Jeanne Shaheen has quite a list of policy objectives on the Energy policy page of her web site.  It’s a virtual who’s-who of left wing thinking, the crux of which–after you filter out all the fluff–seems to be that if we take money away from people and companies that earn it in the free market, and give it to the government, the government will fix everything.  Oh, and nowhere does it say we should drill for oil.  No I was not surprised.

My favorite sentence so far is under the heading “END THE TAX BREAKS FOR THE BIG OIL AND GAS COMPANIES”

Every year, congress gives away approximately $13 Billion (in tax breaks) to the oil and gas industry.

So Jeanne Shaheen the tax machine seems to be telling us that because the Federal government has not taken someone else’s money from them, simply because they have the opportunity to do so, that this is equivalent to “giving it away.”    Giving it away to who Jeanne, the people who earned it?  

Were you giving away my property tax money all those years before introducing that statewide property tax in New Hampshire?  Wasn’t that my money Governor?  Didn’t I work for it? 

People who think this way are theives, and people who think this way(usually without thinking) are elitests.

So which are you?

A bit of both perhaps?

You pander to people’s desire to be green when you say things like “Invest in the future” or “In renewables or efficiency,” without telling them the actual cost, and as if it hasn’t already been happening for the past 30 years.  While the Federal Government has been preventing the Oil and Gas companies from developing new domestic oil fields they have still been funding Ethanol, wind, solar, and other “energies of the future” and 30 years on we are no closer to making them efficient enough, affordable enough, or capable of meeting more than 4% of our national energy requirements.  Even after 30 years.  I don’t see that anywhere in your energy policy.  Seems disingenuos to me.

So what’s Jeanne’s big plan for New Hampshire….wind, and wood-chip ethanol.  We’re saved!!

Jeanne Shaheen is promising to make New Hampshire the renewable energy capital.  Using only wind power, and wood chips she’s promising to create jobs and bring in investment.  Jeanne is pandering.  She’s got nothing.   Oil is not going away in 5 years, 10 years, probably not even 50 years.  But rather than tell you the truth and work on a way to meet our current needs now, say for the next 50-100 years, while we continue to take a more serious look at developing these alternatives, Jeanne and her Democrat friends have been strong-armed into trying to convince us that Green technology will do all the things they claim like create jobs, reduce dependency, and of course stop the fantasy of global warming.  So far it’s not doing any of those things.

But you know what will create jobs tomorrow; what will begin to put immediate downward pressure on the cost of oil without government mandates or funding, and begin to reduce our dependence on foreign oil in just a few years,  Oil.  All they have to do is let them drill.

1) Drilling untapped domestic reserves should generate jobs in steel, plastics, electronics, transportation, construction, and any other industry that fabricates,  assembles, or delivers the parts for drilling equipment, drilling platforms, and the staffing required to create, support, and operate them.  This is billions of American dollars spent that immediately stays in America, creating American jobs, feeding American families, spent in American stores, and ending up in American Banks,  instead of going overseas to Arab emirates.

2) Most if not all of this money will come from the oil companies who invest their profits into expansion and not from the government.  The Democrats want to take money from one company they don’t like, and invest it in a company they do like, while skimming some off for handling.  On the street this is called robbery, or even money laundering, but to congress it is called taxes, fees, and most recently “helping the Middle class.” 

Instead of filtering other peoples money through an inefficient Bureaucracy let the real experts who actually work in these industries decide where to spend their money.  I need a Senator who will tell the government to get out of the way.

3) All this commerce gets taxed, just like any other, as does the payroll, and to varying degrees the profits of all the companies involved.  While Democrats are whining about oil companies making money–mostly because Congress wont let them spend it on research and development–the Government could be reaping a legitimate windfall in regular taxes without all the extra committee meetings and emotional pleas to steal money from industries they just don’t happen to get campaign contributions from.

4) New oil fields means new leases for the government. And not the nonsense being thrown around about drilling everywhere someone has a mineral lease, but letting production begin where we know there are billions of barrels in reserves waiting to be tapped.

5) We won’t need to spend billions on an immediate re-tooling of the energy infrastructure, from engines, to power plants, to the delivery systems needed to keep America powered up and running.   These costs fall directly on the wallets of the American Taxpayers in either more taxes–so the government can support or fund these changes, or in higher prices for consumers.  If we don’t have to pay all of that now we keep more of our money in our pockets which grows the economy without government meddling.

6) Most importantly, (and this is clearly a pipe-dream on my part but here we go anyway) by having more immediate oil resources available we could finally exert some real pressure on the OPEC cartel in regards to production and pricing.  I’d like to say we could break the cartel, but that’s wishful thinking, but if we could bring some free market mechanics back into the price of a barrel of oil, the global price would drop, freeing the all important middle class from the burden of unpredictable of unstable energy prices, and all these inane liberal schemes.  But until we optimize production, we’ll remain well-under OPEC’s heel.

Jeanne has a plan for New Hampshire but it’s the worng one.  The only thing she’s planning on tapping is more of that green Kool-aid.

Wood chips are for hamsters, not fuel for New Hampshire.