Energy: Goldmine for GOP

As the shock waves from $4 per gallon gasoline impact every segment of U.S. society the decades-old taboo against even discussing new offshore oil drilling has been decisively shattered. This wholly unexpected development now offers an extraordinary political opportunity to John McCain and the Republican Party, but only if they have the courage to boldly seize it. The 1981 federal ban on new offshore drilling was a remarkable victory for the radical environmentalists who have long been a dominant element in the Democratic Party. However this Petroleum Prohibition era has only been sustained because the Republican party meekly went along with it even during the years they controlled both the Congress and the White House.

Now mounting public anger and frustration and the resultant rapid shift in opinion polls have suddenly transformed the political dynamics of energy policy.

In the space of one week both President Bush and Senator McCain announced support for offshore drilling- sort of. Previously Bush had ignored this option and McCain had flat out opposed it. While they now favor a reversal of the 1981 ban, they’ve tried to straddle the issue by saying that ultimately individual states should decide on drilling.

This tepid Republican support for new drilling is welcomed by Democrats who genuinely fear the political consequences of the Republicans making this issue a high priority and sticking with it right through to November.

As opposition to drilling is a hot button liberal issue Obama had to oppose lifting the federal ban. Disingenuously he claimed that new drilling wouldn’t lower gas prices and insisted that a “windfall profits” tax was the best option. He’s betting that a continued demonization of “Big Oil” will prevent the people from seeing that failed government leadership is the real villain of the piece.

The companion strategy to new drilling is a dramatic build-up of U.S. nuclear capacity beginning with a demolition of the absurd approval process for new nuclear plants. Democrats are badly split on this issue. Those who obsess on global warming and the carbon emissions, they see as the cause are newly responsive to nuclear as a “clean” alternative. Obama’s history is pure anti-nuclear but in an effort to bridge this Democratic divide he has lamely promised that as President he would commission a “study” of the subject.

Greatly damaging to Democrats has been the torrent of discussion and new information on energy issues. The public is learning things that had been de facto “unmentionable”: the vast size of untapped U.S. oil reserves both land and sea, the superb safety record of new drilling technology, the stunning success of France with nuclear power, and the pathetic track record of so-called “alternative” sources of energy.

Democratic Congressional efforts to push a “windfall profits” tax or demonize “speculators” have collapsed even at their own hearings where the GAO and the Congressional Budget Office poked large holes in both ideas. At last Congress seems to be catching up to the public in understanding that the real problem is one of supply falling way behind demand.

Democratic disunity and growing public awareness and frustration on energy give Republicans a golden opportunity to seize control of the debate on domestic policy. Energy is clearly the hinge on which the future of the U.S. economy is now swinging. It also couples naturally to national security which is McCain’s great strength.

The only thing that seems to be preventing McCain from embracing and fully exploiting this emerging new political dynamic is a stubborn adherence to long held views (e.g. ANWR) and fear of being called a flip-flopper.

Douglas Mac Arthur famously said that the very best campaign plan is outdated following the first day of battle. Great leaders improvise and adapt as conditions on the ground change.

McCain and every other Republican candidate should ride this issue not briefly or half-heartedly but aggressively and continuously. The power of this issue can super-charge McCain’s chances of victory and dramatically improve Republican chances at every level.

Even more importantly this single issue represents a once in a generation opportunity to utterly transform the future prospects of America’s economy and its national security.

In throwing off the self-imposed shackles of the past and liberating the immense latent power of the U.S. economy we shall again validate the prophecy of Ronald Reagan that “It will always be Morning in America”.

Energy: Clueless in Colorado

As if paying $4-plus for gasoline isn't bad enough, some of Colorado's political leaders seem bound and determined to spread pain at the pump to the cost of heating our homes this winter -- and for decades to come. Ours is a beautiful state with an abundance of natural resources: silver and gold lured early pioneers, mountain vistas and ski slopes keep visitors coming year after year, and abundant energy sources fuel our economy and our way of life.

Not long ago, political leaders of both parties understood that the energy sector is vital to the economic health of our state and actively worked to utilize those resources while applying responsible protections for the environment.

Unfortunately, energy has now become a political football. Republicans play the traditional role of advancing affordable energy development, while Democrats try to freeze traditional energy sources to make alternative energy economically competitive.

According to Fortune, our junior senator, Ken Salazar, "has emerged as the Senate's leading oil shale opponent," fighting for a moratorium against further development. Never mind that Shell invested millions in oil shale research: "Salazar's efforts have essentially pulled the rug out from under (it)."

Oil shale reserves in the Green River Formation, which underlies parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, are staggering. A Rand Corporation study calls it the largest known oil shale deposit in the world with 1.5 to 1.8 trillion barrels of crude oil.

Nearly half of those deposits -- 800 billion barrels, triple the known crude reserves in Saudi Arabia -- are recoverable using existing technology, if only Salazar and company would get out of the way.

