It’s a shame that Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, et. al. spent so much time mimicking Democrats in demonizing Mitt Romney for being rich because if nothing else it takes their eye off the ball — defeating a quite weak President Obama by focusing their energies on his truly poor economic decisions. I realize that there needs to be some weeding out of candidate positions and that before they can run on Obama they must run on their immediate competition, but every minute spent off of Obama’s economy is a minute for which Obama is grateful.

Case in point: the recent decision by the Obama Administration to block (semantics aside, let’s call it what it is) to Canadian Keystone pipeline.

The decision is disastrously bad for a number of reasons, which will be highlighted, but even more striking is that they go against the very advice of his own economic and energy advisers and cabinet members. For example, here’s Energy Secretary Steven Chu:

“Having Canada as a supplier of our oil is much more comforting than having other countries supply our oil.”

Wow. No brainer, right? I mean how much grief do Democrats supply in every election cycle about the amount of oil we import from the Middle East. It is, they always tell us — albeit inaccurately and without factual merit — the reason for The Gulf War and 2004 invasion of Iraq. So, if that be the case, why not at least choose to get a larger proportion from our friends?

Of course, here’s the thing. Oil is fungible. It’s a commodity that can be bought and resold 100 times over before it reaches the American consumer. And whether or not an American president chooses to partner with Canadians determined to drill their own territory won’t change that fact. Thus the inevitable — Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said, fine, if you don’t want to partner with our pipeline than perhaps the Chinese will be interested.

You could say that with that decision, to borrow a quote from our current first lady, I’ve never been more proud of the Canadians. I don’t blame them. They’ve got a resource to sell. If we don’t want it, others do. And here’s the great irony. Not only will we be potentially buying Chinese oil then, but should the production price become cheaper than what some of our “enemy” countries can do, they may be prone to buy the Canadian-Chinese oil and turn around and sell back to the US too. That’s how commodities work.

But it gets even better. First, as historian Victor Davis Hanson labels it, and I do love this, it is “the antithesis of Solyndra.” The Chinese, and not Americans, get an estimated 10-20 thousand production jobs.

Here’s the most ironic and comical angle though — Obama’s decision is at best a zero-sum protection for the environment, and more than likely even worse for the environment. Like the Canadian PM said — they’re drilling, baby, whether we like it or not. The impact to the environment is therefore moot. It’s analogous to drilling in the Gulf of Mexico — whether we do or not the Cubans, Chinese, Venezuelans and others will. By taking part you can at least take the lead in doing it as cleanly as possible whereas if you forgo doing so you give no reason for another country to follow suit with improving standards and technology. And if an oil spill can occur in Canada (or the Gulf) from American mishap, the chances are even greater so when it’s China doing the work, or Cuba doing the Gulf drilling.

Here’s Hanson again:

If the Keystone project raises environmental issues, then every other comparable one would too. It is not as if the route bisects Yosemite on its way to Big Sur. How strange — we assume that the Saudis or the Turks can build pipelines across their own lands without environmental problems, but that we, the apparently less technologically advanced, cannot. We hear that oil is “fungible”; if so, each barrel that we pass on, someone else less green won’t.

With that decision — or rather lack thereof — we abrogate our leadership position and lose all influence to pressure these other countries into stricter standards. We accept all of the risk, with zero of the benefit. Bravo Obama!

Great commentary by Sen. Lisa Murkowski regarding President Obama’s plan to enact a 5-year ban on all offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic and Pacific oceans. To wit, it only applies to the United States.

As we continue our endless debate on whether we should have more Outer Continental Shelf development and where, all our neighbors have chosen to proceed. Cuba, Mexico, the Bahamas, Canada and Russia are all moving ahead on offshore development adjacent to our borders.

Each of those nations has weighed the economic benefits of offshore production against the potential environmental risks. All five have decided it is in their best interest to proceed. This means two things for our nation.

