Talk:Energy Policy Act of 2005

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On 14 February 2007, Energy Policy Act of 2005 was linked from Yahoo! Tech:, a high-traffic website.
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Contents

[edit] Contents of Bill

I have yet to find a source for the contents of the final bill, or even a halfway-detailed summary! This is very frustrating, and I would appreciate anyone finding such sources to at least add them to External Links. Simesa 13:30, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Viewing the Bill

  • Visit www.senate.gov
  • Go into Legislation and Records
  • Click on Active Legislation
  • Select HR.6 next to Energy bill
  • Choose Text of Legislation
  • Click #6, which is the final enrolled bill
  • To load the entire text, click on Printer Friendly Display

[edit] Edits on morning of August 9

I must say I am astounded at the quick response!

69.87.155.4's information is appreciated, but not sourced! I have requested a source.

Ben's link http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8748924/ is already broken. Once the dust settles and this gets composed into an article, a different cite will be needed. Simesa 14:30, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

From 69.87...
The senate.gov web site suggests not linking directly, I suppose due to it being some kind of a database that has different links. I think the bill would be worth uploading to the wikipedia (I think registered members can do that)...
Reading the full 1,724 pages is out of the question and would require specialized knowledge of the laws modified as well. We need a detailed summary. I have written the House Energy Committee and asked for one.
To indent, place a : or :: in front of each paragraph. To sign your posting, place a ~~~~ after your last sentence. Try going to WP:sandbox - from there, in the "More info" box, you can start the multi-part "Editing tutorial". Simesa 18:15, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Simesa, don't hold your breath. I've been told that nobody on the Hill or even at the Congressional Research Service has complied any sort of comprehensive analysis yet. I'll put up what I have gotten myself at User:Katefan0/Energy Documents in a few minutes. I'd update it myself but I just don't have time this week. · Katefan0(scribble) 18:23, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I've posted an analysis by a former energy committee staffer now at Columbia U, one by the Republican Policy Committee, and one by Senate Energy. None of them are comprehensive. · Katefan0(scribble) 18:44, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vote tally

I think it's not really appropriate to have a vote tally here. Maybe at Wikisource or somesuch. · Katefan0(scribble) 17:17, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

Someone proposed a vote tally? Why would you have one on this? This Act has major repercussions on the US energy industries and probably on world-wide energy choices. Just because the article is in an unacceptable state today (really its first day) doesn't mean that it won't be a good and important article in a week's time. Simesa 18:19, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Nobody proposed it, it's in the article. There's an entire section with a lengthy delineation of how everybody in the Senate voted. It's not appropriate for the article and takes up too much space. I agree that it's in its infant stages and will improve much over time. I don't think I've ever argued counter to that. · Katefan0(scribble) 18:29, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
The vote tally is relevant because it distinguishes which senators (and states) were in opposition to this bill. It shows that certain parts of the country, namely New England and the West Coast were not in favor of the bill. It shows how votes changed after the conference committee. In shows how the Conneticut senators changes from "not voting" to "no" after the committee, which suggests that they were hoping for a change in the bill that did not occur. It also shows how Senator Clinton changed her vote from Yes to No, which happened to agree with the senior senator from New York. Perhaps they had a chat about why they voted each way. Without this information, it would take much more time for a person to find out how their senators voted, and who else was in agreement. I hope that something to like this is also available for the DR-CAFTA vote. Particularly interesting on that one would be who was the last person to vote (thus passing it through the house). If only ONE of the members of the house who voted YES had voted NO, the treaty wouldn't have passed. Americanus 19:02, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
I agree that it's useful information from a citizen's perspective, but it's just not appropriate for inclusion in an encyclopedia, which should be the highlights of an event, person or etc., not every shred of information available. Instead, I would propose that we just place a link to the vote tally on Thomas or something. · Katefan0(scribble) 19:04, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
Votes are the highlights. Those votes are a significant factor in distinguishing this law from the bills that were pushed for 4.5 years. ... If the article were very long (and I've seen some very long, very good articles) then I think a seperate article on the vote of could be created, and the house members included as well. I think the main reason it looks long is because there needs to be a lot more detail on the contents of the law, with each major component having a subsection, and possibly seperate articles such as "US Ethanol Policy". Americanus 19:18, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Respectfully, a text dump of a vote versus a link with the exact same information is not a highlight. I will resist any attempts to turn the links back into a text dump. The article is already going to be huge, there's no reason to make it even longer when a link will suffice. · Katefan0(scribble) 19:21, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
There does not need to be an article just for a text dump of the vote (Energy Policy Act of 2005 Vote. If you create it, I will nominate it for VfD. A link from this article is sufficient. · Katefan0(scribble) 20:05, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A request

