1.The American Manufacturing Credit
2.Global Warming Reduction Act.
3.Home Purchase Credit
4.Savings and Investment Provision
5.Capital Gains and Losses Equity Provision
6.Alternative Energy Development Provision
7.Global Warming Reduction Act.
8.Oil and Gas Exploration provision
9.$5.00 barrel tariff on imported OPEC oil
10.Iraq War Debt Reduction Act Read More »
Let's review the facts:
Bush asked our National Guard, Army Reserves, all 4 branches of the military and the full throttle of the Pentagon to fight the enemy and possibly give their ultimate sacrifice, their life. What did he ask the rest of Americans to sacrifice?
Bush diverted our troops from Afghanistan, where its government the Taliban aided and abide Al-Queda.
Bush forced and succeeded in cutting taxes putting our economy at peril during a time of war.
Bush continued and expanded a policy of borrow and spend.
Bush continued importing middle east oil without demanding they would ensure oil revenues were not being used to support rogue nations or extremist organizations.
Bush continues to fund the Iraqi government even though the Iraqi's have billions of dollars from their oil revenues.
Bush continued extending the age limit before a retiree is eligible for Social Security benefits.
Bush continued to issue no bid contracts favoring his ties to non-military companies working in the war zone.
Bush continued to reduce taxes even though he asked all first-responders to increase their efforts. Instead budgets for first-responders have decreased.
Bush continued his borrow and spend policy by giving Americans a pittance or so called "stimulus funds" of $300 to help jump start the economy.
Bush continued deregulations for corporate America knowing it could lead to bad business practices and little if any oversight from Congress.
Bush did not ask for a declaration of war.
Bush did not mandate recycling in order to reduce imports.
Bush did not increase military pay for the National Guard and Reserves, leaving millions of military families to file for Welfare.
Bush did not ask or create a system which would limit the American people to reduce their consumption of gasoline.
Bush did not create a military draft, leaving our current military weary from extended tours of duty.
Bush did not impose a harsh rationing of any product made with or containing oil.
Bush did not create or promote any type of increased revenue like war bonds allowing all Americans to financially support this war.
Bush did not ask our children to save their pennies and dimes to support children whose parents are in the war zone.
Bush did not extend unemployment benefits to millions of Americans who have been laid off.
Bush did not ask oil companies like ExxonMobil to donate from their $18 billion profits to help in the war effort.
Bush did not act when he was briefed in August 2001, of the actual threat of Al-Qaeda Saudi nationals to use airplanes to attack the US.
Bush did not capture and force an unconditional surrender of the Afghani government, the Taliban.
Bush did not capture Osama Bin Laden.
A fine, but important point likely escaped the attention of many Americans last night, but the Queen caught it and I’ll bring it to the attention of those who may have missed it because merits repeating.
McCain likes to leave the impression that he is for establishing renewable energies in this country to replace oil. McCain is a liar. That is nothing more than part of his political posturing. Obama called him on this during the debate–but only for a few seconds and it slipped by. You may recall Obama said something to the effect of: “John you say you are for alternative energies but you voted against a recent bill in the Senate that would have helped to fund research and development of renewable energies.”
That bill to which Senator Obama referred is H.R. 5351. Green-heads like the Queen have been following it ever since the U.S. House of Representatives voted to hold Big Oil accountable back in February when it passed H.R. 5351, the “Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2008,” which repeals nearly $18 billion in oil company subsidies over the next decade and dedicates the money to renewable energy and energy efficiency investments.
Read More »Huh?
Who is Sarah Palin? Here's some basic background:
She was elected Alaska's governor a little over a year and a half ago. Her previous office was mayor of Wasilla, a small town outside Anchorage. She has no foreign policy experience. (1)
Palin is strongly anti-choice, opposing abortion even in the case of rape or incest. (2)
She supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in 2000. (3)
Palin thinks creationism should be taught in public schools. (4)
She's doesn't think humans are the cause of climate change. (5) Read More »
Some comments to "Ethnic Cleansing in Iraq" yesterday said things such as 'read up before you post!'
