Cross-Posted: TobyToons.com (Conservative Political Cartoons)

President Obama has taken steps to make us energy independent and create an economy that’s built to last. He’s been a strong supporter of domestic energy production, has made historic investments in clean energy technology, and has nearly doubled fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks. Because of the progress we’ve made, our dependence on foreign oil is the lowest it’s been in 16 years.

The Washington Post gave the ad a rating of “three Pinocchios” for misleading viewers with a suggestion that Obama was responsible for creating 2.7 million clean energy jobs and for cherry-picking certain citations to back up its claims.  The resulting descriptions of the ad included such words as “slippery,” “slick,” and “misleading.”

The Obama administration in a nutshell.

But the irony that the first ad campaign of the season touts Obama’s strengths in making the United States more energy independent, while he is simultaneously thwarting further energy independence via the Keystone pipeline, can not be overlooked.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce Presient and CEO Thomas J. Donohue called the decision to deny the Keystone XL pipeline permit “dumbfounding.”  He added, “the President’s decision will make us more dependent on oil from foreign nations that don’t share our interests.”

So why would the energy independence-touting President deny construction of a pipeline that has the potential to improve said independence, along with an added bonus of creating a minimum of 20,000 jobs?

Aside from kowtowing to environmental groups, Obama cites “the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment”.

That smokescreen doesn’t hold up either.  A new report from Fox News indicates that the Keystone pipeline would actually pose less of an environmental danger than pipelines currently running in the U.S.

Several energy experts who represent the oil and gas industry say the controversial Keystone XL, a 1,700-mile pipeline that would run from Canada to Texas, poses less of a risk to the environment than the estimated 50,000 miles of crude oil pipelines already crisscrossing the U.S., a network they say is safe and efficient.

For years the pipeline was an innocuous project slowly making its way through the convoluted federal approval process. After receiving all but one permit, radical environmentalist—feeling affronted two years into the Obama Administration—set their sights on the soon-to-be approved Keystone pipeline. What should have been a non-controversial construction project became anything but. Before becoming the object of environmentalist scorn, the State Department approved and advocated for the nearly identical Canadian-American pipeline in 2009, arguing:

… the addition of crude oil pipeline capacity between Canada and the United States will advance a number of strategic interests of the United States. These included increasing the diversity of available supplies among the United States’ worldwide crude oil sources in a time of considerable political tension in other major oil producing countries and regions; shortening the transportation pathway for crude oil supplies; and increasing crude oil supplies from a major non-Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries producer.

Canada is a stable and reliable ally and trading partner of the United States, with which we have free trade agreements which augment the security of this energy supply. Approval of the permit sends a positive economic signal, in a difficult economic period, about the future reliability and availability of a portion of United States’ energy imports, and in the immediate term, this shovel-ready project will provide construction jobs for workers in the United States.

Drawing an arbitrary line in the sand, environmentalists threatened to sit out the 2012 election if President Obama approved the pipeline. Organizing daily protests outside the White House, environmentalists effectively turned a non-political issue into one of the most divisive topics of 2011.

Scared to affront his base, President Obama delayed the pipeline until after the 2012 election. Having already passed the bipartisan North American—Made Energy Security Act, which expedited the Keystone approval process, the House again used its leverage to attach a similar measure in the December payroll tax legislation. After weeks of debate, the final version of the Payroll Tax Bill included a provision that would streamline approval of the Keystone pipeline.

Somehow, President Obama determined that the pipeline is not in the interest of our nation, and thus, scrapped the project. Obama is hiding behind the federal behemoth he oversees arguing that the State Department hasn’t had enough time to review the pipeline. Considering the Keystone XL Pipeline has been pending at the State Department since 2008, one would ask how much more time the agency needs. Costing $7 billion, the pipeline would create 20,000 well-paying construction jobs immediately. Midwest construction workers, one of the demographics hit hardest by the economic downturn, desperately need this project. While blue-collar workers would receive many of the direct benefits from Keystone’s construction, thousands of businesses from nearly every state would have reaped indirect business were Obama to simply allow the Keystone project to be built. 2,400 American companies in 49 states are involved in the production of Canadian oil sands. All for not.

