Domestic Policy: June 2008 Archives
No wonder gasoline costs more than four dollars a gallon: our country hasn’t increased its production to meet increased demand.
Other countries get it. Chinese companies are helping Cuba drill for oil fifty miles off the Florida coast.
But because Washington and state capitals succumb to pressure from radical environmentalists, American oil companies are prohibited from drilling in these same international waters.
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Sign our petition to President Bush today: www.MyHeritage.org/Petition
The solution to high energy prices is simple. Demand for gasoline and electricity has grown, but supply has not, so the price has gone up. To bring the price down, we need more supply.
But the left wants to move the other direction. They want to keep our abundant domestic energy resources off limits and raise taxes on gasoline and electricity.
This plan will only raise the price you pay at the pump even more!
The Heritage Foundation’s renowned policy experts have a real plan to lower energy prices:
- Develop our vast U.S. oil resources in Alaska, off our shores and in the Western oil shale by using proven, safe technologies.
- Build nuclear power plants, which are cheap, safe and emit no carbon dioxide.
- Authorize the construction of near-zero emissions coal-fired power plants.
- Stop blocking the construction of new oil refineries.
- Reduce unnecessary government regulations and encourage private-sector innovation.
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The Heritage Foundation
Didja ever think you'd see the day?:
The 2007 State of the Union address, I believe, was the occasion when President Bush coined the phrase "addicted to oil" in the service of selling the chowderheaded notion of "growing our energy," which has done nothing to augment our domestic energy resources but has definitely fueled higher food prices. You knew that some Dem would pick up on that dubious addition to the political lexicon sooner or later, and Lucifer didn't disappoint.
While it was a stupid thing for Bush to say, Obama's parroting of it reveals his stupidity. America is "addicted to oil" like human beings are "addicted to oxygen". Nobody ever talks about the need to find "alternative breathing sources"; the air is the air. Not entirely dissimilarly, petroleum is the lifeblood of the global, and certainly American, economy, and will be for the forseeable future. Ethanol costs more to transport than it's worth, because it can't be pumped through pipelines and therefore has to be trucked. Windmills don't generate much energy at all, and until the advent of weather control technology are at the mercy of nature. Hybrid cars are inefficient, underpowered, and have no room for the three hundred mile extension cords. Solar is impractical until a way is devised to efficiently capture and store it. Nuclear will help (even Europe is way ahead of us there), but it won't remotely eliminate the need for the continued flow of oil at market prices.
Given the deliterious effect of self-imposed scarcity on those market prices, it is unconscionable for any pol, much less a man who arrogantly presumes to be qualified to lead the Free World, to do anything short of maximizing the availability of domestic sources of petroleum. Even global warming hoaxer Lord Queeg is bending to some degree on expanding domestic drilling where the oil actually is. But not False Messiah! His answer is no energy exploration at all, and a George McGovernesque thousand dollar check to every "non-wealthy" American sucked straight out of the exploration budget of every oil company in the country. Or about nineteen tanks of gas at the current price for regular unleaded if you drive an economy car. Yeah, THAT'll solve the energy crisis people like him spent the past thirty years perpetrating.
Still, if it's the difference between the politics of scarcity and the politics of abundance that most defines the two parties, how can it be that St. Barack is the prohibitive favorite to win in November? Was Jimmy "Malaise" Carter unlucky enough to be thirty years ahead of his time?
....that is the $140 a barrel question. And that, in turn, rests upon several other unreliable factors, such as the American people's collective economic knowledge (which is abysmal) and the ability of what passes for the "Republican" presidential nominee's ability to educate them on the connection between environmental extremism and getting shafted for $4.37 a gallon (the most recent regular unleaded price at my neighborhood filling station) at the pump.
As to the first, the trend is at least moving in the right direction:
A majority of Americans (57%) interviewed in a mid-May Gallup Panel survey approve of expanding drilling for oil in offshore and wilderness areas considered to be off-limits...
