Dragline excavator in the Baltic Oil Shale Basin - Narva

While our MSM continues to wag their tongues all over Obama’s gayness they somehow, someway, missed the news that an auditor from the GAO testified in Congress and said:

“The Green River Formation–an assemblage of over 1,000 feet of sedimentary rocks that lie beneath parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming–contains the world’s largest deposits of oil shale,”Anu K. Mittal, the GAO’s director of natural resources and environment said in written testimony submitted to the House Science Subcommittee on Energy and Environment.

“USGS estimates that the Green River Formation contains about 3 trillion barrels of oil, and about half of this may be recoverable, depending on available technology and economic conditions,” Mittal testified.

“The Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, estimates that 30 to 60 percent of the oil shale in the Green River Formation can be recovered,” Mittal told the subcommittee. “At the midpoint of this estimate, almost half of the 3 trillion barrels of oil would be recoverable. This is an amount about equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves.”

And this may shock you….but Obama issued new regulations on fracking a few days ago. I know…a Democrat wants more regulations? Who woulda thunk it.

So just in time to hear the great news that the world’s largest oil reserves is on this continent…not Saudi Arabia, not Iran, not Kuwait. But here in the United States we get Obama to eff it all up.

Shocking.

Even more shocking is the lack of media coverage:

Searches on “Government Accountability Office” (not in quotes), “shale,” and “mittal” at the Associated Press’s national site return nothing relevant to the energy-related story which will follow. A Google News search on “Anu Mittal,” the person from the GAO who on Thursday testified before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology`s Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, appears to return seven relevant items, but it’s really five. The first is a press release from the Luddite (aka Democratic) members of the committee pooh-poohing the importance of Ms. Mittal’s assertions. The other four are from non-major and/or non-establishment press sources: Newser, American Thinker, Daily Markets, and the Inquisitr (yes, spelled correctly). Only one other news outlet I’m aware of, Media Research Center’s CNS News, has also noted Ms. Mittal’s testimony.

…Of the outlets which did cover it, two of them gratuitously brought the Iraq War into the discussion. Newser’s Neal Colgrass wrote: “Maybe President Bush should have invaded the Midwest instead of Iraq.” Residents of Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming will be amused to learn that Colgrass believe that their states are in the Midwest. They’re not. Similarly, the unbylined Inquisitr report snarked that “While the United States has invaded much of the Middle East in search of lower gas prices, perhaps President Bush should have been focusing his efforts on the Midwest region of the United States during the first Iraq war.” Media bias clearly runs very deep — miles deep, if you will.

The Dog Days of Summer Are Here

Some of us are willing to give a tacit seal of approval to people who eat dogs, but if someone has the audacity to tie a dog cage with a dog inside to the top of their station wagon, before embarking on a family vacation, a serious breach of the holy covenant between man and dog has been breached. I assume most of you are aware that people in Indo-China, Indonesia, Korea, and our president have enjoyed the flesh of dogs with no misgivings; however, in all the world, no one agrees with securing the family dog to the roof of a car.

Many people consider this single infraction to be serious enough to refuse to vote for Romney. They are willing to overlook our ruinous debt, the total disregard by White House personnel to pay Third World Hookers their hard earned money, A refusal to draft a budget, An energy policy that causes the rest of the world to laugh at us, Fast and Furious insanity that has cost the lives of a federal agent and hundreds of Mexican nationals, the paying of hundreds of millions of dollars in phony Green Energy Scams to Obama bundlers, an Attorney General who refuses to answer questions and is primarily concerned with justice for “His People,” a GSA crew that spends money in gross indulgences, Leon Panetta’s personal indulgences of flying on the government’s magic carpets for his personal trips, and Michelle’s personal indulgence of vacation flying on her own Air Force One to arrive four hours early and avoid the crowded conditions on her husband’s plane, while the First Couple lectures the rest of us on energy consumption.

Just because our president admits to enjoying dogs for dinner in his best seller, “Dreams From My Father” is no reason to look down on him; it was Romney who tied the dog to the car and risked all types of misfortune and personal injury to the dog.

“With Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy). Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share.”

(Many Americans are wondering if our president and Lolo had too many peacock dinners.)

