Obama: Guzzler-in-Chief (The Michigan View 04.04.11)

Posted by hpayne on April 4, 2011

Obama limo

Barack Obama’s “green” energy policy is anything but the politics of change. By exempting himself from his own federal fleet standard, locking in ethanol subsidies for Big Corn, and guaranteeing government as the buyer for government-mandated electric cars, the president’s plan is a mess that leads America down a dead-end street.

As we reported on the View March 31, there’s a catch (isn’t there always?) to President Obama’s expensive announcement that the feds will replace the entire 600,000 vehicle fleet with hybrid-electric vehicles – which cost more than conventional gas-powered cars – by 2015.

“But . . . under a clever loophole in the mandate, the Guzzler-in-Chief will still get to ride around in his big SUVs,” we wrote. Yes, President Obama gets to keep his guzzling Caddy (Secret Service codename “The Beast”) and its fleet of support SUVs because they are capable of running on subsidized E85 ethanol.

Detroit News’ bureau chief Dave Shepardson has more detail in his April 1 story, “Presidential limousine, security vehicles exempt from fed ‘green’ vehicle policy”:

“The U.S. Secret Service said today that some federal vehicles for law enforcement and security purposes will be exempt from President Barack Obama’s directive that all federal vehicles purchased starting 2015 be advanced technology models. Secret Service spokesman Robert Novy said the directive wouldn’t apply to vehicles used for some law enforcement or security reasons by various federal agencies.”

“Certain specialized vehicles including those with law enforcement and security specifications are not subject to this directive,” Novy told Shepardson. That includes Obama’s Caddy and other SUVs in the presidential motorcade. So too law enforcement vehicles.

The Nanny-in-Chief has a penchant for not practicing what he preaches. There was that Super Bowl menu, for example. . . .

“Obama (transportation policy) actually kills two payoffs with one stone,” writes The Michigan View’s Manny Lopez. “First to the enviro-activists and second to the nation’s corn growers and fuel blenders who feed at the subsidy trough like few others.”

That is, Obama fulfills his promise to put 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015 by putting in place a government program to buy them all. Even then, however, electrics would not be practical for all government uses (just as electrics are impractical for the larger public), so Obama carves out an ethanol loophole.

“No one buys ethanol for their vehicles, primarily because it is 30 percent less efficient, costs more at the pump and actually is worse on the environment to produce one gallon of ethanol than a gallon of gas,” continues Lopez. No matter. Government simply mandates its production (thus paying off ethanol-producer Archers Daniels Midland, a major Democratic Party contributor) – then provides the government fleet to use it.

Even then, it is unlikely the giant SUVs used by Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, for example, will use E85. There is only one E85 pump in all of Washington DC (at the Pentagon) – and even fewer outside the beltway where the president takes his fleet of SUVs on every trip.

The only “change” in Obama’s new energy policy is the shakedown of taxpayers’ wallets. That’s a lot of change to buy electric cars and subsidize ethanol production.

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