T. Boone Pickens was on the show today talking about a plan to use natural gas to decrease our independence on OPEC. Read all about it here. And feel free to discuss it in the comments.

How would America's biggest oil companies react to this cap-and-trade legislation? Most people would say "who cares?" because they are big, bad, evil corporations. But you should care, because they big, bad, evil corporations also provide Americans with jobs and energy.

So how will these companies react? According to Bloomberg News, they will be closing plants, cutting capital spending and increasing imports. You see, fuel importers will only need to purchase permits for the fuel that is to be burned by cars, trucks, etc. Domestic oil companies, on the other hand, would also have to buy allowances for any CO2 produced by their plants. Clearly that would make domestic companies less competitive and create an imbalance in the market. Yeah .. .haven't thought of that one, have you?

The CEO of ConocoPhillips, Jim Mulva, says, "It will lead to the opportunity for foreign sources to bring in transportation fuels at a lower cost, which will have an adverse impact to our industry, potential shutdown of refineries and investment and, ultimately, employment."

It is estimated that one out of every six US refineries would close by 2020 because the cost of carbon allowances would simply erase profits, according to the American Petroleum Institute. For the consumer, carbon permits would add 77 cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline. Slowly, people have started to realize that Obama has mastered the art of increasing taxes on businesses, which ultimately pass on those increases in the form of price hikes for consumers.

Newt Gingrich was on the show earlier today and urged you all to go sign the petition to stop the energy tax. It might help the cause if we gave you a link to that. Consider it done.

Back in February, the White House passed its stimulus plan with the promise of tax breaks for people who purchase electric cars. However, the latest study from the Government Accountability Office says that electric cars will not by itself decrease any greenhouse gas emissions.

The reason is obvious ... it takes power to plug-in and charge an electric vehicle, and where does much of our country get its power? Coal. The study shows that "if plug-in hybrids reached 56 percent of the cars on the road by 2030, they would require an increased electricity production, much of which would likely come from additional coal plants."

Actually ... they have it wrong. Any ObamaBot can tell you that the power to charge up the batteries in electric cars will come from those windmills the government is going to put on the roof of your houses. If you have houses.

As I've already pointed out, the Obama administration knows that it has to act quick on these big agenda items. Healthcare has clearly taken center stage lately. But we can't forget about Obama's energy legislation. The cap-and-trade bill is back in the mix, and guess what? Obama wants the bill to be passed next week! Next week will be dubbed "energy week." Well isn't that special!

Gawd, that was fast. Just in case you don't remember how incredibly painful this bill would be for the American economy, Citizens Against Government Waste has some more details:

In reality, this cap-and-trade plan is nothing more than a hidden tax that The Heritage Foundation has estimated could increase the average American family's energy bill by $1,500 annually!

..... These higher operating costs for utilities, oil companies, and industry will ultimately trickle down to individual Americans, and you will pay an estimated 74 percent more for gasoline, 90 percent more for electricity, and 55 percent more on your natural gas bill. And that's not the end of it. You'll also pay more for every product that requires fossil fuels in its manufacture or transportation!

The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade plan will also grow the size and cost of government by requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to establish a greenhouse gas (GHG) registry, create a GHG emission allowance transfer system, and set emission allowances from 2012-2050. This army of new bureaucrats will eventually control every aspect of industrial, commercial, and individual energy use. You won't be able to tune up your car or install a grill in your back yard without federal interference ... perhaps even a costly environmental impact study. What's more, the cap-and-trade program will necessarily be ripe for political favoritism and corruption, as politicians and bureaucrats manipulate the system for favored industries.

Climatologist Chip Knappenberger has estimated that the 83 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions mandated under Waxman-Markey by 2050 will result in a drop in climate temperature of only nine-hundredths of 1 degree Fahrenheit. That's equivalent to just two years of avoided global warming.

It's a tax, my friends. It's all about the government getting more of your money. The pretense here is the environment. There's a reason why these environmental pushes come from the political left. It's not about the environment. It's about expanding the scope and the size of the Imperial Federal Government. It's about control over your life. Wake up. Global warming is a fraud.

Barack Obama's plan to create green jobs in this country is purely in efforts to expand the number of workers on the government dole. This man is in love with government, and the more people who are getting their paychecks from the government, the better off this country will be.

