A belated apology to Jimmy Carter

It is at least 30 years late, but the nation needs to pull a Tony Hayward and offer an abject apology to Jimmy Carter.

He was right about many, many things, but today -- as we continue to absorb the staggering costs and risks associated with deepwater oil drilling gone wild and worse than bad -- we're going to re-visit why he was right about energy.

Throw a rock at any major speech Jimmy Carter gave to the American people in his four years as president of the United States (1977-1981) and you will hit one that featured both broad and focused strategies on how to begin the transition of American energy consumption to include meaningful conservation and alternative sources such as sun and wind. He walked the walk, too: He even had solar panels installed on the White House roof. (R.I.P. 1979-1986).

When it came to this issue, President Carter's quest was to reshape habits and laws to deliver sane and safe energy practices and policies that would shore up costs, independence, environmental threats and national security. He wasn't driven only by the emergencies belonging to his time at the nation's helm, even though the gas station lines and soaring oil prices of the 1970s lent urgency to his work. His concerns were also and importantly about tomorrow.

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20100620/COLUMNISTS10/6200333/1016/OPINION/Pam+Platt+|+A+belated+apology+to+Jimmy+Carter

devastation has occurred in just 30 years after rejecting every thing JC said and stood for and embracing the gipper's trickle-down economics featuring wildly irresponsible fiscal policies, grossly unfair tax policies and all that's followed, including deregulation and a laisse-faire approach to governance, concomitant with pre-emptive wars of choice featuring torture and an assortment of war crimes if one accepts international law and the Geneva Conventions. Welcome America, to the second decade of the 21st century when all the RW seeds of destruction have borne fruit and are nearing full fruition. :P

Symbolically rejecting green power and conservation in favor of drill, baby, drill.

The CONs have been wrong for a long, long time now . . .

It was all about the loot. Fuck the little guy.

A lot of other guys had it right back then too, and all were roundly savaged for it.

I remember talking hairdos mocking Carter. There was nothing but ridicule when he said there would have to be sacrifices made to achieve independence. How dare he say such a thing?! Americans don't sacrifice for anything. I remember hearing all that crap w/ a sinking heart.

absolutely nothing. Idiocy, in my opinion, is incurable.
President Carter lacked a certain political astuteness that cost him (and the country) dearly. But the guy knew what he was talking about and, yeah, if only we, as a nation, had gotten it and adopted his recommendations, what a different world it would be!

I printed up a bunch of shipping labels with Reagan's face on them.
Those with a few pre-cut plastic protectors, my trusty forceps and a pencil, off I went
to place Ronnie's picture on every urinal I could find, at the Steel Mill I worked at and
restaurants everywhere I traveled in So. Cal.

It seemed nobody ever removed them and it was a real joy to piss on Reagan's face! Only got
caught a couple times, but luckily, both times by smiling democrats...

After Reagan's Reign, one of my staff members (a die-hard Republican as it turned out) got me a button that said "I Survived the Reagan Administration." Hate to admit it, but I did not have the courage to wear it in public. It had come to the point, by the time Ronnie was in his last throes, that I honestly was afraid to diss him, uncertain as to what his supporters would do to me. Wish I'd had the urinal targets of his face to spread around. Woulda been great for my mental health, that's for sure!

What a joke! He was elected with oil money and did what he was told to do.

:toast:
ALL MY FRIENDS!

He inherited a load of shit also.

and in a different US, probably a great President.

doubt it..

but he did do that.

Bad image, don't ya know!

the culture of denial, and the ideology of greed. Global warming denial and the tea party movement are just the latest incarnation of this. People seem to go into shut-down mode whenever something comes up that might threaten their lifestyle.

Thanks for the thread, BridgeTheGap.:thumbsup:

Jimmy Carter a man who was always smart, honest, brave and visionary.

everyone! And that story about the solar panels on the White House sums up his smart move to look ahead - leave it to dumbass actor Bonzo to come in and tear them out - man if that doesn't scream arrogant corporate/big oil thuggery, nothing does.

Disgusting so many fell for the "IMAGE" of RayGun...

