McCain Clearing House

On the surface I must applaud John McCain for at least talking about alternative energy solutions. Though we've been TALKING about it for 40 years at least. His Prize Patrol Package of 300,000,000 tax payer dollars to whoever can come up with a battery strong enough to power an automobile is at least bringing high energy costs to the GOP and the election campaigns. But once I get over the shock that the Republican Party's solution to our huge oil dependency is to have a contest with tax payer money and look at the actual substance of what McCain is proposing, it gets a little confusing.

First thing that comes to mind is is this even legal? Can the federal government actually institute a prize? McCain has already admitted the winner would be determined "by a panel of government and private-sector experts." Wouldn't that mean as president McCain would have to setup an agency to handle such a panel? Or would the panel just be part of his cabinet? And can a presidential cabinet just hand out tax payer money? I know the federal government issues rewards for felons and escaped criminals and such, but that goes through an agency (DOJ). It's line-itemed in the DOJ's budget by Congress. Technically wouldn't this be done the same way, except through some sort of agency (department of energy, maybe)?

Lots of questions on this one. But what's probably most odd about this whole thing is how come we've never had to have a contest before to come up with our other inventions? Is American innovation that far off from where it was just ten years ago? There was never a government sponsored contest to develop the first airplane, or the first steam powered engine, or the first telephone, or the first computer, or the light bulb, or the internet and so on. So why now do we need a contest to inspire this one?

Needless to say that most of the above mentioned inventions, and thousands of others not mentioned, were done with government money any way. Like the internet was developed through the U.S. military. Michael Winter at the USA Today must have read my mind because he discovered that the government is already "paying tens of millions dollars a year 'subsidizing special interests and excusing failure' for the search for the kind of "super battery" McCain envisions." So why the need for a contest, I just don't get it.

Noting that John McCain is the largest recipient of Big Oil money, and that the GOP alone receives 75% of all Big Oil money being donated, I seriously doubt that the McCain Clearing House will gain much traction. There's a reason why we don't already have McCain's Super Battery and why he's suggesting a contest for it. It's because of Big Oil. The last thing a cash strapped McCain Campaign will do is alienate it's biggest donor. So I'm not holding my breath on this one.