Hold the environuts accountable

They have made a mockery of our judicial system; they have created much of our current energy mess so why not turn their tactics back on them? They have done nothing positive for this country in 35 years. The trial lawyers have made billions from suing tobacco producers because their product “kills”. I say it’s high time they start filing lawsuits against “big environmental”. These groups have made it their mission to create the circumstances we have today, where we can’t drill for oil, we can’t build new refineries, and we can’t build new pipelines.

Make no mistake these groups are killing people. They are forcing people to choose between gas and medicine, between gas and food. It is their mission to weaken our economy, they should be imprisoned, and these groups are the biggest threat to free people everywhere. It is time for people to rise up and deal with this threat to our democracy. These people need to be held accountable for the damage they have caused to this country and the world.

The time has come for AMERIPEC

The two major political parties are offering very different approaches to dealing with the high cost of energy. The Republicans are advocating measures aimed at increasing the supply of oil, while the Democrats want to punish the major oil companies. The Dems’ latest attempts to stick it to big oil failed yesterday in the Senate.

According to the donkey party, high gasoline prices are entirely the fault of the oil companies, and if only we slapped a stiff tax on their “windfall” profits, gas prices would fall faster than the Democrat Congress’ approval ratings. Oh yeah, that worked so well the last time it was tried, why not dig up its casket and give it another shot?

But the voters disagree with the Democrats:

Recent polling data from Gallup show the percentage of voters blaming oil companies for skyrocketing gasoline prices has dropped from 34 percent to 20 percent over the past year. At the same time, support for more drilling in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas has increased to 57 percent from 41 percent.

Quick, someone get these numbers to the McCain campaign. Energy is the hottest button of all the hot button issues right now, and the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee needs to get fully on board with the program as proposed by Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions organization:

Drill here. Drill now. Pay less.

While McCain is okay with most offshore drilling proposals and is a nuclear energy booster, he still opposes drilling in ANWR. McCain has a golden opportunity here, as Larry Kudlow points out:

Sen. McCain has a great pro-growth plan to slash corporate tax rates, a move that would be a strong tonic for jobs and wages. But he must bolster that plan with a new emphasis on deregulated energy markets that can produce a total portfolio of conventional and non-conventional energy, including major new drilling. He should couple that with a strong-dollar message to curb both energy and non-energy inflation, which is shrinking consumer paychecks and damaging corporate profits.

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More oil, more jobs, better wages, and low inflation. That’s a winning GOP message this fall. But what if Sen. Obama gets there first? It’s unlikely, but not out of the question. Either way, voters will move to the candidate who connects with their worries. Right now those worries are up for grabs

In fact, if the United States would exploit all of its considerable energy resources - conventional and shale oil, coal and oil from coal, natural gas, diesel and gasoline from cellulosic feedstock, wind, solar, etc. - in a comprehensive energy plan, it could achieve energy independence by satisfying domestic demand. But it also has the potential to go well beyond that crucial benchmark and return to its rightful position as a major energy exporter.

And this has the potential to get even better. It would be in the self-interests of an energy-exporting U.S. and its major NAFTA trading partners Canada and Mexico, both already major oil exporters, to form an oil cartel of their own to take on OPEC. After all, there is nothing better for free markets than a lttle healthy competition, right?

Yes, this would all take years to accomplish. Not only do we need to get going with oil production, we need to put infrastructure in place, including new refineries, piplelines, CNG refuelling stations and the like. But had we started just ten years ago, we would now be on the cusp of realizing our domestic energy potential. So let’s get started. AMERIPEC, anyone?

- JP

Fix energy and you fix the economy

The one thing that everyone likes to do is gripe and moan when the unemployment numbers go up, or when energy costs go up but no one makes the link between the two.  The fact is that as the cost of energy goes up our cost of goods and services will as well.  Businesses in order to stay competitive have to cut back.  Many try to reduce costs, but it will usually mean that many have to layoff workers.