Can we please try to avoid demagoguing this one? Provides massive subsidies for oil companies which are already competative and profitable and support Republicans financially. Really. This statement, as it is, has no place in a neutral encyclopedia. · Katefan0(scribble) 17:39, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. A least rephrase it. Anything going into the background of nay organization should be out, or else we would have to explain how the universe works in every article. Just limit it to "Provides subsisies for oil companies" and leave out the background on the oil companies. I'm tired and not making much sense, sorry. Dboyz-x.etown 07:46, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stabenow

There's absolutely no reason to include a random comment by Stabenow, who is a Democrat, and not a particularly prominent one at that (Harry Reid I could see), when no other lawmaker comments have been included in the article. She wasn't even a member of the conference committee. Voting on the bill doesn't make a lawmaker's comment relevant; most everybody voted on this thing at one point or another. Does that mean we should include comments by the 431 members of the House and Senate who voted on the conference report? Because I assure you, they all released statements. · Katefan0(scribble) 18:14, August 9, 2005 (UTC))

I don't have a problem of not refering to Stabenow. On the other hand, the drilling ban is part of the act that has received a lot of media attention over the past few years in the Great Lakes states, and it is in the bill, so it is definitely relevant for both reasons... 69.87.155.92
Please indent using : or :: and sign by using ~~~~. Simesa 18:25, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
I think some of the problem, most likely, is that this article is extremely unformed at present. Any comprehensive article should definitely treat the ANWR issue, and once a proper section has been built up I think THEN a comment by Stabenow (and others) might be appropriate. But as it stands, just sort of hanging out there, it's not really useful and even sort of gives the appearance of unbalancing the article. · Katefan0(scribble) 18:27, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
Is ANWR protected in this bill, or is the bill mute to ANWR? In either case, I think that both should be mentioned. Since the Great Lakes Drilling ban is actually language in the bill, it needs to be included in the article. · Americanus
It is mentioned briefly currently, but probably a separate section should be developed that treats the debate over ANWR. Right now it's mentioned in the article as: Items left out of the final bill, in order to get it passed, included limited liability for producers of the MTBE gasoline-additive and permitted drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. · Katefan0(scribble) 18:35, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
I think a section with a title link "ANWR Controversy" which details the history of how ANWR was in and out of the bill, and then a link to the ANWR article (of course). · Americanus(scribble)
I read yesterday that various congressmen intend to attach an amendment permitting drilling for oil in ANWR to the upcoming yearly authorization bill. This will likely be a major on-going battle. There is already a multi-paragraph section on "ANWR and Oil" in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - this discussion probably belongs there, as drilling is definitley not part of EPA-2005. Simesa 19:36, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
It wasn't part of it ultimately, but only because it had to be dropped to get the thing passed. Given the contentious nature of its involvement with this bill, I think it's entirely appropriate to have a section on it. Doesn't have to be huge, but it should get more than a cursory mention. · Katefan0(scribble) 19:38, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Neutrality?

"Provides massive subsidies for oil companies which are already competative and profitable and support Republicans financially."

Come on!

