This week, American Thinker published a piece by Michael Lisle titled, “Passing the Smell Test.” In the article, Lisle discusses the Obama administration’s recent decision to invest $2 billion of taxpayer dollars to fund offshore oil drilling in Brazil. Apparently, the president failed to explain to Brazil that drilling for oil is futile because it won’t solve any energy problems. At least that’s what he keeps telling Americans who want the government to pursue every source of domestic US oil supplies including drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR), oil shale in Colorado, and increased offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the outer-continental shelf off of California’s coast. B. Hussein Obama responds to these requests with the classic liberal logic that the US uses 25% of annual global oil production and only has 3% of world reserves so drilling won’t make a dent in the amount of oil the US imports. However, this logic is completely irrational and flawed. The entire world doesn’t use 3% of world oil reserves every year. If this were the case, the world would run out of oil in the next few decades. It is estimated that the oil available in the oil shale in Colorado along with the available oil in the outer-continental shelf each contain reserves the size of Saudi Arabia – a country that no one believes is wasting their time and resources drilling for every drop of available oil within their borders. Even the most alarmist warnings give the world oil supplies at least another century before any threat of running out. Therefore, 3% of world oil reserves would fuel the US for a very significant timeframe while viable alternatives are researched and developed. So while the president uses dubious logic to prevent the US from increasing domestic oil production, he has no problem sending taxpayer dollars to Brazil for that purpose. As if this isn’t outrageous enough, there’s even more to this story.

Major liberal financier George Soros seems to be reaping a return on his investment in Democrat politicians.

The key beneficiary of the $2 billion giveaway is Brazilian oil company Petrobras. As Bloomberg reported, billionaire and large Democrat financier, George Soros, acquired over $800 million in Petrobras stock during the second quarter of 2008. He ended up selling 22 million shares and acquiring 5.8 million shares of dividend-paying preferred stock. Lisle quotes Ed Morrissey at Hot Air who asked, “Is it a coincidence that Obama backer George Soros repositioned himself in Petrobras to get dividends just a few days before Obama committed $2 billion in loans and guarantees for Petrobras’ (sic) offshore operations? Hmmmmmmm.” As Lisle points out, there is no “smoking gun” but the coincidence is very alarming. Since the beginnings of the Bush administration, Soros has held huge influence on Democrat politicians through very large campaign contributions and expensive issue-oriented campaigns through groups like MoveOn.org which was founded by Soros. Petrobras is the largest holding in Soros’ hedge fund and he will very clearly benefit from B. Hussein Obama’s cash injection into their operations.

After eight years of accusations that the Bush administration was abusing their power to help friends in big oil, it shows the level of hypocrisy on those on the left who constantly leveled those charges. Reports have also surfaced that top Obama advisor, David Axelrod, is scheduled to receive millions of dollars in payments from his consulting firm he established. The firm’s largest clients are pharmaceutical companies and other health care industry members who are concerned about the administration’s plans for health care reform. Axelrod left the firm after Obama’s election victory, leaving his son in charge. It doesn’t take much imagination to realize that Axelrod’s son can offer the firm’s clients something no other firm can – direct access to the ears of White House officials. While Bush and Halliburton are gone, liberals are dropping their accusations of big business in bed with big government. It looks like they dropped their complaints a little too soon.

Pelosi and the Democrats are pushing a "green energy" bill that will destroy American economy. Once again, no legislator was given time to read entire bill.

The House of Representatives is preparing to pass yet another huge, wasteful, bill that will damage the US economy in unprecedented ways without even giving the legislators voting on it the opportunity to thoroughly read and understand it. The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill is over 1,300 pages long and the last 300 page amendment was added after 3:00 AM the morning before the House was scheduled to vote on it. After seeing the disaster that was the economic stimulus bill which was rushed through by Democrats before a single legislator had read the entire bill, the Democrats are seeking to double-down on this disturbing trend. February’s “stimulus bill” spent close to $1 trillion on programs that had nothing to do with economic recovery. Congress was told by the administration that without the stimulus, unemployment would rise to over 8 percent. However, the stimulus package was supposed to stem the rising flood of unemployed Americans to less than 8 percent. A few months later, unemployment has risen well beyond 9% and is certain to rise above 10% throughout 2009 and even higher in 2010. However, while average Americans didn’t receive any assistance, AIG executives were guaranteed multi-million bonuses through an amendment to the stimulus and billions of dollars are being provided to corrupt groups favored by Democrats such as ACORN. As late as Friday afternoon as Democrats were preparing for a vote on the cap-and-trade bill, House Republicans were informed that they wouldn’t even have access to the entire bill because there wasn’t a copy on the floor.

