The $10,000 credit proposed in Obama’s latest Budget is pure comedy. No one is taking it, or the Budget very seriously. If they really want to get sales rolling though for the Volt, the “Official Pace Car” of the Obama Administration, I like the — “Buy One, Get One Free” — idea even better than these credits.  Incidentally the current $7500 tax credit is not time constrained; i.e., it doesn’t expire on such and such date. It applies to the first 200,000 of these things that are sold.  At the current sales rate for the plug-ins that should happen in 10 or 15 years presuming there’s no more spontaneous combustion on the horizon.

The then, MI Gov. Granholm, wanted to convert the tax-credit into a Government financed rebate. Fortunately that hand-out failed. Now the only people who can get the $7500 are those with that much of a tax bill.  Half of IRS filers pay nothing, so figure the % of those who could get the full $7500 is fairly low.

Get the irony here? Obama rails about “fairness”, paying your “fair share”, and the rest of that class warfare crap that he and Moochelle are spewing, but here he’s giving tax breaks to comfortable,   Leftist dilettantes, who want to have one of these cars, which are arguably the stupidest idea in the large repertoire of Obama blunders.

A word of advice to any Trotskyite considering placing one of these things in his or her garage. “Make sure you have fire/smoke detectors down there, comrade.”

You’re entirely welcome.

Jim

PS – For your viewing pleasure:

The White House galas, the endless vacations, and the eternal campaign have continued apace through this, “Potemkin Administration”, as it blithely busies itself tending to the menus, and the musical play selections in the Titanic dining room.

It’s clear that the strategy of the Obama re-election campaign, and their major media lackeys will be, first, to present the shabby pretense that, rather than being a craven collaborator with radical Islam; Obama has really been a bold warrior against its worst elements. This as demonstrated by the bin Laden raid, and the summary execution of American citizen, al-Awlaki. Of course he was dragged reluctantly to both missions, clinging to Valerie Jarrett’s skirts in the case of bin Laden; but no matter. It was mighty Barack who slew the beasts.

The major campaign project though will be to create a “Potemkin economy”, from the ashes of a comatose private sector. The term “Potemkin village” was coined in Russia to describe attempts by the USSR to fool usually sympathetic, foreign visitors. They were taken to select villages, factories, schools, stores, or neighborhoods which had been, “prepared” to present conditions that were unknown elsewhere in the country. It was all but impossible for such visitors to see the true oppression and abject drudgery of Soviet life. In 1952, Nobel laureate, Doris Lessing, a British writer, was part of a delegation visiting Moscow. Her memories of the trip are clear, and unforgiving: “I was taken around and shown things as a, “useful idiot”… that’s what my role was. I cannot understand why I was so gullible.”

If Republicans are to succeed in Nov. they must take on the task of demolishing Obama’s, “Potemkin economy”. Our nation is not in any, “recovery”. The condition more closely resembles a “death spiral”.   The GOP must explain this reality without apologies, accurately and relentlessly. If they don’t, the Obama forces will reduce us to a nation of, “gullible” and culpable, “useful idiots”.

An Obama Report Card:

In 2008 candidate Obama said: “We cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences to the next budget, administration or generation.” In 2009 he promised that he would cut the nation’s budget deficit in half by the end of his first term. His peculiar method to achieve these goals though, was to spend our way back into fiscal responsibility, and thus,,,, prosperity. As a result of this disastrous economic “strategy”, the projected deficit this year is not “half” of that contained in Bush’s final Budget; it is almost 3 times larger.

The only question to be asked in this connection then is: When the above promises were made, was he acting as, Barack-the-fool, or Barack-the-liar? Well yes. I guess we could accept, “Both”,  as an answer.

At best the oft proposed explanation that, “he didn’t know how bad it was”, suggests at least two things: He did little serious preparation before entering Office, i.e. he knew how to become President,  but not how to be President. He apparently didn’t understand the concept that a Government, which decides to spend a trillion more than in the final year of its predecessor, without making a single attempt to curtail stupidity, waste, duplication, and corruption; will very likely expand the deficit by said trillion. Despite what they asked us to believe, does anyone really think that his “crack” economic team of  Summers, Volcker, and Romer, and tax-cheat Geithner didn’t grasp this high order of economics?

As for “not knowing how bad it was, here’s Obama at a presidential debate on 9/28/08: “You know, we are at a defining moment in our history. Our nation is involved in two wars, and we are going through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.” In case he didn’t believe his own words then there was this: A January 2009 survey of more than 100 economists, conducted by the National Association for Business Economics, found that that business conditions overall were the worst in the survey’s 27-year history. At the time, 78% of these economists said they expected GDP to continue falling despite the spending measures that Obama had proposed.

CBO reports that annual spending over the Obama era has climbed to a projected $3.6 trillion plus this fiscal year. The government spending burden has averaged 24% of GDP, up from an average of about 20%. Note to Messrs. Obama, Geithner, Summers, Volcker, and Romer: This figure is not read as a spending increase of 4%. It’s an increase of 20%! And none of this factors in the $2 trillion tab for ObamaCare which will create an annual drag on our economy of at least twice this number. Anyway during his first term, “Obama the austere” will have piled over $5 trillion in new debt on our children and theirs. And what pray tell, do we have to show for this unconscionably reckless, binge? Maybe the kindly Ms. Romer broke it to us a softly as possible when, in the middle of last year she suggested that we were experiencing an oxymoronic, “growth-less recovery”. Jobless too, as we’ll see in a minute.