The current May poll result does, however, show a somewhat different attitude than Gallup has measured over the years in specific reference to opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for oil exploration. A Gallup trend question about ANWR was last updated in March of this year.
To wit, respondents still opposed tapping ANWR's billions of barrels of crude by a margin of 52%-43%. Kind of a "tank half full" proposition - saying yes to drilling everywhere else but no to drilling in ANWR doesn't make any sense, but it's remarkable that the public is saying yes to drilling anywhere, even with gas prices going into orbit.
That was a month ago. On Tuesday Rasmussen released a survey asking about offshore drilling and found that two-thirds supported it, a ten-point bump from the Gallup number. But it didn't ask about ANWR and also indicated that 61% of "voters" believe oil companies should be required to squander at least a portion of their profits on alternative energy research. Which, if you're interested in an impromptu politicoeconomic lesson, is the difference between fascism and what directly confiscating that profit would be (i.e. socialism). An bit of ideological confusion that suggests the people participating in these polls are every bit as economically ignorant as feared.
Yet they do understand the whizzing digits on that tote board. A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll this week showed 77% in favor of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and an eleven point bump to 53% who'd be willing to tell the caribou to vacate that tiny postage stamp of the vast Alaskan wildnerness so that their rulers can cease being held economic hostage by ragheads on the other side of the planet. Beats me what the fig is so special about a piece of Godforsaken tundra utterly indistinguishable from any other plot of "the last frontier's" hundreds of thousands of square miles of emptiness. How can mosquito-infested tundra be remotely describable as "pristine" anyway?
Charles Krauthammer deftly depicts the effect this real life case study in supply and demand has had on the presidential "race":
At a time when U.S. crude oil production has fallen 40% in the past twenty-five years, seventy-five billion barrels of oil have been declared off-limits, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That would be enough to replace every barrel of non-North American imports (oil trade with Canada and Mexico is a net economic and national security plus) for twenty-two years.
That’s nearly a quarter-century of energy independence. The situation is absurd. To which John McCain is responding with a partial fix: Lift the federal ban on Outer Continental Shelf drilling, where a fifth of the off-limits stuff lies. …
The oil crisis handed McCain an unexpected and singularly effective campaign issue. A majority of Americans now favor drilling in the Arctic and offshore. Democrats stand in the way of increased production, just as they did thirteen years ago when President Bill Clinton vetoed drilling in ANWR. Domestic oil production would be about 20% higher today if the Republican Congress had been allowed to prevail.
As expected and right on cue, Barack Obama reflexively attacked McCain. “His decision to completely change his position” to one that would please the oil industry is “the same Washington politics that has prevented us from achieving energy independence for decades.” One can only marvel at Obama’s audacity in characterizing McCain’s proposal to change our policy as “old politics,” while the candidate of “change” adheres rigidly to the no-drilling status quo.
McCain is a lot of things, but the man who opposed ethanol in Iowa — as Obama shamelessly endorsed the most abysmally stupid of our energy policies — is no patsy of the energy producers. Americans know that increased production is needed to complement reduced consumption as the only way to get us out from oil shocks, high prices and national security blackmail.
Actually, Lord Queeg has NOT "changed his position," as he still thinks ANWR should be marketed as a tourist attraction. Which, I suppose, puts him solidly in the political middle he likes so much, as the above poll numbers indicate.
BO, on the other hand, is plumbing new depths of idiocy. It is, to borrow a phrase from Ace, "toenail-eating profoundly retarded" to (1) call the environmental extremism that has dominated "Washington politics" and choked off domestic energy production for decades the road to "achieving energy independence"; (2) claim that that environmental extremism hasn't dominated "Washington politics" for decades (unless he's equating "energy independence" with nationalization of the energy sector); and (3) claim that taking the eminently commonsensical move of tapping our vast domestic energy resources would please "the oil industry" rather than the people whose votes he wants through relieving the upward pressure on gas prices, which is the clear direction of the aforementioned public opinion trend on this issue.
