It’s fair to say that the Obama administration has fumbled around with and bungled every aspect of energy policy they have come in contact with. One might ask why that would be. An obvious but incomplete answer would be incompetence. Not that there hasn’t been plenty of incompetence involved but if that were the only reason it should be a correctable problem.
It would be easy to point to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s meteoric rise to his level of incompetence, demonstrated in large part by his bungling of anything and everything associated with the Gulf Coast oil leak situation. Secretary Salazar’s performance makes him an excellent Peter Principle [[1]] poster boy candidate. While much of the bungling is of his own doing, in his defense and as much as it pains me to offer one in his case, Secretary Salazar has no doubt had plenty of help from others in the Obama administration.
The Washington Post published a lengthy article tracing energy related policy and political decisions from back during the 2008 Obama presidential campaign up through the decision to lift the Gulf oil drilling moratorium in October 2010. The title of the article is a somewhat clever play on words (Lifting the drilling moratorium: How politics spilled into policy) but content wise it serves as another example of how the Washington Post and the rest of the main stream media just don’t get it. Of course politics spills over into policy. That in and of itself is not necessarily a problem and is actually to be expected. A problem comes about when one’s politics spill over into policies that are not in accordance with the fundamental principles subscribed to by the majority of the body politic in the U.S.
Let’s say for example that the majority of the body politic subscribes to the principle (and the Founder’s intent) concerning the rights of the individual ‘to’ and ‘in’ property and that the purpose of government is to protect those rights. [[2]] Further that the majority of the body politic believes government has no rights enumerated under the U.S. Constitution that can be construed so as to deny or disparage the individual’s rights to property.
Now let’s say your politics are a little squishy on the principle of individual property rights but pretty firm on the notion of something called “social justice”[[3]] and redistribution of wealth to achieve that somewhat amorphous notion. In the course of practicing your politics you think it best to make policy to achieve social justice in the world (not just in the U.S.) that would require the body politic of the U.S. to pay for renewable energy “science projects” of your choosing and to pay higher utility bills to boot. That being the case should you be surprised to find the body politic believes your policies should be “spilled” into a toilet and find their way to the cesspool of decaying failed socialist policy (failed may be a redundant in this context as no other sort of socialist policies come to mind)?
After the November 2010 it should be obvious to even the most causal observer that President Obama (and those that he has chosen to serve in his administration) and the majority of the body politic may not be on same page. We’ll come back to this disconnect between the Obama administration and the body politic but first a brief summary of some Obama key events and decisions relative to energy policy.
Presidential campaign 2008 [[4]] – In June gas prices go over $4 gallon and candidate Obama says if he thought drilling could save people money (reduce the price of gas) he would be for it but says it wouldn’t and intended to maintain a drilling moratorium as President. Candidate McCain gains traction with a call for increased drilling and by August candidate Obama is for increased drilling if it will lead to support for a comprehensive energy plan.
December 2008 – President elect Obama and his choice for Secretary of the Interior [[5]]
In early December 2008, Salazar had an audience with Obama, who listened as Salazar ran through his policy priorities. “Number one, moving forward with a new direction on energy and developing a comprehensive energy plan,” Salazar recalled telling the president-elect. “And that included a new direction, balancing the developing of conventional fuels, including oil and gas, both offshore and onshore.
” Also at the top of Salazar’s list, he told Obama, would be “opening up the whole new world of renewable energy.”
Obama had found the interior secretary he wanted.
March 2010 – Obama administration announces proposal to lift an offshore drilling moratorium (Atlantic coastline, eastern Gulf of Mexico, north coast of Alaska) on oil and natural gas drilling. [[6]]
“This is not a decision I’ve made lightly,” the president said in his March 31 announcement at Andrews Air Force Base. “It is one that Ken – Secretary Salazar – and I, as well as Carol Browner, my energy adviser, and others in my administration looked at closely for more than a year. But the bottom line is this: Given our energy needs . . . we are going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy.” [[7]]
May 2010 – On May 30, 2010, following the April 20 explosion on BP’s deepwater drilling rig inn the Gulf of Mexico, Deepwater Horizon, Secretary Salazar announces a six month moratorium on new deepwater drilling permits and all operating wells are to shut down until further notice. [[8]]
September 2010 – September 30 Obama administration announces new safety rules for offshore drilling but does not lift the moratorium. [[9]]
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called offshore drilling inherently risky and said, “We will only lift the moratorium when I, as secretary of Interior, am comfortable that we have significantly reduced those risks.”
October 2010 – Moratorium lifted October 12 [[10]]
The administration has been under heavy pressure from the industry and others in the region to lift the six-month ban on grounds it has cost jobs and damaged the economy. A federal report said the moratorium likely caused a temporary loss of 8,000 to 12,000 jobs in the Gulf region.
November 2010 – Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La) sets up a meeting between Salazar, oil industry, and regional lawmakers; Salazar does nothing to clarify new regulatory requirements. [[11]]
December 2010 – Obama administration reverses March 2010 policy and will not allow offshore oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic or Pacific coasts over the next five years. [[12]]
So what happened here? It appears to have been two years of fumbling and bungling around with energy policy. In reality it was two years of fumbling and bungling in an attempt to use an announcement of increased offshore drilling as part of the cover for the ultimate prize of climate change legislation, aka Crap and Tax, in the pursuit of social justice through wealth redistribution. The renewable energy spending of other people’s money (government debt initially, tax dollars eventually) in the Porkulus legislation was chump change compared to the ultimate wealth redistribution goal.