I agree. I think I removed that portion though. · Katefan0(scribble) 19:36, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
  • The link for the DST patch for Windows computers is for a $500 application and is what amounts to be an ad. Should this be on a wikipedia article?
I fixed this a while ago, but didn't notice until now that the POV tag was still on the article. Since there seem to be no remaining POV issues I just now removed the tag. 131.179.64.200 21:35, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Costs of the Law

Cost estimates for each provision in the bill need to be included with the relevant provisions. Some provisions costs under $1 million, while others may cost over $1,000 million. Provisions should be ordered by cost, from most costly to least costly. Americanus 07:41, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

For a bill this size that would be ridiculous - you'd have no sense of flow to the provisions at all. And the data flat isn't available yet (Katefan0 is a reporter in D.C. and would know). Having related provisions listed together is better. I suggest those most of interest to the average reader first.
Even listing the Titles of the Act in order would break up related provisions.
Plus, why would you want nuclear at the top? The next plant probably won't even break ground until 2010.
Wikipedia is never going to get a complete list of the "hundreds of provisions" in this 1,724 page bill. The best we can do is to cover the important ones.
The article isn't done, and the current order isn't good, but until we get a comprehensive summary of the bill's contents it will suffice.
Simesa 11:33, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't particularly care whether things get listed by money or otherwise. I think the bullet list of provisions is a temporary stopgap measure at best. Once we all collectively figure out what the most important provisions are, then I think it should be turned into text. Bullet points are nice for a quick-hit, but not really encyclopedic style. So once we get that figured out, it should be textified and after that, it won't really matter what got how much. · Katefan0(scribble) 12:27, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Moved Comments by Senators

I was going to move the comments by Wyden and Clinton to "Votes", only to find they were there already!

First, Wikipedia is not a political blog. See Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not.

Second, the remarks were not balanced by comments from any of the three-quarters of senators who voted for the Act.

While I hope to vote for Mrs. Clinton in 2008, that does not change Wikipedia's basis! Simesa 11:49, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

It's really not appropriate to have entire blocks of text of peoples' comments. As I said above, more than 400 people voted for this thing; should we include portions of all of their statements? For the record, that's what we have Wikiquote for. If you want to include one or two pertinent comments inside a subject-specific section (like an evetual section on ANWR), that would be okay. But we can't just dump generic quotes in there from one or two people, because that would tend to unbalance the article unless we include quotes from everybody, which is obviously impossible. · Katefan0(scribble) 12:25, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Votes page up for Deletion

The article Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005_Vote has been recommended for Deletion. If interested, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005_Vote
Simesa 12:20, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Criticisms section

As it is written contains a LOT of weasel words. It needs to be rewritten with some more specifics. · Katefan0(scribble) 13:39, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

Also as it is written, there are seven criticisms, 5 of which are democratic criticisms, 2 of which are republican criticisms. Of all the criticisms, one was rebuked - a Republican criticism. Aside from the fact that criticisms and opinion have NO place in an encyclopedia, why is the only rebuke in response to the Republican criticism? This article has no balance, and serves more as a piece of propaganda that it does a fact-based article.

[edit] Deleted "Allocations" (Authorizations) section

The only thing worse in an encyclopedia than no information is Wrong information. Data from the failed 2003 bill should not be considered a priori to be the same as in the 2005 bill. Especially since [1] only adds up to a little over $4.25 billion for nuclear which, with a DOE reactor added in, closely matches the numbers in [2] - both references already in the article. Simesa 20:08, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

In the event the data is nebulous - and firm "rigt" information isn't likely to exist - our obligation is to present the best information available and then to "qualify" the data. Each item on that list is sourced. Are they guesses - yes. But the general scale of the allocations is critical to understanding the bill. Hiding a huges nuclear program in a bill advertised as a renewable energy bill is dishonest - to avoid that dishonest - we must provide relative values of scale. Benjamin Gatti
The numbers you have are garbage. We have exact information only for nuclear, which I've included. No, we don't do "best guesses" in an encyclopedia - there are legal reasons why not! No one is hiding anything on nuclear - in fact it's the ONLY part of the bill we have FULL information for! (And that may be because I requested NEI to compile and print it.) Go look for conspiracies somewhere there might actually be one. Simesa 01:14, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
I now have a detailed summary at my fingertips. I will try to include the specific allocations as I have time, possibly tomorrow. · Katefan0(scribble) 04:11, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 12.3b cost

