The Bamboozler-in-Chief Has Loopholes in His Credibility

I created the new Democrat mascot "hippocrat" for times such as these. Obama and the Democrats, up to and including my own dear brother (Bless his heart!) are talking about "subsidies" to the oil companies and doing away with them, as if that would do anything other than exacerbate the high price of gasoline and further slow an already weakened economy. First, a look at the weaselly word the Democrats use to describe the activity: "subsidize". The word subsidy has the connotation of one party giving money to another. If some entity of government "subsidizes" the arts, if may be through a grant to a symphony or a ballet company or just an artist who wants to photograph a crucifix in a jar of his own urine. A subsidy to any of these groups or individuals, implies that the government will transfer money to them out of their own coffers. Write them a check, if you will, to subsidize those activities.

Imagine, if you will now, an armed robber approaches you outside an ATM. He demands your watch, your wallet, your car keys and your cash, but tells you you can keep $20 of what you withdrew, because he wants to "subsidize" you getting back home. "What a nice guy," you think, "letting me keep part of my own money! So that's what a subsidy is!"

What Obama refers to as "subsidies" to the oil companies, are what most normal people call "business deductions" when it comes to nearly any other industry. And the laws that the legislators wrote to provide those "subsidies", possibly in exchange for campaign contributions, are then called "loopholes" by those who want to raise taxes on those same companies. (Or extort more "contributions" from them!)

First of all, note the social engineering aspect of it: If you perform certain activities of which we approve, they say, we will lower your taxes and let you keep more of the money you earn. So, Congress writes the law in such a way as to give you an incentive for certain types of expenditures and activities. Think of your home mortgage deduction. To encourage home ownership, Congress writes a law that enables you to keep more of the money you earn if you use some of it to purchase a house. In ObamaSpeak, this would be referred to as a "subsidy" to you, the homeowner, if he were at all consistent, and a "loophole" that allows you to get away with paying less than your "fair share". The fact that you would be chastised for doing exactly what they wrote the law to accomplish is referred to as "irony".

Obama and the Democrats want to create enough class envy so that you'll want to punish those nasty, rich oil companies by raising their taxes. And rest assured, taking away current, legitimate business deductions will effectively be raising the taxes oil companies pay.

"Good!", you might say. "Those SOBs earn way too much on the backs of the working stiff!" Only here's how it works in the real world, and Obama knows it. Taxes are a part of the cost of doing business. In order to open a business and stay in business, taxes are an expense, just like rent or salaries. In order for you to stay in business and make a profit, any profit at all, you have to charge more than your expenses. If your expenses go up, the cost of any goods or services you provide have to go up as well. So called "business taxes" are a hidden tax on everything you buy. That makes the oil company, and any other business, a tax collector for Mr. Obama. Every gallon of gasoline you buy at the pump, a percentage of which is taxes, (less any deductions), which goes to the government. And then, the dirty little secret is, that the government then taxes the retail price of the gasoline as well. So the higher the cost of a gallon of gas, inflated by increased taxation, the higher the revenue in state and federal sales taxes they collect. In other words, taxes on top of taxes. Double dipping. On the backs of the "working stiff".

The state and federal governments are already skimming an average of fifty cents a gallon in taxes. By comparison, towards the end of 2010, Exxon was making just a little over two cents a gallon on oil products here in the US, in profits. So, who's the one robbing you blind here? The guy taking two cents a gallon or the guy who's taking fifty cents a gallon and wants to take even more?

As has been pointed out before, gasoline taxes are regressive taxes. They hit the poor hardest. The Bamboozler-in-Chief rails against the oil companies as if somehow, raising their taxes and thus, the cost of gasoline, (and virtually everything else in the economy), wouldn't be anything other than kicking the poor while they're down. It's a cruel deception. But if the poor are struggling and relying on government assistance to survive, it does make them easier to control.

Back in 2009, Obama went on the record acknowledging that it is a "bad idea" to raise taxes during a recession. Unfortunately, that has not been enough to keep him from seeking new taxes and revenues from people in every tax bracket. The old campaign promise of not raising taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year, unfortunately came with an expiration date. The administration that cannot stop its own rapacious spending is looking for more and more ways to feed their spending habits. Raising taxes on the oil companies directly, and you indirectly, is yet another in a long line of bad ideas. Raise your hand if you think you're not paying enough in taxes?

It's demagoguery. Barack Obama wants to raise your taxes, and the cost of everything you buy...and he wants you to thank him for it. Thank him, please, with an early retirement.

Cross posted at LCR, Say Anything.

Wasserman Schultz's Bold Election Year Gambit

Man, I never saw this coming!

