Oil Drilling Moratorium is an Act of Treason

By Alan Caruba

If you had any doubt that Barack Obama’s agenda is to destroy the United States of America, but still want more proof, I offer you the announcement that his administration will not provide any offshore oil leases in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, Pacific, or Atlantic coasts...for at least seven years!

In October, a study by the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University concluded that the reduction of shallow water oil drilling permits that followed the BP oil spill would put as many as 40,000 jobs at risk and cost the region $4.3 billion in lost wages and revenues.

At the same time, a consortium of foreign oil companies led by the Spanish firm, Repsol, working with India’s state-run Oil & Natural Gas Company and Norway’s StatoilHydro are exploring for oil off the coast of Cuba where drilling in its waters will proceed even while American and other oil companies will be denied access to vast reserves off the coasts of all of the Gulf States.

From Alaska to Florida, offshore of California or any of the East Coast States, Obama is destroying America’s energy future in the same fashion his administration has done everything in its power to shut down the nation’s coal mining industry.

Here are the statistics that demonstrate how dependent we are on fossil fuels: In total they provide 84.9% of the energy Americans use. Of that, coal provides 22.4% and oil represents 39.2%, while natural gas accounts for 23.2%. Other energy sources include nuclear power at 8.3%, hydroelectric at 2.4% and the least efficient and dependable, wind at 0.3% and solar at 0.08%. (Data source: the Institute for Energy Research)

In March, Gov. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat, said, “President Obama has made his intentions to bankrupt the coal industry clear. EPA’s actions this week demonstrate that he will wage a war against the energy source that generates half of America’s electricity and is our nation’s most abundant, reliable, and affordable energy sources.”

Gov. Manchin said that estimates were that the administration’s actions would affect 65,000 members of the Appalachian workforce who would lose some of the highest-paying jobs available in the region. At least $12 billion in lost economic development was forecast.

Nor is the Obama attack on the nation’s energy supply restricted to coal and oil.

In October, the Obama administration demanded $880 million in exchange for a $7.5 billion loan guarantee necessary to the construction of a Maryland nuclear facility. The plant would have generated thousands of jobs as well as needed megawatts of electricity for that State’s residents. The project was cancelled.

State by State as America ceases to mine its own coal and loses access its own oil reserves, the prices of energy which will have to be imported will rise while thousands of jobs related to these industries disappear, wrecking the economies of entire communities and delaying the recovery of energy-rich States.

These are acts of treason against the nation, if not in the narrow legalistic definition, but in the larger context of the harm being done to a nation for which affordable, abundant energy has been at the core of its economy and well-being.

The moratorium is the equivalent of an act of war on the ability of Americans to have the energy they need to recover from the present economy, to provide the jobs necessary to that recovery, and to fuel everything from the utilities that generate electricity and the nation’s fleet of trucks that transport the vast bulk of all goods.

This agenda of economic destruction has been carried out since Obama took office in 2009. It is the reason Obamacare was inflicted on the nation, asserting control over one sixth of the nation’s economy. It is the reason the government took over General Motors and Chrysler. It is the reason Obama failed to come back from South Korea with a trade treaty and has stalled others in the pipeline.

In countless ways, the engine of the federal government is being used to betray and impoverish Americans.

Cry treason! For that is what it is.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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The Kindergarten Congress

By Alan Caruba

The Founders in their genius created a Constitution that was intended to slow down the process of legislation precisely because they wanted the new nation to avoid being destroyed by the passions and trends of the day.

So what do we have today, a month away from the largest transfer of power in Congress since 1946?

We have a Senate being asked to vote on whether, not when, to extend the tax rates that have been in existence for the past nine years.

We have no indication of a resolution to continue funding the operation of government.

We have extraneous issues such as whether Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should be imposed on a military, a large portion of which do not want to have openly gay members in their midst.

We have seen a vote allegedly on food safety that will destroy yet another segment of the economy, the small, usually family-owned farm.

The majority leader of the Senate wants a “Dream Act” amnesty program that would fund the college education of the children of illegal immigrants. And while this is being contemplated, since January 2000 census data shows that 13.1 million immigrants, legal and illegal, have arrived in the nation. In 2008 and 2009, 2.4 million new immigrants settled in the United States at the same time that 8.2 million jobs were lost.

Across our southern border Mexico is in a state of anarchy that threatens States from Texas to California, but the present administration is suing Arizona for taking action to respond to the threat.

We have seen the White House push for approval of a critical nuclear weapons treaty that clearly needs to be subjected to further thought before we allow the Russians to decide how many such weapons we can have.

We have an Environmental Protection Agency threatening to ignore Congress and initiate an authority it does not have, the imposition of regulatory control over carbon dioxide emissions. This would give it control over all energy use and thus control over our lives and the future of our economy.

The present Congress, until December 31, is filled with defeated Representatives and Senators, or those about to retire. It should be enacting only such legislation as will maintain the government until a newly-elected Congress takes office in 2011.

And we have a President who sat down this week with the present and future leaders of Congress for two hours in the White House and resolved absolutely NOTHING.

If we replaced the Democrats in Congress with randomly selected kindergarten children, we could do no worse than the ones who forced so-called Medicare reform, Obamacare, on a majority of Americans who expressed their opposition in “town hall” meetings and mass marches.

We have a government-owned automobile company producing obscenely priced electric cars that can barely travel beyond forty miles despite a massive infrastructure that will ensure that gasoline powered automobiles can transport Americans anywhere they want to go.

We have a Congress and administration that, in two years, inflated the nation’s debt beyond that of every previous combined Congress in the nation’s history.

Beyond our borders there are U.S. carrier groups in the Yellow Sea of China and the Gulf of Persia because we have never resolved to take action against a criminal cartel called North Korea and we lack the will to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities even though the entire Middle East would support the action.

Meanwhile, millions of homes in America are over-valued, forcing foreclosures when a rational reevaluation is called for. We have an official 9.6 unemployment rate that is in reality close to twenty million unemployed. Two million of them will lose unemployment compensation that has been provided for two years with which to find employment.

There cannot, however, be renewed employment until the income tax issue is resolved by the simple action of extending present rates.

We have a government that told us that the last Recession ended in 2009! By any rational definition, the U.S. is in a Depression.

Billions squandered. Trillions borrowed. It is a national death spiral that must be set right, but which is imperiled by a succession of potential presidential vetoes.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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Video: Democrat Demogoguery in the House

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