Obama Energy Secretary Says ‘I would give myself an A’ For Helping Make Gasoline The Most Expensive EVER

Let’s see:

Obama’s energy policies gave us the highest gas prices for one year EVER in 2011.

Obama’s energy policies have given us the worst January gas prices in American history.

Obama’s energy policies have given us the worst February gas prices in American history.

Obama’s energy policies have now given us given us the worst March gas prices in American history.

And it aint going to be getting any better as we live Obama’s “hope and change” moving forward.

Even the New York Times has acknowledged the grim very possible reality of gasoline averaging $5 a gallon nationwide this year:

HOUSTON — Gasoline for $5 a gallon? The possibility is hardly far-fetched.

For the record, it isn’t very far from that right now where I live in California.  I gassed up yesterday for $4.70 a gallon.

Oh, and conservatives – and frankly Obama and his handpicked energy secretary himself – actually told us that this would happen:

But suddenly the same mainstream media and the same Democrat Party that demonized George W. Bush every single day that gasoline prices were high say none of this catastrophically high gas price business can possibly be messiah Obama’s fault. Even though I pointed out that this was all simply the stated fruition of Obama all along:

You remember that quip Obama gave us that under his policies, energy prices “would necessarily skyrocket“?

Remember that Obama appointed an energy secretary named Steven Chu who said, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe”??? With gasoline prices in Europe consistently hovering between $7 and $10 a gallon??? Steven Chu said that in explaining the Obama policy of “progressively” making gasoline more and more expensive in order to force Americans to turn to alternative energy sources. And one of the ways Obama wants to accomplish that dream (which amounts to a nightmare for working Americans) is to tax Americans for driving by the mile.

As you contemplate $4 and even $5 a gallon gasoline prices, let me just say one word: KEYSTONE.

Now consider what Steven Chu – Obama’s hand-picked energy secretary – is saying right now:

Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a House panel Tuesday that he’d give himself top marks when asked to grade his policies’ effects on energy prices. Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asked President Obama’s top energy official if he’d grade himself with an “A minus” on “controlling the cost of gasoline at the pump.”

Chu responded by saying he’d give himself a better grade than that.

“The tools we have at our disposal are limited, but I would I say I would give myself a little higher in that since I became Secretary of Energy, I’ve been doing everything I can to get long-term solutions,” Chu said.

Chu would give himself the top grade on gas prices despite that fact that the average price for a gallon of gas just hit $3.87 – the highest ever recorded in the month of March, according to ABC News.

I actually agree with Chu.  He SHOULD get an A – for making gasoline the most expensive over the longest period of time we’ve ever seen.  Which is exactly what he set out to do.

Obama said he wanted gasoline prices to rise – just not so quickly that the frog-in-the-pot-of-water-on-the-stove would notice and hold him responsible:

It was a question from John Harwood at CNBC: “So could the high oil price help us?” and Obama said, “Well, I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment, a gradual increase.”

Obama’s full statement:

OBAMA: I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that, ehh, this is such a shock t’American pocketbooks is not a good thing. Uh, but if we take some steps right now t’, uh, help people make the adjustment — first of all by putting more money into their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly, particularly US automakers.

And yes, Youtube – owned by überliberal Google – has managed to scrub that teeny-weeny little Obama statement of his energy policy.  Because apparently Obama used his same Führer-messiah power to get the media to refuse to cover the news if it makes him look bad that has been very recently demonstrated elsewhere.

Just try to imagine what would have ensued if Bush had asked the mainstream media to literally scrub an already published story from their little Ministry of Truth complex.  The Marxists who write our news would have a) broadcast Bush’s request and framed it in terms of a Big Brother fascist narrative; and b) blared the news Bush had asked them to scrub all over the airwaves just out of pure spite. 

Now, go back to what Obama said and then allow me to explain what Obama SHOULD have said and why his answer is not only deplorable, but depraved.  Obama should have said:

“Could higher gas prices help us?  Absolutely NOT!  High gas prices hurt the American people, it hurts the American economy and it undermines the American way of life.  High gas prices are the worst form of regressive tax – by which I mean it would be a tax that afflicts poor people and particularly poor working Americans – far more than it would harm wealthier people who afford expensive gasoline.  And I will do absolutely everything in my power as president to ensure that the American people are able to purchase gasoline at prices that will enable them to get to work and live their lives.”