The media loves to talk about gas prices at $4.00 per gallon, but what they neglect to tell us is that in many parts of the country diesel is approaching $5.00 per gallon.  Most people don’t view this as a big deal unless you drive a diesel pickup but what most people forget is that everything you need to survive is transported by truck, train, and/or ship all of which rely on diesel to get products to market.

Now there are signs of hope, voters this week in one S. Dakota county approved a measure to allow a new refinery to be built there that will refine mostly diesel and jet fuel from supplies coming from Canada.  This was just a step in the process but a very important one.  While we haven’t built a refinery in 32 years our refining abilities for diesel have been reduced even further, diesel and jet fuel are easier and normally less costly to refine than gasoline but in the last few years the environmental nazis have forced more additives and garbage into diesel that makes it more costly to refine.

The reality is that we have to do a better job of extracting oil within our borders, and directly off our shores.  We have to work harder at buying from our direct neighbors, Canada and Mexico.  We must do a better job at building refineries.  We need to focus our technology investments to things we know that work.  Make sure we can extract every bit of power from oil and coal, focus on hydrogen for tomorrow as it seems to be the only fuel that seems viable.  Solar, electric cars all sound nice but the reality is we’ve been chasing dreams of solar for over 30 years and we still don’t have a technology that is cost effective for broad use.

Low energy costs are what drives the world economy as we go so goes the rest of the world with us.  It’s time to expel the idiot environmentalists that got us into this mess and get on with the business of increasing our energy supplies today and our options for the future.

How about a windbag prophets tax?

The Democrats are a political party so devoid of ideas that they can’t even come up with new bad proposals and are reduced to simply reinventing their old terrible ideas. A case in point is the so-called windfall tax on oil company profits. Both Dem contenders for the presidency favor a version of this old turkey.

Here’s the Barack Obama flavor:

Obama proposes oil companies be taxed on windfall profits from oil sold at or above 80 dollars a barrel, and the revenue be used to help relieve the burden of rising prices on working people, according to his campaign.

Hillary Clinton has gone past the proposal stage and has actually introduced a windfall tax measure:

Mrs. Clinton introduced legislation in the Senate today proposing [a] gas tax holiday and covering the cost of it through a “windfall profits” tax on oil companies, a campaign spokesman said.

Wait just a sec… Haven’t we been down this rocky road before? In the words of one of major league basesball’s most colorful characters, former Yankee catcher Yogi Berra, “This is like deja vu all over again.” The AP’s Daniel Sorid writes:

…even liberals would have a hard time defending the country’s last experience with a windfall tax, in 1980.

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What began as a compromise by the Carter administration to lift ceilings on oil prices grew into a bureaucratic nightmare that Congress in 1984 called the “largest and most complex tax ever levied on a U.S. industry.” The law produced nowhere near the revenue it promised, made the country more reliant on foreign oil, and generated reams of red tape, according to a 2006 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

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The law was put out of its misery in 1988, two-and-a-half years before it would have automatically expired.

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“It’s a terrible idea today,” said Phil Verleger, who helped design the windfall tax policy as the Treasury Department’s director of domestic energy policy from 1977 to 1979. “The windfall profit tax was a quo for a quid; the quid was price decontrol. There’s no quid right now.”

Well, Mr. Verleger, it was a bad idea then, too. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the 1980s windfall profits tax depressed the domestic production and extraction industry and furthered our dependence on foreign sources of oil.

Let me repeat that for those you on drugs or afflicted with terminal liberalism. Ver. 1.0 of the windfall oil profit tax was a disaster for the nation from which it has never recovered. Domestic oil producers found it unprofitable to produce, and the United States became even more dependent on foreign oil than it had been. It  is a major contributing factor to the situation we find ourselves in today: between Iraq and a hard place.

Why, then, in the name of all that makes sense, should this nation go back to doing something that not only did not work the first time, but was a major source of many of the energy woes we are experiencing today? Cynical conservatives are tempted to say that it is because socialists, despite the nearly universal failures of socialism throughout history, just can’t resist trying it again, hoping the results will be different this time.