Simesa, saw your question in the edit summary. This gets confusing real quick, but the 12.3b cost is what the Congressional Budget Office scored the bill through 2015, so just adding up accounts isn't necessarily going to get you that number. I think the straight total is $11.6 b in tax incentives over 11 years, which includes $2.8 b for fossil fuel production and $1.3 b for conservation and energy efficiency. But, of course, straight totals don't always account for the entire "cost" of something. Here's the CBO link: [3] · Katefan0(scribble) 20:06, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Legislative Process"

What is this stuff? Would any other encyclopedia include it? My opinion is that it should be deleted. Simesa 01:05, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merge "Vote" Article"

Energy Policy Act of 2005 Vote should definitely be merged here. Most of the information, especially the parts the main contributor to the article thinks is most important, can be recorded in one, or possibly two external links (which is where information of this type should be). The analysis needs not be so long and should be on the main page, while the legislative process section in the main article is more record keeping that need not be in here.

Considering the vfd discussion had a consensus to either delete or merge, assuming the article hasn't been fixed up (which it obviously hasn't and probably can't), I'd nominate this for vfd again if there's no movement. The analysis can probably be rewritten better from scratch than salvaged from what is currently there. Telso 05:38, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Many of the keep votes during the earlier VFD debate were predicated on the article improving. It has not. I'd support another round at AFD. · Katefan0(scribble) 15:25, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
I vote for condensation and merger. Keep the analysis section (but clean it up). Summarize the objections to the bill, without noting who made them. That, along with the voting records, is something for which there are good sources outside of Wikipedia. --ChrisWinter 05:45, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not balanced

In it's currently form, it looks like the article is 25% what's in the bill (including what was part of the original house bill that wasn't in the final version); 65% arguments against the bill [general against + 2 summaries of Senate floor speaches against]; 10% legislative history summary. For balance, it desperately needs 2 summaries of speaches from Senate Supporters, (preferably chairmen of the commitees) and a general in favor. 168.166.196.40 19:16, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Provides subsidies for oil companies

I removed this from the list of provisions, and replaced it with what seemed to me to be the two most damning bits of the Post article: the incentives for drilling in the Gulf and exemptions from water standards for oil and gas companies. I agree that the Act was not nearly as renewable-friendly as advertised, but to just say that it gives subsidies to oil companies is not NPOV. Kyle Cronan 08:45, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] POV

I've added a POV tag because most of the page is arguments against the bill and there's no coresponding arguments in favor of it. Jon 15:19, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The caption "tax breaks" is slanted because it implies that the government is "giving" someone a "break", with overtones of luck or favoritism. It sounds like a handout, and the media frequently uses this phrase with exactly that intended slanted effect. Tax opponents would prefer the term "tax relief". This slants the other way, suggesting taxes are a burden and tax reductions make that burden slightly less. An accurate term without either slant would be "tax reduction" so I am changing the caption accordingly. 129.219.55.204 15:21, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Defintely a step in the right direction. Jon 15:08, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is Halloween really relevant?

I don't see the importance of noting that the change to Daylight Saving Time is going to extend the amount of daylight on Halloween. There used to be a sentence following it noting how the Act would result in DST time change sometimes occurring 2 days before election day. This line was removed, although it seems to be quite a bit more relevant than Halloween. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 192.146.101.26 (talk) 18:28, 12 February 2007 (UTC).

One of the main arguments of supporters of extending the fall back time actually was to give one more hour of evening daylight on holloween. Jon 15:12, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Nevertheless, this silly Halloween comment is used only in reference to alleged controversy. This has no place in an encyclopedia.
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