Oil Policy Madness

            Madness. This is the only word that adequately describes the energy policy of this administration.

            With gas prices at the pump  going up daily, Obama's solution is to investigate oil companies for fraud. Is he really that clueless?

            Fraud is not the problem. It's a question of supply and demand. But President Obama doesn't understand that.

            In 1970 the United States was producing 9.6 million barrels of oil a day and importing 3.16 million barrels. Today it is still producing over 9 million barrels, but importing 11.3 million barrels a day.  

            It doesn't take a genius to figure out that we need to produce more. But our leader said in a recent speech, "Even if we increase domestic oil production, that is not going to be the long-term solution to our energy challenge." No? What is? Windmills and solar shingles? Can he be so totally uninformed? Or has he gone mad?

            President Obama has said that our country has only 21 billion barrels of oil, about 2% of the world's proven oil reserves. He's right. But his numbers don't include technically recoverable off shore reserves, ANWAR, and the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota, all of which total some 134 billion barrels. Plus it doesn't include another 30 billion barrels in the Chukchi Sea off the west coast of Alaska.

            So what has the administration been doing about recovering all that oil? It has maintained a de facto moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico; it has denied oil leases for drilling off the east and west coasts; it has persisted in blocking production in ANWAR. And now comes the best of all.

            In 2008 the United States auctioned off leases to the Chukchi oil fields for $2.6 billion. Shell Oil alone spent another $2 billion during its pre-drill exploratory phase. That was under the Bush administration. But in 2010, with Obama running the country, environmental groups sued and a federal judge agreed to halt exploration pending a more complete environmental statement. Oil companies complied, but now the EPA has blocked the appeal, stating, among other things, that oil companies ignored--GET THIS--the potential effects of carbon dioxide emissions from ice breakers on nearby communities.

            The nearest inhabitants are 70 miles away in the village of Kaktovik, population 245.

             "Know Thine Enemy." We know it very well. It is not the oil companies: It is the EPA, and it is holding our president prisoner in the White House of Madness.

           

What Would I Do?

            I'm no expert, but I know what I'd do.

            I would start with discretionary spending, since the blowhards in Congress have been arguing about it these last few months. I would cut it by 25% right now, and another 25% over the next five years. There have been umpteen proposals for eliminating unnecessary departments and federal programs. It will hurt, but it has to be done.

            I would go after Obama's legion of tsars. I would fire them all and wipe out their departments. Then I would go after the departments of Education, Energy, Interior, the EPA, and Homeland Security. These bloated, ineffective, counter-productive, and largely useless departments present enormous targets for reducing the cost of government.

            Next I'd  go after agriculture subsidies for billionaire farmers and rules that allow the super rich to own vast properties but avoid paying taxes by planting a cabbage patch and claiming they are farmers.

            This is a minor point, but I'd love to ground Air Force One. Harry Truman didn't spend his time flitting about the country making speeches to hand-picked audiences; he spent his time working at his desk. Obama could learn from his example.

            I would reduce our dependency on foreign oil by drilling everywhere oil and gas has been found. Obama's de facto moratorium on drilling offshore and in Alaska is insane. And I would build nuclear energy plants. Lots of them. They're the most efficient, clean, and safe (yes, safe) sources of energy.

            Now on to military spending. I have always been a supporter of national defense. But enough is enough. Our own survival comes first. I would bring our boys home from Iraq and Afghanistan; close most of the overseas bases; forgo any thoughts of playing the role of international policeman and nation builder; reassess the need for so many carrier task forces that are becoming increasingly irrelevant; spend the money on wounded warriors and their families, not on new weapons systems; and bring on BRAC Phase 2.

            Now the big one: entitlements. How did this country survive without Medicare, Medicare, and Social Security? Without reneging on our promises to seniors and without removing the safety net for the poorest among us, there is a lot we can do.

            First, I  would repeal Obamacare. It cannot be allowed to add a trillion dollars a year to our deficit.

            Second, I would revise the eligibility criteria for Medicaid, beginning with anyone above the poverty line. Thirty percent of Americans are on Medicaid, and none of them pay for their health care. That shouldn't be. No one should get totally free medical care; everyone should have to pay something, even if it's a small co-pay.

            Retirees are entitled to Medicare. This should not change. But why not adopt a form of privatization as recommended by Paul Ryan? And why wait until 2022?

            Retirees are also entitled to Social Security. But if someone chooses to retire early, it should be at his or her expense. Some rules should be revised, such as the one that awards social security benefits to the wife and children of early retirees even if they are millionaires who can afford to retire at age 55.

            Speaking of entitlements, illegal aliens should not be entitled to anything. Not free health care, not free education, not free food, not free housing. No free benefits of any kind.

            On the revenue side, I'd scrap the IRS and replace it with a Fair Tax, a consumption tax, or a combination of the two. This will ensure that everyone pays taxes, as opposed to the 45% of Americans who pay no income tax at all, and it will eliminate the onerous and costly income tax system we now have.

            And just to make everything fair, I'd make everyone subject to the same rules, conditions, benefits, and privileges. Members of Congress who pass our laws should be subject to them like the rest of us.

            I could go on, but the bozos in Washington aren't listening.

The Chinese Own Me

            All the talk these days is about the deficit and the debt. It almost sounds at times that the terms are interchangeable. They are not.

            The deficit is an annual thing. It's all about spending more money than we take in. When we overspend, we add to the debt.

