Gas Prices

Last week the Lord High Muckety-Muck, Barack Hussein Obama, gave another of his great speeches to explain to the American people why gasoline prices are once again skyrocketing.  Was anyone really surprised when the gist of the speech was, “Blame someone else.”?  That has always been his favorite mantra, nothing is ever his fault.  For two years he blamed everything that he failed to do that he has promised was to be his number one priority on George W. Bush.  Now it seems that some people won’t let him keep up that sad old song, so now the fault lies with, get this, Speculators.  Oooooh, those evil oil speculators, trying to predict how high oil prices will go are somehow pushing the price higher.  The sad part is, at least 30% of the people of America will believe that.  They will automatically assume that some filthy rich people are setting prices high just so they can make obscene amounts of money.  Let me try to explain this where even the libs can understand it.  As the price of gasoline creeps higher, people will find ways to cut back on the amount of gasoline they have to buy.  Sales will decline and profits will suffer.  That is cutting off your nose to spite your face. 

There is more than one reason that gas prices are soaring, but they all involve President Barry Sotoroe’s policies.  One of the many campaign promises that Obrainless broke was to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  The policies of this administration seem to be designed to increase our dependence on foreign oil.  We could stop importing oil within 10 years if the government would just let us.  There is more oil in the ground in this country, most of it on government-owned land, than in all of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and Yemen combined.  The technology for extracting it now exists and we could be totally energy independent if we just exploit it.  Shell Oil Co. has spent billions getting ready to drill on Alaska’s North Slope.  Everything seemed to be in order when the EPA suddenly cancelled their permit.  Why?  Because it turned out that in the permit application Shell forgot to consider the greenhouse gas emissions from the trucks carrying the drilling equipment to the site.  “Oh NO!!!” That could have raised the CO₂ level in the atmosphere by half a part per TRILLION! So a project that has already cost Shell Oil Co. over $5 Billion and would have brought millions of barrels of oil to American markets is summarily cancelled.

Let’s not forget the Billions of barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico.  The Obama Administration stopped all drilling in the Gulf after the BP oil spill.  In spite of a court order to begin issuing permits to again start drilling the EPA has continued to drag their feet and not allow U.S. companies to drill.  However, Brazil’s state-run oil company has been given permission by the president himself to drill in the same area that American rigs have been outlawed.   You just can’t take a person seriously who says he’ll end our dependence on foreign oil who takes away our ability to do so.

Of course, the Incompetent-in-chief blames the big oil companies for the high prices and demands that all tax breaks to the big oil companies be stopped immediately.  He even has the Department of Justice investigating them for fraud.  Okay, is this the same DOJ that put together a year-long sting operation complete with infiltrators with aliases and fake buyers to bust an Amish farmer for selling raw milk? Do you really think that they will catch any of the big bad CEO’s? 

Now is a good time to bring up El Presidente’s apparent selective hate for big business.  Notice no lefty is going after Apple, just Big Oil.  While the left is quick to give you a figure of the obscene amount of money Big Oil made last year, they fail to point out that their profit margin was only around 8%.  That means that your oil stock, (and yes, if you have a mutual funds account you own oil stock) only gained 8 cents on the dollar, while if you had instead invested in Apple Corporation you would have seen a profit margin of 44%.  At least the oil companies did pay taxes on their profits which is not something that you can say for GE.  No, GE made over a hundred billion dollars profit last year and didn’t pay a penny of taxes.  Go figure.

I could also go into how inflation is also affecting gas prices but most of you are already getting glassy-eyed, so we’ll explore that in a later piece.  For now, just remember.  The price of gasoline lies not at the feet of Big Oil, but at the front door of the White House.

John A. Wilson

President

Conservative Action Project of Union County