The high price gas Democrats
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeAre high gas prices a good thing?Now it is the oil companies fault and not their messing with the laws of supply and demand. Someone should ask them what they think the price should be today.
That is not as dumb a question as it sounds. Examine a few revealing past remarks from President Obama and the cabinet officials who are now in charge of the nation's energy use and oil leases on federal lands. Then decide whether the current soaring gas prices are supposed to be good or bad.
In 2008, Sen. Ken Salazar (D., Colo.) - now secretary of the interior, in charge of the leasing of federal oil lands - refused to vote for any new offshore drilling. In a Senate exchange with minority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), Salazar objected to allowing any drilling on America's outer continental shelf - even if gas prices reached $10 a gallon. We can now see why the president appointed Salazar, inasmuch as Obama recently promised the Brazilians that he would be eager to buy their newfound offshore oil - while prohibiting similar exploration here at home.
From 2007 to 2008, Steven Chu, now secretary of energy, weighed in frequently on global warming and the desirable price of traditional energy. At one point Chu asserted, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." Chu also lamented, "We have lots of fossil fuel; that's really both good and bad news. We won't run out of energy, but there's enough carbon in the ground to really cook us."
In other words, $10 a gallon for gas would be desirable, while an enormous amount of recoverable American oil, gas, coal, tar sands, and oil shale should be left untapped.
During the 2008 campaign, Obama himself had strange ideas about the prospect of expensive prices for fossil-fuel-generated energy: "Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." Candidate Obama also elaborated on the envisioned role of his administration in ensuring such high prices: "So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them."
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So much of this administration's talk about energy sounds similar to a bull session in the faculty lounge, or what we would expect from lifelong bureaucrats and public functionaries who have never experienced long commutes or struggles in the harsher, profit-driven private workplace.
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The fact si they really want to price to go higher, they just want the government to get the added revenue and not those who take the risk and produce the energy.
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