An Effective Energy Policy

A few months ago the president told Republicans to put their money where their mouth is because next year he's going to tackle the deficit. Now we are again hearing of his plans for next year. In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine for its October 15, 2010 issue, the president said the following:

One of my top priorities next year is to have an energy policy that begins to address all facets of our overreliance on fossil fuels. We may end up having to do it in chunks, as opposed to some sort of comprehensive omnibus legislation. But we're going to stay on this because it is good for our economy, it's good for our national security, and, ultimately, it's good for our environment.

I'm getting a little tired of hearing about what he intends to do "next year" when we have an economic disaster all around us right now, but actually, this statement is scary. What is it he intends to do "in chunks?" Is he going to try and do something by executive order because he can't get Congress to pass a comprehensive omnibus bill?

In August 1977 the Carter Administration created the Department of Energy in order to lessen America's dependence on foreign oil. According to Carter the world was going to run out of fossil fuels in less than a hundred years so we needed to come up with alternative forms of energy. The Department of Energy has proceeded to spend over a trillion dollars since its inception and has yet to produce one useful alternative fuel. But standards have been passed to reduce carbon emissions and make the air cleaner. I'll concede those might have been good standards to set, but we didn't need to spend a trillion dollars just to set standards, and the end result has been to drive the price of automobiles sky high, making life more difficult for many people economically.

The DOE has been a spectacular failure. It's purpose was to reduce imports of foreign oil, but thirty-three years after its inception we are importing more foreign oil by far than when we began. According to the DOE's own report the United States imported 57% of it's crude and refined oil in 2008. It seems to me that the real threat to our nation is not our reliance on fossil fuels, but our reliance on OPEC nations to provide the fossil fuels.

Obama says reducing our reliance on oil will be good for the economy. How? We've already wasted a trillion dollars trying for nothing. His and the Democrat's refusal to allow oil companies to drill for our own oil on our own land is costing thousands of jobs in many different sectors and driving the cost of our fuel higher, hurting everyone economically.

Obama says reducing our reliance on oil is good for our national security. How? By refusing to let us drill for our own oil we have necessarily become more reliant on foreign oil produced by OPEC nations that are hostile to us and routinely jack up the prices for no other reason than to punish Americans and make our lives difficult. Until we have a reliable alternate source the only way to increase our security is to drill for our own oil and stop importing it.

Obama says reducing our reliance on oil is good for our environment. How is oil bad for our environment in the first place? Air pollution? We've cleaned it up. Forests? Spotted owls? Oil companies have gone to great lengths to protect the environment everywhere they've been allowed to drill, but nothing will satisfy environmentalists until we're all living in the Garden of Eden. Fat chance that's going to happen.

Can you imagine what our economy would be like if we had no DOE and a trillion dollars back in the Treasury? How about no Great Society, no welfare state, and seven or eight trillion more dollars back in the Treasury? How about George Bush and only a 450 billion dollar deficit instead of Obama's 1.85 trillion? These gargantuan wastes of our tax dollars all came about under liberal, Democrat controlled administrations. People who have no clue how to live within their means have destroyed America's wealth and have us facing trillion dollar deficits until 2020 by the White House's own projections. We won't survive that.

The answer for an effective energy policy is to get the government out of it. The free enterprise system where individuals have liberty to experiment, explore and create uninhibited by government intrusion has always produced more jobs, more products, and a more robust economy. Reaganomics worked, and Bill Clinton knows it!

The answer to our security is to drill our own oil and stop buying from Muslim OPEC nations that are using oil as a weapon against us. Oil money is the only reason most of the Middle East nations survive. If we didn't buy their oil their power and influence in the world would decline. The threat of terrorists trying to overthrow America by building victory mosques and infiltrating our society with sharia law would cease. When their oil economies collapse Muslim nations will be on their knees begging us for help rather than trying to destroy us. Furthermore, until the president secures the border with Mexico there is nothing he can say about security that can be taken seriously.

The answer to the environment is to stop kowtowing to the environmentalists who have hijacked our nation. If oil companies were allowed to drill in shallow waters in the Gulf rather than where it is 5,000 feet deep the recent oil crisis could have been ended in days instead of months. When a community's progress can be delayed or stopped to save a snail darter or a spotted owl, or a pipeline can be ended in order to save the pristine Alaskan wilderness where no one lives in a thousand square miles and nobody goes to visit anyway, environmentalists have gotten too much power. If they were really concerned about the environment they should have gone to Washington on October 2, and cleaned up the mess left by the socialist One Nation March. Until they stop driving cars and flying in airplanes they can't be taken seriously either.

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm glad the energy policy is Obama's plan for next year. By then conservatives will have control of Congress and be able to stop this foolishness. But that will only happen if we do one thing:

GET OUT AND VOTE. November 2 is coming.