Rahm Emanuel - Obama's fighter for hybrid cars in the White House
Photo by Dru Bloomfield - At Home in Scottsdale. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.
Who's going to be pushing the hardest for cleaner cars in the U.S. - hybrids, PHEVs and CNG vehicles, specifically - in the coming years? According to HybridCars, it will not be Plug In America or AutoblogGreen readers; instead, it could be President Obama's White House chief of staff: Rahm Emanuel. HybridCars suggesets that Emanuel, "a devout Jew," might use his personal desire to see America extract itself from Middle East oil as a reason to push for more fuel efficient vehicles. Emanuel's legislation history includes introducing the American Hybrid Tax Credit Act in 2005 and sponsoring legislation that would have created an NGV mandate for automakers. Emanuel also wrote a book in 2006 called The Plan that includes a chapter on getting off of gas that was very bullish on plug-in hybrids - and ways that the government could support purchases of these vehicles. There's a lengthy excerpt from that chapter over at HybridCars. Now that he's as close as anyone to the man in charge, there's a good chance Emanuel's words are a heard in a different way than before.
[Source: HybridCars]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Red 8:54AM (1/23/2009)
He's also a proponent of EVs, not just hybrids. People should keep that in mind, considering most of his work pushing hybrids was prior to Tesla and others providing genuine alternatives to gasoline and gasoline/hybrid vehicles.
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Andrea 10:06AM (1/23/2009)
Can someone please tell me what his religious affiliation has to do with the kind of car her drives? Whoever wrote this is a fascist ass. Give me a break! Who would have thought driving a hybrid car had anything to do with religious affiliation. Like being a political Jew in America isn’t hard enough…Let’s make a stance to get the US out of the Middle East by driving a hybrid car!!!! LOL!!!! What a moving action on his part!!! Maybe he’s like every other American struggling to pay expensive commuter bills. Or realizes what Carbon Dioxide is doing to the earth and our bodies!
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jaguar879 10:25AM (1/23/2009)
...oil comes from countries that don't like Israel that much. The Jewish community likes Israel. He doesn't want to buy oil from countries that don't.
See the connection yet?
moosetoga 10:30AM (1/23/2009)
Yes, it's truly fascist to note that another blog suggests that Emanuel, because he's Jewish and supports Israel, would have extra motivation to stick it to the oil-producing nations in the Middle East that want Israel wiped off the map. Curse these insidious bloggers and their fascist observations of other bloggers' inferences!
Andrea 10:31AM (1/23/2009)
Of course....but, isn't that is a whole different can of worms besides reserving a parking spot for hybrid cars? So does that mean all people who drive hybrids are protesting where we get oil from? The article is about parking spots for hybrids, not the fact that he's a Jew. It was a side mention to start this whole discussion....It's irrelevant to the point of the article. But the author did his job. Bravo!
moosetoga 10:51AM (1/23/2009)
I'll talk slowly, try and follow.
If the federal government makes a big push to encourage Americans to drive fuel-efficient vehicles, that pushes down demand for oil.
Lower demand for oil = lower oil prices = less money in the pockets of the Middle Eastern leaders who tend to buy rockets and shoot them at Israel.
Rahm Emanuel, someone President Obama will be interacting with on a daily basis, demonstrated during his time in Congress that he strongly supports a push for fuel efficiency. He's also a devout Jew and, the linked blogger presumes, a passionate supporter of Israel. This MIGHT give him some extra motivation to pursue this cause - though nobody's saying they know what's in his head.
But yeah... fascism and junk.
noz 12:41PM (1/23/2009)
Andrea:
""being a political Jew in America isn’t hard enough""
I had to laugh my ass off for this one.
You sound like an AIPAc shill and an Israeli propagandist. I wonder if he were an Arab with the background of involvement HE has and particularly his farther had as a Irgun terrorist, would the Arab have been in office now?
