Pacific Views

Turning the U.S. into an elected dictatorship.

In an earlier post, we looked at the arguments that Dubya's administration is using to persuade the US Supreme Court to put its stamp of approval on the veil of secrecy hiding the proceedings of the energy task force that VP Dick Cheney headed in 2001. Those arguments bear an uncanny resemblence to those the administration is using to justify its conduct of the 'war on terror,' especially in their expansion of unchecked presidential power.

At the NY Times, economist Paul Krugman puts in his very well-informed two cents on why Dubya is so intent on keeping the activities of Cheney's energy task force out of public view.

The main public justification for the Cheney task force was the 2000-2001 electricity crisis in California. For at least two years, we've known that this crisis was largely the result of market manipulation by energy companies — and surmised that some of those same companies were advising Mr. Cheney on energy policy. But the public will pay a lot more attention if it turns out there is documentation that any energy executives were telling Mr. Cheney how to solve power shortages even as their traders were busily creating those shortages

Posted by Magpie at April 27, 2004 07:44 AM | US Politics | Technorati links |