This project is all reward and no risk. Fear mongers warn of imminent oil spills and poisoned aquifers. This is nonsense. America is literally covered in oil pipelines. Furthermore, Americans consume 19 million barrels of oil every day which needs to be transported across our nation somehow.

Apart from the consequential economic impact, the pipeline would reassure American energy security. In recent weeks, Iran has threatened to close down the Straight of Hormutz. This choke point is critical because 14 tankers carrying around 15.5 million barrels of crude oil pass through the straight every day. Representing 20% of all oil traded worldwide, sealing off this passage would cause the worldwide price of oil to increase.

While the U.S. does not directly import much oil from Iran, predicted instability in the region has cause gasoline prices to rise to $3.39 a gallon, up around 10 cents since we rang in the New Year. In short, an Iranian crisis would mean less supply and while demand for global oil continues to increase.

The United States has a great opportunity to mitigate the domestic effects of external threats through constructing of the Keystone pipeline and strengthening ties with Canada. Already importing about 2 million barrels of oil a day from Canada, our neighbors to the north are America’s largest foreign supplier of oil. The Keystone pipeline would provide Americans with an additional 800,000 barrels of Canadian oil every day.

Congressional Republicans are examining legislative solutions to the problem Obama created, but the path forward will be difficult. Click here to let Obama know that there are repercussions for his actions and that he should put his country ahead of his political ambitions and approve the Keystone pipeline.

Although President Obama has been openly mocking and denouncing Congress for failing to pass his jobs bill, his decision, through the State Department, to delay the Keystone XL project until after the November 2012 elections has led to criticism that the president is putting politics ahead of the best interests of the country.

37 Republican senators signed onto the bill that would require the administration to approve the pipeline project within 60 days, unless Mr. Obama declares the project is not in the national interest.

The Keystone project has been interesting in that it has marked a division between two groups that have been very supportive of the president: environmentalists and Big Labor. Environmental groups, fearing oil spills and other ecological disasters, as well as celebrity “green” fans, have opposed the pipeline plan, while labor groups have supported it in the hopes of obtaining high-paying union jobs. In addition, none of the states involved in the pipeline’s path- Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma or Texas- supported Mr. Obama in the presidential election of 2008.

While the Keystone project had already been found to be environmentally sound prior to the president’s delay of the pipeline’s construction, some rerouting of the pipeline was done in Nebraska, for example, and approved by that state’s legislature quickly so as not to prevent the project from moving forward. Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Nebraska) is supporting the bill to force implementation of the pipeline. “This bill respects the Nebraska process to protect the Sand Hills while providing a commonsense approach to bring friendly oil and jobs to the U.S. without unnecessary delay,” he said.

If the pipeline project is not implemented, Canada has said that it will sell its oil to China.

If Mr. Obama’s motivation is political, the environmentalists appear to have his attention. However, the president is likely not only deferring to warnings about the immediate environment of the pipeline, but also the larger “green” issue that allowing the project to move forward would further cement the United State’s commitment to fossil fuels, an image that this liberal president would likely find distasteful.

Let’s hope Sen. Lugar and his colleagues prevail on this issue.

Here are some key passages from a Reuters story.

“Everyone wants to know how we did it,” said political economist Brian Lee Crowley, head of the Ottawa-based think tank Macdonald-Laurier Institute, who has examined the lessons of the 1990s. But to win its budget wars, Canada first had to realize how dire its situation was and then dramatically shrink the size of government rather than just limit the pace of spending growth. It would eventually oversee the biggest reduction in Canadian government spending since demobilization after World War Two. …The turnaround began with Chretien’s arrival as prime minister in November 1993, when his Liberal Party – in some ways Canada’s equivalent of the Democrats in the U.S. – swept to victory with a strong majority. The new government took one look at the dreadful state of the books and decided to act. “I said to myself, I will do it. I might be prime minister for only one term, but I will do it,” said Chretien. …The Liberals thought their first, rushed budget – delivered in February 1994, three months after taking office, was tough. It reformed unemployment insurance entitlements, and cut defense and foreign aid… The upstart Reform Party, then the main national opposition party, had campaigned on “zero-in-three” – balance the budget in three years. “We were always trying to go faster,” said Reform’s leader at the time, Preston Manning. …The Liberals were stung by the criticism and, at first reluctantly but then with gusto, they got out the chain saws. …Cutting government spending programs went against the Liberal grain. Contrary to the Reform Party, the Liberals saw a more important role for government. Paul Martin now has a lasting reputation as the finance minister who slayed Canada’s deficit, but the conversion from spender to cutter was painful. His father, also called Paul, had helped create Medicare, Canada’s publicly funded health care system, and suddenly here was Paul Junior contemplating massive cuts.