Note that Democrats never tire of yapping about Bush turning a quasi Budget “surplus”, into deficit. None of the critics make note of a couple of things which any honest, objective analysis would certainly identify. Right, “honest, objective”, does exclude 99.3% of Democrats, but you get the picture. It’s “real world” vs. “their world”, and never the twain shall meet. The economy was already trending downward, when Bush took Office. Less than 8 months later, the 9/11 attacks were committed. By the end of 2001, it was estimated that 9/11 caused the loss of 1 million jobs.  Thus the so-called, “surplus” disappeared.

Rather than whine incessantly about the situation though, Bush proposed policies that triggered the kind of sustained growth that saw the deficit fall to 1 percent of GDP ($162 billion) by 2007. Indeed, before the financial crisis of 2008, Bush’s budget deficits were 0.6 percentage points below the historical average. So much for Democrat, “perspective”.

Obama Report Card – Fiscal Responsibility: F-

Obama-the jobs-maker’s original target for jobs creation, set during the 2008 fall campaign, was 2.5 million jobs. But as employment fell at the end of 2008, he increased the employment target to 3.5 million jobs. This was a fairly modest target of 72, 000 jobs a month over the 4 years. So after 3 years, let’s see what he’s actually achieved:

Rather than creating 3.5 million, in his 3 years there’s been a net loss of 462 thousand jobs. If you focus on only one statistic here though, it should be this. According to the BLS, and additional 6.851 million of us have decided to withdraw from the Labor Force. It’s estimated that 125,000 net new jobs per month are needed just to absorb net new entrants into the employment market. In other words over Obama’s first 36 months, 4.5 million would have been added to the Labor Force. Yet the BLS reports only a 679 thousand increase in the number. So where have they all gone? Check the “Not in Labor Force” number again. If we add even half of this 4.5 million to the Labor Force, and put half of the aberrations 6.85 million gain in the “Not in Labor Force”, back into the “Force”, we wind up with a total of 160.075 million seeking work. This produces an Unemployment level, of 11.5%. Some put the number much higher than that.

In connection with the expansion of the “Not in Labor Force” category, or the “undead” as they’ve been called; the “Labor Force Participation Rate” has fallen to an alarming 63.7%; its lowest level since 1979, when far more women were at home running households for intact families. Oily Obama pundits have explained this falling “Participation Rate” as evidence that Baby Boomers are retiring. Baloney!  The real story is exactly the opposite. Seniors are continuing to work, or returning to the Labor Force,,, often in menial jobs that they now need to stay afloat, pay for Medicare supplementary insurance,,, etc. Or in many cases remaining beyond planned retirement dates, because their children, sometimes with their families have moved in, to avoid homeless destitution. This due to the fact that, Obamanomics has devastated the 16 – 54 jobs market.

It’s difficult to know the full extent of it, but it’s now certain that millions have moved to the ranks of the “disabled”, after exhausting their unemployment benefits. In 2002 an estimated 7.2 million were receiving SSDI benefits. Next year SS Administrators projects there will be 11 million disabled on their rolls, at a cost of nearly $150 billion a year. After 2 years these beneficiaries will also qualify for Medicare. Mechanisms to disqualify abusers of this system barely exist. So with all that we spend to avoid people becoming “disabled”, over a 10 year span the ranks of the disabled” will grow by 53%. Your Government in action. Note: These allegedly “disabled” are conveniently removed from the “Labor Force”.

Obama Report Card – Jobs Creation: F-

The Obama Administration’s, jobs “death spiral” has many causes. They can be summed up in a single phrase: “anti-business policies”.  It began with the $860 billion slush-fund and debt, “pile-on”  that Democrats risibly called, a “Stimulus”. This was really the first, anti-capitalist blast from this Administration. It announced that Obama governmentalists would not only decline to support private corporate enterprise, but they would be overtly antagonistic to almost all businesses, excluding only those which offered political dividends, or were burdened by Obama-friendly, labor unions.  So who could be surprised when, during this period of crushing, intractable unemployment a Sept. report by the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee revealed that this Administration has “imposed 75 new major regulations costing more than $380 billion over ten years.”  In addition, the report says there are 219 more “economically significant regulations” in the works which will cost businesses $100 million or more each year — for a minimum cost of $21 billion over ten years.  The number of pages in the Federal Register, in which such rules are recorded, is increasing rapidly, the report says, and “pages devoted to final rules, rose by 20 percent between 2009 and 2010, and proposed rules have increased from 2,044 in 2009 to 2,439 in 2010.”

Obama and his tyranny of czars have created a regulatory environment that’s suffocating America’s entrepreneurs’ ability to create jobs and grow their businesses. They are causing existing businesses to  re-trench rather than re-load. This deadly, regulatory tsunami has stifled productivity, while killing wage growth, job creation and overall economic expansion. Obama’s celebrated Dodd-Frank financial regulation and the earlier Sarbanes-Oxley intrusion, have only created jobs for regulations writers, lawyers and accountants.

