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Human Events Editorial...
The Energy Choke
03/24/2011
[This article originally ran as the editorial from the March 21st issue
of HUMAN EVENTS newspaper.]
Jobs and economic growth are being deliberately strangled.
The American economy was already nursing a broken ankle from high
unemployment and suffering heart palpitations as it tried to figure out
how it could cover the impossible cost of its government. Now it feels
a terrible pain gnawing at its belly, as food prices experience their
sharpest climb in 36 years.
Our economy is just beginning to feel the choking grasp of soaring fuel
prices around its throat. Growth requires motion and motion requires
energy. The cost of energy is tied into the cost of virtually
everything else… and our dependence on foreign energy sources puts us
at the mercy of long, oily tentacles that reach back into the most
unstable parts of the world.
This dependence is the predictable result of deliberate policies, from
locking private industry out of Alaskan oil fields, to hounding oil
rigs away from the Gulf of Mexico. Some of these policies have been
pursued in defiance of court orders, so they cannot be dismissed as
momentary lapses in judgment.
The Obama Administration is intentionally choking the life out of
America’s dynamic, highly mobile economy. All of the “alternative
energy” fantasies it sustains with taxpayer money share the common
feature of reducing choice and freedom. Solar panels produce energy
when it’s sunny outside. Wind turbines provide power when nature sees
fit to provide wind. Electric cars can be driven only short distances,
after the owner completes a cumbersome recharging procedure. “High
speed rail” is nowhere near as fast or convenient as personal
automobile use or air travel.
All of these “alternative solutions” would move America to a lower
level of energy, in which citizens would spend a great deal more time
waiting instead of doing. This reduced level of activity would be much
simpler for statists to manage.
Everything becomes more valuable when its supply is limited. Rationing
a limited supply of motion would bring great power to the masters of
Big Government. Increasing the price of everything limits the
consumption of everything. For both practical and ideological reasons,
President Obama and the Democrats see reduced consumption as a virtue,
at least for the “little people.”
It is imperative for Republicans to help the electorate see the future
Democrats have planned for them. This is not merely a matter of paying
a little more at the pump and driving a bit less often. Even labor
unions, among the most stalwart Democratic constituencies, have noted
that an out-of-control EPA is smothering jobs in key states with
oppresive environmental regulations.
Union leaders fear the GOP will use these lost jobs as cudgels against
Democrats. “If the EPA issues regulations that cost jobs in
Pennsylvania and Ohio,” warns Stewart Acuff, chief of staff to the
president of the Utility Workers of America, “the Republicans will
blast the President with it over and over… not just the President, but
every Democrat from those states.” Let’s hope those fears are
justified, and the Democrats are relentlessly hammered for their energy
policies. Middle America needs to fight back while it still has some
air in its lungs.
Read it at Human Events
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