Op-Ed

It’s hard to find gas for less than $4 per gallon in my neck of the woods, and the experts are telling me that I should enjoy this low price while I can, because rates are only going to go up. Please excuse me while I curl into a ball on the floor and weep openly. If only tears could fuel my SUV, I’d be good to go.

Gasoline fuels my vehicle, as it fuels every other vehicle out there (even the coal-powered cars use some gas). Petroleum is a basic necessity in our modern world -- it’s used in practically everything. We need oil to keep the wheels of our economy turning, so why is President Obama so eager to restrict our access to it by making it cost-prohibitive? Even more to the point, since higher fuel costs affect the lower income earners disproportionately to the wealthy – why does President Obama hate poor people? They're going to be suffering the most with high gas prices.

This president has been nothing but bad news on the energy front. His moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico bankrupted Seahawk Drilling and put over 600 people out of work. His rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline to transfer crude oil from Canada to refineries in Texas not only robs the United States of thousands of jobs, but harms the planet because now Canada will ship that oil to China, which will create a lot more pollution than if it had gone to Texas.

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We import nearly 60% of the oil used here in America, and much of that comes from the Middle East. In case you hadn’t heard, things aren’t all sunshine and rosebuds over there. On Monday, Iran announced that it would no longer export oil to Britain and France. The U.S. does not import oil from Iran, and now Britain and France are going to be going after the same sources as us. It’s basic economics: Limited supply plus increased demand equals skyrocketing prices. 

What’s that? We should be focusing on green, renewable energy? We should invest in, oh I don’t know … let’s say … a solar panel company? How about $535 million in taxpayer dollars? Is that enough? Ok, done. Wait … that already happened. Solyndra went bankrupt after George Kaiser, one of Barack Obama’s campaign bundlers, got a big fat payout. Just because that wasn’t painful enough on its own, they later threw the existing solar panels into the trash.

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As more nations industrialize and develop a need for oil, it becomes more and more important that we increase our supply. We have plenty of oil -- tons of it. We just have to get it. Right now, our president is standing in our way. It’s a good thing it’s an election year, because if Barack Obama won’t get out of the way in making America energy independent, we’ll vote someone in who will.

Image via futureatlas.com/Flickr