If you want something to drive you crazier than even United Way's Gloria Pace King and her million-dollar compensation, check out a story in today's New York Times by Dan Frosch . Guess what the far-sighted Bush administration (a wholly owned subsidiary of the oil industry) is doing now? They're freezing all solar energy projects on public land. That's right, they're stopping solar energy projects at a time when everyone but oil industry puppets agree we need new forms of energy pronto. Hell, who in the US, except for Limbaugh's pinheads, doesn't realize now that the United States should have started pouring money into alternative energy decades ago? But no. Since Bush's (the oil industry's) proposals for off-shore drilling (motto: "Drain America First") are going nowhere, then by God, these hippie ideas like solar energy are gonna get squeezed to death. OK, there's no hard proof that the feds' solar freeze is a tit-for-tat revenge policy, but you at least have to wonder about these people's motives. The reason the Bushies give for the freeze is that there's such a surge in demand for solar power plants, a moratorium is needed to study their environmental impact -- for a couple of years. These same GOP operatives have spent their entire careers helping oil, gas and electricity companies weasel out of environmental impact statements, but mention solar energy (i.e., not an industry that bankrolls the GOP), and they go all Earth First! on us. Solar power supporters and entrepreneurs are complaining bitterly that this latest slap in the face of common sense by Bush & Co. will bring efforts to substitute solar power for coal or nuclear power to a grinding halt, in effect killing the baby in its crib. Compare the new policy to the one that allows Duke Energy to continue building the coal-fired power plant in Cliffside even though all the legalities and permissions haven't been worked out. You can't find a better example than this new Bush move of how the public good gets sacrificed to the sick relationship of power and corporate money. It's enough to make you puke.