Trust Gore with domestic energy policies?

Has anyone really stopped to think about why the U.S. is having an
alleged “oil crisis” now — just weeks before the Nov. 7
elections and just a few months before President Clinton is, mercifully,
scheduled to leave the Oval Office?

Not one for run-of-the-mill conspiracy theories, I remember —
paraphrasing, here — something the late President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt once said: Nothing in politics happens by accident;
everything happens for a reason.

As “slick,” dishonest and politically manipulative as the
Clinton-Gore regime has been for nearly eight years, who can deny that
suspecting a rat in this newly-created oil crisis so close to the
election is perfectly logical?

After hearing Gore’s energy proposals last week, the first question I
have for the vice president is this: “Where have you been the last
eight years, sir?”

For eight long, tedious, politically painful, scandalous years, the
Clinton-Gore regime has done virtually nothing to decrease U.S.
dependence on foreign oil. In fact, the U.S. has increased its
dependency on oil following the Gulf War of 1991 from about 45 percent
to its current near-record level of 60 percent.

Sixty percent. Short of releasing oil from our nation’s
strategic wartime reserves and begging OPEC to make us more dependent on
them, Gore’s newest energy proposals will do nothing to
prevent a repeat of spiking oil prices this year, next year, or any
other year in the future.

We’ll just keep “begging” OPEC to supply us, and, if they feel
they’re making enough money, they will. Otherwise, they’ll reduce
production again — like they did last year (and we’re feeling the full
effects of it just now) — and cause another “crisis.”

What kind of “energy policy” is that? Well, it isn’t a real policy —
it is just another short-term proposal designed to allow Gore a free
pass on a critically important issue.

Gore is already working his liberal mantra on the people on the East
Coast, scaring them to death by telling them they’re going to get reamed
this year by high heating oil prices — that is, if the U.S. can even
find any.

That is a truly frightening scenario, but it allows East Coast
voters to forget about asking the one important question: “Where have
you been for the last eight years, Mr. Vice President?”

Or, for that matter, where was he in February when, at a town hall
meeting, Gore criticized suggestions to release strategic oil
reserves to ease domestic prices? Was he on another East Coast of
another country on another planet?

If the Bush/Cheney ticket can use any pressing issue to its advantage
— or any of the far-out charges leveled against them about big oil —
this new “crisis” is the one issue to strike back at Clinton-Gore and be
incredibly believable.

True, Bush and Cheney are oil men or former oil men. Who, then, is
better qualified to speak about oil prices, supply and demand than they?

The limit of Gore’s knowledge of energy policy and gas/oil domestic
supply and demand principles is limited to his hatred of anything he
deems ecologically unsound — such as cars and, naturally, domestic oil
exploration.

He’s written reams and reams about this hatred — “Earth in the
Balance” comes to mind — but now, suddenly, he’s “qualified” to propose
a domestic energy policy? I don’t think so.

Gore has no real domestic energy plans — just criticism of “big oil”
companies who are making profits (like companies are supposed to do)
even though they too are paying more for the oil they must
import, refine, and bring to market.

The Clinton-Gore regime should have done a lot less complaining about
oil prices and a lot more planning about domestic oil needs and supplies
over the past eight years. If they had, Americans on the East Coast or
anywhere else would not be faced with such ridiculously high prices (and
low inventories) of heating oil — again — this winter.

Even Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Fed Chairman Alan
Greenspan have said tapping the nation’s reserves and “tinkering” with
oil prices, supply and demand are not good ideas. That kind of
“manipulation” of the market is artificial, they say, and prone to upset
the economy if OPEC responds by cutting their production (and raising
prices) even further.

Or is it no longer all about “the economy, stupid?”

This “crisis” may or may not be completely an invention of the
Clinton-Gore administration, but you can bet that it sure as hell is
occurring because of the poor planning and energy policy failures of the
administration.

Trust Gore with the nation’s domestic energy policies for the
next four years (as well as the past eight)? A guy who has
publicly stated how much he hates the cars, factories and plants that
use fossil fuels? A candidate whose only domestic energy plan is
to rely even more on the organization that is screwing us already
(because the administration is letting them)?

How dumb would we be for doing that?