The $128 Trillion Rip-Off
by Virgil 20 Jan 2014, 10:10 AM PDT
The biggest theft in world history is occurring
right here, right now—literally, right under our feet. It’s a theft of wealth
that measures in the 15-digits—wealth that’s being taken away from its rightful
owners, the American people, and being sacrificed, in effect, to the Green Gods
of Austerity and Sacrifice.
The exact size of the loot? It totals $128
trillion in recoverable oil and natural gas, according to the Washington,
D.C.-based Institute for Energy Research (IER). To put that $128 trillion sum
in perspective, we could use a mere 13 percent of it to pay off the entire US national
debt. Indeed, that $128 trillion is almost 35 times greater than federal
expenditures for fiscal year 2014, and more than seven times the annual US GDP.
We might note that IER’s $128 trillion
estimate includes only oil and gas; no one has any real idea how much more
wealth—in the form of coal, rare earth elements, and who knows what else—is to
be found in the the 28 percent of land in the US that’s owned by federal
government.
At present, there’s no plan whatsoever to
do anything to utilize this wealth as the Obama administration
is seeking ever-tighter federal regulations, and, beyond the Keystone Pipeline, Republicans hardly ever raise the issue.
In fact, the IER study was released more
than a year ago, and nobody seems to have noticed. Since then, we’ve had
endless negotiations over some sort of “grand bargain” to raise taxes and cut
earned senior entitlements—and in the meantime, we’ve been ignoring the
grandest bargain of all: abundance.
Seems more than a little ridiculous,
doesn’t it? That is, for the U.S.
to be scraping along, fiscally and economically, while leaving fallow such
gargantuan natural resources?
Moreover, to get at this wealth, we don’t
need to drill in Yosemite or other National Parks; we simply need to access the
vast federal lands on and offshore in the "Lower 48," Alaska, and the many overseas U.S.
territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific.
So how did this wealth freeze-out happen?
How did so much treasure get locked up and unused? Here’s how: in the early
19th century, the federal government sold off or gave away most of its lands in
the east. Then, in 1862, came the first of a series of Homestead Acts, which
led to the glorious privatization of much of the Midwest.
Yet the mostly arid lands west of the Mississippi
were generally not seen as viable property for homesteading, and so Uncle Sam
continued to hold title. Then the environmentalists came along and realized
that they could gain de facto control of more than a quarter of US territory.
Congress repealed the Homestead Act in 1976, and after that, the
environmentalists happily proceeded with their no-growth plans.
However, the Green land-grabbing did
provoke a pro-growth backlash in the West, the so-called “Sagebrush Rebellion,”
dedicated to opposing enviro-liberalism. The Sagebrush Rebels helped Ronald
Reagan carry every Western state, save Hawaii,
in the 1980 presidential election; the hope was that Reagan would open the West
to development. Unfortunately, their point man in Washington, Interior
Secretary James G. Watt, turned out to be bit of a kook with a nasty sense of
humor; he was forced out of office in 1983, and that was the end of the
Sagebrushers as a force.
In the decades since, Green Democrats,
joined by more than a few Green Republicans, have banned drilling everywhere
they could. The bans on offshore drilling are a nice perk for rich people who
treasure their ocean views, but it’s not so great for everyone else who needs
money or a job.
Meanwhile, other countries have charged
ahead. Norway,
for example, eagerly drills in the waters outside of its scenic fjords; that’s
why the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund is worth $783 billion—not bad for a
country of just five million people. When the oil is gone, the oil wells will
be gone, and Norway
will still be rich because of all that money in the bank.
So in the spirit of Norway, what could the US do with its
God-given wealth? With its $128 trillion? The first thing we could do is
eliminate any thought of tax increases. After that, we could have a round of
tax cuts—after all, $128 trillion works out to more than $403,000 per person in
the US—and then we could think about spending money to cure disease, build new
infrastructure, establish missile defense, maybe even go to Mars. And we’d
still have plenty of money for a rainy day.
Would the Greens resist such big new
resource production? You bet they would. They’d fight it to the last trust-fund
liberal. But the prospect of $128 trillion in wealth and growth makes it
worthwhile for the rest of us to take up this fight.
Indeed, we might further note that a
15-digit number would be way more than enough to pay for a cool way to
sequester carbon, such as turning CO2 into plastic or building material. And
once the US mastered such sequestration technology, we could share it with the
world, which would make us heroes to most of those worried about climate
change—although, of course, the hardcore Malthusians would hate the
sequestration process all the more if it actually helped poor people.
Yet such Green opposition is, as they say,
a feature, not a bug. That is a plus, not a minus. How so? Because
conservatives and libertarians need an issue that binds them politically to
job-hungry Middle America.
If the pro-growth forces got into a
bidding war with the anti-growth forces, the right could make an opening bid of
$128 trillion. That is, $128 trillion to rebuild the lives and life-prospects
of recession-ripped Americans.
Try as they might, there aren’t enough
liberal trust-funders in the world to top such a bid.
Indeed, once the American people figure
out how rich they are—and how the Greens have conspired to cloak that wealth
and keep them poor—there will be genuine hell to pay.
Keystone Pipeline
TransCanada
Corporation is the proposed builder for the Keystone XL
pipeline.
Note: Susan
E. Rice is a stockholder at the TransCanada Corporation,
the White House national security adviser for the Barack Obama
administration, the assistant secretary for the U.S.
Department of State, and a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution (think tank).
Keystone
XL pipeline requires approval from the U.S. Department of State.
John F. Kerry
is the secretary at the U.S. Department of State
for the Barack Obama administration, and
married to
Teresa
Heinz Kerry is married to John F. Kerry,
and an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution
(think tank).
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Brookings Institution (think tank), and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (think tank).
George Soros
is the chairman for the Foundation to Promote
Open Society.
William
W. Bradley is a trustee at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace (think tank), Mellody L.
Hobson’s mentor, and Anita B. Dunn
was his chief of staff.
Anita B.
Dunn was William W. Bradley’s chief of
staff, the communications director for the Barack Obama
administration, produced ad campaign for the Keystone XL
pipeline, is the head of media for the Barack Obama
Presidential Library, a managing director at SKDKnickerbocker,
and married to Robert F. Bauer.
TransCanada
Corporation is a SKDKnickerbocker
client, and the proposed builder for the Keystone XL pipeline.
Jill
Zuckman is a managing director at SKDKnickerbocker,
and was a reporter for the Chicago Tribune.
David D.
Hiller was the publisher & president & CEO for the Chicago Tribune, a partner at Sidley
Austin LLP, and is a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago.
R. Eden
Martin is the president of the Commercial Club of Chicago,
and counsel at Sidley Austin LLP.
Michelle
Obama was a lawyer at Sidley Austin LLP.
Barack Obama
was an intern at Sidley Austin LLP.
Newton N.
Minow is a senior counsel at Sidley Austin LLP,
and a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago.
Mellody
L. Hobson is a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago,
and her mentor is William W. Bradley.
Robert F.
Bauer is married to Anita B. Dunn,
a partner at Perkins Coie, was White House
counsel for the Barack Obama administration, and Barack Obama’s personal counsel.
Obama attorneys aid Obama in
illegal activities, Robert Bauer Perkins Coie help Obama hide birth certificate
records, Payments to attorneys
Posted on September 28, 2010
No comments:
Post a Comment