Freedom Line Blog

Jim Geraghty at NRO has the story:

A report by Greater New Orleans Inc., an organization of businesses large and small in Southeast Louisiana, lays out how the Obama administration is approving only a fraction of the new permits, significantly less than preceding administrations in both deepwater projects and shallow water projects, that getting approval from Obama’s Department of Interior takes much longer than before he took office, and how Obama’s administration rejects a much higher percentage of proposals for drilling than before he took office….

The three-year average for shallow-water drilling permits had been 14.7 per month; the Obama administration now has that down to 2.3 per month…. The average approval time has increased from an average of 60.6 days in the preceding five years to 109 days in 2011….

I wrote about this general topic last year right here. And here. Meanwhile, as has been reported numerous places elsewhere (I believe I first broke the story four years ago in the Washington Examiner, or at least broke it within the US), Obama has gone out of his way to help promote and subsidize Brazil’s efforts to develop its own oil industry.

This is madness. And it is costing Americans a fortune.

A troubling trend seems to be emerging in the defense industry—outsourcing national security to foreign companies.

We recently learned that two defense companies are competing for a proposed American attack aircraft contract: Hawker Beechcraft of Wichita, Kansas, and a Brazilian company named Embraer.  One particularly disturbing fact is that Embraer receives subsidies from the Brazilian government, which has publicly opposed the War on Terror and American efforts against Iran and Venezuela, but now seeks to profit from that same U.S. commitment to military strength.  Another troubling item is an unconventional clause in the potential Embraer contract known as the “Golden Share” clause.  Under that provision, the Brazilian government would be empowered to shut down the operation at any time during the production or maintenance of the aircraft.  Alarmingly, the United States would have no means for recourse on the matter.  That’s not very “golden” for American interests.

Additionally, awarding the contract to Hawker Beechcraft would sustain an estimated 1,400 domestic jobs, whereas Brazil’s Embraer would offer only 50 final assembly positions.  Moreover, the Hawker Beechcraft AT-6 is based upon an aircraft already in wide use by the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, the North American Treaty Organization (NATO) and other American allies.  Consequently, that familiarity and logistical infrastructure advantage would allow for substantial cost savings over the new aircraft’s life cycle.  This is particularly important at a time when the Defense Department seeks cost control measures.

For these reasons, CFIF has written Defense Secretary Robert Gates, urging him to carefully consider these issues.

Americans just witnessed a similar episode between Boeing and foreign company EADS, and outsourcing defense to foreign companies is simply bad policy.  America cannot afford to jeopardize domestic jobs or our national security.

CFIF Senior Fellow Troy Senik takes President Barack Obama to task in a column for The Daily Caller today, arguing that the commander-in-chief has the power to bring down gas prices, but won’t.  Instead, Obama would rather enrich a semi-socialist state like Brazil while America’s economy sputters.

In fact, gas prices are up 67 percent since President Obama took office a little more than two years ago. Lest you think this analysis one-sided, during the same period in President Bush’s tenure gas prices increased by only seven percent.

Yet that doesn’t seem to bother President Obama much. Earlier this month, he said that we can’t drill our way out of our energy problems. That is like suggesting you can’t medicate yourself out of an illness.

Read the entire article here.

As developments in the Middle East and a wayward monetary policy send gas prices consistently north, President Obama — no friend of hydrocarbons he — seems to be turning over a new leaf on the topic of oil exploration. The only problem? He wants other countries to do the heavy lifting so that we can then import the black gold. An editorial in today’s Investor’s Business Daily has the POTUS dead to rights:

Now, with a seven-year offshore drilling ban in effect off of both coasts, on Alaska’s continental shelf and in much of the Gulf of Mexico — and a de facto moratorium covering the rest — Obama tells the Brazilians:

“We want to help you with the technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely. And when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers.”

Obama wants to develop Brazilian offshore oil to help the Brazilian economy create jobs for Brazilian workers while Americans are left unemployed in the face of skyrocketing energy prices by an administration that despises fossil fuels as a threat to the environment and wants to increase our dependency on foreign oil.

Despite some of the more emotional pleas for energy independence, there’s nothing inherently wrong with importing fuel from foreign sources. In fact, developing new oil production anywhere lowers the price everywhere. However, someone might want to tell President Obama that this maxim applies to U.S. sources as well.