If Romney would have eaten the dog before the trip or barbecued the dog for a road snack during the trip, the public would have found his actions to be far more palatable.

This is a serious election and we must keep our priorities in a logical perspective; otherwise, we will put too much emphasis in the failures of a flawed leader and dog eater, and fail to concentrate on a man who drove with a dog on the top of his car.

Epilogue: No dogs were eaten by me or Romney, while writing this article.

More pandering from Obama:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of course government needs to step in to protect consumers because god knows us consumers can’t think for ourselves and we need to be protected from those eeeevvviiiiiilllllll bankers…woops, I mean those eeeeevilllllll CEO’s….woops, I mean those evvvvvillllll speculators.

Now it’s the speculators and their evil capitalist ways. I mean how dare they want to make a profit? To a Socialist, like this man, it’s pure evil to want to make money. Everything should be done to help the State, all profits should be confiscated and the government should be allowed to decide who is worthy to receive that which they didn’t work for.

This is how this man thinks.

By the way, did we hear these kinds of complaints when the price of oil went down to 30 bucks a barrel not so long ago? No, Didn’t think so.

So now our President is going to take 52 million dollars of our tax money to pay for more bureaucrats to investigate speculators AGAIN!

In the U.S., we’ve had repeated federal investigations of speculators’ role in driving up prices — in 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2011 and again this year. Not one has found evidence of pervasive market manipulation.

How else to describe this as anything other than pure political pandering to his base. His base wants the mighty hand of government to control all aspects of life in this country. Somehow they believe if government bureaucrats get involved they will stop oil speculators from making a profit and THAT will drive the price of oil down?

Let’s not even mention the fact that our exchange is not the only exchange in the world. There are exchanges and speculators all over the planet, and our government can’t do a damn thing about preventing them from making a buck. Speculators will just move to those exchanges if he makes it difficult for speculators to make a buck AND speculation will still occur.

The fact of the matter is that speculators don’t cause higher prices. Higher prices occur because of supply and demand: (pdf)

In theory the price effect of commodity financial investment is ambiguous. On the one hand, well-informed, rational investors should add liquidity to commodity derivatives market, facilitating price discovery and keeping prices more aligned with fundamentals. As commodity investors buy when prices are low and sell when prices are high, this should help clear the market. However, some argue that “ill informed” investors exhibiting herding behavior could add to price volatility (page 6).

That said, most empirical studies find that financial investment in commodities does not have a significant effect on commodity prices. The World Bank, commenting in its June 2011 Global Economic Prospects, observes that “[d]espite such contrasting views [on the relationship between investment fund activity and commodity prices], the empirical evidence is, at best, weak.” (World Bank (2011). p. 62) Moreover, financial investment plays a key role in liquidity provision, and some speculation is needed to clear commodity derivatives markets.

…and volatility

The French G-20 leadership and other official sector entities have also expressed concern regarding the potential role of financial investment in causing commodity price volatility. The most recent upswing in commodity prices beginning in 2009 was accompanied by a sharp rise in commodity price volatility, peaking in February 2010, though volatility has since returned to levels prevailing
during 2000-2009 (Chart 6 below).

However, the even more striking increase in commodity prices during 2008 was not accompanied by a commensurate increase in commodity price volatility.

Broadly speaking, research on the impact of financial investment on commodity price volatility—including work done by the BIS in 2007, the IMF in 2008, and the OECD in 2010—suggests that there is little evidence linking financial investment in commodities to higher commodity price volatility. Indeed, some researchers have found that the presence of key financial investors (index and swap funds) actually helps reduce market volatility. (OECD (Irwin and Sanders). (2010). IMF World Economic Outlook. (October 2008). BIS Quarterly Review. (March 2007)). That said, some recent research indicates that new investment vehicles may have been responsible for at least part of the post-2005 volatility in commodity prices. (World Bank (2011). p. 62)

Is the end goal of Obama here to bring back OPEC? I doubt it. The end goal here is just to rile up the base. Nothing he suggests, no “five point” plan he puts out has any hope of bringing down the price of gas. He needs to open up drilling to every inch of this country and off-shore. THAT will bring down the prices.

Until then we will continue to get inane pandering from this insult of a President.

Obama does it again….

