Yeetle Box - Green Government and Gax Tax Holiday Revisited

Sen. John McCain has pledged to make the federal government more environmentally friendly. Honest. Honest, he did.

In a speech in Santa Barbara, Calif., McCain vowed to "put the purchasing power of the United States government on the side of green technology" by buying fuel-efficient vehicles for its civilian fleet of cars and trucks and by retrofitting federal office space - a move that will have little no impact on global warming, but would demonstrate to voters that he can "think small."

The pledge comes months after Sen. Barrack Obama outlined a more detailed and ambitious proposal on the subject, virtually ensuring that the next administration will take significant steps to lower the government's output of energy and pollution - again, with little or no effect on the American consumer.

Obama, who first set his targets last October, has promised that he would make all new federal buildings 40 percent more efficient than current ones within five years, and carbon-neutral by 2025. He has also pledged to increase efficiency of existing federal buildings by 25 percent within five years and to ensure that the government derives 30 percent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2020 -- none of which McCain has promised to do.

Of course, a champion in environmental issues, President Bush has already instituted energy-efficiency measures for the White House and the government. In January 2007, the president issued an executive order calling on the government to "increase purchase of alternative fuel, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles when commercially available." To date, those commercially available vehicles have not been purchased.

He and the First Lady, Laura Bush, have also made changes in the White House, replacing all incandescent bulbs in hallways with compact fluorescent lights, installing low-consumption toilets in many places and putting in energy-efficient cooling units - similar to former President Jimmy Carter.

Question: Where were you guys in 1976?

The Yeetle Box