Recovery Summer, 2: Electric Bugaloo!
Budget and debt problems at all levels of American government also threaten to crimp the domestic recovery. Struggling state and local governments may dismiss more workers this year as many face their deepest shortfalls since the economic downturn began, and a Congressional stalemate over the country’s budget could even lead to a federal government shutdown.
“The irony is that we just barely got ourselves up and off the ground from the devastating financial crisis,” said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group, who had been optimistic about the country’s prospects. “The recovery itself is less than two years in, and we haven’t yet seen jobs make a decent comeback. Now we’re being hit with this new, very ominous event, so the timing couldn’t be worse.”
No, Mr Baumohl. The irony is that we’re sitting on an abundance of oil and natural gas right here in the US, and yet our own government — increasingly run by unelected leftist ideologues appointed to power in regulatory agencies like the EPA — won’t let us get to it, much less use it.
Make no mistake: oil prices are certainly being affected by the unrest in the middle east. But Libya exports only around 2% of the world’s oil. So scapegoating our soaring oil prices on Libya is a convenient progressive fiction. Obama himself told us energy prices would soar under his regime, as he planned to saddle the US with a Soviet-style industrial regulatory schemes. And unable to get them through Congress, he has concluded he can implement them through his regulatory agencies.
King Obama is transformational, you see: he doesn’t have to abide federal law, be it a ruling on ObamaCare coming out of Florida or a ruling on drilling coming out of Lousiana; he can declare on the spot the unconstitutionality of a duly passed, bi-partisan supported law and instruct his Justice Department not to defend the law in court; he can gin up crises, then use those crises to nationalize industry; he can force through a public takeover of health care against the wishes of the American people, and then issue waivers to those who reward his generosity, allowing them to escape the economic destruction of the system he’s forcing into place.
The American people voted for a symbol in 2008. Just not the symbol they thought they were voting for. Because Obama represents not the hope and change he promised, but rather the soft-tyranny that was always at the end of the progressive movement’s playbook.
Drill, baby, drill is sounding a lot better these days, isn’t it? — even though it issued through the twang of a non-Ivy league soccer mom who made the mistake of not insisting her speeches be adorned with singing children and Styrofoam columns…?
When I read polls that show Obama still has support in the 40th percentile, I’m painfully aware that the US is only one or two elections away from either becoming a permanent client state for Democrats, or else from witnessing a second civil war.
And fuck all those who find my saying so somehow uncivil.
****
See also, here
t doesn’t take an Old Testament prophet to predict that when gas prices are running in the $5-$6 a gallon range in 2012, that the standard liberal tactic to attack oil companies will be all the rage on CNN and MSNBC.
While the Middle East turmoil may have been unavoidable, the Obama Administration’s mind numbing opposition to allow the development our own domestic national resources is either the height of incompetence or borders on treason for its deliberate impact of weakening the American economy.
Any rational government would immediately open up as many sources as possible to begin producing domestic oil and gas rapidly. Instead, the Administration has declared the Eastern Seaboard off limits for drilling, has moved against proven oil drilling sites in the Arctic Sea, refuses to consider opening Alaska’s ANWR, and is dawdling in re-opening drilling in the Gulf.
Nero had nothing on Obama when it comes to partying while his nation is in crisis.
JONAS BROTHERS!
“Boogaloo”.
It seems there is no end of things that are raining on the picnic of Recovery Summer, doesn’t it? It’s almost as if the Obama administration is cursed.
Or…no, this can’t be it…wearing an asshole necklace, economic-policy-wise.
Heh. That calls to mind an old TV ad campaign for Wisk®.
“Sphincter around the collar!”
BTW … yesterday (as I posted) the day began with gas at $3.55/gal for regular. Same station was $3.59 by 4:00pm.
Oh.joy.
When the Fed is printing money faster than Georgia Pacific produces toilet paper, for some reason prices don’t go down.
On the other hand, rumors of the shooting of that Libyan dude plus Saudi promises to increase production have pushed prices below $100 per barrel.
But just so we’re clear, the idea that the well-being of the American economy is dependent on the political stability of Middle Eastern countries or the benevolence of Saudi princes is bollocks on stilts, as our friends across the pond might say.
I’ve been saying since the 1980’s that we will be having a Second Civil War before 2025, and nothing I have seen in recent years has caused me to change that prediction…
Further prediction: following said conflict, the United States will Balkanize into several smaller nations, along mainly ideological lines.
I need to move to Texas before the fighting breaks out, though…
I honestly cannot decide if President Obama is malevolent, clueless or some combination of the two.
We’re looking at a serious monetary crisis coupled with severe energy problems.
Developing American energy supplies would help alleviate the debt crisis.
Nero is the consummate statesman compared to the idiots we currently have in Washington.
But hey, as long as President Obama has his private concerts and arugula, life isn’t so bad…..
You left something out of your rant JeffG; he also won’t allow any development work to go on in the oil sands fields out west as well.
But that’s just picking at nits compared to the offshore drilling moratorium criminally continuing despite a judge’s ruling. It’s more of the Barack “L’Etat c’est moi!” Obama imperial Presidency on display; but as you noted yesterday, for some strange reason we don’t seem to hear the lefties complaining about that kind of thing anymore…
They’re too busy focusing on that nexus of eeeeevvvollll, the Koch brothers.
I mean, they need to practice their smear techniques for 2012, while forbidding anyone to imply guil;t by association when it comes to Obama, his past, or even his present! (Van Jones, Trumka, et al)…
Any rational government would immediately open up as many sources as possible to begin producing domestic oil and gas rapidly.
A rational government would never have closed off those resources in the first place.
A rational government would
never have closed offrecognize that it lacks the authority to close off those resources in the first place.There’s an app for that. We impeach him and replace him with Biden. We KNOW Biden is a blithering idiot of incompetent ineptitude. If things improve, then it was malevolence after all, wasn’t it?
If Obama were merely incompetent, he would occasionally err on the side of doing the right thing. As it is, he’s way outside the law of averages.
The good news? (Yes there is!) The vast majority of the Bakken Formation and Niobrara Shale are privately owned minerals under privately owned surface. Meddle and rage all they want, neither the federal government nor the usual suspects in the environmental movement have a damn thing to say about oil and gas development in those areas. There are hundreds of billions of barrels of oil in those two formations alone, and.. We’ve known it was there for years, we just didn’t have the technology to produce it economically. Well now we do, and I’ve no doubt there are many other similar resources throughout the country.
The rush is on right now, and while we aren’t going to become energy independent any time soon, it should certainly help. Problem is, oil and gas are fungible and if the Middle East blows up we’re not going to be able to take up the slack. An interesting aside, the Chinese are buying into the Niobrara Shale play big time. Coincidence? I think not. They’re not going to be caught short if they can help it.
Also worth mentioning that oil exploration and development in North Dakota has kept their unemployment at the lowest in the nation. Although to be fair, it’s not like there were a lot of jobs to lose there to begin with.
[…] says some of the same things I was trying to get across the other day here. Only he does it pithier…uhh, more […]