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The Public Policy

Barack Obama proposes that we seize the profits of the oil companies and use them for $1,000 "energy rebate" checks to every working family in America. That is what he said in his speech in Lansing, Michigan on August 4, 2008, entitled "New Energy for America." Economist Donald Boudreaux pointed out that seizing all oil profits would still not be enough to fund these $1,000 giveaway checks.

If the government is going to target an industry it has vilified in the public mind, loot all its profits, and then use the money for giveaway checks to buy votes, then what has our nation become?

If the government can do that to the oil industry, then why can't it do the same to any other industry, or group of people, that it successfully paints as unpopular? What then has happened to the whole notion of private property?

Why couldn't President Obama then decree that every owner of a four bedroom home take in two homeless people? Surely there would be room for them somewhere. Why couldn't he just seize every gas guzzling SUV, sell them for scrap metal, and use that money for $1,000 rebate checks to every Democrat voter as well?

This is why people say Obama is a socialist.

MEANWHILE, WE might ask how seizing the profits of the oil industry is going to get us more oil and gasoline, and bring down prices.

Who is going to invest the hundreds of billions necessary to find the oil, drill for it with such incredibly expensive technological wonders as offshore oil platforms, pay for the multibillion dollar oil tankers and pipelines, and finance the distribution to gas stations across America?

After Obama demonstrates that he and his merry band of thieves will then just steal the resulting profits to buy votes, investment in domestic oil and gas production will collapse.

But that is not a problem for Obama. If you read his energy speech, which is on his website, you will see that he has no plan to bring down prices for oil and gasoline. He nowhere even sets that as a goal.

What he does set as a goal is the following: "For the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, we must end the age of oil in our time."

His energy speech was reported as conceding a willingness for increased offshore oil production as part of a broad compromise. But there will not be a drop of any such increased oil if he is President.

Just look at the legislation Obama has introduced in the Senate. The Oil SENSE Act, S. 115, would repeal the authorization in the 2005 Energy Policy Act for the Interior Department to study and inventory how much oil might be available under America's Outer Continental Shelf. Moreover, the bill would prohibit expanded use of 3-D seismic technology to locate and measure offshore oil deposits, even by the oil companies.

As columnist Deroy Murdock explains, "Obama's Don't Ask, Don't Drill policy spurns [modern technology] and embraces outdated information gathered with obsolete instruments. This is the audacity of ignorance."

SO IF AMERICA'S economy is not going to run on oil and gas, what is it going to run on?

Don't bet on nuclear power. In another recent speech, Obama said, "there is no future for expanded nuclear power without first addressing four key issues: public right to know, security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and proliferation."

topics:
Taxes, Barack Obama, Business, Environment, NATO, Energy, Oil