With another spike that sent the average price of a gallon of gasoline rocketing to $3.81, President Barack Obama reluctantly pulled himself away from his NCAA Basketball Tournament bracket late last week to make a campaign appearance where he defended the defenseless - his energy policy.
And once again, the president proves he is clueless about what his policies are doing to the average American working family. Rising energy costs not only increase the cost of the fuel we put into our vehicles, but add to every other expense, also.
Yes, the Middle East situation has caused the price of a barrel of crude oil to rise over the past several months. But we have known for years instability in that region causes prices to fluctuate. Past administrations - even Democratic ones - have attempted to increase our domestic output to guard against this. Obama not only has turned his back on domestic production, he has used every means at his disposal to make domestic production harder to accomplish by imposing crippling regulations issued by unelected bureaucrats in charge of federal agencies, like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Lisa Jackson and Energy Secretary Steven Chu, both vocal enemies of fossil fuels, as anyone who lives in coal country already knows.
Because of regulations, it is cheaper for oil producers to export their products overseas than to make them available for U.S. consumption.
This is Obama's energy policy.
Obama refuses to take the blame for the higher gasoline prices. According to his Neverland view, he says we are producing more oil now that at any time in the past eight years and has quadrupled the number of operating oil rigs. What he fails to mention is these were put into motion by former President George W. Bush's administration. Very few have been approved under his.
Obama and his faithful continue to believe Americans are clueless. Like a magician, he hopes we continue to admire the trick - and not realize it is being accomplished is by blindly pursuing narcissistic policies that create permanently rising energy costs that will cripple every portion of the American economy for years.
