High Oil Prices - Blame The Government You Elected

Harlingen, Texas, April 28, 2008:  Yesterday I topped off my tank at $3.49.9 a gallon.  But, I am lucky.  My home is in one of the lowest cost-of-living regions of the country.  In California, for example, my brother filled up his tank again at $3.89.9 a gallon…and he shops for “cheap” gas. The high price of gasoline is on the lips of everyone you meet these days.  Also, everyone has his or her own idea about whom we should blame for our latest economic woes.

Those of us who dabble in writing politically oriented commentary expect to have our views challenged.  However, reflecting back on my multiple years of journalistic ranting, I can remember no article that generated more comment than last week’s “A Gallon of Milk, A Gallon of Oil and the Ethanol Hoax”.  While the majority of readers corresponding with me agreed with my attack on the liberal left and the environmental loonies who have caused most of our problems, there were still ample emails telling me I had no clue about the reality of our current plight.

My argument is very basic.  If any blame is to be assessed, it must be laid at the feet of our national government.  The problem starts with the price of oil, which everyone must agree is a commodity and seeks out the highest dollar buyers are willing to pay.  Supply and demand determine high and low prices.  To get lower prices you can either reduce the demand or increase the supply.  Now what has been controlled for more than 35 years?  Supply is the answer.  And who has controlled the supply of oil in the United States?  The answer to that big question is the United States Government.

We all know there is abundant oil in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge.  We know more oil is in the Dakotas and even Wyoming.  We know there are huge deposits of oil off the California and Florida coasts.  We know there are tons upon tons of oil shale in the West.  We know that thousands of oil wells were capped and are no longer in production.  Deep deposits of oil at up to 16,000 feet and natural gas, more than 3 miles underground and off shore await us… and we know the technology exists to bring them to the surface.

We know that in the past three and one half decades no new oil refineries have been built, nor have the existing ones been modernized due to the restrictive rules and regulations placed upon the industry by governmental agencies.

While people are forced into making choices between buying gasoline to drive to work, or placing food on the table for their families, a few of our capped wells in California and other locales are being reopened.  In California alone, there are currently more than 3,000-capped wells and many have seen only between 20% and 25% of their oil extracted.  Some were capped just waiting for new technology and higher prices.  Many were capped due to environmental objections.  To be completely objective, we must also admit a large number were capped because they had turned into dry hole.

We have allowed the far left environmental movement to cripple the economy by its marriage to the Democratic Party and a few brain-dead Republicans.  We have allowed the left to keep screaming in our ears that everything is the fault of Big Oil. As the politicos chant this mantra, we buy into the false claim because most of us get our facts from bubbleheads in the media who also are without a clue to reality.

According to Walter Youngquist writing in “Myths and Realities of Mineral Resources”, the six largest Big Oil companies really belong to America.  He says, “Nearly 200 mutual insurance companies hold close to 16 million shares. Ninety-one colleges own these stocks and about 1,000 charities and educational foundations in the United States are holders of these oil company securities.  In direct ownership more than 2.3 million Americans hold stock in these six companies.”

Our own citizens, investing in these combined resources have allowed the “big” companies to drill some very expensive wells.  A single hole can cost a million dollars and more, without any assurance of success.  And this is the Big Oil that should be punished with higher taxes that politicos yell about in the national ear.

Another governmental con job is the political falsehood that oil deposits in such places as the wildlife refuge or off the Florida coast don’t contain enough resources to make drilling worthwhile.  Well, think about this. In the United States we use just under 20 million barrels of oil a day.  An field that produces 100 million barrels of oil is considered huge.  However, it takes years to use up the supply.  If that 100 million barrel field were used to supply America’s daily needs, it would be gone in less than a week. But, that never happens.  The oil is pumped over years and years.  So, when you hear the political chatter about there “is only about 90 days worth of oil in that Alaskan refuge...and it won’t pay us to drill there”, remember not a single field is ever used to supply needed oil, and a field that could supply 90 days worth of Black Gold is huge. That would be a field containing multiple hundreds of millions of barrels. It would be assisting in our nation’s energy needs for decades.

The other chant from the left is we can wean ourselves off our oil addiction by conservation.  There is nothing that can be saved through conservation efforts other than short-term relief.  If you conserved until your economy fell apart, it would still not increase the supply.  People fail to understand we can no longer rely upon our own resources for oil independence.  We passed the point of self-sufficiency in 1970.  Each year, as our population expands, our dependence upon foreign oil and other energy sources increases.  We now consume far more than we can create from our own resources.  The government has added to this burden by its massively restrictive regulations and mind-numbing pandering to the environmental left.

