YOUR TAX DOLLARS HARD AT WORK: FIRST CARS, NOW FOREIGN OIL. (Sarah Smacks Down Obama Again!)

Today's Wall Street Journal contains some puzzling news for all Americans who are impacted by high energy prices and who share the goal of moving us toward energy independence.

For years, states rich with an abundance of oil and natural gas have been begging Washington, DC politicians for the right to develop their own natural resources on federal lands and off shore. Such development would mean good paying jobs here in the United States (with health benefits) and the resulting royalties and taxes would provide money for federal coffers that would potentially off-set the need for higher income taxes, reduce the federal debt and deficits, or even help fund a trillion dollar health care plan if one were so inclined to support such a plan.

So why is it that during these tough times, when we have great needs at home, the Obama White House is prepared to send more than two billion of your hard-earned tax dollars to Brazil so that the nation's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, can drill off shore and create jobs developing its own resources? That's all Americans want; but such rational energy development has been continually thwarted by rabid environmentalists, faceless bureaucrats and a seemingly endless parade of lawsuits aimed at shutting down new energy projects.

I'll speak for the talent I have personally witnessed on the oil fields in Alaska when I say no other country in the world has a stronger workforce than America, no other country in the world has better safety standards than America, and no other country in the world has stricter environmental standards than America. Come to Alaska to witness how oil and gas can be developed simultaneously with the preservation of our eco-system. America has the resources. We deserve the opportunity to develop our resources no less than the Brazilians. Millions of Americans know it is true: "Drill, baby, drill." Alaska is proof you can drill and develop, and preserve nature, with its magnificent caribou herds passing by the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS), completely unaffected. One has to wonder if Obama is playing politics and perhaps refusing a "win" for some states just to play to the left with our money.

The new Gulf of Mexico lease sales tomorrow sound promising and perhaps will move some states in the right direction, but we all know that the extreme environmentalists who serve to block progress elsewhere, including in Alaska, continue to block opportunities. These environmentalists are putting our nation in peril and forcing us to rely on unstable and hostile foreign countries. Mr. Obama can stop the extreme tactics and exert proper government authority to encourage resource development and create jobs and health benefits in the U.S.; instead, he chooses to use American dollars in Brazil that will help to pay the salaries and benefits for Brazilians to drill for resources when the need and desire is great in America.

Buy American is a wonderful slogan, but you can't say in one breath that you want to strengthen our economy and stimulate it, and then in another ship our much-needed dollars to a nation desperate to drill while depriving us of the same opportunity.

I warmly welcome Sarah Palin's emergence as an effective cudgelist for the conservative side. As one who felt that Sarah Palin had taken herself out of national politics with her abrupt announcement of resignation, I will be delighted to be proven wrong.

Incidentally, the references in the following quoted post to Peggy Noonan and William F. Buckley Junior are meant as figures for a New York crowd representative of Rinos across the country who are still part of the party and who do vote. I don't think anyone believes that William F. Buckley Junior himself will ever be won over Sarah Palin.

Equally, the observations made about motivating the base seem archaic at best. Who knew that Barack Obama himself would do more to motivate the conservative base than any other man or woman alive?

That said, here is a post written before the inauguration which echoes other posts from before the election encouraging Sarah Palin to stakeout strong policy positions on issues, especially energy, to establish the gravitas necessary for national candidate. I had foreseen that she should make weighty speeches before venues like The National Press Club but I was probably only betraying my age in an age of Twitter and Facebook:

I believe that Sarah Palin's problem is not that she is "miserably uninformed" but that she is perceived to be uninformed. The media has virtually destroyed her on this issue. Saturday Night Live probably more than any other outlet. To be uninformed is not normally a fatal defect for a politician. By way of example, Vice President elect Joe Biden is miserably misinformed, demonstrably dishonest, and the thief of other man's thoughts, a plagiarist. Nevertheless, he carries the honorific, "Vice President elect Joseph Biden."

Biden gets away with it for two reasons, the media favors him and sounds authoritative. In his debate with Palin he misspoke numerous times but it affected the race not at all. What counts is how the television shows the individual. Biden showed authoritative and Palin, apart from the debate in her interviews with Couric and Gibbons, showed nouveau.

