Barack Obama - 2008
So said Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign. When oil shot to $150 a barrel, and gas spiked to over $4 for three weeks during the summer of 2008, the problem wasn't, as Obama sees it, that the price was too high. The problem was that the price had risen to fast. American's were angry, and the sudden increase was hurting their budgets. If he could just have the prices rise more gradually, he could create a "new" normal, and the people would accept the increases, and adjust their household budgets accordingly. They would also be more accepting of funneling more taxpayer dollars into Obama's green energy initiatives.
We are witnessing the managed increase of energy prices that Obama spoke of in 2008. Prices did rise under President Bush during his eight years in office (link) - 7% in his first term, and 9% in his second term. Bush's response to rising oil prices was to lift moratoriums on drilling in the Outer Continental shelf when the price spiked. The result? Prices dropped significantly. Now that prices are approaching $4 a gallon again, Obama is actively blocking the energy companies to produce more energy. He and his sycophants are calling for the blocking of the Keystone XL pipeline and the BILLIONS of barrels of oil available in the Bakken reserve. He maintains a moratorium on offshore drilling, and on known reserves on federal lands. His energy policy is working just as he wants it to, and the pain it is causing the American people at the gas pumps and the check out stands doesn't concern him one iota.
Obama, his energy Secretary Steven Chu, and the rest of his ilk are carefully and purposely managing the economy and our energy policy to weaken the United States, pushing us towards his goal of a European-like socialist state, and he is doing it with the approval of clueless Americans. To Obama, we are the frog in the pot as he turns up the heat, slowly killing what remains of a once great and powerful nation.