Removing governmental restrictions and adding to our refinery capacity would go a long way toward easing the heavy toll this major price hike has taken on both the national economy and the personal pocketbooks of Americans.  Increased drilling, combined with the small amount of relief that can be brought about by alternative energy would go a long way toward easing the bidding war of oil speculators.  That’s is not going to happen with the democratic majority in Congress.  They will continue to point their collective fingers at the oil companies and never admit to their own actions or non-actions that have caused this crisis.

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A Gallon of Milk, A Gallon of Gas and the Ethanol Hoax

Harlingen, Texas, April 24, 2008:  When I read the newspaper or view the nightly television news shows I can’t help but feel almost uncontrollable anger. And the truth is, I really don’t know where that anger should be directed. I listen to my fellow citizens anguish about the price of fuel, the price of food and sticker shock at everything they want to purchase. They have great concerns about the price of gas at the local station and the cost of milk at the super market.  And they blame the politicians for inaction, along with greedy farmers and Big Oil for high prices.  With their next breath they are crying for more of our corn based ethanol to help lower prices at the pump.  It is enough to make a rational person want to bash his or her head against the nearest hard object in complete frustration.

For the past thirty plus years we have allowed the environmental activists of the Democratic Party to, stop all forward movement in our national quest for energy independence.  We know how to obtain oil from places such as Alaska, Wyoming and the Dakotas, but legislation to drill has been blocked.  We know oil is waiting offshore, but we are not allowed to drill due to environmental impact, even though other nations are reaching for that same oil, just a few miles away.

We have even allowed these same activists to stop the building of new oil refineries for the past 30 years.

Our energy demands from abroad could be reduced by nuclear power, but the socialist led environmentalists have swayed enough pandering politicians to stop the production of nuclear power plants.  Other socialist-activists who hide behind the green wall of environmentalism have slowed the much touted wind farms of this country to almost a standstill.  When construction is almost at hand there is always another call for a study to see if these wind farms will kill migrating birds, or perhaps block Ted Kennedy’s oceanfront view.

Though the United States has enough coal to handle the majority of our energy needs for decades, political roadblocks keep on appearing to slow the rapid development of coal based technology.

While on the topic of energy concerns, lets not forget the political love affair with corn-based ethanol.  To say this bio fuel is a gigantic con game perpetrated by corn producers and politicos would be an understatement.  We must add into the mix major corporations that keep the myth of reduced dependence on oil alive, because they are financially invested in bio-fuels.

When we examine the politician’s incessant praising of corn based ethanol, we fail to understand these are really people who are prostituting themselves for more votes and financial support from the agro-community. 

Ethanol, as we produce it today, is 20% less efficient than gasoline.  It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce enough ethanol to fill the tank of the average American automobile. (Think about that for a minute.  It also takes about 450 pounds of corn to feed one person for a year.) It is too corrosive to be shipped via pipeline and must be trucked to distribution points.  Added to these negatives…it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel, coal, oil, or natural gas, to produce one gallon of ethanol.

Writing on the Mother Jones website, Cameron Scott says, “To grow enough corn for ethanol to replace our oil addiction would require approximately 482 million acres of cropland. exceeding the total of 434 million acres of cropland used for all food and fiber.  This does not even account fro projected growth of oil consumption in the U.S.”

Added to these problem areas, ethanol production increases, rather than reduces, environmental concerns.  Production requires the application of petroleum-based fertilizers that have contributed heavily to the emission of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide.  To produce a gallon of ethanol requires three to five gallons of water and results in 13 gallons of toxic trash and wastewater.  It takes the energy equivalent of 113 liters of gas to treat this waste.

Dr. Walter Williams, the distinguished author, columnist and professor at George Mason University says, “The grain based ethanol hoax is a sterling example of a program economists refer to as narrow, well-defined benefits versus widely dispersed costs. It pays the ethanol lobby to organize and collect money to grease the palms of politicians willing to do their bidding because there is a large benefit to them – higher wages and profits.  The millions of fuel consumers, who fund these benefits through higher fuel costs and food prices, as well as taxes, are relatively uninformed and have little clout.”

So, we tolerate $6.00 corn used to produce $2.00 ethanol, which is also subsidized by the government to the tune of $1.05 to $1.38 per gallon, because it would not survive on the free market.  Thus, we allow the costs to each of us personally to increase even more, because those subsidies come directly from our tax dollars.

But, we haven’t finished here.  How about that box of cereal, or that steak, or that gallon of milk?  Have you checked market prices lately?

