The Smart and the Dumb--guess which one is Obama

The Smart and the Dumb

by John Hinderaker/Powerlineblog in Economy, Energy Policy
The smart is Harold Hamm, the founder and CEO of Continental Resources and one of America’s richest men. Hamm is one of the primary developers of the Bakken oil fields; he estimates that they contain 24 billion barrels of oil. The dumb is Barack Obama. The Wall Street Journal describes Hamm’s meeting with Obama:

When it was Mr. Hamm’s turn to talk briefly with President Obama, “I told him of the revolution in the oil and gas industry and how we have the capacity to produce enough oil to enable America to replace OPEC. I wanted to make sure he knew about this.”
The president’s reaction? “He turned to me and said, ‘Oil and gas will be important for the next few years. But we need to go on to green and alternative energy. [Energy] Secretary [Steven] Chu has assured me that within five years, we can have a battery developed that will make a car with the equivalent of 130 miles per gallon.’” Mr. Hamm holds his head in his hands and says, “Even if you believed that, why would you want to stop oil and gas development? It was pretty disappointing.”

Disappointing, indeed; but that is the story of the Obama administration, which prefers pie in the sky to economic growth. Hamm adds these comments on the administration’s energy policies:

The White House proposal to raise $40 billion of taxes on oil and gas—by excluding those industries from credits that go to all domestic manufacturers—is also a major hindrance to exploration and drilling. “That just stops the drilling,” Mr. Hamm believes. “I’ve seen these things come about before, like [Jimmy] Carter’s windfall profits tax.” He says America’s rig count on active wells went from 4,500 to less than 55 in a matter of months. “That was a dumb idea. Thank God, Reagan got rid of that.” …
Mr. Hamm believes that if Mr. Obama truly wants more job creation, he should study North Dakota, the state with the lowest unemployment rate in the nation at 3.5%. He swears that number is overstated: “We can’t find any unemployed people up there. The state has 18,000 unfilled jobs,” Mr. Hamm insists. “And these are jobs that pay $60,000 to $80,000 a year.” The economy is expanding so fast that North Dakota has a housing shortage. Thanks to the oil boom—Continental pays more than $50 million in state taxes a year—the state has a budget surplus and is considering ending income and property taxes.
It’s hard to disagree with Mr. Hamm’s assessment that Barack Obama has the energy story in America wrong. The government floods green energy—a niche market that supplies 2.5% of our energy needs—with billions of dollars of subsidies a year. “Wind isn’t commercially feasible with natural gas prices below $6 per thousand cubic feet,” notes Mr. Hamm. Right now its price is below $4. This may explain the administration’s hostility to the fossil-fuel renaissance.

Yes: the Obama administration doesn’t like wealth creation and economic growth because they are a threat to its cronyism. It would be hard to think of a more perverse set of economic policies than Barack Obama’s.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/10/the-smart-and-the-dumb.php