Should President Barack Obama give approval for the Keystone XL Pipeline project? Or should he continue to oppose the venture that would undoubtedly grow business, increase jobs and create new wealth for middle class working Americans, all for the sake of saving the planet from “global warming?”
If the President did the former, he’d be fulfilling the wishes of increasing numbers of Democrats and a majority of Republicans in the U.S. Congress and, according to a new ABC-Washington Post poll, some 65% of the American population. If he continues to prevent the Keystone expansion, he’ll be satisfying the wishes of billionaire hedge fund manager Tom Steyer. If the President meets Steyer’s demands, Steyer has promised to donate $100 million dollars to Democrat congressional candidates this year.
The President can choose a public policy course that economically strengthens American individuals, families and communities, or he can choose a course that would serve his own raw pursuits for political power. But on this occasion he cannot do both.
Will Americans choose leaders in this fall’s elections that will pursue rational economic policies, or will we continue to empower a radical environmental agenda that undermines human beings? The answer is anything but certain, but this we do know: free people throughout most of the rest of the industrialized world are electing leaders who are far more rational than our President and members of his party.
Free people on at least three different continents have elected governments that are behaving more like Reagan and Bush than either Obama or Biden. One of the most obvious examples of this is just a bit further northward, but right here in North America.
Consider Stephen Harper, the Prime Minster of Canada. First elected in 2006 on a campaign pledge to, among other things, foster close ties to President George W Bush and America’s efforts to fight terrorism, Harper has over the past eight years championed free trade, federal government spending reductions, and a significant boost in oil production. Today the Canadian government is on track to be debt-free in 2015, as Harper tirelessly lobbies the U.S. to become more cooperative with oil pipeline projects and energy exploration.
Then there’s Alison Redford, the Premier of the Province of Alberta (a provincial premier is a counterpart to the Governor of a U.S. state). Redford agreed to serve on a panel with former Vice President Al Gore to discuss oil energy production and “climate change” at last month’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and the panel discussion quickly turned in to a debate between the two.
After the event both Al Gore and the Huffington Post were convinced that Al Gore’s presentation had been brilliant. Yet European media marveled at Redford’s willingness to call-out Gore’s “erroneous” assertions about petroleum-based energy and her “new way of looking at things” pertaining to economic growth.
Then consider the country of Australia and it’s new Prime Minister Tony Abbott. It wasn’t sufficient that in 2013 Australia was already a global leader in iron ore and timber production and that’s its’ government was set to close out the calendar year debt-free – no, the citizenry of the land “down under” wanted an even more business-friendly and fiscally sound government for themselves, so they elected a candidate for Prime Mister who repeated from the campaign trail that the global climate change agenda is “absolute crap.”
Shortly before his election win Abbott was asked in a nationwide television interview “with our government debt so low, why do you want to cut government spending even further?”
“Because there’s still waste in our government, that’s why” Abbott replied. Shortly after his September 7, 2013 landslide victory he set a date of July 1, 2014 by which he intends to eliminate his nation’s “carbon tax.”
And – gasp! – could it be that the European nations are abandoning their “green” status? It would appear that way. Last month the European commission, the legislative body of the union that sets policies shared among the member nations, voted to officially abandon specific sets of “climate change protocols.” Even more stunning, the commission appears to be preparing to allow fracking among the member nations, with the hope of making Europe a leader in the global natural gas and oil shale markets.
America may very well choose to remain aligned with President Obama and the Democrat party for the foreseeable future. But the rest of the industrialized world is moving in the exact opposite direction of our nation, away from the Obama traditions of dangerous government debt and economy-killing environmental zealotry.
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