This bill will devastate the nation’s economy. The average American family can expect their energy bills to “necessarily skyrocket” as Obama explained before the election when discussing his cap-and-trade aspirations. Gasoline prices will rise above last year’s damaging prices of more than $4.00 per gallon and companies will be forced to drastically raise prices for all products in order to remain solvent under the government’s plan for an unprecedented tax increase. The Waxman-Markey bill expands government power over just about every aspect of average American’s lives and is guaranteed to kill millions of jobs in the process. Spain, which already has a similar program, has unemployment over 18% and rising and they have found that for every “green” job created, 2.2 jobs are lost elsewhere in the economy.

Prominent Democrats also have several conflicts of interest concerning this bill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has $50,000 to $100,000 invested in green energy companies just as the bill’s cosponsor, Rep. Markey. Prominent Democrat and global warming loon, Al Gore’s venture capital firm is currently designing software for corporations to use to track their carbon credits. Gore also owns one of the largest carbon credit firms which is the newest form of indulgences where people can send money to his company to “offset” their carbon footprint. It would definitely seem that Gore, Pelosi, and Markey will profit handsomely off of this legislation. President Obama also has ties to a group in Chicago who would run the carbon exchange where American corporations would buy and sell their carbon credits which will basically be a new form of derivatives. Also supporting the bill are large companies such as GE, Goldman Sachs, and several large energy companies who stand to make fortunes off of the new derivatives market that would be established by the government. All Americans should be especially concerned given that Enron was among the first companies to promote the creation of a credit exchange. This bill is nothing but a huge payoff for friends of Democrats and a massive unconstitutional expansion of government power all at the expense of average American families who will be devastated by this plan.

Even more appalling is that the bill won’t have the slightest effect on the supposed “global warming” problem. Climate experts have stated that the average temperature will decrease by, maybe, .02 degrees by 2050, if we are lucky. Through the usual politicking that takes place required to foist fraudulent bills upon the American people, Democrats have given away over 85% of the carbon credits which will be allocated to businesses. Therefore, any of the supposed benefits of the bill are null and void. There will be absolutely no change in global temperatures, no new energy solutions are available to fill the gap created by removing fossil fuels from the economy which will mean that Americans will have to pay more for less energy, and the government will be granted reprehensible amounts of power of the American people. In a fledgling economy, it is almost criminal to place such a massive tax increase on every American during a deep recession. This is a severe injustice being committed on the American people by the officials elected to represent them.

If this bill passes the House, everyone needs to make a concerted effort to convince their senators to vote against it. Call your senators early and often to demand that they vote against passing this awful bill. Inform them that you will be thinking about this legislation when you head to the polls.

Solar and wind power will ruin the national economy and produce less, more expensive energy.

Speaking in Nevada on Wednesday, President Obama praised both the stimulus and clean energy initiatives. Making a ridiculous statement, B. Hussein Obama said that the stimulus had, “saved or created nearly 150,000 jobs, jobs building solar panels and wind turbines; making homes and buildings more energy efficient.” An earlier post titled, “This is Obama’s Idea of a “Stimulated” Economy?” the dishonesty of this statement was called to light. Claiming to have “created or saved 150,000 jobs” in an economy which has shed close to 1.5 million jobs since the stimulus bill passed in February is more than just putting a favorable spin on the situation; it’s a flat-out lie. However, to be completely fair, let’s suspend reality and assume that the president’s claim is accurate. This means that for every single job “created or saved,” ten other jobs were destroyed. Some may see this as simplified logic, however, once the truth about “green” jobs is examined; this is right in-line with the experiences of just about every other country that has followed Obama’s plan of stimulating “green” growth.

One country that has been held out by the Obama administration as the shining example of green technology progress is Spain. In March, a top Spanish university, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, published the first comprehensive report of its kind on “the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources.” The Spanish findings should make any country thinking of following the same path to run, not walk, away.

One of the main findings of the report was that for every single “green” job created, 2.2 jobs were lost. A RealClearPolitics article on the study stated, “Spain’s experience reveals with a high confidence, by two different methods, that the US should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created.” Making the scenario even worse, was the finding that most of the new green jobs were temporary positions involved in the construction, fabrication, installation, marking and administration of the new renewable energy sources. “Only 10 percent of the green jobs created were permanent jobs actually operating and maintaining the renewable energy sources.” Therefore, Obama’s promise to create 5 million new green jobs will end up destroying over 10 million other American jobs and only result in about 500,000 permanent green jobs.
With the American economy already in a deep recession, it would be suicide to adopt policies that would destroy jobs and raise prices for already struggling families. However, this is exactly what Obama’s investment in “renewable” energy sources will lead to. (more…)