No one needs to be reminded that gas prices are high - we see it every day at the gas pump - but one conservative group hopes to educate the public about the reasons for those skyrocketing gas prices.
The Americans for Prosperity Foundation has launched what it calls the Running on Empty Tour with stops throughout the United States this summer and through the fall.
“When President Obama took office, the price of gasoline was $1.83 per gallon; it’s now $3.78 per gallon, a 106 percent increase. Since taking office, he has paid lip service to allowing domestic production but has taken every step possible to block American energy,” said Americans for Prosperity Foundation President Tim Phillips.
“Obama’s hostility toward domestic production and his desire to use high gas prices to change Americans’ driving behavior are contributing to the escalating cost of fuel.”
The tour started on Wednesday in Nebraska, and will continue through Kansas, Missouri, and Minnesota, with the goal of educating the public about what the Administration could do through executive action to bring down the cost of fuel and restore stability in the market.
The website lists what it calls Obama's "Empty Tank Policies":
• Illegal Moratoriums: After the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf, President Obama issued a moratorium on all new offshore drilling. The courts twice overturned his ban, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was even held in contempt of court for refusing to allow energy producers to get back to work. Since then, oil companies have complained of a virtual “permitorium” as the Obama administration has blocked them at every turn from getting permits. The message is clear: Obama is against domestic energy production.
• Canceling existing oil and gas leases: Amazingly, not only has Obama blocked any new permits but he’s also reaching back and canceling drilling leases that were already in place when he took office. More than 75 parcels in Utah were yanked back after leases were issued. In addition, they’ve ended 61 leases in Montana. They’ve also rescinded leases in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. How can American energy companies get production flowing and put this country back to work if every time they get a lease they have to worry about it being canceled?
• Locking up lands in the West: The Department of the Interior has continued to block more and more access to federal lands in the American West. From unilateral secretarial orders to create “wild lands” on a whim, to using the 1906 Antiquities Act to create massive “national monuments” that span millions of acres, to using the Endangered Species Act to block Texas and Alaska resources, the federal government is working overtime to make sure Americans cannot access their own domestic resources.
• EPA’s job-crushing regulations: The EPA is advancing numerous regulations that will have a disastrous impact on our economy. They are trying to regulate greenhouse gases to combat climate change.
In an email announcing the tour, AFP President Tim Phillips wrote:
Radical environmental policies that stop energy production here at home are hurting just about every American. On the road the stories are heart-rending.
Last night in Topeka, an elderly couple told me they saved their entire lives to buy an RV so they could travel during their retirement years. Now, due to almost $4 a gallon gasoline their RV is parked at home because they cannot afford to fill the tank.
After our event in Omaha, a lady named Jennifer told me that her work at a community blood bank is suffering because folks who have long driven an hour or more into Omaha to donate blood can no longer afford the long drives due to high gasoline prices.
According to Phillips, liberals are already "going nuts":
Before our first event was even held President Obama's campaign went on the attack with a national email and news release: "Americans for Prosperity announced yesterday that they're launching an expensive national campaign to pin the blame for high gas prices on President Obama. There's nothing unusual in Washington about this sort of announcement […] it's a prime example of the kind of special-interest groups that plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars this election cycle to defeat the President in order to promote their agenda.”
Recently, GM CEO Dan Akerson - a self-described "Colin Powell Republican" - suggested raising gas taxes by as much as a dollar per gallon to force consumers into purchasing smaller vehicles.
Swiss climatologist Thomas Stocker suggested artificially raising gas prices by as much as "three to four" times their current levels, according to the Calgary Herald. Imagine what $12 - $16 per gallon would do to the average household budget, not to mention what would happen to food prices.
The Herald reports that Stocker is "a key player with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."
Environmentalists like Stocker love to make such provocative statements, but never consider the impact their policies would have on real human beings.
Instead, they would rather put humanity on trial, and make outlandish calls for zero economic growth. Some environmentalists have gone to the extreme of calling for voluntary human extinction as a way to "save the planet."
Obama promised his energy policies would cause prices to skyrocket, and so far, they have. In March, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh reminded listeners that high gas prices are exactly what the President wants:
Remember, the president is on record as saying he didn't mind $4 a gallon. He was a little disturbed about how quickly it got there. But for the regime, four bucks or higher, that's exactly what they want! They hate oil, they hate anything to do with it, and there's their Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf -- all these electric cars that nobody is buying. We got the numbers in on that and even Dale Earnhardt Jr. has now joined the crusade of bashing the technology of the Chevy Volt. Yeah. Dale Earnhardt Jr.
It's one more reason President Obama does not deserve to be re-elected in 2012.
Those who would like more information about the tour can visit their website at www.RunningOnEmptyTour.com.
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