This is a remarkable story. My only real quibble is that the fiscal restraint actually started the year before the Liberal Party took power, as the chart (click to enlarge) illustrates.

But the key thing to understand is that Canada enjoyed a five-year period when government spending increased by an average of only 1 percent each year.

There are more good passages in the story. Can anybody imagine Obama doing this?

At one 1994 cabinet meeting, Martin announced a spending freeze. A minister put forward a project that needed funding but Chretien cut him off, reminding him of Martin’s freeze. A second minister raised his hand to ask for funding, and a testy Chretien told the cabinet that the next minister to ask for new money would see his whole budget cut by 20 percent. …The ratio of spending cuts to tax hikes was seven-to-one. Asked why, Chretien said simply: “There was more need on one side than the other.” …Cuts ranged from five percent to 65 percent of departmental budgets.

By the way, while there were a few tax hikes implemented, they were trivial. Tax revenue as a share of GDP rose from 44.2 percent of GDP to 44.5 percent a GDP, an increase that probably was going to happen anyhow as Canada’s economy recovered.

So what were the results of Canada’s spending freeze?

The following passage has some numbers, but the second chart (click to enlarge) shows that the burden of government spending in Canada (right axis) fell from 53 percent of GDP to 44 percent of GDP in just five years. And red ink (left axis) completely disappeared.

The deficit disappeared by 1997 and the debt-to-GDP ratio began a rapid decline – it is now at about 34 percent. …After wrestling the deficit to the ground, Canada enjoyed what Crowley calls the payoff decade, outperforming the rest of the G7 on growth, job creation and inward investment. From 1997 to 2007, it averaged 3.3 percent economic growth. while U.S. growth averaged 2.9 percent.

The most important thing to understand is that Canada’s economy improved because the burden of government spending was reduced. Moreover, because the underlying disease was being treated, this meant two of the symptoms of excessive government – deficits and debt – also became less of a problem.

Last but not least, there are rewards for good policy. Just as Reagan enjoyed a landslide in 1984 after sticking to his guns, Canada’s Liberal Party also reaped the benefits of doing the right thing.

The final lesson is that you can impose painful spending cuts and still win elections. Chretien went on to win two more back-to-back to form majority governments, a rare feat. ,,,Drummond, who later moved to the private sector and is now an advisor helping the Ontario provincial government slash its deficit, noted that governments on the right and left in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Ontario won more voter support after their own budget cuts in the 1990s.

Here’s a video I narrated that looks at the Canadian experience, as well as similar good reforms in New Zealand, Ireland, and Slovakia.

Last but not least, let’s put all of this in context. As demonstrated here, the U.S. would enjoy a balanced budget in just eight years if politicians could be convinced to limit spending so that it increased by 1 percent each year.

I regret to inform you that you are not the “99 Percent.”

The 99 Percent dislikes big banks, but also dislikes big government–and big messes.

The 99 Percent does not occupy property it does not own, public or private.

The 99 Percent does not steal from local businesses, does not attack police officers, does not storm national museums, and does not defecate in public.

Flyer at #OccupyWallStreet - the address for donations is a small building in Washington, DC shared by Code Pink and other "progressive" organizations

The 99 Percent does not rank people’s views based on their skin color, gender, or socioeconomic status.