:kick:

Jimmy Carter is certainly the most under-appreciated president in my lifetime...just as Ronald Reagan is the most OVER-appreciated (in fact, disagreement over Reagan largely led to a marital breakup for me, a wake up call about the priorities of my Reagan-supporting ex), Carter was the sort of honest and well-meaning president that Americans claim they want, but immediately start kicking to death as a "wimp". If a Kucinich or Dean were actually ever elected, I'm sure they'd be treated the same as Carter.

Welcome to DU! :toast:

peace and low stress..

when I asked him whom he thought was THE greatest of our living presidents (this was in 1995)

and he said "Living? Well, Jimmy Carter of course."


and we lived happily ever after....

But a huge K&R for this post.

What a missed opportunity the Carter years were.

However America need to apologize to him for a lot more.

Imagine getting tax credits for setting up your own mini windmill farm on your property, and being able to sell excess energy to the grid! It was like that for a while during the Carter administration. And then the Great Prevaricator came along and trashed Carter's sensible energy policies, among other things.

We thew him out for Ronald Reagan. And everything changed...for the worst.

The greedyest will stop at nothing to destroy anyone who interferes with the GOP's desire to turn this country into a rich only welfare state.

When the media starts telling the whole story of his presidency and his warnings.

current president, and he got pillared by the right, just as they do all Democratic presidents. The right wingers always go out of their way to discredit and delegitimize Democrats when they hold power. To them, it defies the laws of nature when a Democrat is in charge.

Carter's last budget before the election ran a $58 billion deficit -i can still remember that, because the PIGMEDIA went absolutely nuts! ' 58 billion'they schreiked, on every tv and newspaper radio, for week or so before the election! Carter was destroying the US economy etc! If I had 'nexus-plexus' (the neswspaper archive agency) i would go back and put together the 'stampede Carter caused' story, but hell, who cares? (and a phony stampede, needless to say)....
Within a couple years, regan was running yearly 200 billion deficits, running up military spending, and that was mentioned only in financial pages, ahem...nudge wink.
(when Carter left, the US natdebt was $1 trillion; when regan left 8 years later, the debt was $2.6 trillion. When oldbush left, it was 6.5 trillion. Today, it's above $10 trillion (if anyone believes lying pigs!) ...iow, you bin had, america!

. . . and could show this editorial to the nation around November 1, 1980.

I have such an appreciation for Jimmy Carter now. I feel he was the last, great Democratic President.

I'd leave it pinned there if it were up to me.

due simply to the limits of that period's technology. The cost per btu of solar energy in the late '70s was astronomical and is still about 4x coal/nat gas today. One has to be realistic and recognize if we immediately did a widespread adoption of alt energy today the rise in price everyone pays for energy would further crush the economy and would hamper the electoral prospects of anyone who advocated the move and would damage every other agenda wish the party pushing it would hope to accomplish. Push to advance the technology, yes, but before you widespread adopt, wait for the bend in the cost curve and proceed slowly so that market forces spur the change and growth isn't hindered.

story at some point in the mid-80s. And, no, I'm not refuting your statement on where alternatives were under Carter. But he was trying to open an important door to them.
The friend who told me the following story is not one prone to lying or exaggeration and I don't remember the context in which she related this to me:
She had an engineer friend who worked for a corporation during the day. He had his own machine shop at home and he "tinkered" there quite often. It seems he had been working on a carburation/fuel injection system for gas engine vehicles. He told my friend that his system would allow a full size vehicle with a V-8 engine to get 50mpg on the highway. One night, 4 men arrived at his shop un-announced, while he was working. They took his protype, his blueprints, trashed his shop and beat him up, telling him that if he ever worked on this system again they would come back and kill him.
My friend said that as far as she knew, he never worked on it again.
And, yes, I've heard the stories of the safes at the auto companies that held such inventions. But I really didn't know what to make of my friends story. Then I watched films such as "Flash of Genius" about Robert Kearns, inventor of the intermittent windshield wipers and went "hmmmm."
Then watched the documentary "Who Killed The Electric Car?" My friends story is now seeming far more plausible.