Yesterday the Obama administration announced a delaying tactic which will put off the possibility of new offshore oil drilling on the Atlantic coast for at least five years:

The announcement by the Interior Department sets into motion what will be at least a five year environmental survey to determine whether and where oil production might occur.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell notes that a planned lease sale, which the administration cancelled last year, will now be put off until at least 2018. As you might expect, Republicans were not impressed with the decision:

“The president’s actions have closed an entire new area to drilling on his watch and cheats Virginians out of thousands of jobs,” said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee. The announcement “continues the president’s election-year political ploy of giving speeches and talking about drilling after having spent the first three years in office blocking, delaying and driving up the cost of producing energy in America,” he said.

But hey, during “his watch” oil drilling is at an 8 year high.

Sigh…

He complained about subsidies to oil companies but was promptly shut up by his own Party.

He attacks drilling offshore, he blocked the Keystone pipeline, refuses to drill in ANWAR, all the while he funnels millions upon millions of our dollars into obviously flawed green energy companies who promptly go bankrupt and THEN tries to take credit for drilling permits issued long before he took office.

Presidents can affect gas prices, at least in the long term, by exercising budgetary discipline resulting in a currency that buys more oil per dollar, by approving or rejecting federal oil leases, and by adding or curbing regulations that affect oil exploration and development. In all of these cases, Obama has supported policies that contribute to higher gas prices.

The point about the lag time between finding and pumping oil is valid. But that reality is precisely why presidents must green-light exploration for future generations — and why Obama is now bragging of record U.S. production only because of his predecessor’s granting of federal oil leases. Obama’s “it takes too long” argument is absurd — as if farmers should never plant new orchards since they won’t see fruit on their trees for three years or more.

And now he is ensuring a 5 year moratorium on drilling on the Atlantic coast.

The man is a joke.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Obama’s first big energy-policy speech was to the United Nations in 2009 when he boldly told the entire world that it had to get off of fossil fuels because: “the threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent, and it is growing.” “Rising sea levels threaten every coastline,” blah, blah, blah, but to the true believers, it was lines from a psalm:

More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent.
More frequent drought and crop failures breed hunger and conflict.
All the largest emitters of greenhouse gas pollution [must] act together.
Wind turbines and solar panels and batteries for hybrid cars.
Loan guarantees and tax credits.
A future that is worthy of our children

Now, not a single word about climate or CO2. Guess that makes it official. Greenhouse gases and global warming are no longer a motivating concern for U.S. energy policy. Quick, tell the EPA, whose war on CO2 is already shutting down its first tenth of the grid. Not needed anymore guys. CO2 is no longer even worth mentioning. Can we hold Obama to it?

The President did repeat “clean energy” a bunch of times in his Nevada speech, but there is NOTHING unclean about CO2, so that doesn’t count. CO2 is the essential nutrient from which all life on the surface of the earth is constructed. Animals get their carbon building blocks from plants which get it from atmospheric CO2 through photosynthesis, and current levels of CO2—about 0.039 percent of the atmosphere—are alarmingly close to the minimum required to sustain life.

From Lawrence Livermore Labs CO2 “fact sheet“:

Carbon dioxide is necessary to sustain life in concentrations of about 0.04 percent of the earth’s atmosphere …

The biosphere craves more of this healthful gas, not less.

The ONLY concern about CO2 is the idea that its greenhouse warming effect might be dangerous, and no such concern is being voiced by Obama. Apparently it is off the table, which ought to clear off all of his green energy plans as well, because their explicit rationale has been the greenhouse threat from CO2.

“Climate” was why, in Obama’s 2008 words, electricity prices would have to “necessarily skyrocket.” It was all about capping CO2 in order to save the planet from global warming:

[C]limate change is a great example. You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know — Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.

The danger of CO2 required a switch to green fairy power. Coal would be forced into bankruptcy while alternate-reality approaches to energy would be subsidized:

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.

That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.

So much for “all of the above.” All but coal, shale oil, tar-sands, ANWR oil, and pretty much anything that produces CO2. And yet, now that CO2 is no longer an official concern, none of these anti-CO2 policies has altered one whit.

