Brilliant idiocy on energy from Democratic über-policymaker Robert Reich

A short piece entitled "Short Straw Economics" in today's NYT Magazine (h/t Althouse) contains questions to and answers from Robert Reich. Reich was Secretary of Labor for the Clinton Administration. He's currently in exile from government as a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley. And the odds are good that he'd show up as a cabinet member again in an Obama Administration. Here's what Reich has to say on the most timely topics of public energy policy today (boldface in this blockquote, as in the original, indicates the NYT reporter's questions):

What do you make of the argument that the only way to lessen our dependence on foreign oil is to tap more oil wells here — in Alaska and off the coasts of Florida and California? When you consider that the oil we pump goes into a global oil market, offshore drilling makes no sense. We take the environmental risk, but we’d have to share the negligible price gains with Chinese consumers and every other user around the world.

Then why do you think President Bush asked Congress last month to lift the longtime ban on offshore oil drilling? If I had to guess, I would say that President Bush is very close to the oil companies and wants whatever they want.

And what they want is license to drill? I think they would like as many licenses and permits as possible granted during the Bush administration. They know they would have a harder time with a Democratic White House.

That first answer tickles the hell out of me.

He's correct that because of the world-wide energy market, in which barrels of oil are fungible as long as the market is operating with a reasonable degree of freedom, Americans would indeed share  with the rest of the consuming world the lower resulting costs from decisions made now to drill ASAP onshore and offshore in America. In other words, Americans would become to the rest of the world the way that Texans and Louisianans are now to Californians and Floridians — i.e., exploited. ¡Qué lástima!

(We Texans and Louisianans try to use that word "exploited" in a good way, though: offshore drilling, done responsibly, brings not only energy to America but jobs and economic benefits to the adjacent onshore states, which is one reason the Texas economy right now looks a hell of a lot better than the California economy. We invite Californians and Floridians to join us in the responsible exploitation of all our coastlines, which is only fair, instead of continuing to get a free ride at our expense.)

What this very smart man is ignoring in his first very glib answer, though, is something so huge that he can't have just forgotten about it. And only by ignoring it can he so cheerfully lie to you through his teeth in his second and third answers.

Short of invading and occupying all or at least most of the nations in OPEC by military force, we can't dictate their production and pricing decisions. And OPEC is a cartel whose existence confirms its member countries' fervent desires to control the supply, and therefore the price, of oil to the extent they can get away with it. It has not, historically, been a totally successful cartel, however, precisely because there are non-OPEC sources of oil — among which is, and always has been, the United States of America.

Reich's policy — and all of the Democrats' policy, including their presidential nominee Barack Obama — will continue to restrict American competition to OPEC. In their preferred future world, as our existing resources dwindle, OPEC's market share will grow. With that growing market share will also grow OPEC's power to be a successful cartel.

And as we saw in the early 1970s, the foreign policies of OPEC members (and for that matter, non-OPEC producing countries that are as friendly to us as Canada and Mexico right now) emphatically does not track our own. If there's a sudden political crisis that again turns today's merely painful energy prices into an actual international energy unavailability, the degree to which we're hosed (and forced to compromise our national sovereignty as a result) will be inversely proportional to the amount of domestic onshore and offshore production then available from the United States and its territorial waters.

Until Reich and his comrades actually succeed in vesting power in the People's Republic of Berkeley and then the Sovereign Soviet Republic of California, however, the State of California, at least in theory, doesn't have a foreign policy that deviates from the United States' own. And until then, domestic production from offshore California would translate directly into domestic security from those who might suddenly wish us (or our friends like Israel) ill.

Our energy policy isn't, or ought not be, just about prices at the pump. It's about, or should be about, national security as well.

Reich knows all this. Indeed, he cleverly reinterpreted the question, which asked about "dependence on foreign oil," into being a question about lowering prices at the pump. Only with the question thus recast could he ignore the "dependence on foreign [countries]" aspect.

He relies upon his readers being either too stupid or (more likely) too partisan to figure this out, though. And for many of Reich's and the NYT's readers, unfortunately, he's right. They'll blithely buy into his song and dance about corrupt Dubya and the evil American oil companies (he'll be intentionally blurry about companies like BP and Shell). They'll rejoice with him when the Democrats ride to the rescue on America's energy problems by driving evil Dubya and the Rethuglicans out of the White House. In fact, Reich and the Dems — who have no actual energy policy except taxation and suffering — are counting on short, stupid sound bites like these to soothe Americans' energy worries and get Obama into 1600 Pennsylvania, whence all other Democratic Party jobs will then flow like mana from heaven, even if domestic oil and gas production more and more flows like cement during those years.

Being, metaphorically, a self-created and -preferred urban eunuch himself, Robert Reich will cheerfully counsel his Democratic masters to put my testicles or yours (or your other sensitive metaphorical bits, if you're not testicularly fortitudinous like me and Hillary Clinton) into OPEC's vise. His ideal population is docile, and they ride on mass transit anyway, where their movements can be monitored and controlled by people like him, who know best. Not that Reich or his buddies still have a complex about being short, by the way. Not at all.

(I can't resist a final comment: In any kind of public debate, Sarah Palin could eat Robert Reich's lunch on these issues. Hell, she could take away the little twerp's lunch money and drink his milkshake to boot.)