Last night a woman on the evening news was telling the reporter that, “ I had to choose between paying about $3.50 for a gallon of gas, or buying a gallon of milk for my children.”

A convenience store operator told the news reporter that the high price of gas had resulted in him losing customers.  “People don’t fill their tanks”, he said.  “And they don’t come in to the store and buy things like they did before.  I am making much less money in my business.”

Yes, prices have sky rocketed on everything from beef to milk and cereal to soda pop.  Even beer has jumped in price, because corn and other grains are being diverted into producing fuels.

Reporting in the Des Moines Register, Philip Brasher has noted “A Senate-passed energy bill would require the use of 15 billion gallons of ethanol by 2015, more than double what motorists are expected to use this year.  The mandate would be raised to 36 billion gallons by 2022.”

At the same time difficulties in transporting the bio fuel to distant locales have produced a glut of ethanol in Iowa and Nebraska, thus dropping the price by 50 cents a gallon and, of course, increasing the subsidies paid to the producers. Even with this happening dozens of plants are under construction and current distilleries are being expanded. More corn is being planted to feed the bio fuel industry and less corn and other grains are being raised to feed the hungry.

So, as you look at high prices everywhere there are a lot of people you can blame.  You can point your rage at Big Oil, Big Industry, Big Farmers, Big Politicians…and on and on. But, the person you really should be angry at owns that face you see every day in the mirror.  Too many of us expected the politicians to be fathers, mothers and nannies combined.  What they really ended up doing is stealing our modern way of life.

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Donkeys, Elephants and Political Truths

Harlingen, Texas, April 17,2008: During the presidential campaign of 1828 Democrat Andrew Jackson was labeled a “jackass” because he was perceived to have stubborn and stupid political views.  One hundred and nine years later that label still hangs around the neck of the Democratic Party. The party never adopted the jackass label, but it became an accepted party symbol by the people. Over the course of time political spinners changed the term from jackass to a donkey that was “clever and courageous”, and the party has continued to spin that image. 

The elephant didn’t come along until 1874 when both the jackass and the elephant were used in a political cartoon by Thomas Nast.  He portrayed a roaring Democrat Jackass dressed in a lion- skin, frightening a very weak and timid Republican Elephant.

Just as with the democrats, the republicans could not shake the image of the oafish, timid elephant, once the public had viewed it.  But, unlike the democrats, there was an official embracing of the elephant by the Republican Party.  However, the official view was of an elephant that was a sign of “strength and intelligence”.

When viewed from the conservative vantage point of 2008, both symbols are very appropriate in their original context.  Right now we have a mix of 561 elected and appointed officials in Washington who are a combination of bone-headed jackasses and wimpy-willed elephants…and they are all tearing our country apart.

If you are wondering where that number blundering politicos comes from, it is the sum total of 435 members of the House of Representatives, 100 members of the Senate, 9 members of the Supreme Court, 15 Cabinet members, the Vice President and the President of the United States.  All are guilty of violating the United States Constitution, pandering to special interests and placing the future of the nation along with its people in extreme jeopardy.

Just pick a topic, if you will.  The economy is currently all over the map.  Each party is attempting to race for the biggest and best giveaway program to help assure its continuance in office, but nothing being proposed will really help the people of this country.

Homeland Security claims to protect us by poorly screening most airports, periodically checking on various ports, and attempting to place a ragtag collection of spotty fencing at selected locales on the southern border.  They can’t even build a fence in an efficient manner.  The law was passed in 2005, was supposed to have already been completed…and is such a mired mess Congress has extended the completion date to 2014.  Now that is really protection.

We need oil and have billions upon billions of barrels in Alaska, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota and offshore.  The jackasses pandering to environmental kooks have blocked drilling.  The timid behemoths haven’t even put up a good fight to correct a situation that has the entire country now paying from $3.50 to $4.00 a gallon at the pump.

There was, and in Washington it is still proudly pandered, the saving grace of corn based ethanol to reduce dependence on oil.  It uses more energy to produce this poor substitute than it provides.  Added to that, the plan has driven up corn prices so high that food items have skyrocketed across the United States and abroad.  But, the jackasses and the behemoths blunder ever onward.

On the donkey side of the aisle, the cry is strong to bring our troops home from Iraq. regardless of the consequences. The fat cat elephants still support a war that they failed to provide for with a military force large enough to maintain the peace and no worthy plan to manage the aftermath of the initial invasion.

The nation has serious constitutional matters that need addressing from the gerrymandering of congressional districts to the eternally argued, and ever-politicized abortion issue.  On these and other important topics, our Supreme Court refuses to act.