So when it comes to these "green jobs" .. you do realize that this is an industry that is being created by government for government. This isn't about global warming or saving the planet. It is about government control. And Barack Obama has modeled his plan to create green jobs after Spain's recent efforts create green jobs.

But here are the ugly facts ... every "green job" that was funded by the Spanish government caused the loss of 2.2 regular jobs, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created. And - and this is a big one - only one out of the 10 newly created green jobs became a permanent job. In other words, folks. This isn't long term stimulus. This is a government-created industry that will create a temporary surge in jobs that aren't permanent and will squeeze out private sector growth.

Oh and there is more. Now Spain has been at it for about eight to ten years. And when this economic crisis hit, the study shows that Spain's "green jobs" policy hindered its ability to cope with the crisis. Which is ironic, considering that Barack Obama feels that created "green jobs" will be America's way of getting out of this crisis.

Speaking of green jobs, I've been reading reports recently of community colleges that are seeing a surge in unemployed workers enrolling in courses that offer training in "green-collar" jobs. These are the people that will be installing solar panels and repairing wind turbines and producing biofuels.

But guess what ... all of these people are getting trained, but where are the jobs? The current financial crisis has caused the green industry to take a major hit. Businesses are drying up. So what we will have are a lot of trained workers and too few jobs.

Barack Obama's cap-and-trade plan has been floating around out there for a while. And I have told you several times how this scheme is nothing more than a tax increase, plain and simple. It increases taxes by creating a market for carbon emitted by companies, and these companies somehow have to recoup the costs to pay for these credits. How are they going to do this? Any logical business would increase prices for its customers.

And the Obama administration knows that this is the case. They have admitted that their plans to implement this cap-and-trade system will increase energy costs. Don't worry, Obama will make sure that the appropriate households aren't affected by these increasing costs. The plan is to use the revenue generated by the carbon trade system in order to "soften the impact of higher energy prices." But anyone worth more than the wheels on their house will not see any of these promised benefits. That's because the Obama administration says, "There will be those who are going to be vulnerable as we make this transition and ... we need to actually target the allowance value and revenues to those households, communities, and businesses."

Those who are "vulnerable" is just another way of saying .. those people who are poor and vote Democrat. Those people who can't afford to shoulder the burden of this society but are more than willing to reap the benefits of its massive government welfare system. Those are the people that the Barack Obama administration wants to aid in this transition. And are you really buying the fact that these government welfare checks to offset higher energy costs will only be temporary? No way. That's the beauty of government - once you get the people hooked on an entitlement program, you can never ever take it away and politicians will always have it as political leverage.

Yesterday Barack Obama decided that he wanted to throw more money at another problem. So he unveiled his plan to spend $2.4 billion for electric vehicle development. The plan also gives a $7,500 tax credit to people who buy plug-in hybrid vehicles.

So what's the problem? The problem is that there isn't a market for these vehicles. As of right now, hybrid cars only represent 2% of US vehicle sales, and it is deeply unprofitable for car companies. Just wait until the people buying those hybrids (and I have one myself) have to replace the batteries. You're going to hear howls of outrage then. My guess? The government will come in with some taxpayer-funded program to help people replace batteries in their hybrids. What fun.

In short .. Obama wants to give them money anyway to make cars that people don't want to buy. According to the LA Times:

Last month, only 15,144 hybrids sold nationwide, down almost two-thirds from April, when the segment's sales peaked and gas averaged $3.57 a gallon. That's far larger than the drop in industry sales for the period and scarcely a better showing than January, when hybrid sales were at their lowest since early 2005.

Yet automakers believe they have little choice but to make more hybrids. Though car buyers are losing interest, politicians are pushing them as key to reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil and limiting the global-warming gases that cars emit into the atmosphere.

Did you know that the auto parts industry is also getting a bailout? Just another $5 billion of your tax dollars. No matter what happens to the recipient car company, the money will be paid. The payment of new bailout money to auto parts manufacturers is your sure sign that more bailout money is on its way to GM and others. BOHICA

Unless you haven't really been paying attention, you must realize by now that Obama's plans to increase taxes on every American by increasing the cost of energy in this country. We've been through this routine before. But now we have a new line from the Obama administration ...