And then there's this story, which would never have arisen if Lucifer had had his way, and will go away if he gets elected:
Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Total SA are getting ready to formally announce historic contracts to return to Iraq some thirty-six years after the country's government took control of its giant oil reserves, the New York Times reported on Thursday.
The oil majors, and a host of smaller companies, are in talks with Iraq's oil ministry for unusual no-bid contracts to service the war-torn country's largest fields, said the newspaper, citing ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.
Beating out offers from forty other companies in Russia, China and India, the Western majors will announce by the end of the month contract agreement to run for one to two years, some five years after the U.S. military toppled Saddam Hussein.
Half a million more barrels a day from a now-friendly and allied country. It helped mitigate the upward pressure on prices. That's good news, right? Sure - to everybody outside Obamanation, which currently is a minority of the electorate, even though an overlapping majority of the electorate says, "Drill Bambi!" (Well, "Drill!" anyway). To Our Mr. Hussein and his nutrooters, that's vindication of their "no blood for oil" mania. Given how much blood we've spilled, I see no reason why some oil shouldn't come back in the bargain.
'course, as Ace observes, we'd get twice that much out of ANWR alone. Which suggests there isn't ANY price libs would pay for oil, which in turn helps explain why they enjoy seeing it right where it is and where it's going, in particular light of the party that is guaranteed to end up with unchecked power next year.
Ah, but for now, who knows? We all know Barry can't handle tacking into the wind of public opinion. He fled from Uncle Jerry, Father Pfleger, Tough Tony, Trinity United, his anti-NAFTA double-talk, and more recently reneged on public campaign financing and the FISA/NSA TSP deal. Given how much the latter two are pissing off his bosomest backers already, what would he have to lose by heaving Santa's reindeer under the bus? After all, where else are Obamanationals going to go? And how much longer will they be able to afford the gas it'll take to get there?
Maybe even False Messiah can't bring himself to ever be seen as agreeing with this man:
Particularly when this man - as he has been on a great many issues over the past decade, much to the Left's frenzied consternation - is absolutely right.
Rising oil prices are playing havoc with our economy. Continental Airlines just announced it's laying off 3,000 workers; Ford is considering slashing about 2,000 jobs. And now what you pay for electricity is going up as much as 29 percent. If you've had enough, please sign our petition and email your representative.
Since the new majority took control of Congress in January 2007 on a pledge to bring down gas prices, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have not sent a single bill that would lower fuel costs to the President. Just the opposite. Reid tried to get the Senate to pass a "cap and trade" bill that could have actually raised the cost of gasoline by as much as $1.10/gal.
Meanwhile, Senator Chuck Schumer's solution to skyrocketing gas prices is to bully Saudi Arabia into increasing production and lowering their price of oil.
It doesn't have to be this way. Believe it or not, America may hold more oil than Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Venezuela - but it is closed off to exploration by our own government. So why bully Saudi Arabia when, in terms of oil production, we could become Saudi Arabia?
The good news is that Congressman Mac Thornberry has introduced the No More Excuses Energy Act (H.R. 3089), which would allow for more oil drilling here at home, increase wind energy, encourage the construction of new refineries, and expand clean nuclear power. If 218 House members sign the discharge petition on the bill, it will be brought to the floor for a vote.
Freedom's Watch will tomorrow begin calling residents in selected congressional districts urging members to support H.R.3089. You can help, too.
First, sign our petition supporting this bill that we can deliver to the House leadership on your behalf. Second, click here to send your representatives an email telling them to sign the discharge petition for H.R. 3089.
Congress is all that stands in the way of energy independence and lower fuel costs for America. Let them know where you stand!
Sincerely,
Joe Eule
Chief of Staff
Freedom's Watch
If this is what it takes....
....to get a (mostly) serious energy policy in this country....
....go for it, I say.
UPDATE: Minnesota GOP Senator Norm Coleman, who has apparently decided that doesn't, after all, want to go down in history as the man who lost an election to Stewart Smalley, concurs.