First, we fail to boost our offshore production at our own expense. America’s neighbors are not drilling for fun or for sport; they’ve chosen to proceed to create new jobs, generate new revenues, and increase the energy supply and prosperity of their citizens.

… Less obvious, but just as real, are the environmental impact that may still result even if we refuse to boost offshore production.

Like it or not, development is now under way in waters all around us. Mexico is advancing on a deepwater well only 22 miles from U.S. waters in the Gulf of Mexico. Before year’s end, Cuba is scheduled to drill 60 miles from Key West, and the Bahamas are proceeding with leases not much farther away. Canada is actively drilling projects not far from Maine’s coastline and proceeding towards development in the Beaufort Sea, just east of Alaskan waters. Along Alaska’s western boundary, Russia is aggressively moving into the Arctic Ocean, with exploration at the very edge of the boundary of Alaskan waters.

In a few years, the U.S. could wind up in a regrettable position—exposed to all of the risks of offshore development but with no control and none of the rewards. … Sitting on the sidelines will also mean we have minimal influence on the standards and regulations for foreign operations. Regardless of our relations with neighbors, it’s not realistic to expect them to match our requirements if we are not demonstrating that they are both workable and profitable.

With a cost-benefit analysis system as obtuse and intangible as this, what’s the point of having one? Ah, but that indeed is the point, and exemplifies everything that is wrong with liberal government — all things are executed using the basis of immeasurable metrics.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal commenting on President Obama’s recent executive order for all agencies to implement a cost-benefit system prior to enacting regulation:

No sooner had Mr. Obama told the bureaucracies to subject all regulations to a cost-benefit test than the bureaucrats began telling reporters that they are already a model of modern efficiency, thank you very much. Among many others, the Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement that it was “confident” it wouldn’t need to alter a single current or pending rule. “In fact, EPA’s rules consistently yield billions in cost savings that make them among the most cost-effective in the government.”

Perhaps the EPA’s confidence owes to a little-noticed proviso in Mr. Obama’s order. When the agencies weigh costs and benefits, the order says, they should always consider “values that are difficult or impossible to quantify, including equity, human dignity, fairness, and distributive impacts.”

Talk about economic elasticities. Equity and fairness can be defined to include more or less anything as a benefit. Under this calculus, a rule might pass Mr. Obama’s cost-benefit test if it imposes $999 billion in hard costs but supposedly results in a $1 trillion increase in human dignity, whatever that means in bureaucratic practice. Another rule could pass muster even if it reduces work and investment, as long as it also lessens income inequality.

Any cost-benefit analysis depends to some extent on matters of judgment, but typically the criteria are more economically tangible, such as how to price risk or the discount rate. No business would recognize Mr. Obama’s version, since his “values” loophole boils down to a preference for bigger government. The danger is that his executive order will transform an important tool to check excessive regulation into a way to justify whatever rule the permanent bureaucracy wants.

Read the rest. It’s already happening in the EPA.

Hey, we can say no, but other countries will say yes. And, similarly, foolish governments and politicos, such as Florida’s Charlie Crist, can write legislation all they want denying American companies the ability to drill offshore, but that won’t do a damn thing for companies based in the UK, or China for that matter. Here’s Greg Pollowitz:

Is there a category for jobs that just float away?

Last week, Diamond Offshore announced that it was sending the Ocean Endeavor rig from the Gulf of Mexico to Egypt. This week it announced that it was pulling the Ocean Confidence out of the Gulf of Mexico and sending it to the Congo.

Bloomberg reports that the Congo project is expected to generate $234 million in total revenue — revenue and jobs that should have been created in the Untied States.

