Obama Quietly Kills Any New Offshore Oil Drilling for Next Three Years

When gas was $4 a gallon and Senator Obama was campaigning for the Presidency, he said was willing to support new offshore oil drilling. Now that the election is a year behind us and gas is under $3 a gallon, Obama is quietly banning new offshore drilling for the rest of his term.

The Obama administration’s six-month delay in approving new offshore drilling leases in federal waters will become a new three-year ban, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar quietly told reporters last Friday.

Which means that no new oil and gas leases will be approved during President Obama’s term even though two –thirds of the American public supports such activity, according to a December 2009 Rasmussen poll.

Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill is one of the off shore tax cheats Obama is targeting

Senator Claire McCaskill's (D- Missouri) husband has an investment in a reinsurance company that moved to Bermuda for tax avoidance. After claiming in 2004 she was a partner with her wealthy husband, she now claims little or no involvement in his business. This could be cleared up if she would release her tax records, but she has refused to for five years. Claire McCaskill was involved in an "Acorn" scandal last election. The Missouri Republican Party has the story:

Shifting blame to her husband and reversing her previous statements, Senator Claire McCaskill’s office responded yesterday allegations that she is avoiding U.S. taxes through her ownership of a Bermuda-based company. Through a spokesman, McCaskill’s office claimed in the Kansas City Star: “Like Warren Buffet, Claire's husband has an investment in a reinsurance company in a foreign country that has never been a tax benefit to him nor will there ever be a tax benefit for this investment.”

McCaskill clearly distanced herself from the Bermuda-based business, placing blame squarely on her husband, the wealthy developer of low-income housing Joe Shepard. This separation stands in stark contrast to a 2004 McCaskill statement regarding her family’s finances, in which she claimed, “My husband and I are a team… We are married, and we share everything -- assets, children and a house... Some have implied that the assets of my family don't belong to me. That notion is pretty archaic.” (Post-Dispatch, July 18, 2004)

In addition, McCaskill continues to maintain that her Bermuda-based company does not exist to provide tax benefits. Of course, the only way to discern if she is telling the truth is for her to release her family’s tax returns. She has stubbornly refused to do so over the past five years.