Why indeed? Although it might depend on what form these tax breaks take. You can see a dividend from these oil companies simply by investing in them.
I should see a dividend check because my tax money was invested in it. No further steps are needed.
Who authorized a staff member to allow a shaky company to get millions of taxpayer dollars, and who was this staff member?
I don't know, but I would like to throttle him personally.
And what is "the other side" trying to do?
There is no evidence for this. Recall that the Republicans turned on George Bush for his spending and his ratings went in the tank.
What I was referring to is partisan politics. "The other side," is Democrat (if you're Republican) or The Other Side is Republican (if you're Democrat). And there is constant evidence for this. Right now, the vast majority of those thinking Obama's doing a bad job are Republican or at least conservative. When Bush (W) was in office the vast majority thinking he did a bad job were Democrat or at least liberal. This is absolutely consistent. The evidence is massive and can be seen easily even on this site. Doubtless, you provide situations where this is not true, but these examples do not represent the majority of thought.
Partisan politics is a lousy way to analyze situations and events. Whether people encourage or discourage the activities of our politicians it should be based upon the "merit of the action" not the party a politician belongs to. We hear a lot about the failure of Solydra, but what about the successes? I tried to look that up but can find nothing. Why? Is anyone foolish enough to believe that there were none? People are trying to undermine Obama and prove he's bad by only pointing out the failures. They believe they are only undermining Obama, but what they're doing is undermining the new energy. Obama will leave office eventually. The damage to him is temporary. But alternative energy will be hindered and given a bad rap for the forseeable future. People won't want to invest, support, or start companies because of it. Let me tell you we will need alternative energy very badly in the future. Trying to kill it with all this bad press, just to get at Obama, only serves to damage alternative energy. And by damaging it, people are damaging America's future.
Americans are no longer looked upon as a serious people. We'll see what happens after the next election, however, and whether this can be turned around. Unless spending is brought under control the future does not look bright.
We're not seen as serious because we spend so much time fighting each other we aren't coordinated enough to get anything done. A new election will only mean another guy that the opposite side will oppose because of his party, and still nothing will get done.
If too many Americans are genuinely depending on a left wing government to show them the way of the future then the United States will waste away in the acrimony that we see in te streets today.
There we go. This is partisan politics. You'll shoot down anything Obama tries because you see him as left wing. You can't imagine he has any good ideas because of his affiliation. When we see a Republican president, the left will fight him on everything because they think he can't have a good idea. Not nearly enough people will analyze the "idea" as opposed to the "party" and we'll be stuck in the quicksand of political detritus while China passes us by.
And I have never heard of any person "insisting on oil and only oil". If you have a link to anyone making such a foolish statement you should link to it. But in fact the private sector is working on alternative energy sources right now and using their own time and money to do it.
And I have never heard either of anyone "undermining new energy development". Have you? It is unreasonable to have Barrack Obama throwing taxpayer dollars around and accusing others of "treason" when they complain about it.
It is constantly happening via bad press. On this site, if anyone posts a positive thread about alternative energy a boatload of folks come around to say it can never work outside the lab, it costs too much, it's a commie plot blah blah blah. Even in this thread you can see where folks pointed out this latest failure proves alternative energy cannot work. Ignoring that this failure is a failure of business management, not the product. People are simply parroting what they read in the press. And there's loads of it in the press. This is "undermining new energy development."