Shutting down Keystone and ANWR are just the latest in the long train of Obama-democrat shutdowns of fossil energy, and Obama is still calling for more Solyndras. From his kick-off speech last week in Maryland:

And I want to keep on making those investments. (Applause.) I don’t want to see wind turbines and solar panels and high-tech batteries made in other countries by other workers. I want to make them here. (Applause.) I want to make them here in Maryland. I want to make them here in the United States of America, with American workers. That’s what I want. (Applause.)

The only thing new is a switch in rationale. Out with saving the planet and in with … saving the economy. Now the reason we are going to unplug our existing energy infrastructure and put all of our eggs in baskets that can’t float without government subsidy is because that’s the way to prosperity.

Not an easy sell, but Obama is up to it. His Maryland speech was the template, resting his economic argument on two of the biggest whoppers ever told: 1) that his administration is already drilling aggressively yet gas prices are still high, proving that aggressive drilling can’t bring gas prices down, and 2) America is an oil-poor country, so really, our only alternative is rainbow colored unicorn farts.

Thorough take-down of the Obama-whoppers here. But the big take-away? CO2 is no longer enough of a concern to be worth mentioning, according to President Obama himself.

Obama doesn’t mean it, but if he’s going to abandon his climate-based opposition to fossil fuels then we should hold him to that: economic considerations alone call for Drill Baby Drill; there is no more need to fund the anti-CO2 frauds at the IPCC; and come on EPA, you heard the boss. Coal, “clean” in the old-fashioned sense of not spewing soot, is a-okay.

Remember how Obama mocked Ed Henry for asking whether Obama wanted high gas prices?

Fox News reporter Ed Henry asked Obama

“Your critics will say on Capitol Hill that you want gas prices to go higher, because you have said before that will wean the American people off fossil fuels onto renewable fuels. How do you respond to that?”

And Obama responded:

“Ed, just from a political perspective, do you think the President of the United States, going into reelection, wants gas prices to go up even higher?” he said. Turning to the room at large, he added, “Is there anybody here who thinks that makes a lot of sense?”

Well, beside all the evidence in the previous post, another Obama stance has been unearthed.

Obama scolded Ed Henry with this:

Look, here’s the bottom line with respect to gas prices: I want gas prices lower because they hurt families.

Thing is, there’s this video from 2008. And in the video Obama says that high energy and gas costs are a sacrifice he expects Americans to make.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So Mr. President, were you lying then or are you lying now?

Fortunately for Obama, democrats have absolutely no long term memory.

And Joe Wilson was right.

via GWP

Here comes Obama The Blamer. Blame Bush, Blame oil companies:

In his weekly address to the nation Saturday, Obama sought to redirect consumers’ anger with his administration to anger with Congress for allowing companies like Exxon Mobil and Chevron to receive $4 billion from the federal government every year.

“Your member of Congress should be fighting for you. Not for big financial firms. Not for big oil companies,” Obama claimed.

“In the next few weeks, I expect Congress to vote on ending these subsidies,” he continued. “And when they do, we’re going to put every single Member of Congress on record: They can either stand up for oil companies, or they can stand up for the American people.”

Lefties think ending these subsidies wouldn’t force the oil companies to raise gas prices because big oil already makes so much money. Really? Their net profit margin is 7.9%. Out of all the industries they rank 91st in profits out of 216 industries listed.

How about taxes paid?

The federal Energy Information Administration reports that the industry paid some $35.7 billion in corporate income taxes in 2009, the latest year for which data are available…That figure also doesn’t count excise taxes, state taxes and rents, royalties, fees and bonus payments. All told, the government rakes in $86 million from oil and gas every day—far more than from any other business.

Not paying their “fair share”? Here’s a staggering fact: The Tax Foundation estimates that, between 1981 and 2008, oil and gas companies sent more dollars to Washington and the state capitols than they earned in profits for shareholders.

…As for the “subsidies” that Mr. Obama says the oil industry receives, these aren’t direct cash handouts like those that go to the green lobby. They’re deductions from taxes that cover the cost of doing business and earning income to tax in the first place. Most of them are available to other manufacturers.

Hmmmm, how about those green subsidies? Now those are real subsidies with millions of dollars in cash handed over without any due diligence and when those companies go belly up the tax payers are left holding the bag:

…Taxpayers and ratepayers are providing subsidies worth almost as much as the entire $1.6 billion cost of the project. Similar subsidy packages have been given to 15 other solar- and wind-power electric plants since 2009.

