Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior…
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More Legal Shenanigans from the Biden Administration’s Department of Education

Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior of federal administrative agencies, whose vast armies of overpaid bureaucrats remain unaccountable for their excesses.

Among the most familiar examples of that bureaucratic abuse is the Department of Education (DOE).  Recall, for instance, the United States Supreme Court’s humiliating rebuke last year of the Biden DOE’s effort to shift hundreds of billions of dollars of student debt from the people who actually owed them onto the backs of American taxpayers.

Even now, despite that rebuke, the Biden DOE launched an alternative scheme last month in an end-around effort to achieve that same result.

Well, the Biden DOE is now attempting to shift tens of millions of dollars of…[more]

March 19, 2024 • 08:35 AM

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Fracking: The Latest Manifestation of American Exceptionalism Print
By Timothy H. Lee
Thursday, September 19 2019
[L]ast November, America exported more oil than it imported, becoming a net energy exporter for the first time since the early 1970s. And then this summer, we surpassed Saudi Arabia as the top oil exporter in the world.

Betting against America is a foolish proposition, as decades and centuries have proven.  Leftist political merchants, however, continue to peddle that gloom and doom. 

The most stinging rebuke in recent years comes courtesy of America’s petroleum sector – perhaps the Left’s most detested bogeyman of all. 

Recall the decades of endless lectures about how petroleum, which has done more than perhaps any other resource in human history to improve lives and advance civilization, was a vanishing resource that we must cede to the mercy of oft-hostile foreign powers and “green” energy boondoggles.  Barack Obama, supposedly the smartest president in history, pontificated repeatedly that we can’t drill our way to energy independence: 

We can’t escape the fact that we only control 2% of the world’s oil, but consume over one-fourth of the world’s oil…  We cannot place our long-term bets on a finite resource that we only control 2% of, especially one vulnerable to hurricanes, war and political turmoil.  Beyond increased domestic production, if we want to increase our long-term independence, we need to reduce our demand and break our dependence on oil. 

The shelf life of that brand of pessimism expired sooner than he could’ve imagined when he spoke those words in March 2011. 

That’s because last November, America exported more oil than it imported, becoming a net energy exporter for the first time since the early 1970s. 

And then this summer, we surpassed Saudi Arabia as the top oil exporter in the world. 

Believe it or not, the news is likely to get even better, as Donald Luskin and Michael Warren explained this week in The Wall Street Journal.  As a result of the American fracking revolution, we stand on the precipice of the most dramatic global resource market shift in human history: 

Daily U.S. crude oil production has risen by 3.65 million barrels since the end of 2016, a leap of more than 40% in less than three years.  The increase is mainly due to the revolution in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling known as fracking.  Global demand has grown by almost the same amount over that period, and the fracking boom has allowed the U.S. to fill all of it.  Considering the dollar values involved, this could be history’s largest shift of global market share for any product over such a short time. 

And it’s only the beginning.  In the next several months, pipeline capacity in West Texas’ Permian Basin shale fields will expand by about one million barrels a day.  That capacity will be taken up quickly by new production that had been held back only by lack of a way to get it to market.  According to the Energy Department, drillers have sunk almost 4,000 Permian wells that are simply waiting to be fracked.  In months, the Permian could be pumping enough to meet all of next year’s global demand growth – all from a single shale play. 

For so long, that astonishing and swift achievement was considered a laughable pipe dream. 

In his 1974 State of the Union speech, Richard Nixon said, “Let this be our national goal:  At the end of this decade, in the year 1980, the United States will not be dependent on any other country for the energy we need.”  Gerald Ford proceeded to move that back five years, setting 1985 as the energy independence date, and Jimmy Carter promised that, “Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 – never.” 

Three decades later, in his own 2006 State of the Union address, George W. Bush prompted a collective national head-scratching when he suggested something called switchgrass as a means toward energy independence. 

But then the unexpected occurred.  American innovation in the form of the fracking revolution was unleashed before people like Obama and Joe Biden had time to suffocate it out of existence via government regulation or outright prohibition. 

And the benefits have already proven invaluable.  Geostrategically, the fracking revolution and consequent greater energy independence has made us less vulnerable to rogue nations like Venezuela and Iran, as the moderate reaction to this month’s attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure illustrate. 

Environmentally, our shift to more abundant and cheaper natural gas from coal has allowed the U.S. to actually reduce carbon emissions, whereas supposedly “green” Europe has increased its own.  So much for the Paris Accords to which leftists profess fealty. 

Fracking has also proven economically beneficial, creating high-paying jobs in the energy and manufacturing sectors, and cutting costs for American consumers.  Simply put, it’s the latest manifestation of American Exceptionalism. 

Despite those benefits, leftists stubbornly seek to kill it.  Democratic 2020 presidential candidates like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris have stated their desire to outlaw it, and it’s just a matter of time until the far left demands unanimity from the field. 

For all of fracking’s economic, employment, environmental and geostrategic benefits, however, we mustn’t allow that senseless agenda to prevail.  

Notable Quote   
 
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— From All of Us at CFIF
 
Liberty Poll   

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