WIRED connects with Congressman McNerney

The March 2007 issue of WIRED magazine includes a brief Q&A with Congressman Jerry McNerney. Among the nuggets:

How has the reception been on Capitol Hill?
It's been incredibly warm. When Senator Jon Tester learned who I was, he did a bow with his hands stretched out. That was cool.

What’s first on your agenda?
Doing away with subsidies to oil companies and reforming the oil royalty system. A lot of companies have been drilling without paying royalties, and that has to stop. It’s up to government to collect that money, a lot of which will go to developing renewable energy.

You can read the rest of the interview as well as check out a unique WIRED photo of the Congressman here.

Comments

[carol schumacher]

jerry,
a bow from john tester- wish i had seen it. he and webb and charlie brown and you are the 4 campaigns i supported and cared about most, we'll get charlie next time!

you are so right that the oil leases are key. that's what jack abramoff most wanted- and got- from pombo. the cobell lawsuit is key. look how they dumped royce lamberth (also former head of fisa court that saw the proof of bush's illegal wiretapping) as judge after he exposed the corruption that led also to the ouster of gail norton. please push these investigations while you help us find the better way for our future.
we're so proud of you.
-carol
you make us all proud.
-carol

[Madeline Doucas]

Dear Jerry,
According to some research on domestic energy use, the single most energy intensive use is to heat water. In the sun belt, it seems to me that an inexpensive, cost-efficient, quick pay-back on the investment, would be for utilities/government to subsidize the low-tech, easy installation of solar hot water systems, much the way PGE is subsidizing solar PV for electricity. This would free up both electric and natural gas supplies for other uses. It could be done relatively cheaply and with proven technology already widely available, and would contribute to cleaner air and less global warming.

What do you think?

[Joseph Holmes]

For nearly all of my fifty-plus years, it's been obvious to me that when your civilization is based on a bounty of fuel that can only be burned once, that you need to take a big chunk of the profit from that fuel's burning and spend it to develop a renewable system that will replace the one-time-use fuel! Duh!

I couldn't agree more with your top priority, therefore, of making sure the profits oil companies are making need to be partially diverted by the taxpayers into building the energy system that can power us forever. Not to mention ending nutty subsidies for them. But along the way, we will have to break the oil companies' monopoly on our liquid fuels (and heating gas supplies) -- and nothing upsets them more than the prospect of losing our indentured servitude and the hundreds of billions of dollars we give them. So we can count on their intense efforts to continue to subvert public policy on this issue as they have for oh-so-many years.

And we can be certain that we'll all need to get involved to outweigh their self-interest with our own.

[Frank Crosby]

Thank you for your outstanding work thus far.

[Jon Theisen]

Jerry, you're doing a good job, keep up the hard work. Please don't forget or back down on Iraq. I know you face a lot of stiff competition from the right and probably AIPAC too. Right now the comments of Khalid Shiek Mohammed remind us all of that ideological movement that attacked America on 9/11 and that still exists. A movement is much harder to attack than a country, like Iraq. I belive in you and your fellow leaders (Harry Ried, Senator of Nevada comes to mind.) Keep up the good work and I will continue on my end to let the folks in the Central Valley, both Republican, Independents and Democrats know what you have been doing.