Do you see the difference in those two statements?

And which statement do YOU prefer as you consider voting for president this November?  Obama’s or the conservative’s?

When Obama was running for president he openly mocked Bush’s energy plan, saying ” it would not produce a drop of oil for seven years.”  And Obama was right in the limited sense that it takes time for an energy policy to bear fruit tomorrow.  And Obama’s implicit energy goal was that if he was elected president he wanted future Americans to suffer because of his refusal to pursue energy.  And – as Obama’s reverend once said – that future is beginning to “come home to roost.”

Obama has put 85% of the outer continental shelf off limits to drilling and is making only 3% available for petroleum exploration and development.  Drilling in regions like the Colorado Rockies is down fully 70% due to Obama’s policies relative to George Bush’s policies.

Why does Obama and his energy secretary Steven Chu want oil prices to be the same (about $10 a gallon now) as Europe?  It’s very simple: they have a Marxist red version of a radical environmentalist green vision of energy: they want to force the American people to “choose” the energy they WANT them to choose.  And if they can’t simply mandate that “choice” like the fascists they are – which would amount to political suicide – their only option is to price gasoline out of the ballpark and force Americans to buy the little green clown cars and the electric golf cart cars that they want.

People like Barack Obama and Steven Chu sit in their limousines and see an average American driving down the road in a halfway cool car and say, “That’s unacceptable.  There should be a much bigger difference between the elites who run the world and the proletariat masses.”

Let’s sum it up in a picture.  This is a Soviet Union proletariat car:

It’s the same damn kind of clown car with the same damn kind of radical environmentalist green clown car marketing that Obama and Chu want us in today.  It’s a little tiny gutless piece of crap.  And you ought to be driving one instead of something better, because frankly you’re a faceless nobody AND YOU SUCK.  That’s the statist view of “an automobile for the people.”

So please reflect on the man that Barack Obama appointed to “get an A” with his current energy prices.  Consider that Obama knew Chu had said:

“Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

Consider that the very same Obama who is now our president said that he was going to make energy prices “necessarily skyrocket.”

And decide what kind of future that you want.

Obama Wants To Tax Everyone Just For Driving. By The Mile.

We all know that rich people are bad by definition according to the tenets of liberalism.

What also needs to be realized is that people who drive – no matter how poor they are or how much they need to drive – are also bad people by the same tenets of liberalism.

And bad people should be punished.

Obama administration floats draft plan to tax cars by the mile
By Pete Kasperowicz – 05/05/11 07:45 AM ET

The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive.

The plan is a part of the administration’s Transportation Opportunities Act, an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly.

The White House, however, said the bill is only an early draft that was not formally circulated within the administration.

“This is not an administration proposal,” White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said. “This is not a bill supported by the administration. This was an early working draft proposal that was never formally circulated within the administration, does not taken into account the advice of the president’s senior advisers, economic team or Cabinet officials, and does not represent the views of the president.”

March Congressional Budget Office report that supported the idea of taxing drivers based on miles driven.

Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place electronically at filling stations.

The CBO report was requested by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who has proposed taxing cars by the mile as a way to increase federal highway revenues.

The proposal seems to follow up on that idea in section 2218 of the draft bill. That section would create, within the Federal Highway Administration, a Surface Transportation Revenue Alternatives Office. It would be tasked with creating a “study framework that defines the functionality of a mileage-based user fee system and other systems.”

The department seemed to be aware of the need to prepare the public for what would likely be a controversial change to the way highway funds are collected. For example, the office is called on to serve a public-relations function, as the draft says it should “increase public awareness regarding the need for an alternative funding source for surface transportation programs and provide information on possible approaches.”

The draft bill says the “study framework” for the project and a public awareness communications plan should be established within two years of creating the office, and that field tests should begin within four years.

The office would be required to consider four factors in field trials: the capability of states to enforce payment, the reliability of technology, administrative costs and “user acceptance.” The draft does not specify where field trials should begin.

The new office would be funded a total of $300 million through fiscal 2017 for the project.

This story was updated at 10:17 a.m.

The obvious reason liberals give for thinking that people who drive are bad is environmentalism.  If you drive, you are guilty of helping to murder the planet.  And – as the utterly looney-leftist United Nations wants you to understand – the planet should have more rights than you.