There is a Chevron station that I drive by on my way to and from work every day. It's usually the one at which I fill up my little roller skate of an economy car when I'm down to the fumes. I used to have to fill up weekly because of my former near-hundred mile per day roundtrip commute; for the past five years my office has been a mere fifteen minutes from my house, and I now only need to get gas in or around once a month.
Still, I can trace the seasons by watching the pump price tote board go up and down: spring, it goes up; summer and fall, it goes down. This reflects the fluctuating demand for gasoline, as people generally do more driving when its warmer and the kids are out of school than they do when "the weather outside is frightful."
The last few weeks, however, that pump price tote board has read like a gauge in a Warner Brothers cartoon - you know, the one whose numbers start moving faster and faster and faster until they momentarily freeze into letters that say "Amazin', ain't it?" before resuming their dizzying blur. One day last week I drove by in the morning, saw the price per gallon had risen a nickel from the evening before, and THAT evening, after half-jokingly speculating that the price probably went up another nickel during the day, I found that I was wrong - it had gone up SIX cents. Eight and nine cent rises in a single day are becoming commonplace.
I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you haven't already seen.yourselves. I'm less than sure, but still willing to bet, that most of you behold that, grit your teeth through "shell"ing out fifty to seventy-five bucks for a tank that only cost a third that much just a few years ago, and don't instinctively think, "Boy, this sucks; I sure hope the Democrats in Congress pass an energy bill that will restrict domestic oil supplies EVEN MORE, and sock those robber baron oil companies with one tax after another that will drive up their pump prices EVEN MORE, and force those robber baron oil companies to lower their prices so that I can relive the glory days of sitting in line for most of a day waiting to fill up my tank with fumes. Boy, those were the good old days." Instead you probably bewilderedly wonder why we can't simply expand our domestic energy supplies so that we're not so hopelessly dependent upon international paragons of virtue like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela for the very lifeblood of our economy and our military.
Welcome to the club, gentles. A club that includes such luminaries of wisdom and common sense as the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger:
Did you catch what Henninger said at the end? Czar Vlad in Moscow and the ChiComms in Beijing watching our energy debates, beholding BOTH political parties competing with each other to see who can lock up our domestic energy resources tighter than a bull's ass in fly season, seeing how desperately unserious, even infantile, we've become, and concluding not only that America doesn't want to be a world power anymore, but "can be taken" - as in conquered. And of course, Uncle Hugo and Adolph Ahmadinejad are watching closely as well, doubtless doubled over in laughter at the spectre of "the Gringo Satan" voluntarily bankrupting itself and its own people for the sake of pagan mysticism masquerading as "climate change".
Another elite member of the club, Victor Davis Hanson, takes particular note of the emphasized passage above and turns a notorious rhetorical truncheon of the Left against its creators:
The other day in a poor part of Central California, I talked with a number of folks at a rural gas station. Most drove second- and third-hand pickups, large cast-off sedans or used SUVs.
They didn't have the cash to buy a new fuel-efficient Honda or Toyota. And they were now spending a day or two of their wages just to fuel their cars.
But I also fill up three hours away on the San Francisco peninsula. High-priced hybrid cars and new more-efficient SUVs are everywhere. After listening to these quite different motorists, I can confirm: The wealthier and better-educated seem less concerned about gas prices.
From my informal conversations, I'd go even further: The wealthy, especially political liberals, also like that high-priced gas translates into less burning of fossil fuels by others and will help accelerate research into alternative energies.
But what these elites don't seem to realize is that the energy policies they advocate are paralyzing almost everyone else - and that the truly ethical and environmental solution would require embracing positions long considered anathema to traditional liberalism.
You can see where VDH is heading, and it is glorious, oh yes:
The debate in Congress over more refineries and nuclear-power plants; drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off our coasts; and developing oil shale, tar sands and liquid coal has been a predictable soap opera: Grasping Republicans supposedly wish to enrich energy companies, while idealistic Democrats want only to protect the environment. But those stances, hatched in the days of $1.50-a-gallon gas, should be revisited in light of different moral considerations.
