The administration in Washington and Congressional buzzards are swooping in on wings of outrage to attack and dismantle as much of the free market oil industry as they can during the present Gulf oil crisis.

The demagogue central planners, Obama and company, have woken from their slumber and bungled leadership to an orgy of ginned up outrage on the House and Senate floor. The Greek chorus in Washington has sprung to life into the only action they really know: whining, pointing fingers, crippling businesses, killing jobs in entire sectors of the economy, all the while shaming and castigating the producers and achievers to whom we owe our quality of life.

Exploiting the environmental crisis, they are rocketing the ball down the field to further their agenda of centralized planning and state control of U.S. oil production, along with sweeping energy and Cap and Trade legislation.

These Congressional and administration furies, whatever the “outrage du jour,” are consistently creating greater unemployment, higher tax burdens, and greater debt – which all combine in a nasty downward spiral to more of the same. If there is an addiction that matters, it Obama’s and the Congressional majority’s addiction to more czars and more central, bureaucratic control of the private sector.

Far from an addiction, oil has been a tremendous blessing, as Jeff Jacoby points out in his recent Boston Globe op-ed Oil Fuels Better Lives:

Awful as the catastrophe has been, however, life without oil would be far, far worse.

Americans consume oil not because they are “addicted’’ to it, but because it enriches their lives, making possible prosperity, comfort, and mobility that would have been all but unimaginable just a few generations ago. Almost by definition, an addiction is something one is healthier without. But oil-based energy improves human health and reduces poverty — it makes life longer, safer, and better. Addictions debase life. Oil improves and expands it.

Jacoby concludes:

Someday there may be an energy source that is as abundant, efficient, clean, and economically viable as oil. But nothing today fits that bill — certainly not biofuels, wind farms, or solar power. Besides, it isn’t only energy products that we get from petroleum. Crude oil refining also makes possible plastics, synthetic fibers, lubricants, waxes, asphalt. “Other products made from petroleum,’’ notes the US Energy Information Administration, “include ink, crayons, bubble gum, dishwashing liquids, deodorant, eyeglasses, CDs and DVDs, tires, ammonia, [and] heart valves.’’

The United States consumes more than 300 billion gallons of oil per year, nearly two-thirds of it imported. There is no denying the drawbacks associated with oil, but its advantages are equally undeniable. American wealth, progress, and autonomy — the most dynamic and productive economy in history — would be impossible without it. What we have isn’t an addiction, but a blessing.

Let’s hope that Congress and Obama remember this as Americans struggle to stay afloat long enough to survive the government-created burden of debt, uncertain business environment, looming health care regulations, tax increases, record unemployment, shrinkage of the private sector, and the METAstaSIZING government sector.

In its statist, bureaucratic and “best and brightest” attempt to insert itself (without Congressional authority) into the climate change scare, the EPA declared in 2009 that carbon dioxide (what you exhale and plants absorb) is a danger to public health. This unprecedented power grab will result in the EPA governing – and draining wealth from – huge sectors of the economy…and ultimately your wallet.

Yet the Clean Air Act (which defines the EPA’s role), provides no legitimacy to the EPA’s finding. As Marlo Lewis points out in this excellent piece at MasterResource:

The Clean Air Act directs EPA to identify and regulate pollutants that damage air quality. Lead is an air quality contaminant, so it fits perfectly within the statutory framework. However, search the Clean Air Act from top to bottom, and you will not find any Title, section, or subsection on global climate change, nor will you find the terms “greenhouse gas” and “greenhouse effect.” Just because EPA has authority to regulate lead as an air quality contaminant, it does not follow that EPA has authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

This end run around Congress raises grave Constitutional concerns. The EPA is proceeding due to the contortions of logic in the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling, Massachusetts v. EPA (549 U.S. 497, 2007). Under the majority’s selective reading, Lewis observes:

[...] a thing may be an “air pollutant” even if it does not degrade air quality. As Justice Scalia quipped in dissent, given the majority’s reading, “It follows that everything airborne, from Frisbees to flatulence, qualifies as an ‘air pollutant.’” Indeed, if anything emitted into or entering the ambient air is an “air pollutant,” then even absolutely clean, pollution-free air is an “air pollutant” the moment it moves or circulates.

