DRILL, OBAMA, DRILL!

Everyone has known for a long time that the only way in the world that California can hope to ever balance its budget is to expand off-shore oil drilling, and get healthy on the royalties that it would receive.

Now recall Candidate Obama deriding Sarah Palin's "drill, baby, drill" slogan, saying that off-shore drilling would not save Americans any money. Now he has changed his mind about this, and will support drilling in the Gulf and the east coast, and in Alaska. Great. Look for Arnold to press for drilling off the California coast. This could easily be done using parallel drilling from existing platforms.

Now recall Teddy Roosevelt and his successful efforts to acquire lots of land in the western states, creating lots of national parks, reserves, and monuments. He was a great progressive. Let's just say, without cynicism, that this was his only motivation in buying up the western states. The federal government owns virtually all of Nevada and Utah. The government owns a great deal of Colorado and Wyoming. It's true that there is great natural beauty in the west. But that's also where the nation's natural resources exist, including oil. The government owns very little land east of Colorado.

Now recall Maxine Waters threatening the nations oil execs by saying that she would not be opposed to nationalizing all the oil companies in the country. Recall Hillary Clinton screaming about the oil companies' "obscene" profits, and calling for a large tax increase on their "excess" profits.

Recall that a lot of countries have nationalized their oil resources. These include not only the OPEC countries, but also Mexico and Venezulea, among others.

Although President"s plan for drilling is quite modest, it is a sign that something else is afoot: A plan to gain additional federal revenue from oil. Not by nationalizing the industry, at least not at first, but to gain revenue from royalties by expanding drilling on federal lands, and taxing the increased profits of oil companies.

Only a Democratic president can get this off. The environmentalists will be quieted by the fact that this kills two birds with one stone: Decreasing reliance on foreign oil, and solving the federal government's deficit problem. And throw in "job creation" as a rationale.

President Obama reluctantly got in the automotive business, the student loan business, the insurance and banking industries. Now watch him get in the oil business. Why would he do this? For the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks, and that middle-class tax increases are inevitable: Because that's where the money is.