The 99 Percent does not repeat, zombie-like, every word it hears out of a leader’s mouth.

The 99 Percent would not deny a veteran civil rights leader and member of Congress the opportunity to speak when he had asked to do so, even if it disagreed with him.

The 99 Percent understands the difference between a mob in the street and our democratic Republic.

The 99 Percent does not belong to a labor union or an anarchist hacker collective.

The 99 Percent does not want to raise taxes, to let the government withhold freedom of the press, to open the nation’s borders to anyone who wants to cross, to deny workers a secret ballot in labor union elections, to spend trillions of additional taxpayer dollars on transportation and the environment, or to forgive all existing debts.

No, you are not the 99 Percent.

We know who you really are.

You are the Democrats.

You are the Working Families Party.

You are the Democratic Socialists of America.

You are Big Labor–the Service Employees International Union, the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, and so on.

You are the institutional radical left–Media Matters for America, ThinkProgress, MoveOn.org, and various other George Soros-funded organizations.

More than anything else, you are the anti-war movement.

That’s why you can gather thousands of Americans–without displaying a single American flag, which you could “could just as easily have burned” (your words).

That’s why you have the support of those Ron Paul fans who are less interested in election than insurrection.

That’s why you are taking marching orders from anarchists like Lisa Fithian.

That’s why you have the drum circles, the hippies, and the joiners who have no idea why they are there.

Many wondered where you, the anti-war movement, had gone for the past few years.

After all, President Barack Obama has done many of the same things that the anti-war movement had complained about when President George W. Bush was in power.

Worse, Obama went to war without the permission of Congress, and has now started targeting and killing American citizens with drone attacks.

And yet you had been strangely, suddenly, and stubbornly silent.

The Obama administration and the institutional left asked you to be quiet, once they had achieved “change” you could believe in.

But they soon realized that they could not survive without you.

Their health care campaign, their war against the rich, their attacks on Republicans over the debt ceiling–all failed without you.

And so Obama, the Democrats, and the unions came back to you–the anarchists, organizers, and online activists of the anti-war brigades.

And they bought your support–cheaply.

President Obama, slow to embrace the protests of the Arab Spring, sprang to embrace your cause.

And yet look carefully at the price you are paying.

While you get arrested, and spend weeks in the open, the Democrats are raising money off your backs.

Your ideals have been reduced to policies that resemble the party platform at the Democratic National Convention.

Do you know what you stand for? Do you know why you are doing this? Did you ever?

My fellow Americans (and somewhat antisemitic Canadians), you are not the 99 Percent.

You are the co-opted.

Amy Myers Jaffe of Rice University says in the next decade, new oil in the US, Canada and South America could change the center of gravity of the entire global energy supply.

“Some are now saying, in five or 10 years’ time, we’re a major oil-producing region, where our production is going up,” she says.

The US, Jaffe says, could have 2 trillion barrels of oil waiting to be drilled. South America could hold another 2 trillion. And Canada? 2.4 trillion. That’s compared to just 1.2 trillion in the Middle East and north Africa.

Jaffe says those new oil reserves, combined with growing turmoil in the Middle East, will “absolutely propel more and more investment into the energy resources in the Americas.”

Russia is already feeling the growth of American energy, Jaffe says. As the U.S. produces more of its own natural gas, Europe is free to purchase liquefied natural gas the US is no longer buying.

“They’re buying less natural gas from Russia,” Jaffe says. “So Russia would only supply 10 percent of European natural gas demand by 2030. That means the Russians are no longer powerful.”

The American energy boom, Jaffe says, could endanger many green-energy initiatives that have gained popularity in recent years. But royalties and revenue from U.S. production of oil and natural gas, she adds, could be used to invest in improving green technology.

“We don’t have the commercial technology now,” she says, noting the recent bankruptcy of American solar companies like Solyndra.

“The point is you can’t force a technology that’s not commercial. Rather than subsidize things that are not going to be competitive, we need to actually use that money to do R&D to create technologies — the same way that the industries created these technologies to produce natural gas and it turned out so commercially successful.”

Read the whole thing here.