Re: Top 10 reasons to blame Democrats for soaring gasoline prices
- From: Mike Roberts <MRMR@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:06:03 -0700
jose wrote:
Top 10 reasons to blame Democrats for soaring gasoline prices
By William Tate
This started out as an attempt to create a light and humorous,
Letterman-esque Top 10 list. But the items on the list, and the drain
Americans are seeing in their pocketbooks because of Democrats'
actions (sometimes inaction) are just too tragic for that.
10) ANWR If Bill Clinton had signed into law the Republican
Congress's 1995 bill to allow drilling of ANWR instead of vetoing it,
ANWR could be producing a million barrels of (non-Opec) oil a day--5%
of the nation's consumption. Although speaking in another context,
even Democrat Senator Charles Schumer, no proponent of ANWR drilling,
admits that "one million barrels per day," would cause the price of
gasoline to fall "50 cents a gallon almost immediately," according to
a recent George Will column.
9) Coastal Drilling (i.e., not in my backyard) Democrats have
consistently fought efforts to drill off the U.S. coast, as evidenced
by Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's preotestation against a
failed 2005 bill: "Not only does this legislation dismantle the bi-
partisan ban on offshore drilling, but it provides a financial
incentive for states to do so."
A financial incentive? With the Chinese now slant drilling for oil
just 50 miles off the Florida coast, wouldn't that have been a good
thing?
8) Insistence on alternative fuels One of the first acts of the new
Democrat-controlled congress in 2007 was an energy bill that "calls
for a huge increase in the use of ethanol as a motor fuel and requires
new appliance efficiency standards." By focusing on alternative fuels
such as ethanol, and not more drilling, Democrats have added to the
cost of food, worsening starvation problems around the word and
increasing inflationary pressures in the U.S., including prices at the
pump.
7) Nuclear power Even the French, who sometimes seem to lack the
backbone to stand up for anything other than soft cheese, faced down
their environmentalists over the need for nuclear power. France now
generates 79% of its electricity from nuclear plants, mitigating the
need for imported oil. The French have so much cheap energy that
France has become the world's largest exporter of electric power. They
have plans in place to build more reactors, including an experimental
fusion reactor.
The last nuclear reactor built in the United States, according to the
US Dept of Energy, was the "River Bend" plant in Louisiana. Its
construction began in March of 1977.
Need I say more?
6) Coal "The liquid hydrocarbon fuel available from American coal
reserves exceeds the crude oil reserves of the entire world," writes
Dr. Arthur Robinson in an article on humanevents.com. The U.S. has
approximately one-fourth of the world's known, proven coal reserves.
Coal would be a proven, and increasingly clean, source of electric
power and--at current prices--a liquified fuel that would reduce our
dependence on foreign oil. Yet Dems and their enviro friends have
fought, and continue to fight, both coal-mining and coal plants.
5) Refinery capacity "High oil prices are still being propped up by a
shortage of refinery capacity and there is little sign of the
bottleneck easing until 2010," according to Peak Oil News. And, while
voters in South Dakota have approved zoning for what could become the
first new oil refinery in the United States in 30 years, the Dems'
environmentalist constituency vows to oppose it, just like
environmentalists opposed the floodgates that could have saved New
Orleans from Hurricane Katrina.
4) Reduced competition With consolidation in the oil industry, has
come reduced competition. Remember, most of the major oil company
mergers -- Shell-Texaco, BP-Amoco, Exxon-Mobil, BP-ARCO, and Chevron-
Texaco -- happened on Clinton's watch. The number of oil refiners
dropped from 28 to 19 companies during Clinton's two terms.
3) The Global Warming Myth At a Group of 8 meeting this week, host
and Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Akira Amari
"described the issues of climate change and energy as two sides of the
same coin and proposed united solutions ... to address both issues
simultaneously". As a result of Global Warming hysteria, the Al Gore-
negotiated Kyoto Protocol created a worldwide market in carbon-
emissions trading. Both 2005 --the year that trading was initiated--
and this year --when the trading expanded dramatically -- saw
substantial and unexpected price spikes in the cost of oil, leading us
to reason Number...
2) Speculation "Given the unchanged equilibrium in global oil supply
and demand over recent months amid the explosive rise in oil futures
prices ... it is more likely that as much as 60% of the today oil
price is pure speculation," writes F. William Engdahl, an Associate of
the Centre for Research on Globalization. According to a June 2006 US
Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report, US energy
futures historically "were traded exclusively on regulated exchanges
within the United States... The trading of energy commodities by large
firms on OTC electronic exchanges was exempted from (federal)
oversight by a provision inserted at the behest of Enron and other
large energy traders into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of
2000." The bill was signed into law by Bill Clinton, in one of his
last acts in office.
1) Defeat of President Bush's 2001 energy package According to the
BBC, "Key points of Bush('s 2001) plan were to:
-Promote new oil and gas drilling
-Build new nuclear plants
-Improve electricity grid and build new pipelines -$10bn in tax breaks
to promote energy efficiency and alternative fuels
A New York Times article, dated May 18, 2001, explained:
"President Bush began an intensive effort today to sell his plan for
developing new sources of energy to Congress and the American people,
arguing that the country had a future of 'energy abundance if it could
break free of the traditional antagonism between energy producers and
environmental advocates.
Mr. Bush's plea for a new dialogue came as his administration
published the report of an energy task force containing scores of
specific proposals... for finding new sources of power and encouraging
a range of new energy technologies."
[The Bush plan] "mentions about a dozen areas including land-use
restrictions in the Rockies, lease stipulations on offshore areas
attractive to oil companies, the vetting of locations for nuclear
plants, environmental reviews to upgrade power plants and refineries
that could be streamlined or eliminated to help industry find more oil
and gas and produce more electricity and gasoline."
The article went on to quote some rather prescient words from the
President, "this great country could face a darker future, a future
that is, unfortunately, being previewed in rising prices at the gas
pump and rolling blackouts in the great state of California" if his
plan was not adopted in 2001.
The Times account continued:
"Mr. Bush talked not only of blackouts but of blackmail, raising the
specter of a future in which the United States is increasingly
vulnerable to foreign oil suppliers...Mr. Bush was praised by many
groups for laying out a long-term energy policy. His report contained
105 initiatives..."
Just as President Bush's predictions have been born out, the article
quoted from that most sage of Democrats, former President Jimmy
Carter:
"World supplies are adequate and reasonably stable, price fluctuations
are cyclical, reserves are plentiful," he (Carter) argued. Mr. Carter
said "exaggerated claims seem designed to promote some long-frustrated
ambitions of the oil industry at the expense of environmental
quality."
But, as a later Times article notes, "the president's ambitious policy
quickly became a casualty of energy politics and, notably, harsh
criticism from Democrats enraged by the way the White House had
created the plan."
In other words, Democrats refused the President's plea to "break free
of the traditional antagonism between energy producers and
environmental advocates."
Remember that the next time you pull up to the pump ... or the voter's
booth.
When Clinton left office, oil was $24 a barrel.
It was Bush's Executive Order that prevented Florida's off coast drilling.
It was Cheney's secret Energy Plan with oil giants that brought
us to this point.
.
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