In a 9/29/11 column, the indelible Victor Davis Hanson explained the deadly Obama malaise thusly: “Here is the lament I heard: the near $5 trillion in borrowing in just three years, the radical growth in the size of the federal government and its regulatory zeal, ObamaCare, the Boeing plant closure threat, the green jobs sweet-heart deals and Van Jones-like “Millions of Green Jobs” nonsense, the vast expansion in Food Stamps and unemployment pay-outs, the reversal of the Chrysler creditors, politically driven interference in the car industry, the failed efforts to get card check and cap and trade,   the moratoria on new drilling in the Gulf, the general antipathy to new fossil fuel exploitation coupled with new finds of vast new reserves, the new financial regulations, an aggressive EPA oblivious to the effects of its advocacy on jobs, the threatened close-down of energy plants, the support for idling thousands of acres of irrigated farmland due to environmental regulations, the constant talk of higher taxes, the needlessly provocative rhetoric of “fat cat”, “millionaires and billionaires,” “corporate jet owners,” etc. juxtaposed, in hypocritical fashion, to Martha’s Vineyard, Costa del Sol, and Vail First Family getaways — all of these isolated strains finally are becoming a harrowing opera to business people.

Despite enormous opportunity for many cash-rich firms to take advantage of the down cycles (low interest, plentiful potential employees, discounted prices, etc.), they are taking a pass, almost as if to collectively sigh, “This bunch doesn’t like me much, and I’m going to hunker down, hoard my cash, and sit out the next year and a half until they are gone.”

Obama Report Card – Economic Stimulation: F-

The amount of money the Federal Government now hands out in direct payments to individuals steadily increased over the past four decades, but shot up under Obama, climbing by almost $600 billion, a staggering 32% increase in his first three years! According to the Census Bureau, 49% now live in homes where at least one person gets a Federal benefit — Social Security, workers comp, unemployment, subsidized housing, and the like. This year, more than 46 million (15% of all Americans) will get food stamps. That’s 45% higher than when Obama took office, and twice as high as the average for the previous 40 years. In advance of Obamacare implementation; 45% of all health spending now processes through the Federal Government, up from 32% in 1990.

In just nine years, entitlement spending is on track to eat up 61% of the Federal Budget, according to the CBO. And unless these programs are cut back, they will soon consume all federal taxes, one CBO Budget scenario predicts. Obama has offered no reform of entitlements, in fact his healthcare law removes at least $500 billion from Medicare, only to transfer it to the fraud-ridden, Medicaid program.

The Bush administration warned as early as April 2001 that Fannie and Freddie were too large and over-leveraged and that their failure “could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting federally insured entities and economic activity” well beyond housing. The FBI began warning of “epidemic” fraud in mortgage applications in 2004, or before. Bush’s proposal would have subjected Fannie and Freddie to the kinds of rigorous Federal regulation that banks, credit unions, and savings and loans have to comply with. In addition, Republican Richard Shelby, then chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, pushed for comprehensive GSE (government-sponsored enterprises) reform in 2005. And who blocked these efforts at reforming Fannie and Freddie? At least peripherally, Republicans like  Sen. Rick Santorum, and Democrats such as Sen Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank, along with the then-junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, who backed Dodd’s threat of a filibuster (Obama was the third-largest recipient of campaign gifts from Fannie and Freddie employees in 2004).

So Obama and his party bear a substantial (though not exclusive) responsibility in creating the economic crisis that Obama himself inherited.

Even if you set all this aside, Obama entered office knowing what he faced, including a deficit and debt that was exploding. And rather than promote adult policies that accelerated economic growth and began to address our fiscal entitlement crisis, Obama recklessly chose to go in exactly the opposite direction, including the 2700 page abomination known as Obamacare.

On his worst day, the economic decisions made by Obama’s predecessor were better, more responsible, and more enlightened by national interest than anything that this Obama has done.

Obama Report Card – Fiscal Credibility: F-

The script for Obama’s “Potemkin Economy” recently proclaimed positive developments on the jobs front. Only Obamunists and their “useful idiots” in the media would have the hubris to even suggest such a thing. The truth of Obama’s America is more accurately portrayed here by the aforementioned, Dr. Hanson:

“Last week, I mentioned that my local community is struggling with council members calling each other names and alleging serial conflicts of interest, theft of the city’s manhole covers by public employees, and child pornography charges lodged against a policeman. This week? An epidemic of the theft of honorific bronze plaques from the walls of the city’s schools, civic centers, and public buildings — the sort of commemoration for good deeds that are the stuff of civilization. It reminds me of Procopius’s description of post-Roman Italy in the 6th-century AD, when lost Ostrogoth and Visigoth souls drifted amid the great cities of the Old Romans, cannibalizing the ancients’ marble, bronze, and lead clamps, and melting down monuments for lime. What scares me is that the “gang bangers”, who are prying these plaques off the walls and selling them, for pennies on their original dollars, for scrap, have no idea of the now dead who built and created these buildings and institutions, but so often in extremis will expect to use them. Did the man who built a school or the woman who founded a civic club ever expect that their commemorative citations would end up in a melt-down pile in the local wrecking yard?

Copper wire torn out from agricultural pumps? Manhole covers stolen by their very custodians? Commemorative plaques pried out? We are almost an entire generation of parasites that cannot create anything new, and so feed on the capital and labor of the past.

Sixth-century Rome to the core, or maybe Dark-Age Greece around 1000 BC where the illiterate and ignorant were wandering beneath the walls of Mycenae or Pylos looking for shelter that they could not build for themselves, and swearing superhuman “gods”, must have erected such walls. Who knows, just as the most fertile period of Greek myth-making came out of the oral traditions of the Dark Ages,  as an impoverished and illiterate age tried to make sense of the monumental traces of a lost civilization, so too soon we may think our forgotten dam builders and water project architects of the last century were Apollo or the Cyclops, as we watch their legacies erode and crumble.”

