Democratic Hypocrisy, Obama to Fund Offshore Drilling in Brazil

For more than forty years offshore drilling has been taboo off the coasts of the majority of the continental United States. This ban has been supported by the American liberals, now termed "progressives," and various environmental organizations since its inception. However, Barack Obama has introduced legislation to provide $2 billion dollars in financing for offshore drilling...unfortunately, that drilling won't benefit the United States in any way.

With gasoline and oil prices steadily rising, we won't be exploiting our vast offshore deposits, because that would be bad...but it's ok for other countries to do so on our dime.  The Wall Street Journal is reporting that,

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.

What I find most troubling is just who is going to benefit from this. A simple exploration of Petrobras investors will show one of their largest is American billionaire, George Soros, who also happens to be one of the largest contributors to Mr. Obama in the last presidential campaign. Unfortunately, this simple fact isn't being reported by major media. I suspect that Mr. Soros didn't get his payoff in the mass payoff of the "Stimulus Package" last February...and so, betting the US Government to underwrite this must be it.