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) Democrat National Committee Chairperson, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, in a rare, and some might say gutsy, bipartisan election year move, has called upon both party officials and rank and file Democrats to apologize to former President George W. Bush.

“We were wrong to blame President Bush for high gasoline prices during his two terms in office”, according to a press release from Wasserman Schultz. “Over the last two and a half years, it has become painfully clear to us that the President has virtually no control over gasoline prices. “
“To imply that gasoline prices were held high in order for Bush’s oil buddies to profit, is demonstrably wrong, given the fact that President Obama has no oil buddies north of Venezuela, and prices have continued to soar. “
She concluded by saying, “We deeply regret having made those statements, knowing now what we didn’t know then. We now concur with President Bush on the inability of the White House to influence fuel prices."

Wasserman Schultz must really be sweating Obama's election prospects if the only way she can give Obama cover for his energy policy is an apology to George Bush! What's that sound? Oh. Another liberal head 'sploding!

Another Fundraiser for the Campaign to Elect Anyone But Obama

Obama's "All of the Above" Energy Plan

Update : Or Maybe it's in the acronym for Coal, Oil, Wind, Solar : COWS

Methane, perhaps???

What Are the Odds We Can Afford Another Four Years of Obama?

A Tale of Two Pipelines

I hear the Bamboozler-in-Chief is heading to Cushing, Oklahoma tomorrow, to give a speech to a yard full of sections of oil pipes, to try to give himself political cover for his failed energy policies. Apparently the public is not invited to this self serving photo op, er, important energy address, and it was figured that the pipes would heckle him less that a live audience who had just filled up their cars with $5.00 a gallon gasoline to come hear him speak. Smart man, that president!

So, I got out my maps to see just where Cushing was in the big scheme of things.



See the solid line in Phase one? That's the Keystone pipeline. The one that has already been built. The one that George W. Bush's State Department issued a Presidential Permit on March 17, 2008, "authorizing the construction, maintenance and operation of facilities at the United States and Canada border". The pipeline that crosses six states and three Canadian provinces. The pipeline that was completed in June of 2010. Eighteen hundred and fifty three miles long. That Keystone pipeline!

In all the talk about the Keystone XL pipeline, the one that will double or triple the amount of oil carried from Canada to the US, plus delivering domestic oil to Gulf refineries, do you remember anyone mentioning the first pipeline, the one that was already built? Hear any big stories about the environmental catastrophes that the first phase of the Keystone project has caused in the last two years? Me neither.

TransCanada has a great interactive map here. It shows Phase 2 of the pipeline from Steele City to Cushing, which was constructed and put into service last year, in February of 2011. Nearly three hundred miles of pipe there, minding its own business for about a year now. Anybody want to step up and tell us about the great environmental disasters caused by this brand new stretch of pipe over the last year? Beuller? Beuller??

After fighting the expansion of the Keystone XL pipeline, Obama now says he wants to "fast track" permits for the third phase, from Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf. I sincerely hope his photo op speech includes the number of jobs he'll want to take credit for on this stretch of pipeline, because the Keystone XL pipeline he is obstructing stretches three times as far, so, would provide three times again as many construction jobs (or three times again the duration of those jobs), not to mention the number of jobs that would be created by the doubling or tripling of oil delivered per day, and giving an outlet to 18 billion barrels of American oil reserves in the Bakken fields of North Dakota and Montana.

A pipeline through the Bakken oil fields would go a long way towards meeting Obama's professed goal of energy independence. It would be a serious step towards ensuring for America the supply of oil, the energy of the present, the energy that fuels this economy. Serious in a way that Dreams of My Father's Algae will not nor could not accomplish in this century.

One pipeline, vetted and permitted in the last year of the Bush administration, constructed and put into service with no problem. Another pipeline, proposed by the same company, meeting the same standards, covering three fewer states and one less province, but proposed during a presidential administration that is openly hostile to petroleum exploration and production, one that is held captive by environmentalists and is fearful of upsetting its base, in what promises to be an uphill struggle for re-election. This pipeline falls victim to politics, plain and simple.

It will be good to have the Cushing/Gulf pipeline fast tracked, but that end of the project really didn't need presidential intervention. Getting the XL pipeline permitted across the US/Canadian border requires the approval of Obama's State Department and the political will to do what is right for the country. If President Obama were truly serious about all the empty platitudes he will undoubtedly utter in Cushing, Oklahoma, Obama would be making this speech on the other end of the pipeline, to cheering crowds rather than mute, empty pipes.


Cross posted at LCR, Reaganite Republican, Say Anything

The False Dichotomy of the Bamboozler-in-Chief on Oil

Barack Obama, Bamboozler-in-Chief of the US, made a rather hinky statement about oil the other day. He posited a false dichotomy about oil being the "energy of the past" and alternative energy being the wave of the future. This is becoming part of his stump speech, as he elaborated on that talking point a few days later, trying to depict anyone who opposed his policies as "flat earthers".