            The debt is what this country owes, because we borrowed money to finance deficits. China owns most of our debt, the same China that stocks the shelves at Walmart, because we can't produce the same products at a competitive price. If we don't start to reduce our debt soon, China will end up owning US!

            Let's look at it this way. When we are in a deficit mode like the one we're in now, every time Obama, for example, gives Brazil $2 billion to develop its oil industry, we have to borrow that money from the Chinese. When we give the Libyan rebels $25 million to help them fight Qaddhafi, we have to borrow that money from the Chinese. When we shower Tripoli with half a billion dollars' worth of missiles, we have to borrow money from the Chinese to replace them in our arsenal. Every time we spend money we don't have, we have to borrow it from the Chinese.

            Our debt is nearly $15 trillion, a number that everyone agrees is unsustainable. Yet, Washington is crying that if we don't lift the debt ceiling, our creditworthiness will collapse and we won't be able to borrow more from the Chinese. So what should we do? Raise the debt ceiling, of course.

            Is that nuts, or what?

            The only way for Washington to reduce the debt is to stop spending more than it takes in. But Washington is addicted to spending. Whenever anyone proposes drastic action to balance the budget, the knee-jerk response is to accuse the proposer of kicking grandma out on the street and denying pregnant teenagers their reproductive health rights.

            What should Washington do, that is, if it had any guts?

            First, what it shouldn't do is raise the debt ceiling. Pay the interest first and then figure out how to live off the rest. But the rest isn't enough? It certainly was enough twenty years ago, wasn't it?  So what would I do? I'm no expert, but I know what I'd do.
             See my next blog.

The Debt Ceiling

            This is it. The moment has come. It is time to decide whether we will regain control of our government or continue our profligate ways to inevitable dissolution of our nation as we know it.

            Congress will soon vote on whether or not to lift the debt ceiling. Many have argued against doing so, and I agree with them. The government cannot, must not, continue to spend more than it takes in. The reality, however, is that there are not enough votes to defeat the bill. So what can we do?

            The Republican Party led by Eric Cantor is engaged in a battle with President Obama and his Democrat toadies to attach severe conditions to the raising of the debt ceiling, These are: 1) statutory spending caps, 2) a balanced budget amendment, and 3) a two-thirds vote requirement for raising taxes and increasing the debt limit.

            This is the real battleground, because the Democrats want a clean bill to reduce spending, but none of the conditions attached to it. Now we will see what the Republicans are made of. To prevent further spending insanity, all three conditions must be met.

            Spending caps must be real and drastic. They must be based on what funds are left after we have satisfied our obligations to pay the interest on the debt. Without these caps, the second condition becomes meaningless, because Democrats will force tax increases to feed their spending habits. The third condition will also be meaningless as long as Democrats control the presidency and the Senate: we've seen how the Administration has circumvented Congress again and again with regulations that are nothing but disguised taxes on businesses, health care and energy.

            For once the Republicans hold the key cards. The debt ceiling cannot go up without their consent. Will they have the moral courage to hold the line, or will they retreat from White House negotiations with their tails between their legs?  It's all about principles and convictions. And guts.

            Republican leaders have been very insistent that they will not cave, that they have heard the voters speak. Well, we're about to find out what kind of men we voters have put in control of the House of Representatives.

            God help us if they prove to be gutless.

Obama Speaks

            Furious. Disgusted. Sickened. It is difficult for me to find the right word to describe how I felt while watching President Obama's April 13th speech to the nation on the budget. Paul Ryan described it as "excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate." I think Ryan was much too kind. I would have preferred gratuitously insulting, scandalously mendacious, and incredibly incompetent. It was demagoguery at its worst.

            Obama was not satisfied with just blaming the previous administration or conducting class warfare on the rich. That was to be expected. But after wasting half his speech praising the benefits of cooperation by trotting out a litany of worn-out platitudes, he attacked Ryan's proposal for reforming Medicare  by predicting drastic consequences for seniors. But he deliberately omitted mentioning that the reforms would not take effect until 2022 and would therefore not affect anyone now 55 years old or over. Mendacity takes many forms.

            When Obama said that we should all be ready to sacrifice, he targeted only the rich. He did not mention that the top 1% of wage earners already pay 40% of income taxes, that the top 5% pay 60%, and the bottom 50% pay only 3%,  with most of them paying nothing. Worse, he said that for him to get a $200,000 tax credit, thirty-three poor people would have to pay $6,000 each to make up for it. How can anybody let him get away with such a despicable lie? That was class warfare at its most outrageous.

            Obama said his proposal would cut the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 12 years. Half of that would come from reduced costs, a trillion would come from reduced interest on the debt, and another trillion from tax reform (read tax increases on the rich). Ignoring for the moment the total absence of specifics in his plan for reducing costs and the negative effects raising taxes would have on our struggling economy, how can Obama's plan possibly reduce interest on the debt?

            I must be missing something. Let's do the math. Maintaining an annual deficit at the current rate of $1.3 trillion a year (with Obamacare kicking in, projections are much higher),  would result in adding  $15.6 trillion to the national debt over the next 12 years. If Obama's plan reduces the debt by cutting $2 trillion in costs and raising $1 trillion in taxes, that still leaves $12.6 trillion to be added to the debt over that period. How in the world would that reduce interest on the debt by a trillion dollars? The Chinese must be laughing their heads off at Obama's math.

            I came across a quote recently that says, in part, "The danger to America is not Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency... The Republic can survive a Barack Obama who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."

            I disagree. Obama is no fool. He is a clever liar who takes us all for fools. I prefer the quote, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."