Silver Sneakers too

Two items caught my attention in the Post recently. "Ethanol subsidies survive in Senate" (8A), and "Lamborn says NREL wasn't in his sights" (1B). The first should come as no surprise to anyone. In spite of all the posturing about the need to do something about the deficit and the need to keep everything on the table (everything but higher taxes), the members of the Senate played to their base and voted to keep ethanol subsidies. After all, the Iowa caususes are looming on the horizon. Tom Coburn from Oklahoma, a state safely out of the corn belt, led the effort to get rid of the subsidy. "We continue to spend money we don't have on things we don't need," Coburn declared.

Meanwhile, Chuck Grassley, Coburn's republican colleague from ethanol dependent Iowa, couldn't understand how anyone could "prefer less domestic energy production." All of Grassley's republican friends from all the other corn producing states agreed and voted to kill the resolution.

In fairness, since I wrote this the Senate has passed a reworked version of the bill. That fact does nothing to lessen the hypocrisy of senators in general and bread belt senators in particular.

When these republican senators talk so passionately about the need to get the deficit under control, how am I supposed to take them seriously?

The other item is even more glaring. It seems republican congressman Doug Lamborn recently signed onto a letter asking to stop funding the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy folks in Washington, the people who supply 90% of the funding for the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in Golden. However, once he discovered that the NREL employs 2300 people, he has reconsidered. The residual jobs and business opportunities generated by such a place amount to 5500 private and public sector jobs and $700 million to our economy, according to Ed Perlmutter, democratic congressman from Jefferson County.

The letter Lamborn signed said that renewable energy research was a "sinkhole for tax dollars, funding ideologically pleasing projects and commercialization and demonstration programs that are best left to the private sector." The idiocy of that language aside, Lambert regrets the potential impact the loss of funding would have on the local economy. I suspect he also regrets the potential impact his signing will have on his next election.

And what about Mitt Romney? An article in The New Yorker (June 6, 2011) talks about Mitt's dilemma as a republican candidate who ramrodded a Massachusetts health care bill through the state legislature requiring all citizens to purchase insurance. Massachusetts health care was Mitt Romney's greatest political accomplishment right up until the time conservative wingnuts told him it wasn't.

Massachusetts health care as created by Romney and Ted Kennedey relies on private insurance and sets up an exchange for citizens who might need such a marketplace. It will help those who can't afford to buy insurance. It mandates coverage. Sound familiar? In the first edition of Romney's book, No Apology, Romney proudly asserts that the health care model established in Massachusetts could very easily pave the way to universal coverage for the nation. In the second edition that sentiment has been deleted.

So now we have Romney running against his own plan, a plan that was initially heralded by conservative icons like the Heritage Foundation and Newt Gingrich. All those conservative voices have now changed their tune. To use a republican phrase, they have flip-flopped. They now lambaste "Obamacare" for the very same reasons they once praised Romney's accomplishment.

By the way, these same conservative voices (you can add Tim Pawlenty to the list) did the same thing with "cap and trade" as a vehicle for addressing energy needs and climate change. This originally conservative idea has been renounced because Obama has championed it.

How can we hope for anything to get accomplished in a poisonous climate like this?

My daughter has only two more weeks in the White House before she takes some time off to have a baby. I can't wait until her last day with the Obamas because in a sense it will be like my last day. I won't feel the need to read Mike Allen's Playbook every morning. I won't feel the need to read all the nasty things people have said about the Obamas in the last 24 hours. I won't feel like I have to watch The Daily Show unless I want to.

I will go back to being interested in the entire political scene on an intellectual level only. I will once again realize that as long as I think only about myself and my needs, my life will go on pretty much unchanged. Sure, I feel better about the direction of my country with Obama at the helm, but things are still basically the same at 9096 W. Quarto Place as they've always been.

Retirement income? Check.

Health care? Check.

Taxes in line? Check

Safe from illegal immigrants, gay marriage, medical marijuana, and anything else I'm supposed to fear? Check.

I get all this, plus I qualify for the Silver Sneakers program at the Y.