The government support — which includes loan guarantees, cash grants and contracts that require electric customers to pay higher rates — largely eliminated the risk to the private investors and almost guaranteed them large profits for years to come. The beneficiaries include financial firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, conglomerates like General Electric, utilities like Exelon and NRG — even Google.

Any whining from Obama about giving subsidies to GE? Google?

How about ACORN?

Doug Powers:

If eliminating government subsidies for oil companies might make gas less expensive, why wouldn’t eliminating government subsidies for General Electric make, say, refrigerators cheaper? Wait, the latter subsidies are for “green” projects so they’re okay.

Hell, GE made about $14 billion dollars in profit last year, and paid very little in taxes:

A new analysis issued this week by the nonprofit, liberal advocacy group says that based on GE’s annual report for 2011 — filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last Friday — the industrial conglomerate had an effective tax rate of only 11.3 percent. That undercuts company statements that its U.S. tax rate for last year was a considerably higher 25 percent. Whichever is accurate, the figure is far below the official U.S. corporate-tax rate of 35 percent.

The analysis, which compiled GE’s profits and tax payments from 2002 to 2011, also concluded that the company has paid about $1.8 billion in federal income taxes on $81.2 billion worth of pretax U.S. profits since 2002, an annual average of 2.3 percent.

Any whining about that from Obama?

No, instead he will continue to pound an industry that employs millions of people across this country, an industry that makes very little profit wise when compares to other industries, and an industry that is providing a indispensable service.

While doling out millions to the green industry that continues to go bankrupt.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This man has to be the sorriest example of a “professor” ever seen. Not only does he not understand the argument against his green energy push he also “mangles U.S., world History”

That is the headline at the very liberal, very leftist, blog known as Talking Points Memo

You know it’s bad when they are calling him out.

But let’s not even get into his ignorance in history. Let’s get into this statement:

“Now, here’s the sad thing. Lately, we have heard a lot of professional politicians, a lot of the folks who were running for a certain office, who shall go unnamed, they’ve been talking down new sources of energy. They dismiss wind power. They dismiss solar power. They make jokes about biofuels. They were against raising fuel standards. I guess they like gas guzzlers. They think that’s good for our future. We’re trying to move towards the future. They want to be stuck in the past!” Obama exclaimed to cheers from the crowd. “If some of these folks were around when Columbus set sail, they probably must have been founding members of the flat earth society. They would not believe that the world was round!”

Leaving out the fact that the Columbus flat earth assertion is not historically accurate either he still fails to acknowledge what the real argument against his policies are. We all want alternatives to the traditional oil energy but conservatives understand that there is NO green energy alternative that is around today, or will be in the next decade, that can replace oil. So while we all want energy alternatives to be investigated and refined, we still need oil. And its better for our country to get it’s own oil rather than depend on other countries.

Newt asks a great question in response to Obama’s insulting speech:

“Why is Saudi drilling good and American drilling bad?”

“This is utter intellectual nonsense,” Newt taunted.

“If he wants to represent Saudi Oil and algae, I’ll be happy to represent American oil and American jobs and we’ll see this Fall who the American people want to elect.”

Additionally, why should the government subsidize obviously failed technology? Obama attempted to use Henry Ford’s innovation as an example. Well…did the government subsidize Ford?

No.

It was because of a businessman who wanted to become successful AND rich that we got the Model T and all the innovation that came with that.

But Obama wants to tax, tax, and tax some more, men and women like Henry Ford until they are forced out of business while doling out millions to his cronies in green energy. His policies stifle innovation. Stunts growth. And is ruining this country.

You know what makes today historic?

Gas prices have never been higher:

This while our President does nothing to help stem the tide. Instead he says that we can’t drill our way to lower gas prices since we only have 2% of the oil in the world. This conveniently leaves out the fact that we have enough recoverable oil for the next two centuries. The 2% figure comes from the CURRENT oil reserves.

Of course we would need to start drilling to get that oil. Something he doesn’t want to do.

But doesn’t he imply that it was due to his administration that oil production was at an eight year high? That oil rigs had increased? That more land was opened for drilling?