With gas prices soaring, Salazar's wannabe senate sidekick, Boulder congressman Mark Udall, called a news conference last month to tell Colorado families that high gasoline prices aren't going away so we need to be more fuel efficient.

File that inspirational note next to Jimmy Carter's fireside chats about economic "malaise."

Udall's plan to do something about soaring gas prices is a confounding concoction combining economic illiteracy and wishful thinking:

** Crack down on price-gouging. Straight from the far-left playbook of MoveOn.org, liberals rant against price-gouging, fully aware that evidence of actual price-gouging is scarce as hen's teeth.

** Stop "subsidizing" the oil and gas industry. Udall wants to eliminate tax credits that U.S. oil companies receive for taxes paid to foreign governments, and he would eliminate a tax deduction for domestic production. This amounts to penalizing American companies when they bring their overseas profits back home and for creating jobs to produce oil in the U.S.

** Move away from corn to cellulosic ethanol. Ethanol mandates contribute to price distortions, but the technology for turning corn into fuel is years ahead of research on switchgrass. The lesson from our ethanol experience should be that politicians are ill-equipped to predict where technology and economics will converge.

Udall boasts of his sponsorship of a bill to allow U.S. companies to engage in exploration off the coast of Cuba, but his bill is mere window dressing. In nearly a year since its introduction in the Democrat-controlled Congress, Udall's bill hasn't even been scheduled for a hearing.

To make matters worse, Udall and Salazar team up with Gov. Bill Ritter to stonewall against responsible energy development on the Roan Plateau. Meanwhile, Ritter still expects the energy industry to provide more tax revenue.

Roan Plateau contains an estimated 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas ‹ enough to heat every home in Colorado for 20 years. Bureau of Land Management would allow drilling on no more than 1 percent of the plateau's surface at any time.

Yet Salazar, Udall and Ritter want to stall the process (which began in 1997 under President Clinton), impose even more restrictions, and then tell the bidders where to drill first. If any of the three knew so much about energy exploration, he could be making a fortune as a geologist.

Say what you will about oil and gas producers, but remember that they don't get paid if they don't produce. If Salazar, Udall and Ritter get their way, Coloradans will be sitting atop vast oil and gas reserves but sending our money to the likes of OPEC and Hugo Chavez.

Ritter strikes out on energy

(Denver Post, July 6) Where is “Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson when we need him? Two prehistoric inventors stand before the tribal elders, beaming proudly. Og has discovered fire, and Zor has invented the wheel. But the ruling Democrats turn thumbs down. “Begone,” they order. “No good will come of those things.” I exaggerate, of course. The elders would decree taxes and regulation, not a ban. Dems aren’t cavemen, after all. Yet if you follow the logic of liberals like Bill Ritter, we’re headed for a future with less fire and fewer wheels. Their distaste for the obvious energy sources that keep America rolling and the lights on is that intense.

Following a sweaty commute on Gov. Ritter’s bike-to-work plan, you can spend the day in one of Mayor Hickenlooper’s minimally air-conditioned office buildings. After dining at ethanol-inflated food prices that evening, you can join our green leaders in one of their voluntary switchoffs, a darken-the-city display of pity for the planet.

That’s the sacrificial approach, the future as guilt trip. Barack Obama has warned: “We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times, and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.” As the loyal convention host for Obama, Ritter is in a sweat himself over those bad ol’ fossil fuels. Let’s count the ways:

With gas prices at $4 and climbing, the governor wants a huge tax increase on Colorado oil and gas production. That’s one. His Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is set to impose new rules that will make it even harder to get energy out of the ground. That’s two. And he’s saying no, in concert with Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar and Senate candidate Mark Udall, to developing our oil shale. That’s three, an energy policy strikeout.

Everyone knows the alternative-energy litany. “Wind, solar, biomass, hydro,” we chant. “Fuel cells, perpetual motion, Kryptonite,” we add in hope of an extra indulgence from the Gaia priests. I have nothing against all that stuff (though I’ve sometimes rooted for Lex Luthor against Superman). It’s simply a matter of cost-benefit and timelines. That stuff is tomorrow, whereas oil and gas – and nuclear, which Ritter sidestepped on "Meet the Press" last week – are today, if Colorado keeps its backbone.

Two short summers ago, Bill Ritter took the state by storm as a pro-business Democrat. Taxpayers and consumers soon learned otherwise. Part of his soul is owned by the unions and the rest by Earth First. How else explain his ballot proposal to more than double the severance tax on petroleum, a mainstay of our state’s economy both in employment and at the pump?

The tax hike takes a divide-and-conquer angle by targeting a single industry which many currently scapegoat, and proponents say it would boost business in general by boosting higher education.

But chambers of commerce have seen through the ruse and refused their support, while university presidents are lukewarm. Their need is operating funds, not the scholarships that Ritter is vaguely promising. Nor can state bureaucrats dispel his vagueness without violating campaign finance laws.