Besides the actual production of oil, workers on the rigs and people that supply the rigs will be adversely affected. According to the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association:

• Each drilling platform averages 90 to 140 employees at any one time (2 shifts per day), and 180 to 280 for 2 2-week shifts
• Each E&P [exploration and production] job supports 4 other positions
• Therefore, 800 to 1400 jobs per idle rig platform are at risk
• Wages for those jobs average $1,804/weekly; potential for lost wages is huge, over $5 to $10 million for 1 month—per platform.
• Wages lost could be over $165 to $330 million/month for all 33 platforms

There are also impacts to people who supply the rigs:

• Supply boats — 2 boats per rig with day rates of $15,000/day per boat — $30,000/day
• Impacts to other supplies and related support services (i.e., welders, divers, caterers, transportation, etc.)

This is the problem with the Administration’s overly restrictive moratorium. Rigs are portable and they will go where the work is. When a rig leaves the Gulf, not only the jobs on the rig are endangered, but also the jobs of those who supply the rig. As noted above, each job in oil and gas exploration and production supplies 4 other positions.

I have to admit, I never thought there’d come a day when I embed a Rachael Maddow video in this blog…

There’s a lot of good points in that MSNBC video, but there’s also a healthy heaping of MSNBC lamestream media slant, and a typical Left wing ignorance of economics.

Two quick points: (1) the oil companies aren’t drilling deeper out of choice but because federal and state governments and environmental groups (lawsuits) make it impossible to drill in either shallower water or on land (ANWR, for example, or in the Dakotas).

(2) It doesn’t surprise me that Rachel Maddow is lacking economics 101 education — while petroleum may be the highest in terms of total profit its tax bill and expenses are also sky high. Thus in terms of profit margin, petroleum is more in line or quite behind other industries. IT Networking, for example, and software both enjoy much higher profit margin (20%+ versus about 11-12% for petrol). US petro-giant Exxon-Mobile, for example, ranks 60th.

Ironically, the risk that another oil leak similar to the Deepwater Horizon has increased due to the Obama administration’s moratorium on deep-well drilling. Engineer Ken Arnold explains why to the WSJ:

A big reason why those experts would have balked is because they recognize that the moratorium is indeed a threat to safety. Mr. Arnold offers at least four reasons why.

The ban requires oil companies to abandon uncompleted wells. The process of discontinuing a well, and then later re-entering it, introduces unnecessary risk. He notes BP was in the process of abandoning its well when the blowout happened.

The ban is going to push drilling rigs to take jobs in other countries. “The ones that go first will be the newest, biggest, safest rigs, because they are most in demand. The ones that go last and come back first are the ones that aren’t as modern,” says Mr. Arnold.

The indeterminate nature of this ban will encourage experienced crew members to seek other lines of work—perhaps permanently. Restarting after a ban will bring with it a “greater mix of new people who will need to be trained.” The BP event is already pointing, in part, to human error, and the risk of that will increase with a less experienced crew base. Finally, a ban will result in more oil being imported on tankers, which are “more likely” to spill oil than local production.

All this is even before raising ban’s economic consequences, which already threaten tens of thousands of jobs. This is why Louisiana politicians are now pleading with the Administration to back off a ban that is sending the Gulf’s biggest industry to its grave.

There are lies, there are damned lies, and there’s Barack Obama. His presidential address to the nation regarding the BP Deepwater Horizon oil leak was filled with some big fibs.

Starting with:

“But make no mistake:  We will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes. .. And we will do whatever’s necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy.”

If the Obama administration is doing “whatever’s necessary,” then why has he not granted a waiver for the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, also known as the Jones Act, “a protectionist law that requires vessels working in US waters be built in the US and be crewed by US workers”? The federal head of the cleanup effort, National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen, has previously stated that there hasn’t been a need for this? Really? Tell that to the people of the Gulf coast. As Fox’s Brian Wilson explains, “But that [the foreign assistance currently used] is largely technology transferred to US vessels. Some of the best clean up ships – owned by Belgian, Dutch and the Norwegian firms are NOT being used.”

Even the typical cheerleader for liberal Democrats, Time Magazine, agreed that the refusal for help was bizarre. Also hurting Obama is that President George W. Bush waived the Jones Act during Katrina response, which perhaps explains why a recent poll of Louisianians found that Bush had higher ratings than Obama, including among 31% of Democrats polled.