According to tax cheat Timothy Geithner, oil and natural gas companies do not deserve tax breaks from the federal government because their businesses contribute to global warming. That's right .. our Treasury Tax Cheat believes in man-made global warming.

Unbelievable.

Geithner said to Congress, "We don't believe it makes sense to significantly subsidize the production and use of sources of energy (like oil and gas) that are dramatically going to add to our climate change (problem). We don't think that's good economic policy and we think changing those incentives is good for the country."

Now what you are seeing here is exactly what I've been telling you to expect for years. The Democrats want their hands on every single possible penny the private sector produces. To do this they will promote this tired and discredited global warming dog squeeze as a reason to drain more money from energy companies.

As for Geithner .. he's a tax cheat. No ... that isn't strong enough. He's a damned tax cheat. He plotted to cheat on his taxes, then carried that plot through; and he was caught. Now he's our Treasury Secretary.

A tax cheat in charge of the IRS. Change you can believe in.

And on top of all of that nonsense about a tax system based on "fairness" .. we have an administration that is knowingly going to increase the price of energy in this country, and tax the businesses and the wealthy in order to make sure that it is "affordable" for everyone. In other words .. energy is going to become a "right."

Here's the routine. Obama brings us massive new taxes on virtually all forms of energy. You will then have to pay more for heating your homes, keeping your lights on, paying for gas. Then the Obama financial wizards will come up with a whole new welfare system to pay people, out of taxpayer funds, who cannot afford the new energy prices ... the poor, poor, pitiful poor and middle class. These new welfare checks will, as is Obama's habit, be called "tax cuts" or "tax breaks." And who will be the people who will get these wonderful new tax cuts under Obama? That would be the people who pay little to no taxes to begin with. These tax breaks aren't tax breaks .. they are welfare checks in order to subsidize the increased cost of energy for the Democrat voting base - the poor.

The Democrat "strategists" will go on CNN and Fox News and tell everyone how Obama is giving tax breaks to the majority of Americans .. and we'll buy it hook, line and sinker.

Barack Obama .. he's a do whatever you have to do to win kinda guy. Don't you just love that about him? So ... how does Obama plan to ram through his healthcare and energy schemes? After all, he doesn't have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Surely there's something he can do. As a matter of fact, there is! He will use a procedural tactic that would only require 50 votes in order to pass the Senate. Here's the deal. You include your health "reforms" in a budget reconciliation bill. These bills require only 50 votes to pass and no filibuster is permitted. Peter Orszag is the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Now he says that he would prefer that this budget reconciliation process not be used, but, after all, health care is crucial ... and when you dealing with something so very important like this you may just have to use some awkward tactics. After all ... as Orszag says, healthcare is "the key to our fiscal future." More like the key to increased government dependency.

Health care isn't the only thing Obama will get through using this tactic. Obama has a grand new taxation plan out there called "carbon cap and trade." Look for this to become law by the same means.

Do you doubt that our wonderful, amazing, greatest president in the history of this country would try some devious tactics to enact his socialist agenda? Permit me to remind you how he won his very first election to public office. He didn't win at the ballot box ... he won by sending his cohorts to the courthouses to work on disqualifying all of his opponents. If you can't beat them, have them removed from the ballot. Whatever works is good enough for Obama ... including nationalizing our healthcare through budgetary trickery.

Maybe this rhetoric from Orszag has something to do with it. He says, "I just reject the theory that the only thing that drives economic performance is the marginal tax rate on wealthy Americans and the only way of being pro-market is to funnel billions and billions of dollars of subsidies to corporations."

Simply put ... what a jerk. Orszag seems to be every bit the anti-capitalist his boss is. Stand by for health care rationing my friends. For those of you who don't believe it could ever happen ... I would really like to be there when some half-assed government bureaucrat tells you that you just don't qualify for some medical procedure because there are others younger and more worthy than you who have longer to live and more to accomplish.

Did you know that Obama's budget includes new taxes and fees on the oil and natural gas industry? Because right now seems like a really great time to place more of a burden on our domestic markets. Meanwhile, Obama is going to increase funding for the Interior Department by $50 million in order to "assess alternative energy resources and bolster clean energy development." The truth is that this money will be spent to fight the expansion of any energy projects that don't pass the "alternative" test.

