GET YOUR TRIPS TO THE CLEANERS IN NOW, BEFORE OBAMA TAKES YOU THERE HIMSELF – AT 8:22 A.M. ET:  The president wants to impose a new energy program on us.  Americans understandably are apprehensive over the cost, having been burned repeatedly since Barack Obama took the oath of office.  Here are some numbers:

President Obama has a solution to the Gulf oil spill: $7-a-gallon gas.

That's a Harvard University study's estimate of the per-gallon price of the president's global-warming agenda. And Obama made clear this week that this agenda is a part of his plan for addressing the Gulf mess.

So what does global-warming legislation have to do with the oil spill?

Good question, because such measures wouldn't do a thing to clean up the oil or fix the problems that led to the leak.

The answer can be found in Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's now-famous words, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste -- and what I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before."

And...

The logic linking cap-and-trade to the spill in the Gulf should frighten anyone who owns a car or truck. Such measures force up the price at the pump -- Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs thinks it "may require gas prices greater than $7 a gallon by 2020" to meet Obama's stated goal of reducing emissions 14 percent from the transportation sector.

Of course, doing so would reduce gasoline use and also raise market share for hugely expensive alternative fuels and vehicles that could never compete otherwise. Less gasoline demand means less need for drilling and thus a slightly reduced chance of a repeat of the Deepwater Horizon spill -- but only slightly. Oil will still be a vital part of America's energy mix.

COMMENT:  Wasn't the Democratic Party once the party of the little guy?  I wonder how the little guy feels about all this.  Of course, the people in power will never know since they'd never stoop to talk to the little guy, unless he was maybe part of the grounds crew at Harvard. 

Our economy is precarious enough without an energy program that will depress it further.  We certainly do need new sources of energy, and we must reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  But those goals will only be met by a balanced program of energy development – done mostly by the private sector – and an increase in drilling for the oil we already have.  But that is heresy to Democrats, who lost interest in the average American decades ago.

June 18, 2010