It gets worse — the Dutch, for example, made a pair of offers of assistance. First to build the very sand berms along the Gulf coast like those Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindel requested from Obama. And second, sophisticated ships designed to filter oil from water via huge vacuum arms. Both offers were initially rejected. It’s, of course too late for the berms. The oil has arrived. But now, more than 50 days after the accident, the Obama administration has accepted the Dutch equipment, which works by sucking in oily water and pumping it back into the ocean after filtering.

What was the holdup? Apparently the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “regulations do not allow water with oil to be pumped back into the ocean. If all the oily water was retained in the tanker, the capacity of the system would be greatly diminished because most of what is pumped into the tanker is sea water.” Greg Yardale comments, “Get it? The EPA wouldn’t let them suck lots of oil out of the ocean because they would be returning small amounts of oil into the ocean.” Wow, and these bureaucratic types want to run your health care too!

And they said Bush was incompetent? Here are some numbers as to what the Dutch could have done on day 3 of the leak: “One ton of oil is about 7.3 barrels. 5,000 tons per day is 36,500 barrels per day. 4 skimmers have a capacity of 146,000 barrels per day. That is much greater than the high end estimate of the leak. The skimmers work best in calm water, which is the usual condition this time of year in the gulf.”

That’s just the first lie. Here’s the next:

Obama: “After all, oil is a finite resource.”

It is? Can he offer some proof? The truth is not only can no scientist prove that oil is finite, but scientists aren’t even sure regarding the source of oil. Decades ago some scientists theorized it came from billions of years of dead things, thus “fossil fuels.” But that’s been largely disproved, particularly through a NASA discovery that found a moon of Saturn, Titan, made up of LPG, or liquefied petroleum gas. Gee, were there dinosaurs on Titan too? Hardly, say the discoverers. Titan, after all, averages temperatures of negative 180-degrees Centigrade.

“We have determined that Titan’s methane is not of biological origin, so it must be replenished by geologic processes on Titan,” Hasso Niemann of the Goddard Space Flight Center told the NYT in 2005. If it’s geologic on Titan, it could be geologic on Earth as well. And if it’s geologic, that means oil could be perpetually produced for as long as the Earth’s core stays molten. (And even if it did come from dead things, are we to believe we used up 4+ billion years of dead things in just a century or so?)

No, rather the Peak Oil theory is based on the same scare-tactic politicization of science, central economic planning, and artificial scarcities as the  population disaster of Thomas Malthus, or the current Climate Change fearmongering.

Back to the Fibber in Chief:

Obama: “We consume more than 20 percent of the world’s oil, but have less than 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves.  And that’s part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean — because we’re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water. “

This might be the most brazen of his lies, because the above statements are only true due to the direct interference by government and environmental extremists. The truth is we have no idea what our proven oil reserves are because the government and environmentalists forbid our energy companies the ability to explore and drill to the extent the market demands! The only reason these companies are attempting to drill 5,000 feet deep is because the government and environmentalists deny them the ability to drill in shallower water or on land. One word: ANWR!

More Obama: “For decades, we’ve talked and talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels.  And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires.  Time and again, the path forward has been blocked — not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor.

Here’s where the Crony Corporate machine — the strange bedfellows of government and corporation — effectively lie to even liberals: Those who drool at the mouth to get off oil and coal in order to stick it to the petroleum companies don’t realize that those same companies are poised to make grand profits off of Cap-and-Trade and similar schemes designed to punish carbon output and push “renewable” energy.

Indeed, BP’s head, Lord Tony Hayward, wsa critical in formulating the Cap-and-Trade system. BP Chairman Lamar McKay supports it. As does Shell President Marvin Odum, and ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva (very Seinfeld, btw). As did former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay, whose subordinates “buried a an Enron-funded study that dismissed the notion that calamity could come of global warming!” [Power Grab, by Chris Horner]

But why?

