Gasoline prices are getting out of control. These prices don’t need to be where they are, and they aren’t because of some conspiracy between oil companies, other individuals or other countries; they exist because your government wants to drive up the price of fuel. The reason is simple: The president and his energy secretary have said and believe that the only way to embrace “green technology” (which they cannot define or point to after three years in office) is to reduce your reliance on fossil fuels. Since you won’t do it voluntarily in a free country, it’s now the government’s job to do it for you through the use of authoritarian policies. Your government is intervening in the market so thoroughly that it is driving up the cost of gasoline.

Obama and Steven Chu want you to focus on the oil companies and their profits, which class warfare rabble-rousers have been doing since my parents can remember. Instead, let’s focus on what’s causing this by looking at the class warfare cycle in its entire magnificence. The government, or in some cases OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), intervenes, the prices go up, people scream “get the oil companies,” prices go down; we have this over and over again. But now, the prices are so outrageous that it’s important to point out and address a new variable in this sickening, cyclical chain of events: Steven Chu.

Back in 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported Chu’s desire to bring economic pain and suffering to the people he’s supposed to look out for, a.k.a., you and your family. “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” he said. This is the man in charge of the Energy Dept. The prices in Europe are between $7 and $9; we’re getting there. It seems class warfare isn’t enough for Chu. He needs us, the millions of individuals who compose this nation, to suffer so he can continue shaping society in the image of his choice. Sadly, the image of his “green” totalitarian utopia involves you stuck in fuel lines, choosing between gas and food or medical expenses, or forcing your family to skip a vacation this year because they can’t afford gas.

However, the government’s treachery runs deeper still. Even though the House voted to end the moratorium on offshore drilling last week, it is too little too late, and it doesn’t answer for the president and his friends in the “no energy” movement who claim this isn’t a supply issue, but instead a speculators’ issue. With the help of the EPA and others, he’s choking off supply, which investors speculate will raise the price of fuel. Since he took office, Obama and other environmental extremists have choked out development of oil sale in the contiguous states which would help solve the problem in the future by denying ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) permits, which would provide results in the near future. Also, of the 14 operating wells in the gulf, they have reapproved one in the last two years.

This is a supply problem, and Obama’s power hungry, repressive ideology has given its best shot. Moreover, the Obama administration has been granting unelected EPA officials control over drilling rights, many of whom have their origins in the Marxist movements of the 1960s and want to restrain our society from using resources that would benefit everyone. Obama and his friends hate resource consumption and want to make more and more people dependent on them while simultaneously making you less self-reliant. Is this in the best interest of the country? No, it’s in the best interest of a group whose goal is to transform and repress this society into something foreign in compliance with their ideology.

Daily Nexus conservative columnist Benjamin Parish is eagerly awaiting Nov. 6.