Soaring gas prices by design
By Jack Rains
Updated 08:41 p.m., Friday, February 17, 2012
Barack Obama's energy policy can be encapsulated thusly:
When Obama took office in January 2009, the average price of gasoline nationwide was $1.89 a gallon. Three years into the Obama presidency, the average is $3.47 a gallon.
And that is not by happenstance, my fellow citizens. That is by design. Talk about a trend.
Al Gore, the former vice president and Democratic presidential nominee, and now environmental multimillionaire, advocates a $5 per gallon-plus price for gasoline. Talk about trends.
Obama cancels the Keystone XL pipeline to bring cheap crude from our reliable ally Canada to Texas refineries, thus maintaining our dependency on OPEC's high prices. Gore and other environmentalists smiled and Obama suggested comfortable walking shoes and bikes as an alternative to driving.
This is as bad as former President Jimmy Carter suggesting we turn off the air conditioners and buy Franklin stoves. Talk about global warming.
There is a simple explanation for all this. All the so-called clean energy schemes (which ignore the price of electrical generation to recharge batteries every few miles) have no hope of market acceptance without gasoline prices being artificially raised beyond reason. When it was introduced, the electric Chevrolet Volt was priced at $41,000 and had a very limited range - 26 miles - but enjoyed a tax rebate of $7,500. Yes, boys and girl, if it quacks like a conspiracy … you know the rest.
So what are we to do? Well, we could persuade the liberals to drop their opposition to domestic energy development and use and switch to speaking up for our national interest, which would mean they would have to abandon Gore and Obama and huge deficits. Or we could hope Obama has a change of heart and/or clarity of thought and fires his left-wing advisers and Cabinet officers who advocate huge deficits. Or, in the alternative, in November we could throw the whole lot out and send them back to K Street to lobby and continue getting richer off of taxpayer dollars, and we cut domestic spending and thus deficits and move to energy independence.
The latter is far less expensive and safer for our nation's security but highly unlikely with our current executive leadership.
Japan and Germany learned you cannot defend your national interests without stable, affordable energy. China is demonstrating it in heeding that lesson well. Meanwhile the Obama administration leads us down the road to financial ruin and security vulnerability.
Wake up, America.
Rains, a former Texas secretary of state, is a Houston lawyer and businessman.
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