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Posts Tagged ‘Energy Independence’
October 3rd, 2022 at 1:08 pm
Image of the Day: Biden’s “Make America an Energy Importer Again” Presidency
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What was once a decades-long dream became reality during the Trump Administration, as the U.S. finally became an energy exporter again.  As Laffer Associates highlights, Joe Biden has inexplicably put that into reverse gear, and now gas prices are on their way back up.  This is progress?

Biden's Reverse-Midas Touch on Energy

Joe Biden’s Reverse-Midas Touch on Energy

 

November 4th, 2016 at 10:07 am
Ramirez Cartoon: Dakota Access Pipeline
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Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

March 21st, 2011 at 9:48 pm
Obama Comes Out in Favor of Oil Exploration … in Brazil
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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.

April 2nd, 2010 at 7:35 pm
Sorry, but Energy Independence is a Pipe Dream
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I guess there had to be at least one negative aspect of the Reagan legacy. It’s temperamental. The Gipper was famous for the sign on his desk reading “It CAN be done”. What a great American sentiment: sweet-tempered, optimistic, tenacious. It helps, of course, when the goal in question CAN be done.

Not so “energy independence”, which has become something of a Fox News shibboleth the last few years. While there’s a strong case to be made for allowing increased domestic energy production, the idea that it will free us from the vagaries of the global energy market is a pipe dream. But don’t take my word for it. Noted conservative economist Irwin Stelzer (a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a regular contributor to the Weekly Standard) makes the point in a very judicious analysis of President Obama’s push for increased oil exploration published in today’s D.C. Examiner:

More important, and this is no fault of the president’s, even if these offshore areas are eventually opened up, their development cannot eliminate the security threat and economic consequences of our dependence on foreign oil. Fuel autarchy is not in our future.

There just isn’t enough oil offshore to replace our imports from unfriendly countries such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. No matter what happens in the newly permitted areas, we will need their oil.

Sober, but entirely accurate. Call it Coolidge Conservatism.