Keystone Pipeline Opponents Dig-In After Report

March 4 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg's chief Washington correspondent Peter Cook reports that opponents of TransCanada Corp.'s Keystone XL pipeline have stepped up their objections after a March 1 report helped clear the way for White House approval of the project. He speaks on Bloomberg Television's "In The Loop."

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PJTV Trifecta - Obama Denies Truth on Oil and Gas

The Obama Administration thinks the US is powerless to control the price of oil and gas. Trifecta reminds Obama that there are trillions of gallons of oil in the United States. So why aren't we drilling for it? Find out.

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Austin Hill - Anger, Villification, Misinformation –And No Energy Policy

“Today, members of Congress have a simple choice to make..”

President Obama was speaking in the White House Rose Garden this past Thursday. Our nation’s energy problems –problems that, as he stated last month, have plagued our country for over thirty years – could now be addressed with one simple juxtaposition and one obvious choice for those who serve in the House and Senate.

“They can stand with big oil, or they can stand with the American people” our President claimed, as he went on to explain his plan to end what he calls “tax breaks” for oil companies. “Right now, the biggest oil companies are raking in record profits,” he continued, “profits that go up every time folks pull up into a gas station…”

President Obama’s remarks about oil companies amount to nothing new – neither in terms of rhetoric, nor in terms of ideas – and they are easy to ignore. Yet they are worthy of our attention, because our President is responding to a crisis with campaign rhetoric that he used years ago, and with ideas that even congressional Democrats have determined to be untenable. Equally as problematic is the fact that the President’s claims get repeated over and over throughout much of the American media, without any fact-checking, contextualizing, or questioning.

So let’s start by questioning President Obama’s logic. He characterized his proposed solution to rising gasoline prices as a “simple choice to make” on March 29th. Yet, on February 23rd of this year, the President belittled the calls from Republican presidential candidates to expand oil exploration and development here in the United States. “That’s not a plan, especially since we’re already drilling” the President told an audience in Miami, Florida on that day. “It’s not a strategy to solve our energy challenge, “ he claimed, as he continued with his disparaging remarks, “…there are no quick fixes.”

So on February 2rd there were “no quick fixes,” yet on March 29th Congress had “a simple choice to make.” Expanding the use of American oil resources is bad, but raising taxes is good. This is apparently the underlying premise of the Obama Administration’s “energy policy.”

Our President’s rhetoric about the oil industry over the past few weeks is essentially a repeat of several of his past performances. During the 2008 oil price spike, in August of that year, then-Senator Obama stood in front of a stadium full of fans in Detroit and said many of the same vilifying things:

“…First, of all..” Mr. Obama began, “You’ve got oil companies making record profits…no… no companies in history have made the kind of profits the oil companies are makin’ right now…They..they…….one company, Exxon Mobil, made eleven billion dollars…billion, with a “b” ….last quarter….they made eleven billion dollars the quarter before that…makin’ money hand-over-fist…makin’ out like bandits…”

The spite and indignation over profitable American companies got the election year crowd fired-up. Yet candidate Obama’s proposed “solution” to the dilemma in August of 2008 was the same then, as it is now: raise taxes on oil companies. His rhetoric fails both in terms of basic economics, and in terms of sound energy policy. But this, apparently, is what President Obama knows, and he will not be deterred.

Beyond the folly of the President’s “tax our way to more energy” strategy, there is the disingenuousness – and the inaccuracy – of the President’s repeated claims of ‘tax subsidies” and “tax breaks” for oil companies. Despite the obvious political strategy of creating a evil demon from which he is attempting to rescue us, President Obama’s loosely worded claims about the oil industry and taxation rates are not only false, but it is harmful.

For the record, when President Obama decries “government subsidies” for the oil industry, what he is actually conveying is his opinion that the oil industry is not taxed at a sufficiently high rate. This is to say that oil companies are being “allowed” to keep more of their own money than President Obama thinks is fair, and he chooses to label this matter of “keeping to much of your money” as a subsidy.

Keeping one’s own money – whether we are speaking of a private individual or an organization – is NOT the same as being paid a “subsidy.” And oil companies are already taxed at a marginal rate of approximately 41%, as compared to an approximate rate of 26% among the other companies on the S&P 500. Yet journalists repeat the President’s claims about “oil subsidies” as though they were factual – which leads us further and further away from sound energy policies.

Anger, vilification, demonization, and misinformation. This is not the essence of leadership, and it does not unite our country. Indeed, it leads to further division – and more energy chaos.

Austin Hill

Austin Hill is an emerging American voice, addressing culture-defining questions through books, talk radio, web, speaking, and interviews. His recent books "White House Confidential" and his new title "The Virtues Of Capitalism" show his range from whit-infused writer to thought-provoking expert on the intersection of philosophy, religion, politics & culture. Hill helps to make the complex seem simple when exploring capitalism, socialism, and other "Isms".