Hence, my suggestion that Palin hire a forensic coach to address the perception problem.

I disagree emphatically that now is too early for Palin to make her mark on the energy issue. She must do the spadework and now so that she can speak from a well-established position of authority when these matters go before the Congress. It will be too late then to both gain recognition and persuade. Let her speak now from a prepared text on the full range of energy issues. It is not merely a question of the price at the pump but of jobs in the coal mines and factories and the price of bread and milk for the kids. The energy issue is a gold mine for conservatives. If we wait we will lose the March.

As much as I agree with you about your assessment of Sarah Palin, I am afraid I must disagree with you about the state of play. We are two years away from the next election and there is no need now to mobilize the base. The need now is to come to Jesus, that is, to find out in our soul what it means to be a conservative. That is the first step. We would be proceeding wrongfooted if we set out looking for a savior. First we have to have a philosophy. I do agree that very likely the leader of the party will be the man (or in this case a woman) who can articulate a philosophy which can, Reagan -like, stitch together the disparate elements of the party, fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, national Defense conservatives, into a coherent fabric which will pull together instead of pulling apart as they are doing now. But, have a care, I do not mean that the spokesperson (I hate that politically correct term I meant to say a "spokesman") should be someone who appeals to only one third of the conservative base. I want a leader who can represent all three legs of the conservative stool. Any fewer will condemn us to another electoral defeat.

In this context, I would prefer Sarah Palin because she has the makings of all three legs of the conservative stool in her biography if she can put away a regrettable tendency toward populism. But I am not going to anoint Palin, I want her to emerge from a Darwinian contest as the clear winner of the ideological consensus which moves the majority of Americans. The very worst scenario would be to impose someone, for example Sarah Palin, on New York's fiscal conservatives who will bolt because they feel she is too provincial. Let her win over the Peggy Noonan's and the William F. Buckley Jr.'s by getting out there and changing her image. If she cannot do so she must fall by the wayside. I am not going to sacrifice the conservative movement to appease social conservatives. We just did that for national defense Conservatives [because George Bush put away the veto pen on spending in a kind of quid pro quo to keep the war in Iraq going] and it cost us the last two elections, it put us in the wilderness for perhaps a generation, and it may well have exposed the country to a Manchurian Marxist who will ultimately sabotage both the national Defense of the United States and Israel which were main motivations of the neocons in the first place.

George Bush came to us and said he was a "compassionate conservative." I did not know what the hell it meant, I have learned over eight years to my sorrow what it means. I do not want the party again to be led down a path by a piper who only shows us some part of his character. I want it committed conservative who will serve all three legs of the conservative movement. I want him tested and I want him proven. We only had two years to do it so we better get on with the job now so that when we need to motivate the base of the next election we will have a real base to motivate.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aogq9sBiBhYo

Petrobras May Borrow $5 Billion From U.S. Ex-Im Bank (Update2)

By Helder Marinho and Joshua Goodman

July 30 (Bloomberg) — Petroleo Brasileiro SA said it may more than double its borrowings from the U.S. Export-Import Bank to as much as $5 billion, following a $10 billion loan from China.

Petrobras, as the state-controlled oil company is known, may increase the loans from $2 billion now, Chief Financial Officer Almir Barbassa said today at a press conference in Rio de Janeiro. The initial loan made in April was an “opening amount,” Fred Hochberg, president of the U.S. bank, said earlier today in an interview in Rio.

“The Export-Import Bank met yesterday with Petrobras, and it offered more resources to the company,” Brazilian Energy Minister Edison Lobao said at the press conference.

Investment in Brazil’s oil industry is expected to surge to more than $200 billion over the next five years, buoyed by spending on the Americas’ largest oil find since 1976. Petrobras in February secured $10 billion in financing from the China Development Bank Corp.

China replaced the U.S. as Brazil’s biggest trading partner this year, after the global recession choked sales to the U.S. The Chinese bank, which plans to open an office in Rio de Janeiro next year, has also agreed to lend $800 million to Brazil’s state development bank, known as BNDES.

The U.S. and Chinese loans will help Petrobras pay for part of its $174 billion, five-year investment plan to expand output.

High Priority

[more at link above]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.