Basically, PrezBO's budget levies an excise tax on oil and natural gas from the Gulf of Mexico, which take $5.3 billion from oil and natural gas companies and put it into the hands of the imperial federal government. This 13% tax will apparently only be levied on companies currently not paying royalties due to a loophole. It also places $4 per acre annual fee on energy leases in the Gulf of Mexico. Other tax breaks include the manufacturing tax credit, enhanced oil recovery tax credit and marginal well tax credit.

What Obama is doing is using the power of government to squeeze the life out of the domestic oil and gas industry. And since it is unpopular to get oil from countries like Saudi Arabia or Venezuela, we will have no choice but to turn to green energy. He wants the transformation of America to alternate energy to be his legacy. It could turn into our economic epitaph.

We have a lot of news about global warming lately. Particularly stories of record low temperatures in Alaska, record snowfall in Wisconsin, the reports that we are actually entering another ice age .. oh wait, never mind .. but we must still use government to curb all of this manmade global warming. Right?

Just how asinine can this get? Well, for starters, did you know that you are increasing your carbon footprint by doing searches on Google? Just what we need - one more thing for the government to regulate. Apparently two Google searches is the equivalent of boiling a kettle for a cup of tea in terms of the amount of CO2 generated. This is because Google data centers consume a lot of power. Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist, says that there is no doubt that a Google search has an environmental impact.

And how about the latest from the EU .. European governments are finalizing their plans to regulate the size of "energy-guzzling" flatscreen plasma televisions. Yes, folks .. the government will be deciding how large of a plasma TV you should be allowed to buy. The government will be picking the winner and the losers in this industry. It knowingly says so, "The worst performers will be phased out, and the rest will have to be labeled with energy ratings which ... will make it easier for consumers to identify the most and least energy-efficient televisions available," according to The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Barack Obama says that he is going to stimulate the economy and create 4 million jobs by investing in green energy. He plans to invest billions of dollars to upgrade the national energy grid to that we can get our power from alternative energy sources like wind, water and the sun. In fact, Obama wants to double alternative energy production in just three years.

But guess what needs to happen first ..... the solar and wind energy industries need a bailout. Yep, in order for Obama to stimulate the economy, he must first spend billions in order to prop up the industries he intends to use. Executives from the wind and solar industries say that they need help in the upcoming stimulus package in order to meet Obama's goals. They claim the economic downturn has made the effectiveness of a tax credit for their investors virtually obsolete. Instead, executives want to change the tax credit to a tax refund. The cost to make that switch? Over $1 billion over the next two years.

And when it comes to your own home .. the government wants to make sure that you can use all this "green energy" that it has created, and that you are changing your energy consumption habits. So, Representatives Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) have proposed to Obama the creation of a national "green bank." This bank would be a fund that would help homeowners fix up their houses to make them energy efficient. Just what we need - another government program. Its official name is the National Clean Energy Lending Authority. It would be a $10 billion program responsible for financing the transformation of the energy sector.

Barack Obama grand stands about his plans to create jobs in America. He claims that he is going to create millions of "green" jobs. What he doesn't tell you is that he wants to kill hundreds of thousands of jobs in the coal industry. And he doesn't say this to the workers in Ohio or Pennsylvania ... he goes and says this in San Francisco - the same place he went to complain about ordinary bitter people clinging to their guns or religion.

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in January of this year, Obama says that he intends to bankrupt the coal industry. Keep in mind that last year, more than 120,000 Americans were employed by the coal industry. Also keep in mind that 49% of energy in this country is currently generated by coal. But what Obama wants to do is institute an aggressive cap-and-trade policy where "polluters" will be charged for every unit of emissions.

He says, "If someone wants to build a coal power plant they can, but it will bankrupt them because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being admitted."

So we are about to elect a man who has openly admitted his intentions to bankrupt an entire industry.

Then this video from 2007 shouldn't come as a shock ... Obama wants "price signals" (on energy) in order to "change behavior." He acknowledges that his cap-and-trade policies will increase costs for consumers, and yet he still wants to do it. However, don't you worry, he does want the government (aka. the taxpayers) to help out the poor people who will have to pay these higher prices, thanks to government caps. And for "those of you who can afford it" you are going to have to pay more for electricity. That's convenient.