One is fairness to the poor and middle class. Like it or not, radical environmentalism appeals to an elite not all that worried when gas prices rise or electricity rates go up - since fossil-energy use goes down.
But a paradox is that most environmentalists think of themselves as egalitarians. So, instead of objecting to the view of a derrick from the California hills above the Santa Barbara coast, shouldn't a liberal estate owner instead console himself that the offshore pumping will help a nearby farm worker or carpenter get to work without going broke?
If there is a way for the Republican Party to win the November election, Professor Hanson just punched its ticket: economic populism. Not the kind that blames "Big Business" for all of society's ills and problems; that promises to somehow make the lives of the "poor" and "middle class" better by jacking up tax rates on the "rich"; that assures us we can maintain our accustomed standard of living and high-tech, energy-intensive lifestyle off of windmills and sunbeams and penguin dreams and stranger things and driving electric cars equipped with three-hundred mile extension cords and herding us all onto bicycles and into mass transit trains like we were all deported to frakking Vietnam or some other commie hellhole; all while the neoBolshevik elites retain THEIR SUVs and THEIR private jets and THEIR secret tax breaks and shelters and so on and so on in an orgy of self-indulgent, "thee and not me" hypocrisy whose shamelessness is bottomless and insatiable.
No, THIS economic populism would put its crosshairs precisely on this autocratic liberal double-standard and rally Us, The People around the question of why we have to have holes blown in OUR household budgets based upon hoaxes of drowning polar bears and climatological Armageddons no "scientist" can prove and forty-year-old hysterical envirocliches, all to cover a stupendous arrogance that presumes to dictate to the rest of us what THEY think is best for us, rather than let us run our OWN lives, thank you very much, and make it easier and more affordable to make our OWN decisions about what kind of car to drive and how much to drive it and how high to turn the thermostat or the AC.
And then there's Barack Hussein Obama, who is not only in favor of making the problem of runaway energy costs even worse, but has already decided on our behalf that it "isn't a problem" at all:
Yeah, all you "clingy" rubes, bumpkins, and other untermenschen; spiraling prices at the pump AREN'T A PROBLEM; they're a BLESSING. You'll LIKE having to donate a minor organ every time you fill up; it helps feed the unemployed, and soon you'll join them and have a guaranteed source of food, and you won't need those nasty, pollution-belching, gas-guzzling old cars anymore because my administration will provide you with nice, clean public transport to the welfare office every day, where you will worship my image and give THANKS for all I have done for you.
Can you say "out of touch" like he was suddenly beamed into the middle of intergalactic space?
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell - who, recall, is expected to be defeated for re-election by a nameless Donk in a state that is "redder" than Mike Huckaplucka's neck - may be figuring out the enormous electoral potential of the word "DRILL!":
That is PRECISELY the message the GOP needs to take to the American people and pound into the ground for the next five months: the Republican Party wants to bring down energy prices by making it possible for us to generate more energy of our own here at home, providing free market economic relief to hard-pressed "paycheck to paycheck" American families. But the Democrats want to keep energy prices high and rising out of sight because they've decided that the economic interests of the American people are less important than the polar bears and snail darters and reepicheeps and klongats and veruul and sehlats that you're murdering with each drive down to Blockbuster for the weekly family video. And they think they have the right to tell you what your economic interests are.
To paraphrase John Lithgow in 2010, if the vote is my family versus the sea otter, I vote my family. And so, I think, would a majority of the American people.
But such a winning message has to be led by the Republican Party's presidential nominee. It has to be a unified national meme that "trickles down" from the top of the ticket to benefit all the down-ballot 'Pubbies as well.
And what is the stance of the Republican presidential nominee on THE populist issue of 2008?:
Mike Goldfarb: Some people are perplexed by your rhetoric on global warming. Is this one of those ‘no surrender’ issues, or is there room for discussion?