Obama Report Card – Preserving America’s Moral Legacy: F-

Obama is no leader, no warrior, and he’s certainly no, wise man. In fact, he’s proven to be nothing more than a glib, but inept, provocateur.

His crumbling, “Potemkin economy” though, is merely the opening act in the dismal, decline and fall of our America. His new assaults on the Catholic Church just reek of this “Stalinism”. Why then should we doubt that this noxious charlatan’s real mission, it is to create an America on the Soviet model?

On 2/2/09 Obama offered this to the “Today Show’s”, Matt Lauer:

“I will be held accountable. You know, I’ve got four years. … A year from now, I think people are gonna see that we’re starting to make some progress, but there’s still gonna be some pain out there. If I don’t this done in three years, then there’s gonna be a one-term proposition.”

The results of his policies are incontestable. By any measure, he has made all things worse, and dreadfully so,,,, unimaginably so. It was Obama himself then, who predicated our response to his horrendous rule. He must be expelled in November.

It’s our only hope.

Jim

They BLS numbers are certainly being “massaged”, but a cultural shift is clearly underway too,,,, and it’s not a good one. Call it, “the entitlement culture”. Millions have become convinced that their plight is always, exclusively, someone else’s fault. So Government must help them, make them whole due to the injustice of it all.  This group is also identified by its endless self-obsessing, and inability to consider things that don’t directly involve them, or that don’t amuse them.  Their apathy or ignorance about civic matters means they choose their politicians or movements based on one thing only: Who promises to give them the most stuff. “Stuff” that’s paid for by “someone else’s” money, or “someone else’s indebtedness.

Another huge problem we have is the Federalizing mentality itself. It’s been spawned by grubby Republicans and Democrats alike. Our central Government is solely designated to find “solutions” to everything from education, to hunger, to healthcare, to world peace, to AIDS in Africa, to hang-nails, to the breeding and care of pets [See Santorum's "PAWS Law"]. In other words, the U.S. Constitution is relegated to being a quaint anachronism. Something “left-over” from the days when Americans actually prized their liberty, more than “stuff”. The problem with this central approach is that Federalizing something, not only builds-in the “creeping elegance” of those spending money that they didn’t earn; but it provides for maximum inefficiency and corruption. Of course it also means that the subject “condition”, will grow worse and thus be in need of even more “good money” to chase the ill-spent, “bad”.

Aside from Federal employee retirements, Social Security is probably the only other, “transfer payment” that should be nationalized since it has uniform contributions and benefits. With this exception, all else relating to unemployment, welfare, healthcare should go back to the States under population based, block grants where they are appropriate. If States were in control, a “corporate” competition would develop. Until they changed their way, States that were as irresponsible as the Feds would attract most of the deadbeats and parasites, with the higher taxes to support them. The “producer classes” would flee.

The transition of the unemployed to lifetime Disability [SSDI] payments, and then after 2 years, to Medicare, is among the worst recent developments from this Federal abomination. These people will collect Federal Disability, and pay no taxes. Many of them will also work though at or below SSDI’s permissible income level [$1010/mo], while too many others, will work “off the books”.

11 million legally “Disabled” by next year? As the system is overrun, the limited Federal mechanisms to prevent swindlers from “a life on the dole”, will be even more useless than they are now.

Obama is using this to shuffle people from unemployment onto Disability, meaning they are no longer in the Labor Force, and no longer carried as “unemployed”.

The “under-employed” are a huge problem too. People who are doing jobs way below the wage level they previously enjoyed. In fact at a level which now qualifies them for Government “services” like  Food Stamps, S-CHIP for their kids, Medicaid, and EITC.

Whenever we hear about the 47% of IRS filers, who pay no Income Tax, Democrats interject the reminder that they do pay taxes, they pay the Payroll Tax. Many don’t. The EITC offsets the Payroll Tax, and then some in households claiming children under 16. One of the worse things about EITC is its perverse incentives for child-bearing. These especially impact immigrant households. About 32% of immigrant households qualify for the Tax Credit, but 48% of such households with children under 16 are EITC eligible. About 18% of native households and 32% of those with children qualify.

Here’s more evidence that we are creating a “shiftless class”, which can become socially disruptive on a dangerous scale, unless the Government buys their passivity. The 2010 U.S. Census data reports that 14.4 percent of high-school-educated men ages 25-34 were unemployed. Even worse are the figures for 20-24 year-old high-school-educated men; 22.4 percent of these males are unemployed. These are the victims of American de-industrialization, the abject failure of the Federal Government to even attempt to enforce employment law with respect to illegal aliens, and the dismal failure of State schools to educate or motivate boys, while focusing on force-feeding females into universities, and jobs formerly dominated by males. Just imagine the long-term social and financial impact of this phenomenon.

A related issue: Obama continues to declare: “We can’t just drill our way out of the problem. If we’re serious about addressing our energy problems, we’re going to have to do more than drill.”

No nation in the world, which had our massive energy reserves would be ignoring this fact in favor of prioritizing and spending [wasting, stealing] hundreds of billions trying to drive “the square peg”,  of “renewable energy” into “the round hole” called the U.S. economy.

