Energy Lunacy

The Department of Energy was formed in October of 1977, when various other agencies focused on energy issues were combined. One of the primary missions of the D.O.E. was - and is - to improve the "energy security" of the United States by reducing our dependence on foreign oil. And how have Americans benefited from their investment in this federal bureaucracy (2010 budget request to Congress - $26.3 billion)? Our dependence on foreign oil has grown from 28% of total consumption in 1972 to 53% today.
Only in government could this type of gross failure to achieve stated objectives be tolerated. In the free market, without tax dollars to continuously fund this kind of ineptitude, such an enterprise would have been shut down long ago. Of course, this bureaucracy has been aided greatly in setting this record of incompetence by Democrats in Congress and the White House - who steadfastly refuse to allow Americans to access the resources we have within our own borders that could substantially reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources.
And now the Obama administration wants to take this model of "success" and apply it to even more of our economy, most specifically health and the battle against global "climate change" (notice that its now referred to as "climate change" and not "global warming" because the earth has actually been cooling for 11 years).
Other than our outstanding military, is there anything the federal government provides that could not be done better by the states or private enterprise?
Given the monumental failure of the Department of Energy, and other federal bureaucracies involved in our "energy strategy", there is no basis whatsoever for any confidence that Obama's new energy plan will be anything but a disaster. Obama himself acknowledged that under his plan "electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket".
A federal government purposely pursuing a policy that it knows will cause the cost of the energy that drives the American economy to "skyrocket" would be ridiculous at any time. But in the midst of the economic downturn we're now experiencing it is simply beyond stupid.