Obama has announced that he will deny a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that unions and GOP lawmakers alike said would be a boon for job creation as well as energy security.
Nearly fifty percent of Americans, in most polls, claim that they think Obama is doing an acceptable job as President. One wonders if these same people mind that gas prices will continue to rise, and American dependence on foreign oil will continue to grow. They probably do. But increasingly, it’s becoming too much to expect most Americans to make basic cause-and-effect connections.
If there was any remaining doubt that Obama is on the hard left of his party, which includes under the thumb of the most militant parts of the environmentalist movement, that doubt should be gone. Militant environmentalists are not FOR the environment so much as they are against industrial and technological development. They believe that the entire progress made in the United States since its status as a frontier wilderness has been a “rape” of the land. Environmentalists, although on the left of the political spectrum, are really no different from the religious fundamentalists on the right. They have a mystical, supernatural devotion not to some biblical “God,” but rather to the pristine status of “Mother Earth.” In their morality, anything that touches, changes or tarnishes Earth in its natural form is bad. This can only mean: Mankind is bad.
It logically follows, then, that militant environmentalists oppose oil production as such. They don’t want oil imported into the United States, which is why they oppose any American intervention in the Middle East to help ensure that this will happen. At the same time, they don’t want any oil produced within the United States, either. How else are we to interpret their position? Every time there’s an opportunity to increase the supply of oil — the major source of energy for human survival, at this time — they oppose it.
Obama is like any other liberal Democratic President in that he’s in the hip pocket of the environmentalist movement. However, unlike some Democratic Presidents or past candidates for President, he really means it. Militant environmentalism is the religious or “spiritual” side of Obama’s militant democratic socialism. It’s why he favored the failed “cap and trade” legislation, which sought to literally nationalize all energy under the power of government, and it’s why he seeks to implement that law, step-by-step, through the EPA whether Congress authorizes it or not.
“Until this pipeline is constructed, the U.S. will continue to import millions of barrels of conflict oil from the Middle East and Venezuela and other foreign countries,” TransCanada said in a statement, saying it is “disappointed” by the administration’s call. “Thousands of jobs continue to hang in the balance if this project does not go forward.”
Do you think Obama doesn’t know this? Obama may be wrong about virtually everything. But he’s not stupid. More than most people, he knows what he’s doing. He knows that he’s denying economic growth to the United States at a time when it most desperately needs it, more desperately than at any time since the 1930s Great Depression. Obama’s “economic policy” is actually anti-economic. That’s why he’s nationalizing or regulating everything he can possibly get away with nationalizing or regulating. He wants government growth, not economic growth.
Remember: Obama buys into global warming, the idea that mankind’s use of energy is destroying the planet. He buys into Marxism, the belief that the rich and productive are — merely through being rich and productive — exploiting the “little guy.” Obama believes in Big Government, high taxes, and in almost unlimited government power. A productive society gets in the way of these things. An economically prosperous people are an assertive people, a people who will not depend on government for all the things Obama believes that only government should be doing. It makes complete psychological and logical sense that Obama would resist one of the single biggest steps to improve the economy.
Some claim that Republicans are secretly happy that Obama took this position. It makes running against him easier. But will it? If half the population is too clueless to even disapprove of Obama’s terrible job as President, it doesn’t seem likely they’re going to blame him for failing to allow oil production to expand. Obama will succeed in continuing to convince these hapless people that it’s not his fault, but “the evil oil companies’ fault” for continuing to raise prices.
Obama is counting on most Americans to be too stupid to grasp the law of supply and demand. The less oil produced, the higher the cost will rise relative to demand. That’s just the way it works. If prices are too high relative to demand, then supply must go up. The desire for profit encourages oil companies to give us all what we need — more fuel and decreasing prices. At least half the population does not get this, and probably never will. That’s why they’re still supporting Obama.