So, “we’re going to have to do more than just drill”? Like what? Install the “green economy” that crushed Spain? Maybe a few more investments like Solyndra, or Ener1? How about a couple more EV projects like the Volt or Fisker?  So anyway let’s explore his theory. Unemployment in oil-booming, North Dakota, is 3.5%. Oregon’s average gas price today is $3.83 and Washington is at $3.78. But Wyoming is at $3.08; Utah $3.16 and Montana, $3.20. Idaho’s average is $3.23. So what’s driving the regional disparities? The answer hinges on the regional oil acquisition costs.  Refineries on the West Coast are likely paying up to $125 a barrel for the oil they use [Mexico], but Idaho and other Rocky Mountain states have access to cheaper oil coming out of Canada and North Dakota, priced closer to $80 a barrel.

More jobs and lower gas prices. Of course such a concept has no appeal among the brilliant Obamunists in the beanies with the propellers on top, to celebrate wind power..

An excerpt from an Obamaphile enviro-crap sheet: “With two new approvals this week – in which just the transmission and roads associated with them is on public lands – the total DOI approvals cover 27 utility-scale renewable energy projects. These include 16 solar projects, 4 wind farms and 7 geothermal plants. A boost in staff capable of reviewing renewable energy permits resulted in the much faster pace of approvals, according to Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar. http://cleantechnica.com/2011/12/31/obama-has-nearly-quadrupled-renewable-energy-on-public-lands/

All of the wind and solar carries substantial premiums to utilities, that purchase this intermittent energy. They must pay more for this power, yet because it is “intermittent” rather than continuous, it is merely supplemental by nature. Utilities and other power generators must still invest in, and maintain conventional generating plants that can meet the full needs of their power customers.  No company would invest a dime in this nonsense, if the heavy hand of Government was not stacking the deck in favor of inefficient, and expensive energy, while our energy independence lays in the ground, waiting to be tapped. More on this in another note.

I really get no sense that the people running for president, and this includes Gingrich, realize what’s happening to this Country under this tin-horn, jackass; much less do they have serious plans to remedy it, before it’s too late, if it’s not already.

Jim

The “energy policy” of the Obama Administration can be summarized in one sentence:

They seek to destroy the conventional [real] energy which has powered America, in favor of Democrat cronies who make up the Leftist, special interests that control so-called “green energy”. 

Rep. Maxine Waters asked the president of a major oil company to, “guess what this liberal would be all about?” She then answered her own implausible question:  “This liberal would be all about socializing — uh, uh, would be about basically taking over and the government running all of your companies.”  Obama never rebuked or corrected this Waters recitation of the Obama energy, “master plan”.

Energy Secretary Chu may be the only other honest voice in the Administration. Two days ago Rep. Alan Nunnelee on the House Appropriations Committee posed this question to Chu:

“But is the overall goal to get our price [of gasoline] down?”, he asked the Secretary.

Chu replied: “No, the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy. We think that if you consider all these energy policies, including energy efficiency, we think that we can go a long way to becoming less dependent on oil and [diversifying] our supply and we’ll help the American economy and the American consumers.”

There is zero evidence that this would occur. In fact there is compelling evidence in Europe that similar emphasis on “diversifying” energy supply produces awful results. Before the “bankrupt clown show” which is the U.S. Government, no country with enormously bountiful supplies of real energy, [oil, gas, coal] has ever chosen the suicidal course to spend countless billions on “pie in the sky” supplemental energy sources, which are both expensive and inefficient.

Surprised that lower prices at the pump aren’t even “a goal” of this “Energy Secretary”? Shouldn’t be. Chu has a long record of advocating for higher gas prices:

• In 2008, he stated, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
• Last March, he reiterated his point in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, noting that his focus is to ease the pain felt by his energy policies by forcing automakers to make more fuel-efficient [less safe and more expensive] automobiles. “What I’m doing since I became Secretary of Energy has been quite clear. What I have been doing is developing methods to take the pain out of high gas prices.” Not lower “high gas prices”, but “to take the pain out of” them. In Chu’s mind a $40,0000 “shoe box” on wheels with a battery that weighs more than the car it’s powering is less painful than a comfortable Accord or Camry that gets 30 mpg. The 56 mpg CAFE fleet average will add almost $7,000 [current $] to the average car cost within the fleet. Chu-math: At $5.00/gal, a driver who goes 10,000 miles a year at 50 mpg will spend $1000. on gas. Driving a 25 mpg car under the same conditions will cost $2000. But the low mileage option comes with an up-front $7.000 penalty. If the driver finances the purchase, this $7,000 becomes something closer to $10,000. The difference in price between the Volt [after the $7500 tax-credit], and its gasoline engine twin, the Cruze, is more than $15,000. To Chu this is, “less painful”.

In addition to subsidizing electric cars, “pipe dreams” like the failed Fisker or the sputtering Chevy Volt another of Chu’s methods, “to decrease our dependency on oil” is to recklessly dump billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars into alternative energy ”rat holes” like the Solyndra solar plant. These poorly chosen, poorly monitored,  ”investments” continue to drop like flies. The Volt, from Marxist Motors  has become little more than a Federally subsidized “toy” for Obama patrons, and other well-to-do Leftists.

So what’s the president’s next plan? Harvesting “a bunch of algae”, as a replacement for oil. Here’s the shameless boob on his latest bit of energy hot air:  “We’re making new investments in the development of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel that’s actually made from a plant-like substance, algae — you’ve got a bunch of algae out here,” Obama said at the University of Miami recently. “If we can figure out how to make energy out of that, we’ll be doing alright. Believe it or not, we could replace up to 17 percent of the oil we import for transportation with this fuel that we can grow right here in America.”
The Department of Energy (DOE) currently spends about $85 million on 30 research projects “to develop algal biofuels,” according to the White House, which announced that Obama is committing another $14 million to the idea. Oil prices over $4.00 and climbing. His answer is to spend more Government money that we don’t have to “harvest” green scum. Note the “green scum” phrase as used here is not to be confused with any description of Obama’s loyal, enviro-nazi brigades, no matter how apt that usage may be.

