2006 April | Liberally Conservative

Gas Pains – Cause and Effect

by Don Anastas @ 1:24 pm. Filed under Economics, Politics

The politicians on both sides of the isle joined in the donkey parade, touting gas rebates, rollback on tax incentives, oil company investigations, windfall profits taxing. Ho-Hum, it’s an election year and the political hypocrites are in full swing.

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Government, and the inept politicians who legislation are, in part, the cause and effect of high gas prices. Big goverment will always spur big costs to consumers.

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Democrats have vetoed opening even a tiny portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas production. If there is as much oil as the U.S. Geological Survey estimates, this would increase America’s proven domestic oil reserves by about 50%.

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In 1995 the Republican Congress passed an ANWR production bill, which Bill Clinton vetoed because he said it could be five to 10 years before the oil would be produced. We would have that oil today if Mr. Clinton had signed that bill.

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Democrats have also voted against producing oil from the Outer Continental Shelf, where there are more supplies by some estimates than in Saudi Arabia.

In the 1970′s the environmentalists and their followers in Democratically controlled Congress even protested building the Alaska pipeline, which today supplies nearly one million barrels of oil a day.

When the U.S. imposed a windfall profits tax in 1980, prices rose to an inflation-adjusted range even higher than today, and domestic production fell. As for claims of “gouging,” the price of gasoline at the pump in the U.S. has risen 25% less than the rise in the global price of crude oil since 2003, according to Wall Street economist Michael Darda.

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Fact Sheet:

China’s demand for oil grew 41% over the past four years, while total world demand grew by about 8%.
Refiners are starting to mix more fuel with ethanol instead of MTBE, an additive that is blamed for causing groundwater pollution. Ethanol tends to be more expensive than MTBE. This is mandated by congressional legislation.
Since the 1990s, the FTC has engaged in multiple gas-price investigations, but it has yet to find a case of price manipulation. The last major investigation, which was in 2001 after gasoline in the Midwest was priced at about 30% more than the national average, found that the high prices were primarily a product of refinery production problems, pipeline disruptions, low inventories and high crude prices.
Congress passed an energy bill that included as much as $5 billion in tax breaks for oil companies. The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates oil companies will receive at least $10 billion in total tax breaks over the next five years.
In 2001, the average U.S. family drove about 5,700 miles commuting to and from work, up from about 4,900 in 1990. Commuting made up the largest share of total vehicle miles traveled in 2001. Social and recreational travel made up the largest share in 1990.
An average American spends about 14 hours a year mowing the lawn, compared with about 375 hours driving. An average lawn mower uses about four gallons of gasoline a year. An average American driver uses about 500 gallons of gasoline a year.
As gas prices increase, many gas stations also report an increase in gas theft. Gas theft costs gas stations an estimated $237 million in 2004 — about one of every 1,100 fill-ups — up from well under $200 million in 2003.

The rhetoric and blame game over fuel cost demonstrates a complete lack of responsibility by elected offiicials. Opportunities to enhance energy self-sufficiency has been around for decades but U.S. citizens have been paid lip service by politicians.

Citizens have voted for many politicians for years without challenging them to do better. Do we go to the polls ignorant of the activities and voting records of career politico’s? American consumers are at fault for their poor habits too. We want what we want, driving gas guzzling cars, buying our children cars and failing to demand more efficient vehicles and effective mass transportation alternatives.

Bloated government and selfish consumer habits are as much to blame for current gas prices as world markets and the growing demand for oil in China and India. Change is difficult but we should demand more from ourselves and more from elected officials.

Source of Data: The Wall Street Journal

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Colin Powell Comments – Untimely & Unwarranted

by Don Anastas @ 10:19 am. Filed under Military, Politics, War on Terror

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell advised President Bush before the Iraq war to send more troops to the country, but the administration did not follow his recommendation. Powell made these comments in London and is crying foul because his strategy was not deployed, in favor of active military commanders in charge at the time.

Is this a too little, too late, simply jumping on the retired U.S. General “arm chair strategy” bandwagon. We would hope Mr. Powell would have shown restraint and not joined the fracas of punditry recently displayed by commanders not on the front lines of decision making in the war on terror and Iraq.

