Gas Prices and the Obama Administration

As gas prices skyrocket throughout the United States and the Obama Administration looks for a scapegoat, this article reminds us that this is exactly what key members of the Administration wanted. Obama has surrounded himself with advisers and cabinet secretaries that have stated that they would like to see gas prices go up.

"Thanks to my policies, Americans will enjoy ever higher gas prices."

While he was a senator from Colorado, current secretary of the interior, Ken Salazar, who's responsible for leasing out federal lands for oil exploration and drilling, implied in 2008 that he would rather see $10 a gallon gas than to actually allow more drilling in American territory:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a measure to open up off-shore areas to new oil and natural gas drilling when the price of gas reached $4.50-per-gallon. Salazar objected. So McConnell changed it to $5-per-gallon. Salazar still objected.

And so on and so on it went until McConnell said $10-per-gallon.

Between 2007 and 2008, during discussions about global warming, Steven Chu (the current secretary of energy) said, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." At the rate we're going, it looks like you could get your wish, Steve.

Until recently Obama himself has seemed unconcerned about gas prices and has tried to blame a caricature of the average American for the problem. The President seems to believe that we're driving around in eight mile per gallon vehicles that need tune-ups. Recently Obama told the father of a large family in a townhall meeting, "If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting eight miles a gallon, you know, you might want to think about a trade-in." A quick check on the Internet will show that even a huge Ford F-250 with a gasoline engine (which is less fuel efficient than a Diesel) tends to get better than 10 miles per gallon. Even a passenger van, which is the kind of vehicle many families with more than two kids are forced to drive, will get around 16 mpg in city driving and about 24 mpg on the freeway. Sedans can do even better. However, even those who drive the hybrids that Obama loves so much are suffering; not only are they paying higher gas prices as well, but they're also paying more for all the goods and services that are affected by higher gas prices.

In 2008, Obama actually said, "we could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups. You could actually save just as much." Does anybody actually believe that we waste as much oil as could be extracted from American land by not inflating our tires and tuning up our cars? Many modern cars actually display a warning light if your tires drop below a certain pressure and internal combustion engines have become so optimized that tuneups are rarely necessary. So, what other sage advice does the man who travels on the taxpayers' dollar have to give us?

Now that Obama and co. seem to be getting what they wanted, why are they making a fuss over our current gas prices? Oh, that's right, it's hurting him politically among average Americans, despite the media's and the Administration's best efforts to place the blame somewhere else. Do we all remember when gas went up this high under Bush and the media rushed to blame his policies and his connections with oil companies? Now that the media's guy is in the White House (a man whose cabinet and policies seem to have been deliberately chosen to encourage high gas prices), the media is trying to blame anyone but Obama. This article has an interesting analysis of the media's bias.

Has any other administration been so nakedly hypocritical and been allowed to get away with it by its media lapdogs?