Don't get too excited about the President's announcement to open offshore drilling. People forget that as soon as he got into office he was able with a stroke of his pen to reverse it when President Bush did that. Since this administration is unafraid of executive orders and recess appointments, I won't believe this will do any good until the oil starts flowing out of the ground.
There are some practical reasons for this. A business must want to drill there. The last time Congress approved this, the areas they opened were areas devoid of oil in sufficient amounts to make it worthwile. Even if a business plans to drill there, it must still obtain permits. Unless I'm mistaken, it's still prohibitively expensive and unnecessariously laborious to obtain a permit. Once you get one if you do, there are still confiscatory taxes, union contracts and litigation from environmental wacko groups to hurdle, meaning that it could be years before we ever see any oil come from this, if it ever flows at all.
Contrast this to our neighbors. China and Mexico have already begun to drill during the Obama Administration. These nations know no environmental restrictions, have a bureaucracy of one, and steal their technology from us. The prices of our commodities are high because of governmental policy and because of the enormous cost associated with finding these reserves, work that we do and that places with Communist or Dictatorial regimes steal via espionage if they can.
Furthermore, this could be just Shylock's pound of flesh. I suspect that Obama offered this so that recalcitrant "moderate" republicans like Webb, Snow, and the like will sign off on legislation he wants. He scratches their back and expects them to throw him a bone. They are fools to trade on his promises as the President has not kept the campaign promises he made that mattered most to Americans at the time of his election. I would believe him when I saw him keep his word, and so far his record on this is abyssmal at best. But they will trade him after the fashion warned of by CS Lewis where evil men "steal a man's soul and give him nothing in return" (Screwtape Letters).
The carrot is a ruse.
Ask yourself, are you better off now than you were before Obama was elected? I know I'm not. So, his bait won't lure me in.
There are some practical reasons for this. A business must want to drill there. The last time Congress approved this, the areas they opened were areas devoid of oil in sufficient amounts to make it worthwile. Even if a business plans to drill there, it must still obtain permits. Unless I'm mistaken, it's still prohibitively expensive and unnecessariously laborious to obtain a permit. Once you get one if you do, there are still confiscatory taxes, union contracts and litigation from environmental wacko groups to hurdle, meaning that it could be years before we ever see any oil come from this, if it ever flows at all.
Contrast this to our neighbors. China and Mexico have already begun to drill during the Obama Administration. These nations know no environmental restrictions, have a bureaucracy of one, and steal their technology from us. The prices of our commodities are high because of governmental policy and because of the enormous cost associated with finding these reserves, work that we do and that places with Communist or Dictatorial regimes steal via espionage if they can.
Furthermore, this could be just Shylock's pound of flesh. I suspect that Obama offered this so that recalcitrant "moderate" republicans like Webb, Snow, and the like will sign off on legislation he wants. He scratches their back and expects them to throw him a bone. They are fools to trade on his promises as the President has not kept the campaign promises he made that mattered most to Americans at the time of his election. I would believe him when I saw him keep his word, and so far his record on this is abyssmal at best. But they will trade him after the fashion warned of by CS Lewis where evil men "steal a man's soul and give him nothing in return" (Screwtape Letters).
The carrot is a ruse.
Ask yourself, are you better off now than you were before Obama was elected? I know I'm not. So, his bait won't lure me in.
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