I try to keep my politics in check in the classroom and just be upset about everything no matter which side of the House it comes from, so I apologize that the article this post links to has Republicans in the title and wants to pick a fight with a political party. I promise I’m equally offended by both parties and would post it if it blamed Democrats for being insane too.

In their purported effort to slash the national budget and restore us to fiscal sanity a year ago, the Republican budget plan proposed to cut $1.6 billion from the Environmental Protection Agency which, it claimed, is smothering our fragile economy with job-killing legislation. In part, the cuts were deliberately designed to curtail EPA programs to encourage renewable energy.

At the same time, the budget proposal defended and left intact $4 billion in subsidies to the oil and gas producing companies. Why? Ending the subsidies would amount to tax increases which would cost American jobs.

Pro Publica carried the story, but you can find it elsewhere too and, of course, it’s not really news now and wasn’t news a year ago. We’ve been subsidizing the enormously profitable oil companies for decades in our hurry to burn everything on earth.