The real answer is just as cynical. The oil companies are simply too inviting a target for the political left. They are fond of repeating that the oil companies are making billions of dollars of profit. Never mind that Exxon-Mobil’s profit margin of 10.7% pales in copmparison to some other well-know American corporations:

If you’re after really big earners… check out Yahoo (a 45.5 percent profit margin), Citigroup (33.4 percent), Intel (24 percent), and Apple (22.7 percent).

Never mind that Exxon-Mobil paid nearly $3 in taxes for every $1 in income. The company’s first quarter tax bill was $30 Billion.

Never mind that among Exxon-Mobil’s larest stockholders are not just individual fat cat shareholders such as the the Rockerfeller family, but many pension funds and mutual funds as well. Penalizing the big oil companies will simply force them to protect their shareholders by passing along the tax increases to consumers, who always pay the ultimate price for the left’s attacks on capitalism.

Those of us who take the time and trouble to study history do so because it is such an excellent teacher. It was the American-born philosopher George Santayana who is credited with the quote which would seem to explain the Democrats’ myopia on oil company profits:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

But it is another one of his quotes, and from the same source, which puts that first quote in context and best describe’s the Dems’ obsession with meddling in the affairs of the corporations they love to attack:

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.

These liberal Democats and their two favorite candidates for the leadership of the free world are fanatics. As a conservative, I can think of one tax which I would support - a tax not on windfall profits, but rather one on windbag prophets.

- JP

Calibrate your BS detectors!

From motortrend.com:

SIOUX FALLS, S.D., Dec. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Research findings released today show that mid-range ethanol blends–fuel mixtures with more ethanol than E10 but less than E85–can in some cases provide better fuel economy than regular unleaded gasoline, even in standard, non-flex-fuel vehicles.

Previous assumptions held that ethanol’s lower energy content directly correlates with lower fuel economy for drivers. Those assumptions were found to be incorrect. Instead, the new research strongly suggests that there is an “optimal blend level” of ethanol and gasoline–most likely E20 or E30–at which cars will get better mileage than predicted based strictly on the fuel’s per-gallon Btu content. The new study, cosponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE), also found that mid-range ethanol blends reduce harmful tailpipe emissions.

Whoa, time out! The American Coalition for what? For Ethanol? What a relief to find that one of the co-sponsors of the study has no axe to grind. As for the other co-sponsor, DOE, wasn’t that the agency of the federal government that has been hyping the use of ethanol as a motor fuel for years?

Excuse me, my BS detector is in the red zone…

You don’t have to be a node on the Psychic Friends Network to see what’s behind this new PR offensive by the ethanol lobby and its bought-and-paid-for politicians. Recent news reports of the spike in food prices and the rising number of the world’s hungry have put Big Ethanol in a bad light. The short-sightedness of the rush to use ethanol as a motor fuel is being exposed, and the folks who were making out like bandits over the diversion of corn from food crop to fuel crop are worried - very worried.

Notice that the news release pushes the idea of E20 and E30 as “optimal” blends of ethanol and gasoline. This is important for several reasons. First and formost among them is the fact that Big Ethanol has taken a fallback position. Things are looking so bleak for them that they are no longer touting E85 as the energy savior of the world. They are seriously trying to cut their future losses here. They realize that the amount of ethanol in a gallon of gasoline needed to replace MTBE as an additive to oxygenate gasoline (as mandated by Congress) is less than 4% or 5%. E10 is the traditional “gasohol” mixure of 10% ethanol in every gallon of gasoline, and they are afraid that when E85 is abandoned - and it will be abandoned soon - we will settle on E10 as the standard blend. So now they are promoting stronger doses of their bad medicine - two times and three times the amound of ethanol than in E10 as that which is “optimal” for todays cars. Their proof? Read on…

The University of North Dakota Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) and the Minnesota Center for Automotive Research (MnCAR) conducted the research using four 2007 model vehicles: a Toyota Camry, a Ford Fusion and two Chevrolet Impalas, one flex-fuel and one non-flex-fuel. Researchers used the EPA Highway Fuel Economy Test (HWFET) to examine a range of ethanol-gasoline blends from straight Tier 2 gasoline up to 85 percent ethanol. All of the vehicles got better mileage with ethanol blends than the ethanol’s energy content would predict, and three out of four actually traveled farther on a mid-level ethanol blend than on unleaded gasoline.