Stop this FEEL SORRY US bullsh^t...you just massacred over 1300 people in Gaza...HALF of them civilians (probably one of the worst ratios ever recorded...so either the IDF really sucks or they did it intentionally) and not one freaking apology...not one ounce of remorse.
I don't want to bring politics in the mix but when someone like you slips in usual zionist crap, it has to be called out...where ever it is.
People are getting sick of it.
As far as I'm concerned, Rahm Emmanuel can support the greenest of greenest technologies, he still has no place whatsoever as a zionist to be in the white house...and neither do the other 50% of them who are also there.
Wake up people.
John Smith 6:49AM (1/26/2009)
Oh please.
Everybody knows that Judaism has morphed into political Zionism and religious Humanism.
Andrea 10:59AM (1/23/2009)
thanks for the lesson....
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Epyx 1:01PM (1/23/2009)
"The article is about parking spots for hybrids, not the fact that he's a Jew."
Actually, it is not in any way shape or form about hybrid parking spots. The picture is not the white house and just a stock photo used under permission.
I dont need to go into the other part of your post as it has already been sufficiently covered.
Lastly, noz is a douche bag and trolling to stir up controversy.
noz 1:51PM (1/23/2009)
I think unequivocally the "douchebag" award goes to you.
You're too dumb to realize the subtleties of the other poster's political jab...but given your past posts, I'm not surprised.
The controversy started well before me you twit.
gorr 11:06AM (1/23/2009)
For me it appear a costly and complicated way of getting cheap energy. Why change the cars technology. The cheapest way i see to cut oil import is to produce green algae fuel from co2 output of the millions chimneys thar expel co2 all day long everywhere in u.s.a in coal and natural gas power plants and numerous other chimneys. Green algae can grow easilly too in sewage plant converting pollution directly in fuel. So this stuff, green algae, eat pollution and give fuel. So why investing goverment money in phev, hybrid, ev, er-ev, hcci, 2 mode hybrid, mild hybrid, full hybrid, paralel hybrid, serial hybrid with plug in capability with fast charger, electric charging station... so on.
This is ridiculous and costly. If i were the president i will go directly to cheap alternative and i won't invest in marginal improvement. Just starting green algae fuel can cost zero dollars to the goverment because it's supposed to be a private business anyway. The state just give business permits. This fuel can serve to planes, cars, trucks, electrical generation, ships. Hybrids
are nothing compare to good butanol of 95 octane in a hemi challenger at 40 cents/gallon with carbon neutrality. The infrastructure is almost all in place for green algae fuel like sewage, chimneys, retail stations, delivery trucks.
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Tim 1:13PM (1/23/2009)
Anything that would stop American from hemorrhaging wealth via trade deficits.
We should be exporting products NOT importing them and OIL is the biggest single import.
It's about national (economic) security and national wealth and standard of living.
By the way, if Obama thinks creating jobs via printing or borrowing money to improve infrastructure is going to add to national wealth, he’s listening to the wrong economic idiot advisors.
That’s like creating one job to dig a hole and another to fill it back in. The ONLY way to create wealth and improve the standard of living for ALL Americans is to PRODUCE products and EXPORT them in exchange for OTHER nation’s wealth.
Examples include Post WWII America, Post 1970’s Japan, Post 1980 S. Korea, Post 1990’s China.
Obama’s economic stimulus plan will turn the current recession into a HUGE depression just like FDR’s “Great (Socialist) Society” plan did in the 1930s.
We’ve been warned by history!
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Joe B. 2:30PM (1/23/2009)
More power to Rahm Emanuel. Any thing that gets the U.S. off of oil is a positive unless it's another form of dependence. Let's not depend on China, Korea, or Japan for lithium ion batteries. I will not support the Volt as long as they use LG products. GM wants U.S. tax payers to bail them out but they use Korean products. Sorry. I have no sympathy for GM.
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Ahmet 8:05AM (1/27/2009)
I agree with NOZ on this issue.
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