Vision, Mission, and Strategy
Hillbilly Politics
Part III of our Why the poor should vote Republican series
For the past 30 years Democratic Party presidents, congressmen and candidates have opposed expanded oil, coal and natural gas exploration and production, as well as permits for new oil refineries and nuclear power plants. Democrats have based their policy arguments on safety (despite the absence of any significant nuclear power accidents in the U.S.) and environmental concerns; as well as the promise of “clean” solar and wind energy.
When Americans noticed that the polluted air and water of the 1970s were cleaned up while energy use expanded exponentially in the 1980s and 1990s, they argued that carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels were dangerously warming the globe. When the combination of cold 2000 naughts’ winters coincided with scientific data affirming global cooling, they semantically shifted to fears of amorphous “climate change.” When the discovery of emails from adherents of the latter indicating a conspiratorial fraud followed closely upon the Summer of 2008’s increase in gasoline prices to $4/gallon, they lost all credibility aimed at the CO2 humans exhale, i.e. plant food.
Democrats’ ancillary argument against expanded oil drilling throughout the last three decades, when confronted with economics 101 (how increased supply lowers prices) has been to bemoan that it takes a decade for newly-drilled oil wells to produce; and thus would have no effect on “short-term” prices.
Three decades later, with the pollution, global warming, wind farms (that no one wants in their backyards and that require electricity during balms in Gilead), andbankrupt solar Solyndra scandal no longer advancing the anti-fossil fuel religion; Obama now urges Americans to embrace European-style fast trains to nowhere anyone wants to go.
Throughout the entire “Era of Democrat Opposition to Domestic Energy Expansion”, beginning approximately after Three Mile Island and the Exxon Valdez killed no humans and areas of despoliation were cleaned up within months by Mother Nature, through the 2009 BP oil spill that was cleaned up before any Gulf beaches lost business for a second summer; it has been Democrats who have be solely responsible for restricting U.S. energy exploration and production restrictions. Whether it was Speakers Tip O’Neil or Jim Wright opposing Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush in the 80s; President Bill Clinton opposing Speaker Newt Gingrich in 90s; or Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid filibustering President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama opposing Speaker John Bohner in the 21st Century; the World’s Oldest Political Party (founded by Andrew Jackson or Thomas Jefferson, we know not which; and presently led by one Barack Hussein Obama) owns high energy prices.
Yet, despite their hard work and the natural result of higher energy prices from restrictions of supply, a pristine Alaskan Natural Wildlife Refuge, a still-revolving and not-too-warm-Earth and even the lowered oceans that candidate Obama promised; Democrats seem not to want to own the $4-5/gallon gasoline in Orlando, Palo Alto and other points across the Fruited Plain.
President Obama seems to want to make his handiwork an orphan despite his voluminous pronouncements and those of his Administration:
- Senator Obama in January of 2008 promised to bankrupt anyone foolish enough to build coal-burning power plants and that his policies would make energy prices “skyrocket” as the energy industry passed along the exorbitant costs of his cap-and-trade policy. Somehow, despite the rejection of cap-and-trade by even a super-majority Democrat congress, he has caused energy prices to skyrocket thanks in part to executive overreach by the EPA that resulted in Texas power plants having to accept charity from border town Mexican plants two winters ago.
- “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” – Senator Obama in the Spring of 2008.
- In the Fall of 2008, Barack Obama’s “Nobel-prize winning physicist” of an Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, told the Wall Street Journal: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
- President Obama supports ethanol subsidies in 2010 that drive up the cost of food and President Obama raises fuel-mileage (CAFE) standards in 2011 that drive up the cost of SUVs.
- Offshore drilling permits are being issued at less than half the rate of the previous administration. The average number of leases issued on public lands is less than half than during President Clinton’s term.
- Senator Obama in 2008 had no problem with $4/gallon gasoline, but would have preferred “a gradual adjustment“. President Obama inherited $2/gallon pump prices on Inauguration Day 2009, now gradually adjusted back to $4/gallon three years on. Hail to the Chief!
- Obama during Indian Summer of 2008: “…we could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups…”
- When an accident on a British Petroleum deep-water oil rig accident poured oil into the Gulf of Mexico and onto the shores of Louisiana wetlands and Alabama beaches a few years ago, President Obama refused to accept clean-up help from foreign flag-masted ships and issued an oil-drilling moratorium that a federal judge ruled to be in violation of existing law. The President refused to comply with the order even after being held in contempt and actually helped hasten the removal of oil-drilling rigs from the Gulf to Brazillian waters. The latter reminds of Obama’s transgression of bankruptcy laws to rip-off Chrysler bondholders and his use of TARP funds to turn General Motors into a Government Motors welfare program for UAW, but I digress… Of late, the Obama Administration has made it more palatable for oil to be drilled off the coast of Mexico and by the Chinese off the coast of Cuba than in U.S. territorial waters.
- The President spent three years studying the environmental impact of a proposed Keystone oil pipeline from Canada to Texas and wanted to keep on studying it until 2013 (think campaign contributions from the Sierra Club) so badly that he vetoed congressional demands to approve the jobs, energy-producing and national security asset. China will be getting much of that oil now.
Finally, Barack Hussein Obama’s latest answer to America’s energy needs: algae aka pond scum. No wonder the president isn’t more proud of his hope and change.
Given how he prefers to issue ObamaCare waivers and “laws” that state that “the Secretary shall decide” our only chance for energy price relief favors from his gangster-style “government” will be if he is in office long enough for one of his daughters to get married, as in The Godfather:
Don Corleone: I understand. You found paradise in America. You had a good trade, you made a good living. The police protected you and there were courts of law. So you didn’t need a friend like me. Now you come and say “Don Corleone, give me justice.” But you don’t ask with respect. You don’t offer friendship. You don’t even think to call me “Godfather.” You come into my house on the day my daughter is to be married and you ask me to do murder – for money.
Bonasera: I ask you for justice.
Don Corleone: That is not justice. Your daughter is alive.
Bonasera: Let them suffer then as she suffers.
[the Don is silent]
Bonasera: How much shall I pay you?
[the Don turns away dismissively, but Bonasera stays on]
Don Corleone: Bonasera, Bonasera, what have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? If you’d come to me in friendship, this scum who ruined your daughter would be suffering this very day. And if by some chance an honest man like yourself made enemies they would become my enemies. And then, they would fear you.
Bonasera: Be my friend… Godfather.
[the Don at first shrugs, but upon hearing the title he lifts his hand, and a humbled Bonasera kisses the ring on it]
Don Corleone: Good.
[He places his hand around Bonasera in a paternal gesture]
Don Corleone: Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, consider this justice a gift on my daughter’s wedding day.
The service required? Vote for his re-election.
Not me. I’d rather travel With Al Gore via an Obama-fueled rickshaw.
Mike DeVine
Atlanta Law & Politics columnist – Examiner.com
Editor – Hillbilly Politics
Co-Founder and Editor – Political Daily
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
More DeVine Gamecock rooster crowings at Modern Conservative, Unified Patriots, and Conservative Outlooks. All Charlotte Observer and Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-eds archived at Townhall.com.