It’s strictly symbolic, but I’m glad that President Obama is putting solar panels back on the White House. Jimmy Carter was the president who first installed them. Reagan immediately took them down because he was a jackass.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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I don’t understand how you could call Reagan a jackass, Boo. Everyone knows he was a stooge.
Nonsense! He was a dimwit, a fuckhead and a douche bag.
And a treasonous traitor.
Symbolism is wonderful, but judging from the field of Democratic candidates for PA governor, Pennsylvania is going to continue to get fracked.
Back to the solar panels, those installed today are cheaper and more efficient than what was installed in the Carter era.
Now can we see a hybrid or electric Presidential vehicles, energy self-sufficiency for the White House and Camp David and solar panels on every flat roof the GSA manages? The Presidential Tesla?
I thought they already ordered the fleet to be only hybrid vehicles back in 2009 or 2010.
They did, but the Secret Service told Obama ‘no,’ on the Presidential Limo.
Too heavy with armor. IIRC Johnson’s Lincoln limo was five or six tons with a beefed up motor. Floor was armored too and rightly so. You wouldn’t want the POTUS to get hit with an IED, would you? Today, I wonder about an anti-tank missile.
I hope the Presidential limo is diesel, as that is a lot less flammable in case of a bomb attack.
that’s understandable, it’s way too heavy
I knew I heard all the rest of the fleet was being converted.
I hope at least by this point, 5 years in, that O has also replaced all the Edison/GE incandescent bulbs in the WH in favor of more energy efficient compact fluorescent.
As for the Tesla, he can by a pricey elitist one now for $70 grand, or wait until the end of next year and buy the new people’s Tesla, a crossover type, the Model X, for a mere $35k. Politically better to wait and buy an X.
You can order the X now and it is definitely not $35k. Musk is promising a $35k model with great range but no real details yet ….
Yeah I might be confusing prices on upcoming new Teslas. Does make more sense that a SUV type model, the X, would not price that low. Must have had in mind the model for the masses scheduled for 2016.
So Obama can go ahead and buy the Model S and check the “Made in America” and “environmentally conscious” boxes, and let the phony anti-elitist conservatives (quietly driving expensive luxury cars, usually foreign) carp away hypocritically.
Obama drove a Ford Escape Hybrid as a Senator (or rather he had one – not sure how much driving was done) so he knows how to choose a car for symbolism. That had it all, made-by-UAW-in-America, American brand, hybrid for green, small SUV for “family” (although I don’t think any American-branded sedan hybrids were available then – not counting the rubber-band-quality things GM was peddling that were so bad most state incentives excluded them).
It would be interesting to ask the company which builds the bomb-proof limos to create a Tesla version based on the X when it starts to ship – early 2014 last I heard. I’m sure it’s possible and at 300 mile range the battery would be sufficient. They’d probably have to adjust the motor though – although strong enough (given the acceleration) it would need to adapt to the extra weight.
Sadly, all the CFL’s that I can find (I converted the whole house years ago) are made in China.
Yeah, symbolic.
Carter was good at symbols, too. Remember that Garry Trudeau was so impressed that he invented a character, Duane Delacourt, as Carter’s secretary of symbolism:
http://www.confessor.org/projects/doonesbury.php?Character=1061
I’m happy with symbolic moves but am too experienced to get any encouragement from them.
We just returned from 1.5 weeks in the province of Quebec where my son noted that in all that time we saw one Suburban, one Yukon XL, no Ford Exploders or Extinctions and a lot of normal-sized cars. It was quite a shock to step out of the Denver airport and view the sea of urban assault vehicles Americans drive.
While we were there we used a car on only 3 days – would have preferred none but the cost of train fare across the province for the family was more than twice the total car cost. The cities were definitely pro-pedestrian and bicycle and it was a royal pain driving in them. In other words, Quebec has its priorities right.
Meanwhile, in the US in 2013 the White House is finally getting around to symbolically putting up solar panels. This despite 8 years of occupancy by the party of the so-called left in the 1990s as well as the last 5.5 years. Yeah, sorry, just not impressed at all.
Did you miss the billions of dollars this administration spent to jump-start the solar and wind industries in the Recovery Act?
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2010/2010-12-22-091.html
GIve it a rest, Joe. I know that Obama hasn’t done NOTHING for the environment. In fact I’m very aware of the pro-environmental laws and regulations that they’ve managed to push through. On a personal note I was pleased to learn that as part of the budget deal in December they renewed the EVSE 30% tax credit (for home electric vehicle chargers), saving me a few hundred in 2012 taxes. And I’ve seen that in continuing negotiations with the extremist party that they continue to fight for more renewable tax incentives.
My disappointment in the post above is about the US in general and not specific to the Obama administration. Pro-oversized SUV, anti-public transport, pro-global warming denial. None of these are the fault of Obama or his administration. Not really a fault of Clinton either – I mean, neither Bill nor Barak nor (if she wins in 2016) Hillary is known for sticking their neck out for big initiatives unless there is a popular groundswell, and there certainly hasn’t been one in this country except among us environmental elitists.
Yes, I’d love to see Obama push harder on environmental issues, and I do think his lack of doing so strongly indicates that the Democratic political class doesn’t really think global warming is a serious threat. But the problem isn’t with Obama – it’s with the American media/political/industrial complex.
I think they do think it’s a serious threat, but have recognized they are powerless to stop it.
I remember when people were yelling at Obama because he hadn’t installed the solar panels in his first time. That horrible sellout.
It wasn’t a sellout, though I’m sure you can find comments somewhere on the internet saying that. But it did indicate that in his first term the environment was well down the list of priorities. Not off of the list – there were a number of important improvements, somewhat counter-balanced by some backwards progress on other areas (but very obviously far better than any GOP president would have been). However, there is a sense from the Democratic insider political class that the environment is just one of many constituencies, and a small one really pushed by the more elite (educationally and/or economically) members of the party. Yes, give the environmentalists a few successes but it’s nowhere near the priority of other issues. And not putting solar panels on the white house during the first term pretty well symbolized where the environment fit in the priority list.
Please do not overstate what I’m saying. There has been some progress under Obama. He has been immeasurably better than a GOP president on the environment. BUT, if the Democratic leadership really believed what the science is telling them about a) climate and b) the general state of all kinds of finite resources (especially sea and land food) they would be putting this at the top of their priority list. But they aren’t so they clearly don’t believe the science.
Down the list of priorities my ass. He actually passed over immediate, shovel-ready stimulus projects to get alternative energy funding into the Recovery Act.
Think about that: knowing that the shitty economy was going to be a drag on his political standing, he prioritized exactly this – solar energy – over jobs jobs jobs.
Give it a rest yourself. You are way off-base with this. You are elevating cute symbolism over substantive policy gains. There has been a hell of a lot more that “some progress” under Obama. He has made the United States into the world leader in investment in alternative energy research and implementation, and the world leader in reduction of greenhouse gases. #1, in both categories.
That the party as a whole has not been on board only makes his accomplishments more impressive.
Were there bankers’ heads displayed prominently upon them? Because otherwise, it just doesn’t count.