McCain: There’s always room for discussion. But I don’t know how any conservative can not support cap and trade. We did it with acid rain. The Europeans are putting it into effect. It’s a capitalist process that encourages green technologies. If we’re wrong, all we’ve done is adopt green technologies, in an effort to give our kids a greener planet.
As far as ANWR is concerned, I don’t want to drill in the Grand Canyon, and I don’t want to drill in the Everglades. This is one of the most pristine and beautiful parts of the world.
Nobody, to my knowledge, has suggested drilling in the Everglades, or the Grand Canyon, or down Rabbit's hole in the Hundred Acre Wood. And "pristine" ANWR is so cold, bleak, and barren that it - and its oil, if Lord Queeg has his way - might as well be on Mars. Heck, spilling oil all over it would probably increase its "pristineness".
That was five months ago. His tune hasn't changed:
He said that he opposed drilling in ANWR for the same reason that he “would not drill in the Grand Canyon… I believe this area should be kept pristine.” (Proposed oil and gas exploration in ANWR would only affect 2,000 of its 19 million acres, or 0.01%.)
The wedge issue of the election (well, okay, along with five robed, dhimmized oligarchs unilaterally deciding to announce the surrender of the United States to al Qaeda), and Maverick is going to throw them both away, thinking he can win by becoming more like Barack Hussein Obama instead of Ronald Reagan, whose "foot soldier" he claims to be.
We are soooooo screwed.
And I don't just mean from the pump handle making us walk funny.
Over at PowerLine, they have some interesting numbers showing just who supports America being less dependent on foreign oil and who only gives lipservice to that:
ANWR Exploration House Republicans: 91% Supported House Democrats: 86% Opposed
Coal-to-Liquid
House Republicans: 97% Supported
House Democrats: 78% OpposedOil Shale Exploration
House Republicans: 90% Supported
House Democrats: 86% OpposedOuter Continental Shelf (OCS) Exploration
House Republicans: 81% Supported
House Democrats: 83% OpposedRefinery Increased Capacity
House Republicans: 97% Supported
House Democrats: 96% OpposedSUMMARY
91% of House Republicans have historically voted to increase the production of American-made oil and gas.
86% of House Democrats have historically voted against increasing the production of American-made oil and gas.
Well gosh, that's quite a bit different than what they're saying, isn't it? One could almost believe they *want* these high gas prices. I wonder why that would be? Oh...so they can "save" us all from the eeevil oil corporations, that's right.
Although blessedly defeated for now, there is something that so emblematically symbolizes the Lieberman-Warner "climate change" legislation that I feel compelled to reproduce it here, along with an accompanying question:
Doesn't this diagram look an awful lot like the ones Hillary Clinton's "health care task force" rolled out fifteen years ago for her first attempt at a health care putsch?
Bonus question: minority Republicans stopped ClintonCare a decade and a half ago and were rewarded with control of Congress in 1994. Minority Republicans stopped the even bigger communistic attack of Lieberman-Warner this week, yet are doomed to lose more ground on Capitol Hill, without which they may not be able to stop it again next year. And no matter how the presidential election turns out, there will be a president at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue who will sign this monstrosity. What does that say about ideological/philosophical direction in which America is drifting?
A special message from Newt Gingrich, Chairman, American Solutions:
We launched our “Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less.” campaign last week, and the response has been overwhelming.
Already, more than 350,000 people have signed the petition urging Congress to start drilling for oil domestically. Next week, it’s our goal to deliver more than 1,000,000 signatures to the United States Senate as a first step toward stopping the destructive Warner-Lieberman bill which would raise the cost of gasoline, diesel fuel, aviation fuel, natural gas and coal.
I hope you'll sign the petition now and join me in sending a message to Congress that we need real solutions to stop the pain Americans are feeling at the pump.
And me, too.
Max Whitmore on Texas tea (via Newsmax):
Now, I want to turn to oil. I will be brief concerning my feelings about the oil situation. This entire run-up of oil prices is a very carefully planned event by the oil suppliers, the Middle East producers being most prominent. If you believe otherwise, you just do not understand markets.