Meanwhile, the Administration continues to do everything possible to make supplies and costs of energy even more “painful” by refusing to open access to the country’s oil and gas reserves and blocking new projects that would lead to the development of more energy in America. His decision to block the Keystone XL pipeline, is prima facie evidence of the Obama-Chu strategy to drive gasoline prices higher.

At least Chu gave an honest answer that actually matches the actions taken by this foul Administration. Obama offers double-talk on gas prices. Last week he attempted to deflect blame for the pain by repeating the lie that we can’t drill our way out of this problem.  This despite mounting evidence demonstrating that alternative energy cannot stand the test of the market, and a focus on domestic production of real primary energy is the only way, “out of this problem”.

Obama and his greasy minions have been boasting about oil and gas exploration and production. At best, the claims are distortions. Most are bald-face lies though. The GOP House put together this note explaining the difference between what the regime of the oily liar says [SPIN], versus reality [RINSE]. GOP candidates better be well versed in this stuff, especially this first item:

SPIN: “Even if we tap every single resource available to us, we can’t escape the fact we only control 2% of the world’s oil but we consume over a quarter of the world’s oil.” (President  Obama, Press Conference, 3/11/11)

RINSE:  According to a recently released Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, the United States combined recoverable oil, natural gas, and coal resources is the largest in the World – outranking Saudi Arabia, China and Iran.                                            

– The President is ignoring the majority of America’s energy resources. The 2% figure is a narrow estimate based on the United State’s proven oil reserves – currently measured at 28.4 billion barrels of oil. However, according to the CRS the U.S. actually has   134.5 billion barrels of recoverable oil.                                                                                                                               —  Total recoverable energy reserves for the United States (combing oil, natural gas and coal) is 1.3 trillion barrels of oil equivalent – the largest in the world.                                                                                                                         —  This number does not even take into account the large oil shale reserves in the United States. The Department of Energy estimates 1.38 trillion barrels of shale oil are recoverable from approximately 7.8 million acres of federal land. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that our oil shale reserves could be greater than 1.5 trillion barrels of oil. This is five times larger than Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves.

SPIN: “Oil production last year rose to its highest level since 2003.” (Heather Zichal, “Expanding Safe and Responsible Energy Production,” The White House Blog, 3/8/11)

RINSE: The Obama Administration’s actions have caused domestic energy production to decrease.

– In 2007, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projected total 2010 U.S. oil production on federal lands to be 850 million barrels. Today’s actual production on federal lands is 714 million barrels, a 16 percent decline from what was projected. If it wasn’t for the Obama Administration, the U.S. would be producing more energy.

– This is why FUTURE projections show a decline in U.S. production and an increase in imports. On March 8, 2011 the EIA published new projections that show a decline in total U.S. crude oil production of 110,000 barrels per day in 2011 and 130,000 barrels per day in 2012.

– Finally, the White House does not explain that the vast majority of increased production is occurring on private lands, not public. For example, North Dakota alone produced almost 120 million barrels of oil in 2010, compared to just over 20 million in 2003. The majority of North Dakota’s production is on private land. This begs the question, why are we not using our federal lands to create American jobs and produce American energy resources to lower prices?

SPIN: “U.S. oil and natural gas production has increased, while imports of foreign oil have decreased.” (White House Fact Sheet, “Fact Sheet: Expanding Safe And Responsible Oil And Gas Production,” www.scribd.com, Accessed 3/14/11)

RINSE: Since 2008, U.S. foreign oil imports have decreased by 2 million barrels per day—at the same time, U.S. consumption has decreased by 2 million barrels per day.

– Imports have decreased, not because of Obama Administration policies, but because demand decreased due to a floundering economy and high unemployment.                                                                                                           – Once again, any increase in onshore or offshore oil and gas development can be attributed to previous Administrations’ pro-energy policies. Canceling leases and slow-walking offshore permits, as the Obama Administration has done, does not increase American energy production.

– This is why EIA’s Short Term Energy Outlook shows total U.S. oil production DECREASING by nearly 250,000 barrels per day in 2012.

SPIN: “Total U.S. natural gas production in 2010 was 26.9 trillion cubic feet, a 5% increase from 2008 and the highest level in more than 30 years.” (White House Fact Sheet, “Fact Sheet: Expanding Safe And Responsible Oil And Gas Production,” www.scribd.com, Accessed 3/14/11)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         RINSE: The vast majority of the 5% increase represents natural gas extracted from private land, where the Obama Administration has had less of an ability to impede production.

– The Obama Administration is actively trying to impose regulations that would decrease natural gas production. The Environmental Protection Agency has been aggressively trying to stop natural gas production though regulation of hydraulic fracturing – the currently state-regulated drilling technology necessary for U.S. natural gas production to increase.

–The Department of the Interior has also announced potential plans to impede natural gas production on federal lands through duplicative hydraulic fracturing regulations.

Offshore Energy Production:

SPIN: “From 2008 to 2010, oil production from the Outer Continental Shelf increased more than a third – from 446 million barrels in 2008 to an [sic] more than 600 million barrels of estimated production in 2010.” (Heather Zichal, “Expanding Safe and Responsible Energy Production,” The White House Blog, 3/8/11)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           RINSE: Once again, the Obama Administration is attempting to take credit for actions they had nothing to do with. The strong production in the Gulf was due to leases issued in 1996-2000 under the Deepwater Royalty Relief Act – long before President Obama took office.