Of course he does. He is a master at deception

“Gasoline prices are higher today at least in part because government has neglected to pay sufficient attention to the importance of producing more of our own oil and natural gas,” said API Director Erik Milito.

President Obama likes to brag that oil and gas output has risen during his term. True, but he had absolutely nothing to do with it. Output, according to a new API study, “increased in 2011 over 2009 only as a result of growing production on state and private lands — up almost 29% for oil and 22% for natural gas.”

By comparison, on federal lands, which Obama’s administration controls, production fell 7.9% for oil and 6.8% for natural gas over the same period.

Oil markets understand that the increase in oil production was due to decisions made 5 years ago. They also see what is coming in the next 4-5 years by the decisions being made by THIS administration. The price of oil today is increasing because of the outlook for tomorrow.

But why the deceptions. It was only a few years ago that he, and those in his administration, admitted that high gas and energy prices isn’t all that bad.

Click here to view the embedded video.

His Secretary of Energy:

“Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,”

Oh, sorry…he “retracted” his statement…but doesn’t regret it:

But Chu declined to say whether he regretted making the 2008 comments.

“Let me not comment on that,” he said.

Would he like to comment on this?

Chu specifically cited a reported breakthrough announced Monday by Envia Systems, which received funding from DOE’s ARPA-E, that could help slash the price of electric vehicle batteries.

He also touted natural gas as “great” and said DOE is researching how to reduce the cost of compressed natural gas tanks for vehicles.

High gasoline prices will make research into such alternatives more urgent, Chu said.

“But is the overall goal to get our price” of gasoline down, asked Nunnelee.

“No, the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy,” Chu replied. “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.”

Obama has clearly stated in the past that he wants to increase the price of energy from oil and coal, to tax those who do provide that energy into oblivion. Those placed in charge of energy inside his administration have clearly stated they want prices to increase so we will be forced into the boondoggle known as green energy.

But now that polls show he is getting hurt by these rising prices he wants to make us believe that HE is the oil man that everyone accused Bush of being.

Just laughable.

In the “let the consumer decide” department, the benefits of alternative-energy vehicles like the Chevy Volt don’t outweigh the costs to consumers. Yet President Barack Hussein Obama wants, with tax dollars, to make alternative-energy vehicles ownership easier and prices more in line with conventional vehicle models by:

• increasing the $7,500 tax credit for alternative-energy vehicles to $10,000
• earmarking $1 billion to reward cities that provide infrastructure for such vehicles
• earmarking $650 million for a research program to increase the range and decrease the price of alternative-energy vehicles
• repealing $4 billion of tax incentives for oil and gas companies to “pay” for his proposed tax credits and earmarks
• giving a new five-year tax break for those who buy commercial trucks that run on electricity or natural gas

These were the measures he proposed in a speech before the Daimler Trucks North America manufacturing plant in Charlotte, NC on Wednesday, March 7, 2012, to address high gasoline prices. He said nothing about increasing oil production. While tax credits may give consumers more reason to purchase alternative-energy vehicles, they won’t give manufacturers any incentive to look for cheaper ways to manufacture them. Obama’s proposed tax credit increase ensures that taxpayers will continue to pay an arbitrarily high price for alternative-energy vehicles long after the market would have brought costs down. The responsibility is with manufacturers, not taxpayers, to produce an alternative-energy vehicle that consumers actually want to purchase, and at a price they can afford. That also means that government should not, through tax credits, try to foist alternative-energy vehicles on consumers.

In short, “let the consumer decide.” But that is not how the big government socialist central decision-makers work. We consumers don’t know what’s good for us. We are too stupid to make our own decisions. So big government must intervene. The tax code exists to raise revenue so the federal government can fulfill certain basic, essential functions that individuals or state and local governments cannot, such as defense. Tax credits, tax subsidies, and tax penalties turn the tax code into an instrument to manipulate behavior instead.

Regarding repealing oil and gas company tax incentives, Obama said, “It’s time to end that taxpayer giveaway to an industry that’s never been more profitable, invest in clean energy that’s never been more promising.” But he made no mention of the clean energy bankruptcies or the subsidies given to politically connected clean energy companies. BTW, Obama has a stated goal of having one million electric vehicles on US roads by 2015.

But that’s just my opinion.

Cross-posted at RWNO, my personal web site.