Bottom line: the severance tax petition looks doomed with a month to go; don’t waste your time signing. Take time instead to attend one of the commission hearings on those draft regs to impede oil and gas drilling with more red tape. Big turnouts so far indicate significant citizen pushback.

Perhaps Democratic tribal elders won’t get their way after all. The dread of environmental guru Amory Lovins that it would be “disastrous for us to discover the source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it,” may not prevail. Most of us, you see, really want to keep the fires burning and the wheels turning.

Zoo & RTD missed the memo

Tell me again, is the problem for the polar bears too little ice or too much? It was fears of disappearing habitat, though unsupported by sound science, that recently led to official listing of the bears as a threatened species, with all the carbon-fearing, economy-slowing litigation that is sure to follow. But nobody told the ad agency for the Denver Zoo. Idling at a stoplight behind an RTD bus the other day, as we both spewed CO2 into the fragile ecosphere, I noticed above the tailpipe a zoo poster with the slogan, "Every time you visit, you help animals," and a cute drawing of someone's hand sawing a hole in the ice as a grateful (and presumably otherwise unfed) polar bear looks on.

Memo to Zoo & RTD: You're three decades out of date. Global cooling and encroaching glaciers was the panic of the 1970s. Today's crisis is the opposite, a sweltering planet and disappearing ice caps. Get back on message there.

No big deal, though. The villains are we greedy, heartless human beings either way. It's exactly as the pro-energy side is trying to warn in connection with Gov. Ritter's new rules to impede oil and gas production: "Certain species are covered. People are not."

Finally, a voice for prosperity

Here comes the cavalry at last, I told a press conference at the State Capitol today. Too few powerful voices speak up for productive Coloradans in a Colorado political scene currently dominated by advocates for redistribution, regulation, and anti-market schemes. Now at last a proven success model called Americans for Prosperity is riding over the ridge to help change that. I'm pleased to be on the group's advisory board. Here's their press release with full details. ================================

The national free-market grassroots group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) today launched its Colorado state chapter, saying that its first goal would be to educate and mobilize grassroots taxpayers in support the removal of artificial, government-imposed barriers to energy development, which will help lower prices for cash-strapped citizens.

“From unnecessarily limiting the supply of energy to proposed cap-and-trade carbon taxes and regulatory schemes, many state and federal government policies are threatening to put a major dent in Coloradans’ quality of life,” said AFP President Tim Phillips. “Current and proposed energy policies largely amount to higher taxes, lost jobs and less freedom, and the Colorado chapter of Americans for Prosperity is going to educate and mobilize taxpayers on this and other issues, and we’re going to make sure their voices are heard loud and clear in Denver and in Washington.”

The group has named veteran Colorado grassroots leader Jim Pfaff as its state director. Pfaff formerly served as President and CEO of the Colorado Family Institute and Colorado Family Action and since 1998 has also served as President and CEO of IRDS, Inc., a public relations and political consulting company that specializes in grassroots mobilization, public policy consulting and polling.

“Americans for Prosperity has been fighting the good fight in other states and in the nation’s capital and getting results through taxpayer involvement,” said Pfaff. “With such an outstanding, effective organization looking out for citizens’ interests, we are going to have a major impact on Colorado.

“Colorado has a strong energy economy, but many politicians and special interests are putting Colorado families in peril because of environmental alarmism,” said Pfaff. “Recent calls for oil shale development are a good example here. We are sitting on one of the largest oil fields in the world, yet Mark Udall, Ken Salazar and Bill Ritter are fanning the flames of environmental fears. Instead of pushing for reasonable oil shale policy which can help reduce energy costs and gas prices in the long run, they are stirring up fears of environmental disaster which are just not true.”

Americans for Prosperity now has 21 state chapters around the country. In 2006, the group was active in fighting to reform Colorado’s costly Public Employees’ Retirement Association (PERA,) and will now work toward educating and training grassroots taxpayers in every corner of the Rocky Mountain State in support of increased responsible energy production and other pro-taxpayer issues, such as protecting the Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights, making government spending more transparent and ending forced unionism.

AFP has also become a national grassroots leader in the fight against pork-barrel earmarks and global warming alarmism. In 2006 the group traveled over 10,000 miles to 37 states and 50 pork-barrel earmarks on the Ending Earmarks Express road tour of federal earmarks. The group is currently in the midst of a nationwide Hot Air Tour, which is exposing the high economic costs of so-called “solutions” to global warming.

According to the American Council on Capital Formation, Colorado stands to lose between 20,000 and 31,000 jobs by 2020 if proposed cap-and-trade global warming tax hikes are approved by Congress. Moreover, the group estimates that the price of gasoline would skyrocket another 74 – 140 percent by 2030 and the cost of electricity would increase by 96% to 133%.