Candidate Obama’s politically expedient policy position change on off shore drilling during the 2008 campaign appears to have been formulated in order to take the wind out of McCain’s sails. That change of position then led to the selection of an Interior Secretary who was thought to be capable of talking publicly acceptable talk on oil and gas drilling while pursuing renewable energy/climate change policy in the background. Obama put two people in charge of policy formulation who are first are foremost regulators; Ken Salazar, a regulating politician and former bureaucrat from a western state and Carol Browner, a former Clinton administration EPA director.
Along came the BP oil spill event and that really complicated things for these regulators who had no basis in principle from which to react. Their reactions to the Gulf oil spill ended up being like pouring gasoline on the flames of the great recession that was already well on its way to becoming a towering inferno of failed Keynesian economic policy. The best they could come up with was to frame offshore oil drilling as a safety issue and regulate it and regulate it some more (leaving a little room for free market activity which could be taxed to pay for the creation and enforcement of more new layers of regulation). By October 2010 with the November mid term elections barreling down on them like a run away freight train Obama and his regulators were stuck with the results of their unprincipled politics having yielded little more than some spiffy new regulations to brag about.
The Obama administration on Tuesday lifted its moratorium on exploratory drilling in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, potentially blunting a serious political issue in the weeks before the midterm congressional elections, and signaling its confidence in newly tightened regulation. [[13]]
Energy policy is far too important to be left to business as usual – regulate, regulate some more and then toss in large helpings of crony capitalism [[14]] and government spending for good measure. Approach each matter of energy policy from the perspective of preserving the property rights of individuals and implementing government policy that impartially preserves those rights. That doesn’t mean that environmental or natural resource preservation concerns are steam rolled in the process. On the contrary, applying free market principles first and foremost along with a clear understanding of and appreciation for the TANSTAAFL principle [[15]] (There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch) will serve the best interests of all concerned. The sooner we get started the sooner we can start ripping up those good intentions paving stones on the road to economic hell that the purveyors of social justice have put down with our tax dollars and start following the Founder’s compass down the path of the blessings of liberty.
Note: This article is also available for download as a PDF document. Click to download PDF
Print This Post
Email This Post
Endnotes
[1] The Peter Principle – Dr. Laurence J. Peter – In business and government bureaucracies there is a tendency for many people to progress up the bureaucratic food chain until they arrive at a point where they have exceeded their competence to perform. Dr. Peter explained it as people tending to be promoted up to their level of incompetence in hierarchical organization structures or simply that, “The cream rises until it sours.”
[2] … In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions…
Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.
James Madison on Property (http://www.ourfounderscompass.com/archives/537)
[3] “Social justice,” on the other hand, aims at the heart of our legal system by setting an unattainable goal, by fueling discontent, by insinuating a permanent state of hopelessness.
But above all, social justice is unacceptable as the basis for a stable society because, unlike the law, it is what anyone says it is on any given day. We need only to move back a few years, or travel a few thousand miles, and one is certain to find an entirely different definition of social justice. At the end of the day, it is nothing more than an empty slogan, to be filled by power-hungry political activists so as to enlist the participation of well-intentioned people.
The rule of law and a world according to “social justice” are mutually exclusive. One cannot have it both ways.
What have the rule of law and the pursuit of “social justice” respectively spawned over time? The rule of law gave birth to a series of individual rights. In other words, rights vested solely in individuals. Only individuals are capable of having rights, just as only individuals can be free. We say a society is free if the individuals who make up that society are free. For individuals to be free, they must have certain unalienable rights, and others upon which they had agreed with one another.
Social justice has spawned an aberration called “group rights.” Group rights are the negation of individual rights. Group rights in effect say, “You cannot and do not have rights as an individual — only as a member of a certain group.” The rule of law knows nothing about groups; therefore, it could not provide for, or legitimize rights of, groups. Groups have no standing in the eyes of the law. And, since their so-called rights are invariably created and conferred by persons of temporary authority, they are “subject to change without notice,” as the saying goes, just like the definition of social justice itself.
Four Points of the Compass: Restoring America’s Sense of Direction by Balint Vazsonyi – Heritage Lecture #577 – http://www.heritage.org/Research/Lecture/Four-Points-of-the-Compass-Restoring-Americas-Sense-of-Direction
[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/12/AR2010101206279.html
[5] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/12/AR2010101206279.html
[6] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/science/earth/31energy.html
[7] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/12/AR2010101206279.html
[9] http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/09/30/interior-dept-sets-new-offshore-drilling-rules/
[10] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/12/politics/main6950567.shtml
[11] http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/11/23/salazar-fails-calm-oil-drillers-after-gulf-meeting
[12] http://voices.washingtonpost.com/post-carbon/2010/12/obama_administration_will_ban.html
[13] http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2010/oct/13/gulf-drilling-moratorium-lifted/
[14] Crony Capitalism
A description of capitalist society as being based on the close relationships between businessmen and the state. Instead of success being determined by a free market and the rule of law, the success of a business is dependent on the favoritism that is shown to it by the ruling government in the form of tax breaks, government grants and other incentives.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cronycapitalism.asp
[15] See Everything I need to know about economics – by some French guy 160 years ago – http://www.ourfounderscompass.com/archives/433
The TANSTAAFL principle is closely related to the fundamental theorem of ecological economics, that everything depends on everything else. Everything worth while has a cost. Whenever you think you are getting something for nothing, look again – someone, somewhere, somehow is paying for it. Behind every free lunch is a hidden cost to be accounted for.
TANSTAAFL*, The Economic Strategy for Environmental Crisis, *There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch by Edwin G. Dolan