– The Obama Administration’s actions, such as imposing a de facto moratorium, are causing energy production to decline in the Gulf of Mexico. EIA shows a 300,000 barrel per day decline in current Gulf production and a projected Gulf decline of over 150 million barrels of oil in 2012.

SPIN: “Since the Deepwater Horizon spill and the implementation of stronger safety standards, BOEMRE has approved 37 shallow water permits in the Gulf of Mexico.” (White House Fact Sheet, “Fact Sheet: Expanding Safe And Responsible Oil And Gas Production,” www.scribd.com, Accessed 3/14/11)

RINSE: As of February 2011, shallow-water permit issuance continues to lag behind the historical average of 7.1 permits per month. 37 permits issued since April 2010 represents an average of only 3.7per month.

– Only two deepwater permits have been issued – over four months after the moratorium was officially listed. The Administration is being held in contempt for slow-walking permits and is currently trying to appeal a Federal Judge’s ruling that ordered them to act on stalled deepwater permits.

SPIN: “The Obama Administration is working to increase the responsible and safe production of oil and gas in the United States, and has offered a total of 38 million acres of OCS under active lease of which 6.5 million acres are producing.” (White House Fact Sheet, “Fact Sheet: Expanding Safe And Responsible Oil And Gas Production,” www.scribd.com, Accessed 3/14/11)

RINSE: The reason there is not production on 31.5 million acres is because the Obama Administration has stopped activity and is failing to issue permits to drill. This is blocking expanded American energy production in both the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska.

Onshore Energy Production:

SPIN: “Onshore oil production from public lands has also increased over the last year, from 109 million barrels in 2009 to 114 million barrels in 2010.” (Heather Zichal, “Expanding Safe and Responsible Energy Production,” The White House Blog, 3/8/11)

RINSE: The slight increase in onshore production from federal lands is due to lease sales approved by previous Administrations—not the Obama Administration.                                                                                                           – Since taking office, the Obama Administration has slowed onshore energy development on public lands and issued fewer leases.

– In 2008 there were 2,416 new oil and natural gas leases issued on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land spanning2.6 million acres. In 2010, under the Obama Administration, the number of new leases issued dropped to 1,308 and acres leased dropped to 1.3 million.

– The total onshore acreage leased under the Obama Administration in 2009 and 2010 are the lowest in over two decades, stretching back to at least 1984.

SPIN: “In 2010, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) held 29 oil and gas lease sales for public lands in the West, offering 1643 parcels covering 3.2 million acres.” (White House Fact Sheet, “Fact Sheet: Expanding Safe And Responsible Oil And Gas Production,”www.scribd.com, Accessed 3/14/11)

RINSE: 29 lease sales may seem high, until it’s compared to 2008 when there were 38 lease sales. Lease sales have DECREASED under the Obama Administration.                                                                                                           – The total onshore acreage leased under the Obama Administration in 2009 and 2010 are the lowest in over two decades, stretching back to at least 1984.

SPIN: “41 million acres of public lands are under lease for oil and gas development, of which 12 million acres are producing.”(White House Fact Sheet, “Fact Sheet: Expanding Safe And Responsible Oil And Gas Production,” www.scribd.com, Accessed 3/14/11) 

RINSE: This argument represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the process of oil and gas development on public lands. The process of developing a lease – from the sale to actual production – takes time. Approximately one-third of leases are waiting to complete environmental review and obtain permits to drill. The Obama Administration has slowed this process by adding new layers of regulations and hurdles. Total acres leased are not an accurate representation of potential energy development as all leases DO NOT contain economically recoverable amounts of oil and gas.                                                                                                                            – From 2002-2007, 52% of all exploration wells drilled were dry and 8% of the development wells drilled were dry.

SPIN: “The Administration is working to increase certainty and reduce costly delays and litigation in the onshore oil and gas leasing process.” (White House Fact Sheet, “Fact Sheet: Expanding Safe And Responsible Oil And Gas Production,” www.scribd.com, Accessed 3/14/11)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         RINSE: The Department of the Interior’s proposed “wild lands” policy to treat designated lands as de facto Wilderness Areas will lock-up land from energy development, decrease certainty and increase costly delays for energy developers.

– BLM has admitted to a 206 day average processing time for Applications for Permits to Drill (APD). However the actual time from when a company submits an APD to final approval is close to 2 years in some field offices.

###

The only consistent energy policy the Obamunists have, is to lie about the true nature of their “energy policy”.

