Crime of the century: LIBOR and the Global Bank Conspiracy

In what may prove to be the “Crime of the Century,” recent evidence has come to light that some of the world’s largest banks were involved in a scheme to manipulate a key interest rate index, thereby cheating investors out of hundreds of billions of dollars.

LIBOR which stands for London Interbank Offering Rate is where 16 major international banks with offices in London each day inform the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) what each bank must pay in order to borrow cash from other banks.  The BBA then takes those rates and tosses out the highest rates and the lowest rates and averages the ones that are left and it’s published as LIBOR.  It has just become public knowledge that the banks making up the LIBOR system apparently were manipulating these rates to their advantage.

LIBOR is like the prime lending rate for banks and affects hundreds of trillions of dollars of investments in derivatives, bonds, and mortgages.  Because LIBOR is, by far, the largest interest rate index in the world, it has far reaching affects both short-term and long-term.  For example, if you had a 30-year mortgage with an interest rate set at LIBOR plus 4 percent, a few tenths of percent could cost you tens of thousands of extra dollars.  And you would be struck with that interest rate for the life of the mortgage.

Of course, the banks deny that they manipulated the LIBOR.  That’s despite the fact that Barclays Bank, a trillion dollar British bank and one of the largest in the world, had to negotiate a settlement with the British government for several hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties.  But it still claims it did no wrongdoing. Some of the biggest banks in America including Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of America are also involved in setting LIBOR along with some of the other largest banks in the world.

The world’s major banks gained massive advantage in manipulating the LIBOR in two different ways.  The first is pretty straightforward, based upon the simple fact that these banks themselves hold trillions of dollars of investments that are LIBOR-rate sensitive.  With respect to investments that made them money if LIBOR dropped, the banks could manipulate the rate to drop when everyone in the world was expecting the rates to shoot up.  That is when the financial markets were in turmoil and the banks were exposed to massive losses.  Emails released by Barclays conclusively demonstrate that is what they did. They manipulated their stated interest rates to the BBA so as to affect the LIBOR in a way to maximize the value of their trading positions.

This is where the banks get their second advantage of manipulating LIBOR.  During the height of the 2008 financial crisis, LIBOR was viewed as a gauge of the financial strength of banks.  If the banks were charged high interest rates by other lenders who supposedly were most familiar with the borrowers’ financial condition, then it would indicate they were at a high risk of defaulting on their loans and therefore in a poor financial state.  So if a bank was actually charged a high rate of interest by another bank but falsely informed the BBA they were actually charged a lower rate, they would be looked at as a healthier bank.  This was important because, at the time, there were major investors and financial institutions withdrawing funds or refusing to lend to other institutions like Bear Sterns or Lehman Brothers.  An institution could go bankrupt in a matter of days without such investment given the heavy dependence on short term funds, the funds LIBOR was created to rate.

Now, the question of the century is, did the British government encourage the banks to manipulate the LIBOR downwards during the financial crisis?  There is some evidence that this is exactly what happened.  Barclays’ former chief operating officer, Jerry del Missier, contends that Barclays was told by the Bank of England in 2008 to underreport its borrowing costs.  He bases this on a discussion between Bank of England deputy governor Paul Tucker and Barclays’ then-head of investment banking Bob Diamond.  The subject of their discussion? Barclays’ persistently high LIBOR submissions to the BBA.

Barclays argues that Mr. del Missier misinterpreted the call, that Barclays had not been urged by the Bank of England to underreport its own borrowing costs in order to appear to be in line with other banks.  But in one transcript of a telephone call from April 11, 2008, released by the New York Fed this past Friday, a Barclays employee told the New York Fed that Barclays was underreporting its rate to avoid the stigma associated with being an outlier with respect to its LIBOR submissions, relative to other participating banks.  Another smoking gun came from a subsequent phone call, on October 24, 2008, in which another Barclays employee told a US Fed official that the LIBOR rate was “absolute rubbish”.

Under US law it’s a criminal conspiracy to falsely report and manipulate interest rates for the financial benefit of a cartel.  If the Bank of England encouraged this, then it becomes even worse.  On top of the Bank of England’s involvement, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the then-New York Federal Reserve Chairman, allegedly knew about the LIBOR manipulations in 2007.  Geithner even corresponded with the British financial services regulator as well as the Bank of England in 2008 on the LIBOR manipulations and on how to prevent them.  But nothing was done to stop the continued manipulation.