Because, as Michael Morris, the CEO of the largest national coal-burning utility, American Electric Power, told Forbes Magazine (without shame), the way the carbon trading schemes are organized the company gets to pass the entire cost of the regulation on to the consumers, padded for additional profit through “administrative” fees. The more it costs them the more they make. And the more you pay. [Power Grab, by Chris Horner]

Added Exelon’s John Rowe, “Exelon would gain simply because a price on carbon would raise the cost of production for fossil-fuel-powered electricity. Most of that would be passed on to customers, raising the wholesale price of power. Exelon’s revenues would rise, but its costs wouldn’t.” [Power Grab, by Chris Horner]

Despicable, eh? All enabled by your president. It’s to be expected. The insurance companies helped craft his health care legislation, just as the “Trusts” of yesteryear co-authored legislation with Teddy Roosevelt regarding trust-busting and industrial regulation. They do this because the large companies can handle the costs while the nimble smaller companies must pack it in. You see, the one thing large corporations fear more than government is free-market competition. In this way, the federal government picks the winners and losers. By the way, the American consumer is always the loser.

Let’s wrap it up.

Obama:  “Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be right here in America.”

Ah, the Democrats are always such Chinaphiles, aren’t they? Actually, this is just a half-truth by Obama. The full truth is that we import most of our oil from Mexico and Canada. In other words, our neighbors are happy to drill and sell us oil in territories where we could be doing the same. The full truth is that China is importing massive quantities of oil from countries like Iraq. Chinese companies (i.e., state-owned) are also attempting to purchase European-owned oil facilities operating in the Gulf of Mexico. China intends to drill in the Gulf even if we don’t.

This begs the question: If it’s good enough for one billion Chinese…

The Obama administration is feeling a lot of heat regarding their reaction to the continued oil leak in the Gulf. Rather than be the executives who, you know, execute action to solve a problem (hence, The Executive Branch) the Obama administration is instead focusing on “whose ass to kick” (i.e., lawsuits — and what else would one expect from lawyers) and shifting blame. This week the blame goes to the Tea Parties and fiscally responsible conservatives. Watch how deftly Obama misrepresents the arguments of those who advocate limited government (including thus by definition James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, et. al.).

Here’s Obama to The Politico’s Roger Simon:

In an interview with POLITICO, the president said: “I think it’s fair to say, if six months ago, before this spill had happened, I had gone up to Congress and I had said we need to crack down a lot harder on oil companies and we need to spend more money on technology to respond in case of a catastrophic spill, there are folks up there, who will not be named, who would have said this is classic, big-government overregulation and wasteful spending.”

The president also implied that anti-big government types such as tea party activists were being hypocritical on the issue.

“Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying ‘do something’ are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs to stop doing so much,” Obama said. “Some of the same people who are saying the president needs to show leadership and solve this problem are some of the same folks who, just a few months ago, were saying this guy is trying to engineer a takeover of our society through the federal government that is going to restrict our freedoms.”

The president makes two fundamental errors in his argument, and we’ll look at them in reverse order to which he made them.

First, it’s ridiculous to compare a Federal response to the worst petroleum accident in the history of the country to daily Federal intrusions into our lives. Indeed, the very argument of those who advocate limited government is that national disasters are precisely when one should expect an overwhelming Federal response. No fiscal conservative or tea party I know is saying that government has no role (that would be the anarchists, the people who riot at world trade meetings, and hardly conservatives).

Conversely, the tea parties legitimately question, for example, daily government intrusions on your wallet and liberty vis-a-vis the type of light bulb you may place in your home, or how many gallons per flush your toilet may use, or how much money you must pay your after-school high-school employee to check out your customers at a register, not to mention Michelle Obama’s toe-dipping into the pool of the government determining what foods are or are not good for your family.

