Word: richardson
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...Bill Richardson's troubles, history may remember this as the year the secretary of energy got a very big promotion. Richardson announced Friday the administration's intention to dun the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for 30 million barrels of crude oil, and while the professed reason is to head off a heating-oil shortage this winter, Bill Clinton may have just created a new version of Alan Greenspan...
...move's immediate lesson is that when it comes to political expediency, Al Gore has nothing on his boss. Richardson denied any intended benefit for the aspiring veep, and indeed, not only does the decision positively dwarf Gore's Thursday proposal for "several" 5-million-barrel swaps, any benefits for goosing heating-oil stockpiles are unlikely to show up until well after the election. So the administration's it-was-Bill's-idea announcement, with Al Gore nowhere in sight, may help protect the veep against George W. Bush. But it doesn't make the precedent any less shocking...
...push up demand. The idea of tapping the reserve in the current climate has been around since last winter (when Gore, by the way, resisted the idea, calling it futile and short-term). Where was the administration then? Well, all summer Gore, as now, was bashing Big Oil, and Richardson, as now, was begging OPEC nations to boost production. Both men have now resorted to more practical means, and in the process discarded one more principle - the separation, whenever possible, of government from the markets - in favor of political concerns...
Looks like you can cross off Bill Richardson from the shortlist for jobs in the Gore administration. The beleaguered energy secretary absorbed another blow Thursday when Al Gore took aim at rising fuel prices, urging President Clinton to tap federal petroleum reserves in order to stave off a winter of soaring heating costs - and an autumn of voter discontent. The presidential hopeful, campaigning near Washington, called on Congress to allocate $400 million in energy assistance for low-income families, and to provide tax credits to oil distribution companies...
...vice president's proposal was a highly calculated swipe not only at Richardson's troubled tenure as the nation's oil watchdog, but also at President Clinton himself, whose perceived inaction on the growing energy crisis has marred an otherwise rosy economic outlook and created the potential, come the late fall, for more than a few disgruntled voters. By taking an aggressive stance against the status quo, Gore manages to create the desired distance from Clinton's energy policies, assuring voters that he's able to get tough on important issues - even when the target is his longtime ally...