So today my Congressman, John Dingell was tossed out of his chairmanship of the House Energy committee. So why am I celebrating the loss of power for my congresscritter? Well, obviously I didn't vote for the guy if I'm celebrating, but why not?
First of all, John Dingell has been representing parts of southeast Michigan for nearly 54 years. I have a problem with that in general so I'm already not a fan. But Dingell in particular is loathesome for extra special reasons. In particular, he is bought and paid for by the auto companies. For some things, like the auto company bailout I'm mildly in favor of, this is a good thing.
However, as chair of the House Energy committee, it's a disaster. For his entire 50 years, and in particular since we realized that oil was not a limitless resource (originally in the 70s, and again lately) he's blocked all kinds of legislation that would improve CAFE standards or move us towards a genuine energy policy. Fortunately, our newly progressive Democratic overlords led in particular by the President-elect, Nancy Pelosi, and Henry Waxman our new Energy chair, ousted his sorry ass today in a close vote among the Democratic caucus. Yay!
Waxman in particular is awesome. Last seen battling the forces of evil and investigating damn near every aspect of the Bush Administration, he was before that a damn fine legislator. It seems likely that the United States will finally have a real energy policy, and that's a change we can all believe in.
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