Tag: barack obama

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Common Sense

The Pump Price of Politicians

Before closing Congress in order to block a vote to allow more domestic oil drilling, Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters, “I’m trying to save the planet.”

Funny, Pelosi hasn’t stopped using oil but wants to stop drilling for it.

Some time after Congress’s 35-day vacation, she hopes to find a renewable energy source.

There’s that audacity. Or insanity. You pick.

Presidential candidates, meanwhile, get no vacation. They’re busy producing new energy plans.

Lots of folks, Obama included, blame the oil companies. Not me. They don’t owe me fuel. Just because we don’t like the price of gas doesn’t mean we’re allowed to fill up and drive away without paying. Yet that seems to be the spark plug of Barack Obama’s latest. He’d offer a $1,000 tax credit to taxpayers to be paid for with a windfall profits tax on oil companies. That is, rob Exxon to pay Paul.

McCain says drill, drill, drill. And Obama has already started to cave on many energy stands, though both he and McCain continue to oppose drilling where we know there’s oil, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Beware of politicians with plans. Let markets react. Let the private sector do its job.

As for more drilling on government lands, like up in desolate ANWR? Why not let voters decide? Put it on the ballot this November.

Now that would provide a paradigm’s worth of difference.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability Common Sense free trade & free markets insider corruption

A Real Reform for Obama

Barack Obama’s record as a maverick, either in the U.S. Senate or his years as an Illinois legislator, is slender at best. Behind the self-avowed reformer’s rhetoric, his policies seem typical, demanding ever-bigger government, ever-more intrusive government.

But there’s at least one reform practiced by candidate Obama that could yield some very good changes indeed: His rejection of government funding of presidential campaigns.

Note I say “practiced by,” not “advocated by.” Obama has opted out of the system for tactical reasons only. In doing so he broke a promise earlier in the campaign that he would accept matching funds – along with the limits on his own general election spending that this would entail. But he had scooped up so much financial support so fast that he decided it would be shooting himself in the foot to accept spending restrictions.

Obama may be uncomfortable with his flip-flop. I applaud it – no, not the hypocrisy of it, but the example it sets for policy.

We should never force taxpayers to fund campaigns they may not support. And while we’re at it, let’s cut away the tangle of campaign laws regulating how much money we can give a candidate, or what and when and where we can say things about candidates.

If Obama could sign on to that proposal, he could really punch away at McCain on the issue. Obama would then be advocating real reform. Real good reform.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.