This brings into question whether Geithner, the Fed, and the British authorities can be trusted to regulate the global financial network for the benefit of the citizens.  If what’s all alleged is confirmed, this is truly a global criminal conspiracy.

Photo credit:  Matt from London

Independence Day Roll-out of New Website!

Happy Independence Day!  I hope you enjoy the collection of articles that Kathleen and I have put together to mark this 236th anniversary of our extraordinary country.   Allen West’s Balkanized States of America as well as Heritage’s Does the Declaration of Independence Still Matter are especially good reads.

I also want to welcome you to our new website!  As many of you know, the genesis of JoeMiller.us was the 2010 U.S. Senate Campaign.  After the close of the campaign, Kathleen and I continued to receive feedback from like-minded patriots throughout country asking that we stay engaged.  We resurrected the JoeMiller.us website in May 2011.

Since then, we’ve seen incredible growth.  It’s obvious that people throughout the country are desperate for the real news, with biases of the establishment media stripped away.  With the following that JoeMiller.us has generated, Kathleen and I decided to invest in upgrading the site to make it more user friendly and adaptable to the expectation of our readers.

So, over the last several weeks, Kathleen and I have worked with top line developers at The Liberty Lab to create a new site.  The product of those efforts is before you.  I encourage to take special note of Kathleen’s new page, “Kathleen’s Korner.”  Please also take time to explore the other new features of the site as well.

Understand that there may be some glitches that we experience along the way.   If you see anything you don’t like or needs to be improved, please take a moment to send some feedback through our contact box at the upper right-hand corner of the site.  And don’t forget, if you want to see our efforts expanded, please donate or choose to advertise on our site.  Ultimately, we’d like to add reporters and writers to our site to bring you more original content.

Again, thank you for standing with Kathleen and me for the cause of Liberty.  And may God Bless you and your families on this Independence Day.

 

My Verdict: Obamacare UNCONSTITUTIONAL!

Today’s shocking Obamacare decision caused me to reminisce about my time on the federal bench ten years ago.  When I was a United States Magistrate Judge, I took the same oath of office that every federal judge and justice in the country swears to.  I swore to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. . .”

That oath is anchored to the phrase, “Constitution of the United States.”  If the Constitution changes over time by an activist majority of the Supreme Court, then my oath was essentially an oath to the Supreme Court, not to the Constitution.  Of course, that’s not what the Founders intended.  The Supreme Court was never designed to be the pinnacle of federal power.

But that’s where we are today.  Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005, wrote the 5-4 opinion saving Obamacare and causing President Obama to declare “victory” and pundits to say that his administration has been “vindicated.”  Incredibly, Roberts determined that the government, under its taxing power, has the right to “impos[e] a tax on those who do not buy [a] product,” in this case, health insurance.*

From the bench today, Justice Kennedy issued a scathing denuciation of Robert’s reconstruction of Obamacare:  “The majority rewrites the statute Congress wrote … What Congress called a penalty, the court calls a tax.”  He concluded, “The law is “invalid in its entirety.”

The chief justice’s rescue of the individual mandate is a massive expansion of federal power, now permitting the federal government to regulate, by taxation, its citizens’ “failure to act” or passivity.  I challenge you to go back to the first 150 years of U.S. jurisprudence and find any Supreme Court opinion that would suggest such a construction of Congress’s power to tax and spend under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

In his powerful dissent, Justice Scalia agreed that this power grab was unconstitutional:

What is absolutely clear, affirmed by the text of the 1789 Constitution, by the Tenth Amendment ratified in 1791, and by innumerable cases of ours in the 220 years since, is that there are structural limits upon federal power—upon what it can prescribe with respect to private conduct, and upon what it can impose upon the sovereign States.

And then the zinger:

Whatever may be the conceptual limits upon the Commerce Clause and upon the power to tax and spend, they cannot be such as will enable the Federal  Government to regulate all private conduct and to compel the States to function as administrators of federal programs.

In other words, when the federal government is allowed to tax non-activity, what powers are left to the states and the people under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments?  Not much.

But even more basically, Roberts and the four more liberal members of the bench are all starting with the assumption that the federal government can tax and spend for things outside of its enumerated powers, misconstruing the “general welfare” clause of the Constitution.  James Madison apparently disagreed, suggesting the clause “amounted to no more than a reference to the other powers enumerated in the subsequent clauses of the same section.”

Not anchoring the general welfare clause to the enumerated powers enables virtually unlimited federal spending/taxation power and is completely contrary to the whole nature of the Constitution: a document designed to restrain the federal government, retaining all unspecified powers to the states and people.

