In the opinion of Congress of Racial Equality chairman Roy Innis, few words better describe the latest Democratic “energy” bill than fraud, swindle, con job or hoax. While cons are great entertainment when they’re just a movie, they’re justifiably the source of anger and outrage when they’re perpetrated on consumers and families by corporations or Congress. That’s what we’re dealing with here, says Innis: An outrageous swindle, in the form of “expanded offshore leasing” that in reality –

* permanently locks up 88% of our OCS oil and gas - and the revenues and jobs that production would bring; and

* is supposed to be replaced with “alternative energy” that would bring brownouts and blackouts, and wouldn’t survive without costly mandates and subsidies

Energy Fraud

By Roy Innis, CORE

Democrats are engineering another energy swindle that will cost consumers and taxpayers. Since publication of my book, Energy Keepers - Energy Killers: The new civil rights battle, millions of Americans have become aware that this country has vast untapped energy resources. Three-fourths of US voters now support expanded onshore and offshore drilling. A bipartisan coalition in Congress wants to increase domestic petroleum, coal and nuclear power, while fostering conservation and wind, solar and other energy opportunities. They’ve been blocked at every turn by liberal Democrats, many of whom are working with radical environmentalists to eliminate proven hydrocarbon and nuclear technologies that provide 93% of our energy, and replace them with systems that currently generate less than 1% of the energy that safeguards our jobs, homes, security and prosperity.

However, political realities and voter outrage over soaring gasoline, food and heating costs forced House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid to devise an elaborate hoax. It had the trappings of a pro-energy bill - but was as authentic as the betting house and announcer in the classic Newman-Redford film, The Sting. Their legislation “expanded offshore leasing” - but only beyond 100 miles off most of our coasts, and 50 miles off four states that would get no revenues from leasing or production, and thus would have no incentive to permit leasing. In other words, it allowed leasing only where there was no petroleum, or where drilling and production would be so far offshore and so expensive that no sane company would do it. The bill made 88% of our nation’s offshore oil and gas permanently off limits - along with jobs and some $800 billion in revenues that development would generate for state and federal governments. The pseudo-energy bill also imposed new subsidies to promote unreliable wind and solar power - paying for them with higher taxes, higher electricity rates and new taxes on oil companies, which then would have less money to drill in the few places that aren’t off limits. It mandated that utilities magically increase their wind and solar electricity generation from 1.5% today to 15% 2020.

Drafted largely by environmentalists and lobbyists, the legislation would have undermined our free market system and given Congress and bureaucrats the power of Roman emperors to give thumbs up or down to companies, industries and jobs. It would have made lobbyists and pressure groups more important to business success or failure than quality products and services, innovative R&D or sound management.Our energy woes have nothing to do with technology or the will of oil companies to lease and drill. They’re due to politics, moratoriums, lawsuits and anti-drilling pressure-group tactics that block drilling everywhere we turn. We’re fed up with it.

This anti-energy insanity has got to stop. We’re the only country on Earth that deliberately locks up its own energy resources, and then spends $700 billion a year (the price of the Wall Street bailout) to import substitutes. We’re driving up energy prices and forcing poor families to choose between buying a gallon of milk or a gallon of gasoline. If Congress can’t get its act together this year, we’ll make darn sure it gets religion next year. Read more here