Guest Saturday with The Free Market Project #1

This article was originally published by Pat Slattery of The Free Market Project on April 22, 2011.

Obama asks why gas prices are high. Hand him a mirror.

I was going to discuss Obama’s gas-price task force myself, but Ed Morrissey does such a great job at Hot Air that there’s not much more to say: Obama’s gas-price task force and example of Obama’s warning?

The cause of rising gasoline prices is obvious to the most casual of observers.  First, the Democrat, environmentalist, progressive alliance will not allow expanded energy production domestically.  We have a “permitorium” in the Gulf of Mexico.  We have closed our East and West coasts to exploration and drilling.  We refuse to drill in ANWR or even to drill more in the Alaskan Oil Preserve.  It goes on and on.  We haven’t built a refinery for decades. (By “We” I mean the country dominated by the alliance described above.)  Instead, we send billions of American dollars to foreign nations, even going so far recently as giving Brazil a few billion to drill off of their shore and promising more American dollars will flow into their economy when they can sell us oil.  On top of that exodus of American dollars out of the country, the American taxpayer is subsidizing not-ready-for-primetime wind and solar energy that has already proven a bust in Europe.

Why do Progressives always want to be like Europe, following in European footsteps, even when the evidence of their having gone down a road first proves it’s a dead end?  European-style socialism? Failure.  Universal health care? Failing.  Green energy?  Failing.  Yet, when the results are already written, or the writing’s on the wall, Progressives still want to follow the path.  It’s some weird form of political penis envy on the part of American Progressives for Europeans.

Aside from refusing to produce domestic energy sources, there’s also the loss of value in the dollar resulting from the incredible (and incredibly ineffective) deficit spending of the last three years, particularly the last two.

Obama’s panel is nothing new.  Every time energy prices rise, idiot politicians look to blame someone else–oil companies or speculators.  In the meantime, they refuse to do the things that would actually lower prices.  Or, in the Obama Progressive regime, actively do things that raise prices.  If Obama wants to know why gasoline prices are so high, someone should simply hand him a mirror.