What the left doesn’t say is that the above is a pretense, not their real reason (although it clearly is the primary reason for the useful idiots who make up much of the environmentalist movement).  The real reason is control: the left wants to have near total control of how you live your life.  And the freedom to drive where you want to is a major obstacle to the type of control the left wants.

To quote one Democrat John Dingell regarding socialized health care –

Let me remind you this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 million American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.

– is pretty much to quote them all on pretty much anything.  What they really want is “to control the people.”

Right now, you can buy a car, fill it with gas, and drive wherever you want to go.  That’s just wrong to Democrats.  You shouldn’t be able to do that.  You should have to travel the way they want you to travel.  To the extent you should even be allowed to drive at all, you should only be able to drive the type of vehicle THEY want you to drive.  And there should be a tracking device so they can track where you’ve been.  And, of course, ultimately, you shouldn’t BE allowed to drive.  It’s too much freedom.  You should have to use public transportation.

It’s really not an accusation; it is simply a FACT that fascist Democrats want to take away your freedom, take away your car, monitor where you’ve been by installing tracking equipment and tax you into extinction.

And the easiest way for totalitarians – I mean liberals – to do that is to make gas so expensive that the unwashed masses simply can’t afford it.  Which goes along with making the sacred “green” cars too expensive for most families to be able to afford.

So you’ve got Obama on the record telling a journalist that he doesn’t care if the price of gas goes way up; he just doesn’t want it to happen too quickly and make us angry.

You’ve got the man Obama handpicked for his energy secretary on the record saying, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”  When of course gas prices in Europe are easily double ours in Amerca.

And you’ve got Obama doing everything he can to keep America from being able to drill for its own oil.

Meanwhile, Obama’s response to shockingly high gas prices has been to demonize oil companies and decry their profits.  When what’s funny about that is that 1) oil companies make about 7 cents per gallon in profit, versus Obama’s government which makes about 44 cents in “profit” per gallon (with state governments gouging for even more “profit”).  And 2) by taking away tax breaks that ALL U.S. companies get, what Obama is really demanding is that Americans pay even MORE for their gasoline – because ALL TAXES ON CORPORATIONS SIMPLY GET PASSED ON TO CUSTOMERS IN THE FORM OF HIGHER PRICES.

Obama is not only basically saying, “Screw you, America!”  He’s saying that Americans are simply too stupid to even understand that they are getting screwed.

Obama Hope N’ Change Now Means No Food, No Fuel And No Roof Over Your Head

Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!” (Revelation 6:6).

Messiah Obama wisely understands that we need sky high energy prices to force us to abandon lifestyles that are bad for the world.  That way he can keep the promise he made to the earth: “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”  The earth is much bigger than your little children, so Obama can break his competing promises to you and your family.  In fact, your evil if you want him to keep his promises that would prevent him from his messianic duties of healing the whole world.

A gallon of gas was $1.79 when Obama took over from that terrible George Bush.  Unfortunately, it has gone up about 110% under Obama, to $3.88 this week.  Damn that Bush devil!  Can you believe the way he actually wanted to keep the cost of our energy low, so people could do awful stuff like drive to work?  The half of us who sponge off the other half don’t need work, so why should the half we sponge off of?

The United States has more coal than anyone else on the planet by far and away, and half of our nation’s electricity comes from coal.  But America is evil if it uses coal.  Let China build a new coal-fired electricity plant every single week and overtake our economy.  They’ll be bad and our poor, destitute starving children will be good.  That’s why Obama promised liberal San Franciscans, “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”  HERES the system any enlighted American would clearly want: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”  It won’t matter how many Americans die in abject poverty; Obama is just what we needed.

China will overtake the U.S. economy by 2016, they’re saying now.  What’s that, you ask?  They were saying China wouldn’t overtake us until 2018 just a few months ago?  You don’t seem to understand the meaning of the words “funamentally transform” very well, do you?  But they’ll be bad, because they’ll be burning all that oil and coal and we won’t be.  That makes us better.  And so what if we have to freeze in the dark?

