One of the more positive ancillary benefits of this presidential primary season is the newfound focus on taxation, regulation, and energy production. The prominence of the presidential election has helped jumpstart a vital discourse on long-term reforms for those three policies. The RSC, which is the most respected conservative group within Congress, has proposed a jobs growth plan today, which seeks to achieve those reforms, | Read More »
After three years of cumbersome red tape, environmental impact studies, and endless litigation, the Canadian Keystone KL Pipeline extension project is close to obtaining final approval from the State Department. This $7 billion pipeline project, when completed, would transport over 700,000 barrels of oil per day from the Canadian tar sands in northeast Alberta to the hungry oil refineries on the Texas Gulf coast. This | Read More »
When Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle coauthored the dystopic novel Lucifer’s Hammer, they focused heavily on issues of resource management. In the end of the novel, one of the protagonist characters expired uttering the following last words: “Give my children the lightning again.” Yet the challenge of giving future Americans (like my two children) the motive power to enjoy a lifestyle comparable to my own | Read More »
Larry Niven’s awesome novel Lucifer’s Hammer concluded with an amazing vignette. A leader lies dying amid the ruins of a devastated world. His followers debate whether to take over and activate a surviving nuclear power plant. The great man’s dying words resonate and should be a part of the current American Energy debate. “Give my children the lightning again.” He said as he expired. Sadly, | Read More »
The loss of jobs is only half of the result of the government interventionist equation. The other casualty of an economy driven by taxation, regulation, litigation, subsidization, monetary intervention, and debt is the crippling cost of living for all Americans. [Yes, I was about to say middle class, but we would be wise to eradicate that sort of socialist innuendo from our vernacular.] Earlier today, the | Read More »
When members of Congress return to Washington in September, they must confront the next budget challenge; a Continuing Resolution for FY 2012. While the top line discretionary spending level has already been agreed upon through the debt ceiling agreement, the specific levels of funding for each department and agency are still up for debate (or closed-door negotiations, in this case). Unfortunately, instead of prudently analyzing | Read More »
The Obama Administration continues to play bureaucratic hacky-sack with what could be a key element of our nation’s secure energy future: the Keystone XL pipeline project. The new line would increase the export capacity of the Keystone Pipeline (placed in service 2008) by 700,000 barrels of Canadian oil-sands oil per day. The expansion would also facilitate the domestic movement of crude from the key storage | Read More »
The Democrats think the American people are stupid. Throughout the debt ceiling imbroglio, Obama and every single elected Democrat have regurgitated their talking points about a balanced solution to the debt crisis. They have insulted the intelligence of every voter by intimating that the budget can be balanced by eliminating a few tax credits. No, they don’t want to talk about the tens of trillions | Read More »
Summertime 2011, and “investigative journalist” Lee Fang of ThinkProgress has replaced the BP Spill in my blogging life. Fang’s amateurish attempts to find scandal in oil commodities trading have become my new blog fodder. Fang puts forward the half-baked theory that the evil Koch Brothers and other traders control world oil prices via speculation. His latest piece, “JP Morgan, Koch, Other Oil Traders May Buy | Read More »
President Obama has asserted ad nauseam that expanding oil drilling would not affect the price of oil and generate price relief at the gas pump. He has scoffed at the ‘drill, baby, drill’ plan, denouncing it as insufficient in dealing with our “long-term” energy needs. Now that his reelection prospects are beginning to wither, Obama is undergoing a foxhole conversion and easing his aversion to that “addictive” | Read More »
On Thursday, the Department of Energy announced a release of thirty million barrels of crude oil over the next 60 days from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the nation’s stockpile supposedly set aside for emergency supply disruptions. Washington, DC – U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today that the U.S. and its partners in the International Energy Agency have decided to release a total of 60 | Read More »
Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Kathleen Hartnett White to discuss the Left’s smear campaign against fracking and how the technology can open up large tracks of oil and natural gas right there in the U.S. We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. | Read More »
Ed Morrissey and Fausta are both not getting why the President is taking the side of Argentina (thus sharing a podium with that noted beacon of freedom, tolerance, and capitalism known as Venezuela) in its perennial attempts to get the United Kingdom to give up the Falkland Islands. It’s not just that we’re signed on to the OAS declaration demanding that the British negotiate on | Read More »
Last month, during his weekly radio address, Barack Obama announced his plans to drill in NPR-A. No-he wasn’t planning to eviscerate his genuflecting media outlet; he was promising to issue more land leases in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Like most of his capricious gestures to conservative policy initiatives, this promise was vapid of substance and lacking accountability. He knew all along that his unelected bureaucrats | Read More »
I like Texas. The state has many great things going for it, including a friendly tax and business climate. However Texas has to keep working to stay on top, so when South Carolina is backing down from its refusal to work with Amazon, and Tennessee has dropped its Amazon tax bill, it’s disappointing and frustrating to see Texas moving forward with punitive taxation against an | Read More »
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