The Roberts decision reflects that any faith in the Supreme Court to solve our nation’s problems is misplaced.  We must engage like never before.  Reject the LSM, rely on solid Internet news sources, support a Tea Party congressional candidate, engage in vote integrity efforts, and reflect upon the moral crisis we’re facing.   A massive victory in November will put today’s defeat in the proper dustbin of history.  But unless we rapidly correct the downward spiral, there won’t be much left for future generations.

***

Author’s note:  To his credit, Chief Justice Roberts did reject the Commerce Clause as constitutional authority for Obamacare.

PHOTO CREDIT: DonkeyHokey

Obama intends to exempt multinational corporations from US laws

A leaked document reflects that the Obama administration is negotiating an international agreement to allow multinational corporations, operating inside the U.S., to be exempt from many US laws.  And it gets worse.  The agreement sets up an international tribunal to decide which U.S. laws the multinational corporations can ignore.  The agreement is called the Trans-Pacific Partnership  (“TPP”).

The negotiations surrounding the TPP have been shrouded in extreme secrecy.  That’s outraged members of Congress from both sides of the aisle:

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has been so incensed by the lack of access as to introduce legislation requiring further disclosure. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has gone so far as to leak a separate document from the talks on his website. Other Senators are considering writing a letter to Ron Kirk, the top trade negotiator under Obama, demanding more disclosure.

The leaked text from one of the trade documents may reflect why there’s been such an effort to keep the TPP discussions under wraps.  Lori Wallich, head of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch stated yesterday that

Via closed-door negotiations, U.S. officials are rewriting swaths of U.S. law that have nothing to do with trade and in a move that will infuriate left and right alike have agreed to submit the U.S. government to the jurisdiction of foreign tribunals that can order unlimited payments of our tax dollars to foreign corporations that don’t want to comply with the same laws our domestic firms do.

She maintains that the TPP would

Limit how U.S. federal and state officials could regulate foreign firms operating within U.S.  boundaries, with requirements to provide them greater rights than domestic firms;

Extend the incentives for U.S. firms to offshore investment and jobs to lower-wage countries;

Establish a two-track legal system that gives foreign firms new rights to skirt U.S. courts and laws, directly sue the U.S. government before foreign tribunals and demand compensation for financial, health, environmental, land use and other laws they claim undermine their TPP privileges; and

Allow foreign firms to demand compensation for the costs of complying with U.S. financial or environmental regulations that apply equally to domestic and foreign firms.

As many of you know, I have been sounding the alarm about multinational corporations for several years.  The multinational corporation’s goal is profit and profit is inhibited by national boundaries with their varying political and legal systems.  It may come as a shock to some of you, but the multinational corporation does not support the U.S. Constitution.  Rather, its aim is uniform legal systems.  It would celebrate the death of the nation-state.

The fact that the Obama administration has been secretly negotiating with multinational corporations to enter into an agreement that undercuts US sovereignty should outrage every red-blooded Patriot.

[Author’s note:  In fairness to Obama, his support for the TPP is no different from the internationalist presidents that preceded him.   But it should come as no shock to anyone that Obama attacked Bush over his support for the TPP in 2008.]

Murkowski vote sends ultra-liberal Hurwitz to the 9th Circuit

CNN reports that the ultra-liberal Andrew Hurwitz, the self-proclaimed “intellect” behind Roe vs. Wade, will be sent on to Obama for appointment following today’s Senate cloture vote:

The Senate Monday voted narrowly to end a filibuster of President Barack Obama’s pick for the California-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after a key Republican argued the judge was too sympathetic to criminal defendants and, based on his writings about Roe v. Wade, might be a judicial activist.  By a vote of 60 to 31, the Senate got the minimum number of votes needed to move forward on the nomination of Andrew Hurwitz, a justice currently serving on the Supreme Court of Arizona.

Senate.gov shows that the minimum number of votes to move Hurtwitz on to his certain confirmation was supplied by several RINO’s including Alaska’s very own Lisa Murkowski.