So, “researchers” at state universities in two of the corn-growingest states in the union found that cars which are specifically tuned for ethanol perform better in economy tests on ethanol than they do on gasoline. Well, duh! Cars actually perform better on the fuel they are tuned for than on the fuel they are not tuned for. What a shocker!

Expect much more of the same kind of bogus “studies” like this one in the near future. Meanwhile, real research is showing some promising new technologies are moving forward which can, among other things, lead to producing “green” gasoline directly from cellulose. No conversion to ethanol needed, thank you very much. This has Big Ag beside itself. After all, states where food crops don’t grow without intensive inputs of fertilizers, pesticides and, yes, energy, can grow switchgrass without much trouble. Along with weeds, chips from scrap wood and other cellulosic “wastes” are perfect feedstocks for these emerging processes.

Big Ag is afraid that it will soon be reduced to doing what it has bragged about doing in its past TV commercials - feeding a hungry world. There’s not as much quick profit to be made there than in producing a fuel feedstock which is an inefficient use of time, land, chemicals and farm fuel. Especially if ADM and other big farmers have to go back to producing more food, thus increasing the supply and driving down prices.

Big Ag is even more afraid of losing its generous federal government subsidies for growing corn for fuel. Many are now questioning the “wisdom” of such a counterproductive waste of the taxpayers’ money. They are also questioning the practice of such protectionist measures as high tariffs on the importation of ethanol from Brazil and other parts of the world.

E10 solves the MTBE problem with more ethanol than is needed for the task. Fine. Let them have their 10%, but this and no more.

- JP

No cheeseburgers in paradise

(with apologies to Jimmy Buffett)

I went to McDonald’s for a burger on a bun,
But the man at the counter said, “We just can’t help you, son.”
Everythng that we used to feed the critters in the stall,
It’s all been Shanghaied to make more ethanol.

All the grass for the cattle and the corn for the swine,
Is sellin’ at the pumps for three dollars ninety-nine.
Ain’t no cheeseburgers for you in this paradise,
All you get is cold sushi with a little cup of rice.

Oh, a big cheeseburger would taste so nice,
But now they tell me I have to think twice.
The cars get the grain, and the cows won’t eat mice.
Ain’t no cheeseburgers left here in this paradise.

I went to Cracker Barrel for a tasty pork chop,
But the waitress said, “Son, you know that’s got to stop.”
“How about a can of sardines with some seaweed on the side?”
Well, good God Almighty, I’m close to suicide.
I don’t eat bait and won’t swallow my pride.

They’re starving in the Congo - there’s famine in Sudan,
But the food’s goin’ in the tanks of cars and vans.
How in the devil did we get in such a mess?
Greed, granolans, government - you don’t even have to guess.

There’s plenty of oil and gas in the ground,
And underneath the oceans just waiting to be found.
But the tree huggers won’t let us drill in any case,
That’s cuttin’ off the nose just to spite the face.

Oh a big cheeseburger would taste so nice,
But now they tell me I have to think twice.
The cars get the grain, and the cows won’t eat mice.
Ain’t no cheeseburgers left here in this paradise.

Let’s take Sierra Clubbers and politicians too,
And throw ‘em the ocean while we drill a well or two.
Let’s drill in ANWR and off Florida for oil,
Before the Cubans and the Chinese come and take it all.

Then feed our corn to the hogs and grain to the cattle,
And beat these stupid moonbats in the final battle.
It’s worth every damn bit of sacrifice,
To bring cheeseburgers back to paradise,
A Pepsi and some fries would also be nice,
Bring sanity back to our paradise.

- JP

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