Yet, we have the power to stop this unbridled power grab. The power to create and define a law comes only from Congress (as representatives of we the people), not from the Supreme Court or the EPA. As Lewis points out:

Members of Congress, however, have a duty to exercise their own judgment to determine what the law means. They cannot automatically defer to the Court’s interpretation without Congress ceasing to be an independent and co-equal branch. A doctrine of judicial infallibility is as alien to our Constitution as is a doctrine of bureaucratic supremacy.

Scheduled for a June 10 vote, Senator Murkowski’s resolution asserts Congress’ authority to define the role of the EPA. Lewis sums up what’s at stake:

The importance of the vote on S.J.Res.26 is difficult to exaggerate. Nothing less than the integrity of our constitutional system of separated powers and democratic accountability hangs in the balance.

Contact Senator Webb and Senator Warner today and urge them vote to support for Murkowski and S.J.Res.26.

Thank you to everyone who has contacted Senators Webb and Warner in support of the Murkowski resolution that would override the EPA’s attempt to backdoor Cap and Trade (tax) by circumventing the legislative process. Our sources are telling us that the resolution is getting good bipartisan support: 41 senators already, including Webb. True to form, though, Warner still hasn’t stated his position.

The vote is scheduled for June 10^th. We must keep intense pressure on both of them to show them we are still engaged and we expect them to protect Virginia’s—and America’s—economic future and the integrity of the legislative process by standing up to an out of control EPA, preventing them from foisting enormous taxes on us at a time when we’re already struggling and face even greater problems in the future. Call and visit both Webb and Warner’s district offices.

Click here to learn more about the issue and how to take supportive action.

Let’s talk about economics. In fact, let’s call this Econ 101. But I’m not an economist, so this is a layman’s view. The first part of this essay is preaching to the choir for Tea Partiers, but it’s important to the later parts, so bear with me.

In order for wealth to be available for any purpose, it first must be produced. Wealth is produced in a quaint and old fashioned process known as production. To produce wealth, someone has to work. And not only that; what some in the limousine liberal set would find to be even more shocking, someone has to make something.

This does not mean that everyone needs to work in a factory, on a farm or in a mine. But this is incredibly important: it does mean that a lot of people do need to. For example, people who dig coal out of the ground are producing wealth. People who turn that coal into electricity are, too. Making things is often noisy, dangerous, sweaty, and uncomfortable work. It’s also nothing less than vital; production is the engine of the economy. This is an undeniable fact that we must never lose sight of.

The rest of us, if we’re not employed in production, are probably employed helping them stay productive (health care, education, housing, etc) or in business services (computers and IT, communications, office services, personnel, etc), or perhaps in some other area like retail consumer goods. Many of us, in fact most of us in Western economies work in these supporting areas of the economy and not in actual production. Don’t get me wrong: these service jobs are essential, too. Without many of them the productive economy couldn’t function. That’s why those jobs exist. They stimulate economic activity and produce tax revenue. They are real work. The core of an economy, though, lies in production. We can’t all work in the service sector.

We are seeing increasing evidence from all over the Western world that the productive have become badly outnumbered. Even worse, the production process has become misunderstood or even maligned. Dirty, sweaty and dangerous jobs making things have been sent to Asia in favor of an entirely service sector economy. How is this possible?

Over the past few decades the FIRE economy (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) was substituted for production. How does it work? Simple: the Federal Reserve blows ever-bigger money and credit bubbles, and people use debt to buy houses and Chinese-made consumer stuff they can’t truly afford. And it worked for awhile. In fact, it worked so well that we started to believe we didn’t need to make anything at all. We got rich making nothing, as long as the Fed’s credit bubble stayed inflated and as long as people went deeper and deeper into debt.

But that’s all over now. We have a mountain of debt, and no one wants anymore. But that doesn’t matter because the idiotic federal government keeps borrowing more money for us, signing our names on the loan papers. How are we ever going to pay it off? There’s only one way to pay off debt, and that’s by producing wealth. But we in the USA don’t really make much anymore, we just service each other.