This is why Thomas Paine (of Common Sense) wrote that government “in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one”; and why Thomas Jefferson similarly argued never to misread the “General Welfare” clause: “They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare…. [G]iving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please.”

The second fundamental error President Obama makes is his implied assumption that a lack of regulation enabled the BP oil leak. I have a hard time believing that when we’ve got a Federal agency called the Minerals Management Service (MMS) — an agency that the vast majority of Americans had probably never heard of six months ago — we really don’t have a plethora of federal, state and local regulations guiding the energy company. On top of that we’ve got the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, and slew of other bureaucracies — again, federal, state, local — that must on a daily basis wade through no doubt pages of regulations that when stacked are higher than an oil rig. And that’s just the complexity that our government must interpret — imagine how much it costs BP, Chevron-Texaco, Exxon-Shell, etc., and thus how much that costs you and me at the pump. Remember, it was this same MMS that gave the Deepwater Horizon oil rig a safety award last year. So how would have giving the MMS, or another agency, more power prevented this accident? There’s not one shred of proof it would have.

Now, this isn’t an argument against regulation carte blanche. Rather, it’s an argument that the facts show that that oil leak was not a systemic problem — such as Obama argues — or caused from a lack of regulation, but rather caused by a series of human errors — the humans at BP and in the government did not follow the regulations, and indeed not even follow BP’s internal regulations or oil and gas industry common practices!

This understanding — that the problem was human, not systemic — is best explained, by the way, by a small Colorado oil and gas company president this weekend in the WSJ. In short, summarizes Terry Barr, the employees at BP and at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig chose to press forward despite a minimum of three “red flags” which any other company in the energy industry, argues Barr, would have halted operations.

Here’s a hoot, the U.S. Justice Department announced it will begin a fishing expedition to see if there was any criminal activity in the British Petroleum’s (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

“If we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be extremely forceful in our response,” Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said in New Orleans after viewing spill damage, which he described as “heartbreaking to see.”

Hmmm. A good place to begin investigation might be President Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu. While at the Energy Biosciences Institute Mr. Chu received, according to a rare honest piece of reporting at the New York Times, “the bulk of a $500 million grant from the British oil giant BP to develop alternative energy sources.”

But who would dare insinuate that the Obama energy secretary was a little too cozy with BP and the oil industry? That’s crazy talk!

Dr. Koonin, who followed Dr. Chu to the Energy Department and now serves as under secretary of energy for science, is recused from all matters relating to the disaster because of his past ties to BP, said Stephanie Mueller, an Energy Department spokeswoman.

Dr. Chu, she said, “has never had a financial interest in BP.” [except $500 million...]

Ms. Mueller added, “No one in their right mind would suggest that Dr. Chu is beholden to oil companies, especially since he’s spent the past decade working to cut America’s dependence on oil and move us toward a clean-energy economy.” [thanks to a payment from BP for... 500 million dollars!]

Well I can think of 500 million reasons why someone might be in a right mind to suggest that Mr. Chu is beholden to oil companies. After all, has the brilliant Ms. Mueller not stopped to consider that the oil companies just might be the very same companies who one day also own the “alternative” energies? Or has that possibility not crossed her brilliant Beltway intellect?

Did you know that the Department of the Interior’s Mineral Management Service the Summer before the Deepwater accident gave the rig an award for safety, or that BP was “one of three finalists for a federal award honoring offshore oil companies for “outstanding safety and pollution prevention.”"

Better yet, perhaps Eric Holder could investigate President Obama, since the prez himself is the #1 recipient of money from BP’s political contributions in 20 years! Wait, wait, I thought oil was evil. I thought corporations were evil. Isn’t that what the Left always tells us? But they’ll take their money like the rest of us, eh?

Now I write all this tongue in cheek, of course, although the ties between our energy secretary and BP are quite interesting, aren’t they?

