THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIII, Issue # 289, December 15, 2011
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
AMERICAN ENERGY CAN JUMP-START U.S. ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Tapping Abundant U.S. Energy Deposits
Would Create Jobs & Restore Prosperity
By Paul K. Driessen
THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, U.S. ENERGY POLICY, & THE UNACCEPTABLE, DEMORALIZING, & UNNECESSARY ECONOMIC SITUATION CURRENTLY FACING THE
AMERICAN NATION: THE VAST ENERGY RESOURCES WITH WHICH AMERICA IS BLESSED, BUT WHICH OUR POLITICIANS & REGULATORS HAVE KEPT
LOCKED UP, MAKING THESE RESOURCES UNAVAILABLE TO US FOR RECOVERY FROM OUR ECONOMIC DIFFICULTIES -- EXCESSIVE TAXATION & GOVERNMENT
REGULATION OF BUSINESS & INDUSTRY -- ANEMIC ECONOMIC GROWTH -- HIGH RATES OF UNEMPLOYMENT & UNDER-EMPLOYMENT -- THE U.S. GOVERNMENT'S
FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY -- NEEDED: CHANGE -- CHANGE IN THE DIRECTION OPPOSITE TO THE POLICY AGENDA OF BARACK OBAMA, HIS
LIBERAL LEFTIST COHORTS IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, & HIS POLITICAL ALLIES IN THE RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST MOVEMENT!
FULL STORY:
Our nation’s economic growth may finish an anemic 2% on the last day of this year. Faced with looming taxes and regulations, few companies are expanding, hiring,
or buying equipment. More than 14 million Americans are unemployed, excluding the nearly 9 million who have been forced to take part-time jobs, or the 2.5 million
who’ve given up on finding work.
Meanwhile, 140,000 have been added to government payrolls, and the nation is spending $4 billion a day more than it’s taking in.
That is unacceptable, demoralizing, and unnecessary.
The White House and the Democrats inside and outside of the U.S. government are clueless about reinvigorating the economy. But they have proved they know
how to kill jobs, prosperity, and hope. Their energy policies are especially destructive.
As President Barack Obama made clear, under his tutelage, electricity costs would “necessarily skyrocket,” gasoline prices would soar, “Green” energy would
become the law of the land, and he would “fundamentally transform” America. He is keeping his promise.
America’s vast storehouses of untapped oil, gas, coal, and uranium could generate millions of jobs and hundreds of billions in revenues. Electricity generation
industries and the factories and other businesses that depend on reliable, affordable energy could do likewise, if they were unshackled from excessive regulations
that often actually harm health and environmental quality.
Instead, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Departments of Energy and the Interior, and other government bureaucracies continue to impose a near-total
shutdown of onshore and offshore oil and gas leasing. They drag their feet or simply reject drilling permits, display antipathy toward hydraulic fracturing to tap our
100-year supply of shale gas, and impose truckloads of punitive air and water rules designed to shutter dozens of coal-burning power plants.
The President claims he will “pare back regulation” by several billion dollars, out of an estimated $1 trillion in total annual regulatory compliance costs. EPA alone
promised “$126 million” in supposed paperwork reductions, while imposing several hundred billion dollars in new EPA regulations.
Mr. Obama finally suspended EPA’s proposed ozone rules, which many had warned would be the most expensive environmental edicts in history. But they will be
back with a vengeance after the 2012 elections. Meanwhile, bowing to EPA and environmentalist pressure, he postponed action on the Keystone XL pipeline,
which would have created 20,000 almost-shovel-ready construction jobs.
Now, EPA wants 230,000 new bureaucrats, just to process future carbon dioxide emission permits, based on bogus climate chaos models and scenarios. Even our
worst nightmares cannot fathom the job-killing compliance costs this would impose on the 6,000,000 businesses these regulations would affect.
Again using questionable to fraudulent assertions about catastrophic man-made climate change to justify its actions, EPA is also demanding 54.5 mpg fuel
economy standards – which will result in thousands of deaths and millions of injuries, as cars are further downsized and plasticized.