Hurwitz’s elevation to the U.S. Court Appeals with Murkowski’s vote will move the Ninth Circuit even further to the left.  Hurwitz is so far outside the mainstream that the House Republican Study Committee (RSC) took the unusual approach of sending a letter to the Senate, urging his rejection.  The RSC letter stated that,

Roe stands almost undisputed as an unprecedented judicial usurpation of legislative authority in its fabrication of a “right” to abortion—a “right” that had never before existed in the Constitution.  Yet Mr. Hurwitz continues to distinguish himself among legal scholars of all stripes by standing almost entirely alone in his continued defense of what he calls “careful and meticulous analysis of the competing constitutional issues.”  Despite ample time and experience as both a lawyer and a judge, Mr. Hurwitz continues to hold firmly to these erroneous views.

Additionally, Mr. Hurwitz repeated this trend in his arguments to the Supreme Court in Ring v. Arizona.  Acting as a pro-bono attorney, Mr. Hurwitz suggested that the Supreme Court change the wording of the Constitution in order to arrive at a ruling based on his beliefs, not on the rule of law.  These two examples illustrate significant divergence from the standard we believe life-tenured federal judges should follow in deciding questions of law and fact.

Seldom does the Senate have the opportunity to review a nominee whose views on Roe v. Wade are so clearly known.  Far more rarely, do you as Senators have the opportunity to consider a judge who proudly claims their significant contributions to the creation of that opinion, and the invention of “Constitutional” protection for abortion.  A nominee like Mr. Hurwitz who played so notable a role in one of the most significant exercises of judicial activism in our nation’s history must not be confirmed.

Earlier today LifeNews joined RSC’s opposition, warning that, “Since Hurwitz is still proud of inventing abortion rights from whole cloth, we can be sure he’ll continue to pull things from the constitutional ether if promoted from the Arizona Supreme Court to the Ninth Circuit. Only then, the victims of his judicial activism won’t be limited to Arizona. They will also include the residents of California, Montana, Alaska, Nevada, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands — all part of the Ninth Circuit.”

Now that Murkowski has voted for cloture to satisfy her leftist constituents, watch her vote against Hurwitz on confirmation, knowing that such a vote will have no impact given the Democrat’s majority.  This is the kind of duplicity Alaskans have come to expect from our senior senator.

IRS targets Tea Party groups – their goal is silence of the right

The Tea Party is an amazing political phenomenon, one that remains strong despite the media’s all-out assault since its beginnings in 2009, and I am proud to be a part of it. If ever there was an All-American movement, it is the Tea Party. Patriotic, hard-working, family oriented, and focused on a simple request – limited government and fiscal responsibility. What’s not to like about it ? The answer is simple – it threatens the liberals grip on government and many other areas of our lives.

One of the revealing benefits of many concerned citizens becoming politically active is the realization by many that politicians are not as smart as they make themselves out to be. In fact, it becomes pretty distressing to see how limited is the knowledge base of many politicians in regards to the  Constitution and American history. As more and more patriots get involved, our efforts become more effective, despite many setbacks and the continued assault by both the President and the MSM to derail the Tea Party.

While at CPAC this year, I met many great conservatives passionate about fighting for shared American ideals. There was a great cross-section of the country and all age groups. Especially heartening were the many young people, including some strong conservatives I met at the Yale Political Union in January. Another passionate  and articulate Tea Party patriot who spoke at CPAC is Jennifer Stefano, who literally stumbled upon a Tea Party rally while taking a walk in the park with her family. Now she is an articulate and effective spokesman for the movement and drawing a lot of attention to the grass-roots movement.

Yet what is the response to the Tea Party from the MSM, the President, and now, the IRS ? Their goal is simply to silence the movement. Their number one argument is that the Tea Party is racist, the ultimate trump card they use when anything doesn’t go their way. While Occupy Wall St. can break laws all day long while politicians from Oakland to New York City cross their arms, the Tea Party is investigated in Draconian ways, now officially through the IRS.

Mark Levin is pursuing action against the IRS (Exempt Organization Division) for

using inappropriate and intimidating investigation tactics in the administration of applications for exempt status submitted by organizations associated with the Tea Party movement.

Michelle Malkin also reports on the IRS intimidation of Tea Party groups across the country.

Make no mistake, this is bullying at the highest levels of government. While the President and the MSM feign outrage at the slightest faux pas (real or imagined), real outrage should be directed at these type of Machiavellian steps our government seems to take with impunity. Let us work towards electing politicians who will uphold the Constitution and allow us to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without the government meddling in our everyday lives.

Where will we be in November 2012 – let alone in 2020?

As I discussed during my Senate campaign less than two years ago, our nation faces some very tough times ahead, in both the near-term and certainly in the long term.  Since that campaign, the state of our nation – and Alaska – has not improved; by many standards it has deteriorated.  The false hope peddled by Obama lies strewn about the Occupy sites, even as many continue to cling to unreality.  However, I am doubly committed to fighting to Restore Liberty in our nation and my great state.