But the hypocrisy here is staggering, truly embarrassing, absolutely extreme. That is, almost as bad as the hypocrisy of say the lack of coverage of Iranian police bashing in the skulls of students during a pro-democracy march to, say, I don’t know, the overblown and totally slanted coverage of Israeli soldiers defending themselves during an attempt to search a ship of militant, crowbar- and knife-wielding “peace activists” who clearly had a single goal of provoking a violent response.

Were we to replace the words Obama and Chu with Bush or Cheney and BP with Haliburton or, heck, just keep the word BP, and you can bet dollars to navy beans that the press would be screaming about how our government is beholden to oil and corporations, and how secretive this all was, and how evil Cheney was, and how the Justice Department investigation would be like the fox guarding the hen house, and Bush was playing golf while Rome burned, and what a sham it was that the federal government had been passing out safety awards to BP, etc., ad nauseum.

One last word. As Charles Krauthammer has pointed out, why not investigate why BP needs to drill 5,000 feet under water. Isn’t that the first question? Why do we feel it necessary? What have these lawsuit-happy environmentalists and legislators bought us by blocking oil drilling on shore, or gee, at least closer to shore. In most ways, as we’re now learning, drilling 100 miles off shore is far more environmentally dangerous than drilling 5 miles off shore. Got a leak 5 miles off (and a couple hundred feet down)? No problem. Divers can fix that. Got a leak 5,000 feet down? You’re screwed. Much harder to fix. Did I mention that the current leak is 5-G.D.-thousand feet down? Thanks envirowackos!

Hillary Clinton recently lamented that the American “rich” don’t pay enough in taxes. One wonders where she gets her data from, because the IRS and CBO numbers show the opposite.

“The rich are not paying their fair share in any nation that is facing the kind of employment issues [America currently does] — whether it’s individual, corporate or whatever [form of] taxation forms,” Clinton told an audience at the Brookings Institute, where she was discussing the administration’s new National Security Strategy.

Clinton said the comment was her personal opinion. “I’m not speaking for the administration, so I’ll preface that with a very clear caveat,” she said.

Clinton went on to cite Brazil as a model.

“Brazil has the highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere and guess what — they’re growing like crazy,” Clinton said. “And the rich are getting richer, but they’re pulling people out of poverty.”

According to the Congressional Budget Office the top 1% of wage earners in the United States pay almost 39% of federal taxes (Income taxes, Social Security, Medicare, etc.) Note: Just federal. We’re not yet even discussing how much state and local taxes add to that.

So, my first question to Madam Secretary would be, “How much would you consider a fair share?”

We’ve created the very economic majority-rule system of which our founders warned — a system where some 60% of the American public receive benefits even though they pay zero dollars in federal income tax, and just 7.65% to a Social Security system, never intended for more than beyond a few years — 5 or so — of post-retirement benefit; a system in which the top 20%, 10% and 5% of income earners pay 69%, 73%, and 60%, respectively, of ALL Federal taxes!

By contrast, the top 1% of wage earners in the UK pay 25% of all federal taxes. In other words, simply by our “rich” moving across the Atlantic they could receive a 15% tax cut.

These Top Percenters are the very people who create the startup businesses and add jobs in our country and, thus one sees the relationship between our extremely high income tax (not to mention corporate tax rate) and our high unemployment rate — there’s no incentive to risk adding new jobs with the Hillary Clinton economic model.

And mind you, these aren’t the uber-rich such as (now) Bill Gates, George Soros, or Warren Buffett, who don’t rely on income but instead wealth. Understand the difference — The uber-rich, such as those three highly fiscal liberal persons mentioned, care not if income tax rises because they long ago made their fortunes, not through income but through stock and other wealth creation schemes.

One need also remind Hillary Clinton that the United States imports 365,000 barrels of oil from Brazil every day. Brazil is #8 in our list of top petroleum importers (behind Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria, Angola and Iraq).

This leads to the second question for Madam Secretary: “If the U.S. is to copy Brazil’s economic model should we not commit to domestic oil drilling as Brazil has done?”

I think we all know how Hillary would answer that question.