Markets always like a “hot” stock. That will never change. But, it always, I repeat always, takes a “promoter” to get a “hot” stock hot. Promoters will spend money advertising, paying writers to “plug” a stock, buy their way onto radio and TV shows, or whatever it takes to get investors’ attention. Promoters will work with brokerage houses and individual brokers to promote their stock to investors and, if necessary, even bankroll the buying to move a stock higher.
But all this takes time, money, and lots of heavy duty coordination to accomplish. True, now and then a true rush to a stock is caused by a totally unique product like Xerox, Apple's iPod, and a few others I could name. But, that only happens a few times every decade. Most of the “hot” stocks out there make only the promoters and a few of the truly savvy speculators money. The average investors comes out poorer almost every time.
No, this oil move is a carefully orchestrated event. Huge money pools are financing the buying of the futures contracts to run up the prices. Giant power centers are making sure that no one gets “out of line” in this incredible fleecing of the non-petroleum countries.
The folks behind this push are the same ones that brought us the 1973-74 gas lines and changed the world’s financial power centers forever. Only this time the reason for the move by these folks is quite different.
The oil producers can see the handwriting on the wall. Oil will soon become just one of many power sources in the world. The so-called alternative fuel sources will force oil producers to reduce their price per barrel by a huge margin and for good in the next five to seven years. To “make hay while the sun shines” so to speak, the oil powers are using their huge money pools to run up prices that then translate into higher prices per barrel, even when nothing has changed, especially production costs.
All the talk of running out of oil is nonsense. If we want it bad enough, we could do what the Nazis did in WWII and just make it in chemical plants. Did you know that German scientists did just that over sixty years ago and maintained their entire war machine with synthetic fuel?
If you question this, just look at the diamond business. We can now make diamonds that are truly difficult to distinguish from the real thing and for very low cost. Yes, the diamond business is very worried.
No, this oil move is a careful plan to fleece the world of huge piles of money that will then be used to buy banks, insurance companies, food companies, almost any high grossing consumer goods company, regardless of its location in the world. Thus, when oil does fall from its throne, the income from these purchased businesses they own and control will replace the oil income. Who needs oil?
This fleecing is going on even as I write this article. Look in your local newspaper at the companies being bought. Where do you think the money is coming from? It is coming from “private investors” (who are their partners), banks (already partly-owned by oil powers) and other innocuously named private groups funded by the oil giants to disguise their oil-backed involvement.
"Big Oil," in other words, is our old buddies the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the cartel of friends and enemies upon which we have made ourselves hopelessly dependent by our own policy choices: 38 billion barrels of domestic oil resources and 1 TRILLION barrels in oil shale deposits we have locked up in the ground based on technological ignorance, environmentalist superstition, and outright Marxian impulses.
Remember which side of the aisle it was, only a few years ago, that championed the notion of driving up gasoline prices to the levels we're seeing now for the express purpose of "forcing" the American people off of fossil fuels and into government-dictated "alternative energy" sources. And now that they've realized that dream, what do the libs and their greenstremist allies propose as the "solution"? Drastically higher energy taxes and little short of the outright nationalization of the energy sector.
OPEC thinks the Left is going to win, impliment its energy-destructive statist policies, and destroy its best customer, which is why they're gouging us for as much as they can get while the getting is still good. But there is a non-BS alternative - the same one that a man named Ronald Reagan pursued almost thirty years ago when he deregulated natural gas prices and otherwise got the federal government out of the energy regulation racket: we can drill more, drill now, and pay less. A strategy that upwards of four out of every five Americans favor.
Those are, of course, the same Americans a majority of whom are going to hand the entire government over to the Democrats in November. 'Tis a pity the GOP can't even muster the testicular fortitude to get out in front of where the people say they want to go on energy. No wonder they're "running on fumes" metaphorically as much as we, the people will be literally, at our own electoral hand.