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Powell said he gave the advice to now retired Gen. Tommy Franks, who developed and executed the Iraq invasion plan, and Rumsfeld while the president was present.

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“I made the case to Gen. Franks and Secretary Rumsfeld before the president that I was not sure we had enough troops,” Powell said in an interview on Britain’s ITV television, according to a transcript released by the network. “The case was made, it was listened to, it was considered. … A judgment was made by those responsible that the troop strength was adequate.”

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Powell further stated, “The president’s military advisers felt that the size of the force was adequate, they may still feel that years later. Some of us don’t, I don’t,” Powell said. “In my perspective, I would have preferred more troops but you know, this conflict is not over.”

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“At the time the president was listening to those who were supposed to be providing him with military advice,” Powell said. “They were anticipating a different kind of immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad, it turned out to be not exactly as they had anticipated.”

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Rumsfeld has rejected criticism that he had sent too few U.S. troops to Iraq, saying that Franks and two other generals who oversaw the campaign’s planning, John Abizaid and George Casey, had determined the overall number of troops, and that he and Bush agreed with them.

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No matter what Powell’s feeling, he demonstrates he learned little about diplomacy while Secretary of State. It’s doubtful Powell would appreciate public criticism of his decision making, yet he was weak at the State Department and the decision to remove him was not only warranted, but long overdue.

Source: FoxNews

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April 29, 2006

Moon Bat of The Week Award!

by Don Anastas @ 1:34 pm. Filed under Moonbat Awards

The Vatican

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The Vatican is attempting to censor a book, The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown and the upcoming movie by the same name. Instead of encouraging dialogue within the faith they are returning to the dark ages of burning books, dungeons and tolitarian rule with an iron fist.

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While the Vatican cannot prove every single word in the Old or New Testament they claim Brown’s books is a lie and a sin.

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Archbishop Angelo Amato said the book, written by Dan Brown, had been hugely successful around the world thanks in part to what he called “the extreme cultural poverty on the part of a good number of the Christian faithful.”

The novel is an international murder mystery centered on attempts to uncover a secret about the life of Christ that a clandestine society has tried to protect for centuries.

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The central tenet of the book is that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children. In his address to the group, Amato said Christians should be more willing “to reject lies and gratuitous defamation.”

Amato said that if “such lies and errors had been directed at the Koran or the Holocaust they would have justly provoked a world uprising.” He added: “Instead, if they are directed against the Church and Christians, they remain unpunished.”

Catholic group Opus Dei has told Sony Pictures that putting a disclaimer on the movie stressing it is a work of fiction would be a welcome show of respect toward the Church.

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In the novel and film, Opus Dei is characterized as the latest in a series of secretive groups that worked over the centuries to obscure truths about Jesus Christ.

Opus Dei is a controversial conservative Church groups whose members are mostly non-clerics and urged to seek holiness in their everyday professional jobs and lives. It has rejected criticisms that it is secretive and elitist. Former FBI agent and convicted spy, Robert Hanssen is a former Opus Dei member

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Amato is suggesting an uprising and punishment similar to what Islamist extremists would bring about. Is he suggesting Jihad by way of terrorist organizations who kill innocent people they disagree with or who disagree with them? Has the Vatican formally renounced Iranian statements that the Holocaust is a myth? Did the Vatican try to stop the Godfather trilogy, which depicted heavy corruption in the church and ties with the Mafia?
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Amato suggested that Catholics around the world should launch organized protests against the “The Da Vinci Code” film just as some had done in 1988 to protest against Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ.”

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The Vatican is depicting itself as out of touch and very dangerous to democratic principles. Freedom of religion is only one key right in the U.S. Constitution and the Vatican shouldn’t attempt to disolve all others rights of freedom to protect it’s own self-serving interest.

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liberally: adv 1: freely in a nonliteral manner; "he embellished his stories liberally" 2: in a generous manner;

conservative: One who desires to maintain existing institutions, customs; one who holds right of center opinions in politics;