President Barack Obama, facing political heat and plummeting poll numbers inevitably generated by rapidly rising gasoline and energy prices, is calling for a one-third reduction in oil imports over the next decade. How will this potentially laudable — but likely farcical — goal be accomplished?
By boosting domestic energy production, offering incentives to increase the use of biofuels and natural gas, and making cars and trucks more fuel-efficient.
According to the AP and Fox:
Obama long has said the U.S. needs to reduce its dependency on oil — particularly from overseas sources — for financial, security and environmental reasons. In his State of the Union address in January, he set a goal of having 80 percent of U.S. energy come from clean sources like wind, solar and nuclear by 2035.
But what about domestic oil production?
The administration says it still sees vast opportunities to expand on domestic oil and gas production. An Interior Department report released ahead of Obama’s speech Wednesday said more than two-thirds of offshore leases in the Gulf of Mexico are sitting idle, neither producing oil and gas nor being actively explored by the companies who hold the leases. The department said those leases could potentially hold more than 11 billion barrels of oil and 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
And what about nuclear energy?
Officials said Obama also would reaffirm his support for nuclear power, which has come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks after an earthquake and tsunami in Japan severely damaged a nuclear power plant there.
One might initially be tempted to see this as an admission of past failings and the adoption of new, rational policies to lower energy prices for Americans, but it is no such thing. In Clintonian fashion, it depends on what the meaning of “boost” is, but this is primarily one of the oldest cons in the book: bait-and-switch.
Mr. Obama, as I’ve previously argued in these pages, is provably a socialist, but a particularly American kind: a stealth socialist. Stealth socialism is a matter of tactics. Stealth socialists, recognizing that an open Marxist agenda will never fly with the American people, adopt a patient, long-term strategy whereby they attain the same goals but through misrepresentation, misdirection, lies, and bait-and-switch. These are, coincidentally, the tactics of the con man. Having been a community organizer, Mr. Obama is particularly adept at these tactics and with the use of the primary vehicle for their implementation: rhetoric.
Not everyone should fear socialism. Those who want to have others provide for them when they are fully capable do not fear socialism. They welcome it. Only those with innovative capabilities should fear socialism. Only those who love this country should fear socialism.
Using energy restrictions to implement a political policy by lying and subterfuge is typical of the left.