Even businesses on the leading edge of the “Green Revolution,” crony capitalism, and lobbying for dollars are faring poorly. After lapping up $1.5 billion in
government red-ink subsidies and loan guarantees, three US solar companies filed for bankruptcy and fired over 2,000 workers. And, still, the Energy Department
shoveled more billions of tax dollars into more wind and solar projects, despite voter objections.
The Department of Energy also sponsored programs that cost $20 million to create 14 jobs and weatherize four Seattle houses in a year. It spent $80 billion to
create 225,000 “clean energy” jobs, at $356,000 apiece. It shells out $6 billion a year to grow corn on an area bigger than Indiana, and convert it into ethanol that
gets a third less mileage per gallon than gasoline.
This isn’t “Green” energy. It’s “greenbacks” energy. It requires perpetual infusions of taxpayer money, confiscated from hard-working, productive sectors, and
given to companies that have better political connections. That is unconscionable, and unsustainable.
America must promote and permit projects that actually generate energy, jobs, and revenues. It must reward and encourage companies that provide affordable
24/7 energy to power virtually everything we make, grow, transport, and do.
Unleashing America’s vast supplies of shale oil and gas, conventional petroleum, coal and nuclear energy isn’t a magic potion. But, it is a vital part of the
solution to what ails our nation.
The petroleum industry alone currently supports some 9.2 million jobs, but could do much more. Recent studies by Wood McKenzie, ICF International, and other
analysts conclude that opening currently off-limits onshore and offshore areas could generate an additional $800 billion in government revenues and another 1.4
million jobs, by 2030. That includes primary jobs for roughnecks on rigs; secondary jobs in steel making, construction, pipelines, refineries, transportation and
other sectors; and indirect jobs in hotel, restaurant, retail and other sectors that benefit from the increased energy, payrolls, and economic activity.
We could do likewise with coal, nuclear, and hydroelectric projects.
We need American energy for American jobs – tapping resource bounties to help balance the budget, drive down unemployment, and get the country going again.
We can and must protect human health and environmental quality – from real threats, not exaggerated, speculative, or computer-generated threats. We can and
must do so without raising energy and business costs even higher, killing more jobs, and stifling private sector and government revenue opportunities.
Over-regulation brings energy poverty and blackouts, destroys jobs, impairs families’ living standards and nutrition, leads to foreclosures and homelessness,
increases stress and alcohol abuse, makes it harder for families to afford proper heating and air conditioning, and harms people’s health and welfare.
Those impacts must be fully considered, along with putative benefits of current and future regulations. If laws and rules don’t pass muster, they need to be
rewritten, rejected, or repealed.
Subsidies do not create jobs. Getting overzealous government out of the way, ending government deficit spending, letting business work within a sensible
regulatory system, ensuring that companies have the affordable energy they need – that creates permanent, sustainable jobs and brings renewed prosperity. That
generates revenue streams that curb the need to raise taxes on productive companies and workers.
As election year 2012 dawns, voters must demand that presidential and congressional candidates explain how they will reform our legal and regulatory system, to
tap U.S. energy bounties, while protecting environmental values from actual risks, and ignoring exaggerated, imagined, and invented dangers.
Unaccountable politicians, bureaucrats, and environmentalist ideologues have strangled our economy long enough. We the People must now lay the foundation
for producing more domestic energy, creating jobs, and ensuring that our children can look forward to a brighter future.
American energy can ignite America’s renewal, and restore American jobs, opportunity, and prosperity. Voters need to send Congress, the White House, and
EPA a message:
We need American resources for an American recovery. Slash the crippling regulations. Drill here in America. Produce affordable energy, to create jobs and fix our
economy. Do it now!
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
Conservative columnist and political commentator and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death,
Paul K. Driessen is Senior Policy Advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), the Congress Of
Racial Equality (CORE), the Center For The Defense Of Free Enterprise (CDFE), and the Atlas Economic Research
Foundation. Driessen has served on the Staffs of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Department of Interior, as well as on that of
an energy trade association. He has often spoken and written on such topics as environmentalism, global climate change,
global warming alarmism, corporate social responsibility, and public policies relating to energy, the environment, and
economic development.
Driessen earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Geology and Field Ecology at Lawrence University, Appleton,
Wisconsin, and his Juris Doctor (JD) at the University of Denver College of Law. He received accreditation in Public
Relations from the Public Relations Society of America, New York, N.Y.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity