Paying at the Pump With Eric Bolling and Gov. Sarah Palin

If you missed the Eric Bolling – Sarah Palin Special: Paying at the Pump, aired on Fox News over the weekend, here it is.  Definitely worth the watch!

‘The Special’ offers input from experts, everyday people and some solutions including from Governor Sarah Palin and Eric Bolling…

Paying at the Pump with Eric Bolling and Sarah Palin

Video:  Paying at the Pump with Eric Bolling and Sarah Palin

The video clearly points out that energy production in America is directly related to the American economy… and in turn energy independence is directly related to American economic recovery.  This special touches on several common sense solutions.

And for the environmentalists out there, there are green solutions for clean-up.  Here’s one: check-out these products: DualZorb®, PondZorb® and AcidZorb® distributed domestically and globally by a growing company MC Endeavors, Inc. who just launched an Online Store.

Updated: 4.17.12 at 12:05 ET – National Review Online

(Curiously just on the heals of, but not a word for credit or even a mention of the Bolling- Palin special… so as stated below this seems to be the big ‘campaign’ initiative of the day, but nothing will come of it… and certainly no shared credit if something should!)

Obama Announces New ‘Oil Market Manipulator’ Hunt Four Years Straight by Jim Gerahty

President Obama’s big initiative for the day is yet another pledge to crack down on nefarious energy traders who are driving up prices of oil and gasoline.

Today: “Under pressure to take action on rising gasoline prices, President Barack Obama wants Congress to strengthen federal supervision of oil markets, increase penalties for market manipulation and empower regulators to increase the amount of money energy traders are required to put behind their transactions. The White House plan, which Obama was to unveil Tuesday, is more likely to draw sharp election-year distinctions with Republicans than have an immediate effect on prices at the pump. The measures seek to boost spending for Wall Street enforcement at a time when congressional Republicans are seeking to limit the reach of federal financial regulations.”

If this pledge sounds familiar… it’s because Obama and his administration announce some new initiative to do this every year, usually as spring turns to summer and the price of gas increases as Americans drive more. It’s almost like the Cherry Blossom Festival.

Last June: “The Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether oil companies have engaged in anticompetitive practices or manipulated crude oil prices, the government’s latest salvo to rein in high energy prices. The commission said on Monday it was also looking into whether oil companies had provided false or misleading information to a federal agency related to the wholesale price of oil or petroleum products. “We remain committed to preventing and prosecuting any anticompetitive, fraudulent, or otherwise illegal activity which we identify through the foregoing investigation,” commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a letter to Senator John Rockefeller, who called on the FTC in March to launch an investigation.”

Just about one year ago today, April, 2011: “With U.S. gasoline pump prices soaring, the Obama administration on Thursday unveiled a working group of federal agencies to probe potential fraud in the energy markets. The White House is worried that if average gas prices rise above $4 a gallon, the economic and political fallout could dominate next year’s presidential campaign and drown out President Barack Obama’s message of economic recovery. Obama asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to assemble a team of agency officials to “root out” cases of oil market fraud that affect pump prices, including actions by speculators.”

March 2011: “Obama said he had ordered a review of why oil companies aren’t producing more petroleum on federal land, and said his administration would monitor “any possible manipulation in the oil markets” and work with state governments to monitor for potential price gouging at the gas pump.”

July 2010: “Traders will face new rules aimed at making it easier for regulators to prove manipulation in markets for commodities such as oil, wheat and natural gas under the financial overhaul awaiting President Barack Obama’s signature.”

And then in August 2009: “Energy traders and companies will face fines of up to $1 million a day if they manipulate oil markets, the Federal Trade Commission ruled on Thursday in a crackdown on fraud that they said causes widespread damage to the U.S. economy. The agency issued a rule, which takes effect November 4, to prohibit fraud or deceit both in the cash, or physical, energy markets and on the regulated futures exchanges.”

Now… with gas averaging $3.89 per gallon nationally and much higher in many parts of the country, we can conclude that either every previous initiative announced by the administration was spectacularly ineffective at containing the nefarious menace of oil price speculators… or that oil price speculators are not really the reason gas prices increase.

No Green Jobs and WH Lies…

Drillgate: Internal Emails Shows Obama Team Lying to Public

If you’re the President of the United States or one of his political appointees and you’re ideologically opposed to new oil and natural gas development offshore, what do you do when the public registers its overwhelming support for new drilling in public opinion polls?

You dance, delay, and deceive. You speak melodious words about seeking the wisdom of the public in making these decisions and then ignore evidence of the public will when you get it, or worse, you hide it.

First came the dance. In August 2008, after soaring gas prices and a dramatic shift in public opinion caused President Bush, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, and Republican presidential candidate John McCain to reverse their positions on offshore drilling, then-Senator Obama also changed. The Democratic presidential nominee reversed his own position and that of his party, saying he was open to offshore drilling as part of an overall energy plan. The Democratic Congress followed a month later by quietly dropping the 25-year Congressional ban on offshore drilling.

Then came the delay. In January 2009, President Obama inherited a draft five year offshore drilling plan prepared by the outgoing Bush administration. The plan was already receiving public comment as part of the elaborate rule making process followed by federal agencies. Ken Salazar, Obama’s new Secretary of Interior, determined the decision about new offshore drilling was so important that he ordered a six-month extension to the comment period.

Third comes the dishonesty.

In April of 2009, during a discussion about offshore exploration in San Francisco, Salazar said that President Obama directed him to “to make sure that we have an open and transparent government” and that “these are not decisions that are going to be made behind closed doors.” Salazar went on to say that President Obama wanted to make sure that DOI was “maximizing the opportunity for the public to give us guidance on what it is that they want to do.”

Yet, more than four months after the comment period ended, the Department of the Interior has failed to make any public announcement about the results, even though sources have told American Solutions for months the comments show a 2-1 advantage in support of offshore drilling.

It took American Solutions almost four months and the power of the Freedom of Information Act to finally uncover indirect confirmation that, out of over 530,000 comments submitted, pro-drilling comments outnumbered anti-drilling comments by a 2-1 margin.

In an email dated October 27, 2009, Liz Birnbaum, director of the Minerals Management Service, informs other Interior officials that a preliminary tabulation of the results of the comment period had not yet gone to Secretary Salazar, adding “[s]o the Secretary can honestly say in response to any questions that he’s [SIC] has not yet seen the analysis of the comments – staff is still working on it. I did, however, confirm to him the 2-1 split that these guys [at American Solutions] are emphasizing.”

When a public employee is on record condoning purposeful deception of the American people, the taxpayer should no longer have to fund his or her job. Secretary Salazar should immediately fire Liz Birnbaum for purposefully deceiving him, and in turn, the American people. It’s not possible for the Secretary to honor pledges of openness, honestly, and transparency in government if his staff is going to deliberately undermine such pledges.

Public opinion polls already measure near 70% support for offshore drilling, so the results from a public comment period that reflect the same public sentiment should not be surprising. But after all this talk of wanting the public’s input, Secretary Salazar and his team must find it a real stumbling block to have to explain all their anti-energy development actions in light of the comment period results to which they previously attached such great importance.

This newly gained insight into the anti-energy exploration mindset within the Department of the Interior allows a new perspective of President Obama’s mention of offshore development in his recent State of the Union address. Here is the one paragraph in which the President described offshore development:

But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies. And, yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.

To the passive listener, it sounded like President Obama expressed at least rhetorical support for offshore drilling.

But the President only says we must make “tough decisions” on offshore drilling, deliberately refusing to apply that standard to other decisions on energy.

But tough for whom? Certainly not for the public that overwhelmingly supports more offshore drilling.

Indeed, the only person facing a tough decision is the President since an important part of his political base is opposed to new American energy development.

Bucking public opinion would indeed be a tough decision for this President, but he has shown himself quite comfortable with bucking public opinion to pursue stunningly unpopular policies on health care and cap and trade.

In short, it’s a fair conclusion that the tough decisions the President identified in his State of the Union was his intended decision not to pursue any new offshore oil and gas development. The actions by Salazar and his team are entirely consistent with that conclusion.

What makes all of this dispiriting, especially this month, is that with 15 million Americans out of work and with the President’s recently submitted budget projecting trillion dollar annual deficits for the next ten years and a near tripling of the national debt by 2020, the President is throwing away a golden opportunity over the next three decades to create millions of new jobs and generate more than $270 billion in annual economic growth from new oil and gas development, including $54 billion annually in federal tax receipts that could help lower the federal deficit and the national debt.

These extraordinary benefits of job creation and economic growth – all without requiring any federal spending – are, sadly, not on President Obama’s agenda, notwithstanding all the phony rhetoric to the contrary.

Indeed, we can look forward to the President’s continued strategy of dance, delay, and deceive.

by Vince Haley

New (Green) Wind Farms Bring No New Jobs

Despite all the talk of green jobs, the overwhelming majority of stimulus money spent on wind power has gone to foreign companies, according to a new report by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University's School of Communication in Washington, D.C.

Wind turbines are powered by strong prevailing winds in Palm Springs, Calif. The American Wind...

(David McNew/Getty Images)

Nearly $2 billion in money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been spent on wind power, funding the creation of enough new wind farms to power 2.4 million homes over the past year. But the study found that nearly 80 percent of that money has gone to foreign manufacturers of wind turbines.

So Where Are the Jobs?

"Most of the jobs are going overseas," said Russ Choma at the Investigative Reporting Workshop. He analyzed which foreign firms had accepted the most stimulus money. "According to our estimates, about 6,000 jobs have been created overseas, and maybe a couple hundred have been created in the U.S."