As we watch President Obama visit Cushing, Oklahoma and try to do damage control for his abortive Keystone Pipeline decision, let’s have an Obama energy memory jog. This president will blame anyone for anything that goes wrong and take credit for anything that goes right. He will spin any topic to his advantage. He now tells you no president can do anything about gasoline prices. Watching your approval ratings drop like a rock months before an election can do that to a man.
Newt is right. He’s right about a lot of things. Too bad he is a personal scumbag and erases the blackboard every night and starts each day with 10,000 new ideas and strategies. Because he is right about $2.50 gasoline here. First, eliminate the ethanol. Second, eliminate the boutique blends required by the EPA. Next, tell the world you plan to open all public lands to drilling. Tell that same world you will fast-track that drilling. No more frivolous lawsuits to stop progress. Eliminate all mileage requirements on automobiles. Let the consumer decide that as well as the gasoline price. Stop all US exports of energy. Declare it a national policy.
The impact on the rest of the world would be significant. The Middle East and Russia would realize they have a competitor in the oil production business and may have lost a customer for their products. As production begins to happen, the country will need transportation to get the oil from production to refineries. Just as we have needed with Canadian crude and North Dakota crude. This is tons of jobs. The Mandan, ND, refinery will get a big upgrade. This is more jobs. Of course, all that drilling is more jobs.
Newt is right, it could be done. But, it will require a whole new mindset here in the US. The vast majority of people will have to recognize they have been scammed. Scammed by Gore, scammed by the media who have convinced many that progress is bad. When BP was getting the final permits to upgrade the Whiting, Indiana refinery to handle Canadian heavy crude, the Chicago Tribune broke a story that the new refinery would put mercury into Lake Michigan. The EPA, Federal and state of Indiana, had already issued the permits. The annual amount of mercury was less than what went into the lake in one day, but the public and the politicians responded. Including Republicans like Mark Kirk and Peter Roskam. They delayed the project and added cost. But, Chicago is getting more gasoline from a near-by refinery using secure crude from a friendly country.
It’s a mindset. The public has to want cheap gasoline and shout down those who want to keep it from us. Common sense needs to kick in.
Now, for my memory jog. Obama tried his level best to give us Cap and Trade. If he had succeeded, we would be looking at $6 gasoline right now. When his lips move and he tells you all he has done to keep gasoline prices low under his watch, just remember this. He is lying. He wanted you to have $6 gasoline and he tried hard to do it to you. The truth matters and in his case you get precious little.