Let's look at what he said, he called oil "the fuel of the past", as opposed to algae and electric cars and windmills and solar that he deems "the fuel of the future". But, isn't he omitting a rather large part of the equation? How about: The Present?

You know, algae might make a fine fuel someday, but when you go to fill up your car to get to work tomorrow, to go to the grocery store, to carpool the kids to school, to take the baby to the doctor, you can't fill up at the corner algae station, because there is none. If Barack could snap his fingers and put an algae powered car on every driveway in the nation, most of you would have to stay home, because there is no infrastructure to support it.

Those mean, nasty oil companies (more about them later) and their dealers have put up an awful lot of money to make sure that there's a gas station as convenient to you as possible, so you won't get stuck by the side of the road in downtown Cleveland or Left Wingnut, Wyoming, because you couldn't find a gas station. That infrastructure was not built overnight. And it did not come cheap, either.

And historically, even big breakthroughs in science did not take effect universally. People were still using kerosine lamps after Edison invented the light bulb. Many people still rode horses and horse drawn buggies after the automobile was invented. People were still riding trains after the Wright Brothers' invention made its first commercial flight. Ever heard of "Amtrak"? There are people today who take trains to cities where they could fly. Most times the things of the past have coexisted with newer technology for years and years. Some things are even more enduring and compete with new technology for a century or better.

The point is, that a) our need for a stable petroleum supply for both our manufacturing and energy needs is not going away any time soon. The monitor you're reading this on was made from petroleum products. The keyboard you use to type your nasty response, disagreeing with everything I say, is made largely from petroleum products.

b) The infrastructure to support electric, or algae, or hydrogen, or nuclear powered cars is not there yet, and for many people, won't be there for many years. You may be able to refuel your car's hydrogen fuel cell at the corner of Fifth and Main in the next five or ten years, but those people who use a tractor to clear the snow off their unpaved roads in the winter, will never see a hydrogen fuel cell for that old Ford 9N. Before we relegate any fuel "to the past", there must be something else to take its place. And we are not there yet.

Electric cars are still mostly playthings for the well to do. Worse yet for their prospect, is the fact that China is the primary source for acquiring the "rare earth" elements needed to make high tech batteries and devices. Even as you read this, the Chinese have backed off from selling us as much of the rare earths as we would like to buy. What if that source were cut off from us completely? What's "Plan 'B'"?

And a nation of electric cars and electric high speed trains (don't get me started on THAT one!), will require more and more electric capacity, not less. And every solar or wind powered facility needs a full fledged back up system for when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing, unless you had a very efficient storage system, which we do not currently (pun intended) possess. Yet, Obama and his EPA are shuttering coal fired plants left and right (mostly left), leaving our grid in a much more precarious position to provide for the needs of a growing economy. I guess his first step in bringing these goals to pass, was to make sure the economy wasn't growing!

But the only reason we’ve come this far as a nation is because we refuse to stand still. Because we put our faith in the future. Because we are inventors and builders and makers of things. We’re Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers and Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. That’s who we are. That’s who we need to be right now.

After disparaging the past, he cites Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers. We are still using Mr. Edison's lightbulb today, and many of us prefer it to the "CFL" (Catastrophic Failure Lamps; see also: Exploding Mercury Bombs). We may all be using LEDs someday, but for now, many people object to the price of LED bulbs and the environmental hazards of CFLs.

I bought an LED bulb just yesterday. I'm glad I didn't buy two! When I got it home, it didn't fit in the fixture I had purchased it for. Maybe one day, they come out with a different bulb or someone designs a different fixture and we all live happily ever after. But, that's not today.

Mr. President: I don't live in the past. I resent you trying to falsely paint everyone who disagrees with you as ignorant, particularly in light of that historically inaccurate tripe you included in that particular speech. I live in the present, where petroleum and petroleum byproducts fuel my transportation and provide my livelihood. There are millions of Americans just like me. You were not elected to bring about some sweeping change that would alter our future. You were elected to defend and uphold the Constitution. Last time I looked there was nothing in there about algae powered cars, LED lighting, solar power or universal health care.

Quit bragging about how much higher oil production has been during your administration, seeing as how oil production on federal lands has dropped and the increases are all in spite of your policies. Stop playing politics with America's energy security. Approve the Keystone pipeline. Facilitate drilling in the far northern, barren and desolate regions of ANWR.

Tell your hippie, environmentalist friends that it is essential to become energy independent to preserve our liberty, and that oil and coal are the energy of the present.

Cross posted at LCR.