Barfrack and Wafflin' Andy

Famous natural gas storage tank, Boston, MA

Two of our wealthy career politician rulers have suddenly switched sides on shale gas recovery.  America's most anti-energy president has suddenly become Barfrack Obama.

The Wall Street Journal has an opinion column noting that Barack Obama has done an about face and now seems to be boosting the prospects of natural gas (especially that derived from shale gas fields). The White House has released a report that notes the important role that shale gas has played in helping to spark job and industrial growth. The White House mentions the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania as playing an especially important role...

Meanwhile, in Albany, governor Andy Cuomo, who we suspected had already promised billions of dollars in fracking revenue to his state employee union masters, in spite of the fact that the rest of New York's anti-prosperity Democrats are fighting fracking tooth and nail, has suddenly gone a-wafflin'.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s budget proposal will not include any funding for additional gas-drilling regulators, he said Monday.

Speaking after delivering remarks at a Martin Luther King Jr. remembrance ceremony, Cuomo told reporters he won’t move to add the appropriate staff until the state Department of Environmental Conservation determines whether to allow high-volume hydraulic fracturing.

It’s a “chicken and the egg” situation, Cuomo said.

“You would not be hiring staff to regulate hydrofracking unless you believed you were going ahead with hydrofracking,” Cuomo said. “And we haven’t made that determination. So the budget won’t anticipate hydrofracking approval.”

What's up with the commissars?  We suspect it has to do with Barfrack wanting to be reelected president, and Wafflin' Andy looking to be reelected governor.  Ed Lasky has another theory about Frackin' Barry's suddden crush on shale, however.

George Soros -- a major donor to Obama, a major backer of so-called 527 groups, and the sugar daddy of the Democratic Party -- has recently made a major investment in a company that would be enriched if natural gas takes off as a fuel source for cars, trucks and buses.

 Apologies to Mrs. Howe for the run-on sentence, we couldn't stop ourselves.