If the old saw “No good deed goes unpunished” is true, or has at least has some truth to it, then what about its corollary — “No bad deed goes unrewarded”?
Between promoting the rebranding of PJ Media and eyeballing the seriocomic “Occupy” demonstrators down the street from the Capitol, I was puzzling that conundrum while in DC this week.
Something told me a disturbing irony was about to occur. Consider this: the USA is an energy powerhouse. We’ve all been reading about this lately, all that shale in the Dakotas, the unlimited natural gas, the new conversion technologies, etc. Turn on the spigot, not only would we not be importing energy, we might even be exporting it in a few years. Good-bye, mullahs. Good-bye, Wahhabi maniacs. We wouldn’t even have to listen to lectures from self-righteous Norwegians!
Of course, what stands in the way of this absolutely commonsensical approach is our president and his legion of enviro-looney supporters — you know, the ones who think life is a constant rerun of the China Syndrome and the rest of us are greedy idiots who want to see the country return (cough, cough) to Los Angeles circa 1971.
The not-so-secret-secret — except to semi-literate Internet trolls — is that we are all environmentalists now and have been for decades. No one wants dirty air or water. But some of us are a bit suspicious of claims that anthropogenic global warming is proven science, we are on the verge of environmental Armageddon, and so forth.
I have no intention of rehashing all that here, though I’m sure some of our “more constructive” visitors will have something to add. My intent is to point out that it is likely a good percentage of the Democratic leadership sees things more or less our way — at least privately. Do you think, say, Robert Rubin really doesn’t want to see more drilling? The man used to run Citibank. What about Rahm Emanuel, who made a fortune on Wall Street in no time flat? William Daley?
I could go on, but you get my point. Even Barack Obama (confused and ideologically deluded as he is) may be playing a cynical game here as well. Liberalism, progressivism — call it what you will — is a protection racket straight out of the Mafia. You say one thing for cover and you do another. And not just in the obvious sense of Al Gore becoming a billionaire over AGW or Arianna Huffington swindling AOL. It filters all the way down.
So while on the one hand Obama may be hiring czars by the dozens, putting bureaucratic martinets in charge of the EPA, and regulating our society into oblivion, the spigot (secretly, quietly… maybe not so quietly even) is slowly opening.
The question is — how fast? An American economic boom is coming, but when?
I discussed this in DC with Glenn Reynolds. He says this is too late to save Obama. I am not so sure. I write today as the stock market — that great predictor of the future — is rocketing upwards. It’s been going generally up for a while, actually. Although some predict dire economic times ahead, some folks on Wall Street are clearly seeing the reverse. (Apparently, the Dow is headed for its best October ever.)
I predict America will be in the lead in this boom, maybe is already in the lead. I don’t want to see the hugely undeserving Obama profiting from this. But so it goes. “No bad deed goes unrewarded.”
A fuddy-duddy socialist squeaks through because of forward-thinking capitalist innovation? Let’s hope the country remembers.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member