Our nation has reached a condition where many times, up is down, right is wrong, and good is evil. Whereas diversity is celebrated as a core character trait, we witness over and over that “diversity” is an acronym for the “liberal mindset,” entertaining no deviation from politically correct dogma. Nothing crystallizes the backlash of straying from the liberal plantation more than Susan G. Komen’s recent public relations disaster following its announcement that it would cut off funds from Planned Parenthood.

At the same time, US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg tells Egyptian media that she would look elsewhere if she were writing a constitution today. Never mind that she is sworn to uphold the US Constitution, the legal foundation for the greatest nation on earth.  But this is no surprise given Ginsburg’s increasing reliance on foreign courts in her own legal decisions.

President Obama, with deep ties to radical members of anti-American organizations, has no qualms in dropping the name of his alleged savior when it brings him political points via a fawning US media. Citing Jesus in support of how one should spend money is a surprise though, given the fact that Obama donates a pathetic 1% of his income to charity.  Moreover, his sudden affinity for Christ doesn’t make much sense in light of his past hostility toward our nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage.  Nevertheless, he invokes the name of Jesus to aid in tax collecting.

As we head into this important and already contentious election season, we are faced with a juggernaut Establishment machine that seems to have no regard for the rule of law, especially as it regards vote integrity. While Eric Holder demonizes any state that dares to pass voter ID laws, his own media event attacking these requirements required all attendees to present – you guessed it – an ID card.

The Republican nomination might be considered by some as a healthy and vigorous means of competing for the right to oppose Obama. But right now it appears that “Republican Demolition Derby” might be a better way to describe that process.  In any event, one of the least conservative candidates, Mitt Romney (whom I strongly oppose), has a solid advantage on the road to the nomination.  Newt Gingrich, trying to link himself to Ronald Reagan, carries his own baggage:  big government credentials from the past thirty years that should set off alarm bells for any conservative.  And while my visit with Ron Paul last month was very encouraging on the fiscal front, his assessment of the threat of radical Islam is difficult to stomach. So is Santorum the “not Romney?”  Not as long as he continues to embrace earmarks, endorsement of establishment candidates, and the other hallmarks of DC corruption.  Such an approach to government makes his conservative rhetoric ring hollow.

So where will we be in November of this year?  How about 2020? Can we tolerate another four years of Obama’s devastating assault on the moral and economic fabric of our nation?

The sleeping conservative giant woke up in 2008, organized in 2009, and won amazing victories in 2010, nationally and in many statehouses and local jurisdictions. The conservative movement is alive and well, and on the move. 2012 is another step on the path to Restoring Liberty, but it won’t be the final step, not by any stretch of the imagination. This is a long war we are in, one that requires all of our efforts, for the long haul.

What must we do this year and beyond? We must fight, for sure. We need to recruit, educate, and become stronger organizationally and policy-wise. We have the moral – and legal – high ground, yet it seems we continue to cede this ground back to the enemy. We must always be prepared to give an answer for our hope, to fight vigorously, yet with civility, on the battlefield of ideas.

The mission I started almost two years ago is as valid now as it was then, if not more so. With recent visits to Yale and with conservative leaders in DC, I am encouraged with the commitment of so many who are fighting for our nation.  This includes a surprising number of like-minded students at Yale who vigorously defended free market principles amidst a crushing onslaught of Big Government-types who seem to see DC as the answer to everything.

This week, I will be joining thousands of conservatives at CPAC. I hope to learn about the many different organizations that are fighting the good fight and listen to and share ideas with grassroots conservatives from across the nation.

2010 was just the beginning, and 2012 will be another campaign in a long war to take back our nation.  If the gains in 2012 are as significant this year as two years ago, our movement will continue to grow – and be effective in the goal to Restore Liberty. We will likely not gain all of the victories we desire at once, but we should take heart in our current strength – and trajectory.  We must win the Senate, the White House, and gain even more Tea Party strength in the House, not to mention the critical battlefields of local and state politics.

Are you with us in this fight? It just takes a few patriots to Restore Liberty to this great nation.

For the future of America, get involved now.