The only way we will be able to dig our way out is to once again concentrate on making things, right here in Virginia, USA. This means our future depends on protecting, encouraging and enhancing real productive economic activity, right here in Virginia.

So what do we have to do? Luckily, Virginia already has a reputation as a business-friendly state. Let’s build on it; I’ll cite just a few examples:

1. Productive economies run on energy. We are a major producer and user of coal; cap-and-trade would be doubly hard on Virginia and must be defeated.
2. High taxes dampen economic activity. Virginia must become a low tax state.
3. We must fight the soon-to-be federally proposed VAT tax, where each step of the productive process is taxed. I can’t think of a better way than VAT to force productive jobs to go elsewhere.

There’s one more thing I want to point out: in order for Virginia to be able to take care of her own and to take care of Virginians who are in genuine need, we must be able to produce excess wealth. The more productive our economy is, the better able we are to take care of our own. It’s really that simple. The problem is not that we are not taxed enough. The problem is that we have placed too many obstacles in the path of production. If we can’t produce, nothing else matters.

I mentioned in my Thursday post about Senator Murkowski’s EPA resolution that this was happening because the legislative process for cap and trade (tax) has failed. So far. A person posted an accurate comment that a new version of cap and trade has been introduced called the “American Power Act” that you need to be informed about. 

This is, of course, what the Left does when they fail to win a debate: they simply change the language and start over as if the previous debate never happened and no one will notice what they’ve done. But we’re not fooled—we know that despite the new name, the substance remains the same: higher taxes, fewer jobs.

The American Thinker does a quick calculation (based on CBO cost estimates of cap and trade) of how much this bill would cost the average American household:

So if we do the math and divide the $846 billion by the estimated one hundred-nine million households in America the ultimate burden of this bill is an average of $7761.00 per household per year.  The CBO estimated the lost jobs as a result of this bill will be in the millions nation wide; and you thought 9.9% unemployment was bad.

And far more costly than the staggering price tag of the bill is the damage it does to your liberty. This will grant government the power to regulate anything in your life they can tie to energy use (which is basically everything you do).

We can’t let our representatives think we’ve gone to sleep on this one (or any of the other liberty-stealing actions they push). Even if Murkowski’s resolution ultimately passes, it’s pointless if the American Power Act does as well. 

You know the drill: call, fax, e-mail, show up at offices. You may not think they’re listening, but they are, even if they pretend they’re not. But those aren’t the only things we can and should be doing. It’s time to start registering voters. Work with everyone you know who isn’t registered already to get them registered. You can start by sending them to this website. A big uptick in voter registration led by us will show the politicians that not only have they not worn us down, we are now more engaged then ever and fully committed to changing our leadership.

And restoring power to the people.

I want to follow up on Jamie’s post yesterday about the pending Cap and Trade resolution scheduled for next week.

Because the Senate has been unable to pass legislation on this, the EPA is preparing to simply regulate CO2 on their own without a single vote or word of input from you. Senator Murkowski, though, has introduced a resolution that would strip the EPA of their power to do this. Her resolution already has 41 co-sponsors.

Senators Webb and Warner (especially Webb, as he is the more likely to be persuaded) must know where we stand on this issue. E-mail, call, and visit their offices, letting them know you don’t support a tax on air that will crush businesses and increase the cost of energy on all Americans. The last thing we need during a down economy is to pay higher energy bills.

But on a broader level, they must know that we are aware this is yet another huge power grab and we are committed fighting it. We don’t support unelected, unaccountable government agencies doing whatever they please. If they can, why do we even have the legislative process? Further, if CO2 can be regulated at the whims of the EPA, government now has the power to tell businesses and individuals how to live their lives. They can force you to pay to upgrade your heating and cooling units and replace your household appliances with energy efficient ones, regulate the temperature in your homes, and make you purchase whatever car they deem safe for the environment. That’s just for starters. Believe me, they will take it much farther and do things you never even would have thought of. The possibilities are endless. And there will be nothing you can do about it.

Now is the time to stop this. Contact Webb and Warner. A group will be visiting Webb’s downtown office (5^th and Franklin) at 11:00 am tomorrow. Be there to fight for your (and your children’s) liberties.