The American Spectator

Oh, dear. Politico reports that the president will make another push for his central planning repackaged as a “green economy” in a national address tomorrow night. The reason for what used to be a global warming tax then a climate change tax is now “green jobs” and showing he’s really engaged and angry at BP.

You see, they spilled some oil when drilling in deepwater offshore instead of in ANWR and other, drier places onshore with lots of oil where they’re not allowed. So it just follows that we should stop offshore drilling and…mandate windmills (raise the price of granny’s air conditioning, hike the cost for the working poor’s transportation, etc.). Because cars run on windmills. Or something.

This oil spill he’s going to show us he’s really cheesed about is of course the one that reached Louisiana’s marshlands and otherwise its coast in force, wreaking economic havoc as well which Team Obama then compounded. This landfall came after the administration heeded green calls and failed to burn the oil off in time despite a plan-in-place since 1994 requiring no bureaucratic hurdles (only, apparently, political and ideological hurdles). Yes, that same oil spill that Louisiana’s governor sought to impede with barrier isles, permits for which the administration sat on and then denied (but-for a symbolic 2% granted).

Such responses of competently and faithfully exercising existing authorities without ideological corruption are insufficiently sophisticated for the Statist, who instead prefers to watch things turn really lousy followed by a lecture that more government and less freedom is really what you need. Strike out that “global warming” thing at the top of your plan and scribble in “no more spills” and you’ve got a winner, a new gusher of revenue.

Indeed, we read today how the president will tell us that this unfortunate chain of events is just proof that we need to let him do to us what he promised he wanted to do to us, which is cause our energy prices to “necessarily skyrocket”, “bankrupt” politically disfavored industry, and “also raise billions of dollars”. Lots of billions of dollars.

Speaking of billions of dollars (which used to be real money), President Obama is also going to say that we need to “start investing in” rat hole energy sources. Yes. It’s criminal we have yet to do that. Ah, except for the $30 billion the taxpayer has already had taken from him to pour down said rat-holes (more, depending on how and what you count). Tell you what. Give us our $30 billion back and we’ll let you play this make-believe game of yours that it never happened. Otherwise, stop being so dishonest. We’ve tried building a better windmill and it turns out…it’s a windmill. And ethanol remains moonshine. Corrosive, wasteful, economically deleterious mandated corn squeezins’.

And frankly, if $8 gas and windmill mandates would force the invention of pixie dust energy we would have seen it in Europe after decades of precisely this failed system — which Obama told us on at least eight occasions he was modeling here after Spain’s disaster — but all it has produced is bankrupt states which are being forced to turn off the spigot, bursting the bubble they created, to avoid collapsing. The mini-boom turned colossal bust. So as Obama lectures Spain to cut it out or else risk bringing us down with them, he pumps his foot on the gas ever harder here.

This is one part seizing on the BP Gulf oil spill for political gain — letting no crisis go to waste — and an equal part defensive political scrambling to pretend he’s striking back at BP… by giving BP the bill it invented with Enron 15 years ago and has been feverishly lobbying for since.

Yeah. The logic and maths are a little fuzzy.  But he’s going to try it again, regardless. There’s a fundamental transformation to impose; the Left sees its political window for this closing so no time for such inconveniences. You could call it a “Power Grab”. Maybe subtitle it “How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America”.