Follow Joe Miller at Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Gingrich’s Lunar Plan: Blasting Government Spending to New Heights

As most of you know, I am no fan of Mitt Romney.  The only constant in Mitt’s history seems to be moving his political career forward.  So, I haven’t exactly been disappointed in the recent disruption of Mitt’s coronation plans.  Moreover, I’ve got to admit that I’ve enjoyed watching the Establishment’s hyperventilation over Newt Gingrich’s upstart candidacy.

I’ve always been amazed by Newt’s intellect and his capacity to generate almost unlimited schemes to make government better.  He’s a big idea guy, maybe a bit of a technocrat.   So it didn’t surprise me when today, he announced a big idea to make America proud again:  a permanently manned lunar base by 2020.  But this scheme directly confirmed my fears of what Newt’s presidency could become.

What this boils down to is little connection to reality.  Reality is that this nation is nearly bankrupt.  To get us even close to solvent requires radical, significant cuts, similar to what Ron Paul has proposed.  If the Speaker wants to combine his space plan with fundamental reforms of the entitlement state, perhaps it would be worthy of discussion.

For those of you who see this as something to help America dream again, creating new found patriotism, keep in mind what our last major space project was:  the International Space Station.  I’m not exactly a fan of creating “patriotism” in international efforts.  And Gingrich hasn’t guaranteed an exclusively sovereign US effort, something we’re unlikely to see given his internationalist tendencies and modern multinational space efforts.  Nor have I heard him call for serious reform of NASA, an agency dominated by failure and alien hunters.

In any event, the real problem is that we’re well over $100 trillion in debt, including future unfunded liabilities, and until that is radically attacked, there’s no way we can spend hundreds of billions on a moon base.

Newt has called for downsizing the federal government, getting rid of deficit spending and returning power to the states.  But now he’s calling for more spending, making me wonder whether he really comprehends that the federal government is the problem.  Its debt threatens to drag us into oblivion.  Dreams are nice, especially while Rome is burning, but they don’t put out the fire.

Follow Joe Miller at Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Socialism behind Obama’s Rejection of Keystone?

The president’s decision to reject a proposal concerning the Keystone pipeline project is exceptionally disappointing.  In short, the pipeline would have served as a major distribution corridor for crude oil from the oil sands of Canada to various refineries located throughout the United States.  At a number of junctures in the lower-48, it was also expected to be a conduit for significant quantities of American crude.

No one can reasonably contest that the construction of the pipeline would have led to the creation of thousands of good jobs here in America, not to mention its role in increasing the worldwide supply of energy.  I briefly touched on this world supply issue in an earlier post concerning the sensitive situation with Iran in the Straits of Hormuz.

The not-so-cynical view of Obama’s decision is that he was playing to his radical environmentalist base.  That’s consistent with one of his major stated reasons — the threat of environmental damage from the pipeline — for rejecting Keystone.  However, pipeline environmental disasters are rare and minor compared to oil tanker mishaps at sea.  And now that Obama has rejected the pipeline, Canada will inevitably look to transpacific buyers, such as China, for their western crude supplies.   And how will the crude get to Canada’s new partners? By seafaring supertankers, of course.

The cynical view of Obama’s decision is clear:  he rejected the pipeline because it’s largely a private enterprise, created by market demands not government dictated economic policies.  In other words, he doesn’t like it because it is not a project run by the federal government.  But while Obama single-handedly destroys this guaranteed US economic opportunity from private investment, he has no problems sinking billions of US tax dollars to support failing energy businesses like Solyndra.

So what gives?  Unlike Obama’s socialistic projects, private investment like the Keystone pipeline doesn’t allow for much corruption, campaign contribution kickbacks, cronyism, and other graft.  Had the Keystone pipeline been constructed by government contractors using a government-run slush fund and Obama’s cronies, there’s little doubt that it would have been approved.

Such cynicism should be no surprise after nearly four years of Obama.

Follow Joe Miller at Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Iran situation illustrates need for energy independence

The United States may reject oil from Iran but that does not result in immunity from Iran’s saber-rattling in the Persian Gulf.  The situation shaping up in the Strait of Hormuz illustrates the need for a serious push towards energy independence here in the United States.  It defies common sense for the American economy to be reliant on foreign sources of energy when we have so much available right here at home.

Simply put, it comes down to supply and demand.  When any nation, such as Iran in this case, decides to restrict the supply of energy available on the world market, the price of that energy will spike for consumers, and especially American consumers.

Our nation has the ability to greatly increase the energy supplies available here at home, so why do we continue to allow petro-dictators, oppressive regimes and declared enemies of the United States to distort the market at the cost of the American People?

Follow Joe Miller at Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.