--President Obama wants to hit the oil and gas industry with an additional $26 billion in taxes. He calls tax breaks for the industry "unjustifiable loopholes," though he has no problem with massive taxpayer-funded subsidies for unfeasible wind and solar power.Unfortunately, devastating the nation's energy supply in the middle of a depression is one of the worst possible things a leader could do. It is only what we expected of him, however.
--The president's "cap-and-trade" plan to force massive cuts in carbon dioxide emissions would slap huge new costs on coal-fired power plants by making them buy allowances to emit more than they are permitted. Those costs -- in effect, an energy tax -- would be passed on to consumers.
--He has declared that Yucca Mountain -- an isolated area in Nevada which U.S. taxpayers have paid $14 billion to prepare to receive nuclear waste -- should not be allowed to store waste after all. That will complicate plans to expand nuclear energy production.
--He has proposed slashing a program that helps utilities plan and certify new nuclear power plants. If Mr. Obama wants to end subsidies, that's fine. But should he not start with the most impractical subsidies -- the ones going to unproven energy sources that cannot meet our energy needs? And why not dump the requirement that corn-based ethanol be added to our fuel supply? The 43-cent federal subsidy for every gallon of ethanol produced has raised food prices, and the fuel harms small engines and reduces mileage. _EnergyCurrent
An incompetent president would be manageable, if he were alone in his incompetence. Unfortunately, Obama is surrounded by incompetence of all varieties -- from the incompetence of inexperience to the incompetence of destructive ideological mind-binding.
Humans who care about the future will have to work through parallel channels to safeguard resources for the future, and to develop effective technologies for the day when a freer and more rational society can evolve.
When a powerful nation elects a complete clown as its leader, there are bound to be unfortunate repercussions --
ReplyDeleteThis also describes the election of Jimmy Carter. The US has elected a spectacularly bad president every 20 years since 1900. Beginning in 1900 we had a decade and a half, then Wilson, then two decades later Roosevelt, then LBJ, Carter, Clinton, and now BHO.
In fact, the time between bad presidents is shrinking, so that now we are now approaching almost continuous corruption.
Ron, your comparison to Carter is qualitatively valid but quantitatively wrong. Obama's impact is already so much greater and more damaging than Carter's that we won't have time to dwell on it very much longer.
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