Jim

If we had a real media, that were objective news gathering entities, the following questions and more would have been thoroughly pursued over the last years.  Among other things, this pursuit would have resulted in another family “occupying” the White House.  Forget the media though.  In the majority, they’re made up of Leftist co-conspirators.  On the other side, we find Vichy cowards.  The few people who do ask the questions are disparaged by the rest of them.  All of the “rest”.  So it’s left to the GOP to interrogate this President.  Yes,,, to question his legitimacy to hold Office.  This has nothing to do with “birthers”, or birth certificates.  It’s about this man’s stunning corruption and utter ineptitude.  Those who argue that such questions violate propriety, or the dignity of his Office may have their “propriety”, but they, their children and theirs damn sure won’t have their Country.
In no particular order:

1] How many times has the President blamed others for the blundering mess that he and his Congress have created?
2] How many czars has President Obama appointed?  What have they achieved?  And at what cost to tax-payers?
3] How many unnecessary solo flights has Ms. Obama made, and what have these cost tax-payers?
4] How many Administration meetings in the White House and nearby conference facilities have George Soros and Bill Ayers attended, and for what purposes?
5] Why is Eric Holder still Attorney General, rather than under Federal indictment?
6] When will a Special Prosecutor be appointed to investigate the entire failed and corrupt, “green energy” program?
7] How many “recess appointments” have been made?  Without violating the Constitution?
8] How many court orders have been ignored?
9] How many times has the president bowed to foreign leaders?
10] Why has the expression, “Islamic terrorists” been removed from the Government’s lexicon?
11] How many times did the President publicly order Congress to, “Pass this bill!”
12] How many times has Obama falsely claimed that, “every economist who’s looked at it says that the Recovery Act [Stimulus] has done its job and turned the economy around”; and where is the “every economist” list?.
13] How many other public misrepresentations did the President make about Obamacare, about Stimulus, about economic recovery, about “fairness”, or doing their “fair share”?
14] How many gaffes has Obama made?*
15] How many times before the election did he promise to reduce spending, cut the debt, streamline Government?
16] How many White House galas have been staged, and how much have these cost tax-payers?
17] Why didn’t the President retrieve or destroy the “state-of-the-art” drone captured by the Iranians?
18] Why didn’t the President consider the purported Iranian plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador, and dozens of Americans along with him, an “act of war”?
19] How many times has this President played golf, compared to attending church?
20] Why has this President, at great effort and expense, and unlike any presidential predecessor, enforced concealment of more about his past, than he has allowed to be revealed?

Jim
*Partial Obama “gaffe” list:
- At the Congressional Black Caucus annual awards dinner in Washington defending his call for the rich to pay more in taxes, the President said he didn’t mind people calling him a class warrior for merely asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a Jew.
- At a St. Patrick’s Day party for Ireland’s Prime Minister, Obama read the Prime Minister’s speech, during this “reading” he idiotically thanked himself for giving the St. Patrick’s Day party at the White House before he realized his mistake and stopped. Incidentally the press did not report this gaffe even though it was recorded on their own running cameras.
- Then there was his mispronunciation of corpsman as “corpse-man”; his announcement that he’d visited all 57 states; his acknowledgement of WW II, ‘fallen heroes”, many of whom are in the audience”.
- Speaking of Iran, he recently said, arguing that, “tiny countries” with small defense budgets can’t do us harm.”
- In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas.  Ten thousand people died—an entire town destroyed.” OK, make that 12 people.
- To Stephanopolis: “What I was suggesting—you’re absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith”
- On Obamacare: “The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system.”
- Same subject: He proudly proclaimed that his healthcare plan would reduce insurance premiums by 3,000 percent.
- Linking his birth to the civil rights movement: “There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born.”  Obama was born in 1961. The Selma march took place in 1965.

A gallon of regular gasoline the day Obama was inaugurated was $1.79 on average in the U.S.  Today that price is $3.59, a 100.6% increase.  The number of food stamp recipients has risen since Obama took office from 31,983,716 to 43,200,878, a 35.1% jump.  Long term unemployment soared 146.2% during the same 34 month period from 2,600,000 to 6,400,000.  Staggering hope and change isn’t it?

American citizens living in poverty have risen 9.5% from 39,800,000 to 43,600,000, and the number of unemployed has jumped almost 25% from 11,616,000 to 14,485,000 as of August 31, 2011.  The number of unemployed blacks has risen from 12.6% at the end of George Bush’s term to 15.8% today, a 25.4% increase, and finally, our national debt is up 43.2% from 10.627 trillion to 15,022 trillion.

Keep these figures in mind as we recount the number of firsts for this presidency:

• First President to refuse to show a valid birth certificate.
• First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner.
• First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in.
• First President to preside over a cut to the credit rating of the United States.
• First President to violate the War Powers Act.
• First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
• First President to defy a Federal Judges court order to cease implementing the Health Care Reform Law.
• First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party.
• First President to spend a trillion dollars on shovel-ready jobs and later admit there was no such thing as shovel-ready jobs.
• First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.
• First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.
• First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.
• First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.
• First President to terminate America’s ability to put a man in space.
• First President to encourage racial discrimination and intimidation at polling places.
• First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.
• First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.
• First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly speak-out on the reasons for their rate increases.
• First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state they are allowed to locate a factory.
• First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).
• First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.
• First President to fire an inspector general of Ameri-corps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.
• First President to appoint 45 Czars to replace elected officials in his office.
• First President to golf  93 separate times in his first two and a half years in office.
• First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.
• First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.
• First President to coddle American enemies while alienating Americas allies.
• First President to go on multiple global apology tours.
• First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends, paid for by the taxpayer.
• First President to refuse to wear the U.S. Flag lapel pin.
• First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.
• First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000.00 a year at taxpayer expense.
• First President to repeat the Holy Qur’an tells us, and openly admit the early morning call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound on earth.

Remember that 34 months of Obama we the people have accumulated national debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as during the rest of our nation’s entire history, as the Obama’s plan their next extravagant vacation to the Indonesian Island nation of Bali.

Hope and change?

* sources: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Wall Street  Journal, Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Dept of Labor, Standard & Poors/Case-Shiller, Federal Reserve, US Treasury, Heritage Foundation.