It seems that no issue meaningful to the people is worthy of passage.  No project of value to a special interest group is found wanting.  Most of all, the officials who took an oath to preserve and defend the Constitution of the United States of America have managed to find almost uncountable ways to prostitute that glorious document…And We the People do nothing about it.

In a commentary, I once suggested that every election ballot should contain a square voters could check which read “None of the above”.  I would be willing to bet the farm that if such an item were on every ballot, we could empty out Washington and rid ourselves of that gaggle of misfits now in control.  Unfortunately, the provision does not exist in any national election and we all continue choosing the least offensive of the candidates seeking office.  With that system in place, the old cliché will remain our reality. We will continue to get the government we vote into office, while the donkeys and the elephants continue to blunder their way across our land.

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Where Is Obama's Small Town America?

Harlingen, Texas, April 14, 2008:  I really don’t know where a person would find Barak Obama’s “Small Town America”.  I know that I have not viewed that kind of world from my own vantage point…and I have lived in this so-called “Small Town America” for the past 35 years.

In political remarks that are burning up the Internet, leading the dialog of talk shows and firing up political pundits everywhere, the topic is Obama, speaking in San Francisco.  He said, “You go to some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them.  And they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.  And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Well, I don’t think small-town Pennsylvania is too much different from small-town Exeter, California or small-town Cowiche, Washington or my small-town of Harlingen, Texas.  All small towns are relatively the same.  First of all, you know your neighbors. You know the town’s strengths and its weaknesses.  You know the leaders and the followers. There is teamwork to assure survival.  There are helping hands for those in need.

Yes, there are guns in most small towns.  People in many small towns like to hunt.  There are also fishing poles, because the people also like to fish.  Most of all, they love the Constitution…and the Second Ammendment.

Small town America has an abundance of churches and the pews are filled on Sunday mornings.  But, this never happens out of bitterness but because of the love of God.

People in small town America have antipathy for people who aren’t like them?  I think not.  You will find more human kindness, caring hearts and real compassion in small towns than you will ever discover inside those concrete jungles such as Washington D.C.

Security concerns for the nation cannot be shrugged off as anti-immigrant sentiment and the only place you hear anti-trade sentiment is out of the mouths of politicians.

Jobs come and jobs go in America.  When I moved to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas the main work force was agriculture oriented.  Those not involved with farming were in the textile and clothing-manufacturing field. The region had a historic 12% to 17% unemployment rate. 

Well, that was 35 years ago…and guess what!!!!! Most of those jobs are gone.  The agriculture business is now half of it’s former self.  All of the textile and clothing plants have closed.

Did small town Rio Grande Valley, Texas become bitter?  I think not.  In fact, today, most of our Valley small towns have grown.  Tourism, call centers, service industries, discount shopping malls and construction have replaced the lost jobs…and our unemployment hovers in the area of 5%.  All of this happened because small town folks worked together and not because of Big Brother Washington.

And what about our supposed antipathy for those who are not like us ?  What about that charge of anti-immigrant sentiment?  We didn’t find much help coming from Washington politicos to correct those “so-called” problems.  In Harlingen religion stepped forward to meet a need.  The Ministerial Allience joined as one and created a human service organization called Loaves and Fishes.  What started out as a soup kitchen has grown into a one square block facility that, each day, feeds hundreds of homeless and needy people, who come primarily from other locales.  It provides shelter for those needing a place to rest.  It has family emergency assistance, a crisis center, job training, helps obtain medical care, clothing for the needy and provides offices for a variety of government service organizations.  Do you really think this happened out of bitterness?

We know times are tough for many people.  That was understood when we created our Valley-wide food bank.  Tons and tons of food are provided by companies, churches and through individual donations.  These are distributed to any and all who suffer from hunger.

These are local, antidotal examples of small town America, but they exist in similar forms across the United States.  This is not the view of the country seen by Obama.  It is the view as seen by other people who live in small towns everywhere. 

Small town people are different from those who dwell in large cities.  They are more self-reliant.  They do not keep their hands out to Washington pleading for our government to supply their daily bread.

Sure, small town America struggles.  But, across the country these rural communities still manage to endure.  They don’t do it looking to politicians such as elitist socialists like Barack Obama. They know who the leaders are in their communities…and they know the followers. They prosper through self-determination, expanding their vision, and thinking beyond their boundaries.  They plant new ideas and nurture them.  Most of all they think young seek new ideas and involve the entire community in civic action.  Often they take risks, and if they fail, try again.  Most of all they share in the town’s ownership, not in bitterness, but with pride.

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