He is an editorial contributor to national publications such as U.S. News & World Report, a columnist with TownHall.com, and is a popular expert-host on radio from leading stations in Washington DC, Chicago, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and nationally with networks such as Fox NewsTalk Radio.  He hosts the "Austin Hill Show" weekday mornings at Fresno, California's Talk Radio 105-9 KMJ-FM,  and weekday afternoons at Boise, Idaho's Newstalk 580 K I D O radio.

Hill holds a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and a Master's Degree in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics from Biola University in California.

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Austin Hill - “Tire Gauge Politics:” Obama Becomes The Status Quo On Energy

“What do you think are some of the important issues in this year’s presidential election?”

My question was off-topic from the stated purpose of the interview, and my talk show guest seemed a bit caught off-guard. But I was even more surprised by his answer.

It was early in the year 2000. Vice President Al Gore was ramping-up his presidential bid, while a bunch of Republicans were slugging it out for a chance to run against him. And although the dot com economic bubble was looking like it might be headed for a burst, the American economy was still relatively stable – certainly more so than it is now.

“Well, our lack of a coherent energy policy is a huge issue right now” noted the famous automotive revolutionary Lee Iacocca. Gasoline was averaging only $1.50 a gallon at the time, and Iacocca was visiting my hometown of Phoenix to unveil his then-new electric bicycle invention. But he was willing to venture in to a discussion of presidential politics – and “energy policies” were top of mind for him.

“When I was running Chrysler I tried to get Presidents Carter and Reagan to focus on this, but when foreign oil is cheap it’s just too easy to play politics and to ignore the problem of foreign oil dependency” he continued. “One of these days America is going to end up in big trouble if we don’t make some changes…”

That was twelve years ago. And today we are in trouble – have we been “playing politics” all these years? - as yet another spike in foreign oil prices threatens our economy. And, just like in 2008, Barack Obama is once again running a campaign for the presidency in an environment of spiking fuel prices - only this time he’s the incumbent and not the outsider.

The price increases have become so burdensome that the President can no longer ignore them. Last Thursday he stated that “some politicians, they see this as a political opportunity,” and noted a headline from “one newspaper” which supposedly indicated that “Republicans are licking their chops” over rising gas prices. “Only in politics do people root for bad news” President Obama growled to his audience.

And the price surge is happening against a rather bizarre background. After denying a permit in January for the expansion of the TransCanada Corporation’s Keystone XL Pipeline project - a project that would have presumably expanded American oil refining and decreased America’s foreign oil dependency – the President is now stuck defending his obsession with government funded electric cars that don’t sell, and failed solar energy companies owned by his campaign donors which have “lost” hundreds of millions of our tax revenues.

This confluence of elements has led the President to begin talking about domestic oil production as though it were actually a good thing. Under his administration, the President continued in his Thursday speech, “America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years,” with a record number of oil and gas rigs. “We’re focused on production.”

This is a dramatic departure from the President’s previous attitude. While campaigning for the presidency during the 2008 price spike, candidate Obama scoffed at the idea of producing more oil at home. “If everybody in America inflated their tires to the proper level,” he sarcastically noted in August of that year, “we would actually probably save more oil, than all the oil we’d get from John McCain drillin’ right below his feet… or wherever he was gonna drill…”

Americans need to demand both an end to the “politics of oil,” and a coherent energy policy. Never again should we settle for cynical “tire gauge politics,” or “stimulus dollars” for President Obama’s solar energy friends.

Republican congressional leaders should take the lead now – now, while the President is lacking credibility on the issue - and begin to acknowledge the obvious: the United States is home to its own substantial oil and gas resources.

There’s nothing wrong or “unfair” about this – we’ve got resources right here at home. Yet it iscurrently a violation of federal law to search for oil in the Pacific Ocean, in the Gulf of Mexico, in the Atlantic Ocean, and in Alaska. Similarly, it is against the law to search for oil shale in the continental United States.

President Obama is being forced to contradict his positions from four years ago because he’s not campaigning against the status quo. He is the status quo in this year’s election, and the status quo has us, once again, “over a barrel.” Alternative energy development is good, noble and necessary – but oil is our need right now.

Who will take the lead, in the President’s absence?

Austin Hill

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Austin Hill is an emerging American voice, addressing culture-defining questions through books, talk radio, web, speaking, and interviews. His recent books "White House Confidential" and his new title "The Virtues Of Capitalism" show his range from whit-infused writer to thought-provoking expert on the intersection of philosophy, religion, politics & culture. Hill helps to make the complex seem simple when exploring capitalism, socialism, and other "Isms".

He is an editorial contributor to national publications such as U.S. News & World Report, a columnist with TownHall.com, and is a popular expert-host on radio from leading stations in Washington DC, Chicago, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and nationally with networks such as Fox NewsTalk Radio.  He hosts the "Austin Hill Show" weekday mornings at Fresno, California's Talk Radio 105-9 KMJ-FM,  and weekday afternoons at Boise, Idaho's Newstalk 580 K I D O radio.

Hill holds a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and a Master's Degree in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics from Biola University in California.

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THP Videos - Obama's High Gas Prices

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