And the messiah to the world also knows that if you can afford gasoline, you might be so selfish as to actually drive.  And evil working poor people usually can’t buy expensive and impractical electric cars, so he must force them by making it hurt for them to drive.  That’s why he appointed an energy secretary who has been trying to“figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” .  And of course when gas is $9 a gallon in Germany, Obama has a long way to go to bring Europe to America.  The only tragedy of soaring gas prices, of course, is that Americans might actually hold Obama responsible.  That’s why he answered the question, “Could the high gas prices help us?” by saying, “I think I would have preferred a gradual adjustment.”

We already voted for the “hope and change” of $9 a gallon gas in the wonderful fundamentally transformative election of 2008.  And how dare people get angry about that now!!!

Because Obama in his blessed wisdom knows that most Americans are far, far too stupid to understand anything that happens gradually, such as gas rising to the $8 a gallon levels like they are in Europe.  And it doesn’t really matter how much the American people suffer.  Not compared to healing earth and lowering the seas like Moses.  Obama will be better than Moses; he’ll make the level of the whole ocean change!!!!

And then there are the large families that can’t fit all their kids into an electric car or a hybrid anyway.  Obama is right: they should like kill the extra children or something.  Because children should die so the earth can be happier.

And food?  So what if the price of food is going through the roof?  Michelle Obama will tell you that you’re too fat anyway.  You need to lose a whole lot of weight, and her husband’s policies will give you the help you need.  You shouldn’t be allowed to eat half as much food as you eat, anyway.  They don’t get to eat in North Korea, and it’s a socialist worker’s Utopia.  So why should it be any different in the worker’s Utopia your Dear Leader is trying to create for you here?  North Koreans are 5.3 inches (13.5 cm) shorter and 30 pounds (13.5 kg) lighter than those fat overfed capitalist South Korean bastards.  And American kids should be as short and gaunt as their fellow socialist travellers.

Michelle said of his worshipfulness: “Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”  Or full.  Either your stomach or your gas tank.  And I couldn’t agree more.  As we socialists have said in the past, “Arbeit macht frei.”  And just what kind of a bad person are you for not being grateful to him?

I sure hope I’m not putting too much crap in the sandwich I’m feeding you.  Because excrement is a precious commodity in North Korea.  And it should be just as precious here.

But just in case you think the hope and change of Obama’s fundamental transformation is already more than you can bear, it gets even better.  The cost of having a roof over your head is skyrocketing, too.  Which might help you not worry so much about the price of food and the price of fuel.

Renters spending bigger chunk of income on housing
Study says supply of affordable housing has shrunk along with incomes.
Posted by Teresa at MSN Real Estate on Wednesday, April 27, 2011 12:48 PM

Record numbers of Americans are paying more than half of their pretax income for rental housing, according to a new study.

The study, by the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies, found that the recession’s toll on incomes had increased more families’ housing-cost burdens. Almost 26% of renters spend more than half of their income on rent and utilities. Another 26.2% spend 30% to 50% of their incomes.

The study’s findings are similar to the findings of the Center for Housing Policy, which found that working families, both renters and homeowners, were spending a larger proportion of their income on housing. [..]

Lower-income renters have historically struggled to find affordable housing and have paid a disproportionate share of their income in rent. But, according to the study, that problem is moving up the income ladder with more lower-middle-income renters and middle-income renters paying 30% to 50% of their incomes for rent and utilities.  […]

Here’s how The Washington Post summarizes the situation:

The study offers the latest in a series of grim statistics about the scarcity of rental housing, especially for the working poor. The supply has not kept up with demand in part because of a shortage of apartments, a key source of new rentals. Developers cut back on such projects when the economy deteriorated in 2009, which drove down vacancies and boosted rents. Analysts say they expect rents to keep climbing as developers try to ramp up new projects and catch up with demand.

In many areas, the demand is driven by families who lost their homes to foreclosure during the housing bust and ended up searching for rentals. Meanwhile, as the job market recovers, more newly employed young adults appear to be seeking their own apartments instead of living with their parents, putting even more upward pressure on rental rates, according to one of the study’s researchers.

But don’t worry.  Pretty soon, thanks to Obama’s financial policies, you’ll have cash.  Lots and lots of cash.  Wheelbarrows full of it, in fact.

The decline of the U.S. dollar is accelerating rapidly.

Here are a couple of videos worth watching about the exciting fundamentally transformative changes you can hope for coming your way soon!

.

.