Obama raises oil prices and cuts jobs

How much more evidence do we need to prove the president is an ideologue on a mission to ruin the US economy because he believes myths about oil, energy, jobs, the auto industry and the rudiments of prosperity? He is determined to stick with his groundless, harmful beliefs that electric cars, including the Chevy Volt, which no one is buying, can change the way America travels and how it uses fuel.

How many members of the UAW have no work because car-buyers are purchasing only about 10 Chevy Volts per day? When a highly touted car model sells in such low numbers, the only word that can describe it is FLOP.

Americans want cars that run on gasoline and they want gasoline prices to drop. But Obama is standing in the way of both demands. Americans also want high paying jobs. The Energy Industry has plenty of those jobs -- when the government gets out of the way.

Since the upheavals in North Africa and the Middle East began, Obama has given no assitance to entire nations of people revolting against their tyrannical dictators and demanding democracy. His hands-off strategy says only that he willingly accepts the slaughter of citizens by their government. Libyans are dying in substantial numbers as Gaddafi's air assaults continue. What does Obama do? He goes out to play golf.

Interior appeals oil drilling ruling

The Obama administration late Friday appealed a judge's orders directing the Interior Department to act on several Gulf of Mexico deepwater drilling permits.

The appeal is the latest salvo in the ongoing fight over the speed with which Interior is – or isn't – letting oil drillers get back to work after last year's BP oil spill.

Gulf state lawmakers and the oil industry have accused the department of enacting a "de facto" moratorium against new drilling, while Interior says it needs to ensure safety and environmental protections are in place.

Friday's appeal challenges rulings by Judge Martin Feldman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, who on Feb. 17 gave Interior 30 days to make a verdict on five pending deepwater drilling permits applications. He later added two additional permits to that order.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar had hinted the appeal was coming at a Senate hearing Wednesday.

“The judge in this particular case in my view is wrong," Salazar said. “And we will argue the case because I don’t believe that the court has the jurisdiction to basically tell the Department of Interior what my administrative responsibilities are.”

He added, “the policy we have in mind is unmistakingly clear: We are moving forward with the development of oil and gas” production."

Earlier in February, the judge held Interior in contempt, citing "dismissive conduct" by blocking offshore drilling during last year's spill.

The delay in issuing permits since last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill is “increasingly inexcusable," Feldman wrote.

Interior on Monday announced the approval of the first deepwater drilling permit held up since last year’s spill. The permit, issued to Noble Energy for a well partially owned by BP, was not one of those that Feldman’s ruling addressed.

Buffett Bets on America

Warren Buffett cuts to the heart of the matter. Despite current troubles, he's sure the economy is heading for a recovery, and no doubt he's right. However, it's too bad for America that Obama is the president in charge during these rough times.

Buffett to taxpayers: Get over your anger

Bloomberg News

Taxpayer anger against President Barack Obama and Congress is counterproductive because policy makers took measures including deficit spending to stimulate the economy, billionaire investor Warren Buffett told CNBC.

“Sentiment has turned very sour in the last three or four or five months,” the chairman and CEO of Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said in an interview broadcast Thursday.

“I hope we get over it pretty soon, because it’s not productive,’’ Buffett said. “We will come back regardless of how people feel about Washington, but it is not helpful to have people as unhappy as they are about what’s going on in Washington.”

More than three-quarters of U.S. investors view Obama as anti-business and are pessimistic about his policies, a Bloomberg survey this month indicated.

The U.S. unemployment rate is 9.6 percent, even after an $814 billion stimulus measure enacted last year and other government actions.

The Federal Reserve has kept the benchmark overnight lending rate target close to zero and said this week that it was prepared to ease policy further.

“The truth is we’re running a federal deficit that’s 9 percent of gross domestic product,” Buffett said. “That’s stimulative as all get out. It’s more stimulative than any policy we’ve followed since World War II.”

Buffett also said that the economy remains in a recession, by his definition, because most people and businesses still aren’t doing as well as they were before the financial crisis.

Buffett’s assessment of the economy contradicts the view of experts who announced this week that the recession officially ended in June 2009.

Buffett said he uses a common sense standard to evaluate the economy. Buffett gets insight into the health of the economy through the performance of Berkshire’s many subsidiaries.