I was a national security consultant to the Department of Defense at a time when that meant I took my martinis "shaken not stirred." Under contract to the DoD, I co-authored a conflict prediction study forty years ago that set forth today's MidEast situation with perfect accuracy. Yesterday's commenters implied I don't understand the MidEast. In fact, I predicted it 40 years in advance, perfectly! Which made me the only Presidential candidate who actually has foreign affairs competence. My writings here are not from readings, but from hands on experience.
I met the Shah, and spent time with the CIA controllers who lived in the palace "furnishing advice" on his every act. The Shah was our puppet, owned lock, stock and barrel. British MI-6 created the Shah by kidnapping him when they killed his father for collaborating with Hitler, and MI-6 agents raised and educated the Shah. Our CIA took him over in the 1960s. Yes, he used torture. Duh! Iran is in Central Asia!
Everyone between Poland and China uses torture as casually as Columbia University undergrads deprive their opponents of the right to free speech and freedom of assembly.
Jimmy Carter ordered our CIA out of Iran and cut off all support and supplies. The Shah had the most modern Air Force in the world, all state of the art American technology because Iran was the armored firewall protecting Arabia and oil from takeover by the USSR, with whom they shared a long, and viciously battle torn border.
When Carter cut off replacement parts and withdrew the thousands of American contractors who maintained the advanced technology air force, armoured brigades, and communications systems, Iran's military was rendered immobile within weeks.
When Carter withdrew the hordes of American intelligence gatherers, the Shah lost much of his knowledge of the Russian sabateurs infiltrating Iran and who were organizing, supplying, paying salaries to, and training the so-called "popular uprising."
Every day there was military action of both Soviet organized phony internal "rebels" as well direct small scale invasions by USSR secret police groups operating in every poluation center inside Iran. As soon as Carter crippled Iran's military, death loomed large.
The Ayatollah Khomeni lived in exile in Paris financed by the USSR. Just as we had CIA sitting alongside the Shah every day, Soviet Russia had agents walking beside Khomeni all day long, every day. Iran was the biggest prize of the Cold War. Remeber, this was immediately after the Soviet/China alliance whupped us in Vietnam.
As soon as the Russian terror squads verified that Carter really had, with monumental stupidity, removed all support from the Iranian government so that the Soviet guerrillas could operate inside Iran with impunity, Soviet agents took control of the Tehran aerodrome, and chartered, using Russian bank accounts for payment, an Air France plance to fly Khomeni back into Iran while a US Air Force plane flew the Shah to safety.
Ever since then Russia and Iran have functioned as a single weapon against American interests.
Iran controls the "democratically elected" government of Iraq. Iraq's President and his top officers have large personal offices in Tehran! They shuttle back and forth getting their instructions from the Ayatollahs.
This is no different from the way the Chinese Communist Secret Service had a so called "Arkansas restauranteur" with an office and satellite dish accross the street from the White House. That "restauranteur" was never vetted for White House access by the Secret Service but had a special, one of a kind pass, that let him run in and out of the White House and barge in unannounced on Bill Clinton's meetings. He was Clinton's best friend and confident. When the "restauranteur" was supoened by Congress, he boarded a plane to Hong Kong and nobody including our CIA has been able to find him.
Intelligence agencies have enormous influence behind the scenes of all governments. How do you think French President Sarkozy got together with the Russian President on 90 minutes notice and negotiated a Treaty that let the Russinas do anything they want in Georiga and still be in compliance with the Treaty?
And Sarkozy loves Nobama.
WHY THE SUNNIS FEEL BETRAYED
We promised them a role in the Iraqi government if they fought on our side against Al Quada. Now the Iraqi government is not embracing them, but exterminating them. And the Iraqi government has its real offices in Tehran. The President of Iraq commutes to his Tehran office for instructions from his masters before making any decisions.
The Iranians hate the Sunnis as much as Pakistan hates India. Fallujah was the site of a massacre of Shiites by Sunnis many centuries ago. For Shiia, the annual pilgrimage to Fallujah ranks almost equal with the pigrimage to Mecca, for Shiia to reiiterate their hatred of Sunnis and reinforce their desire for vengeance. US public television regularly broadcasts coverage of this annual Shiia convention to pledge vengeance against the Sunnis. Nobama's withdrawal makes it possible.
Indeed, today's news reports that Shiite Extremist Muqtada al-Sadr is rousing his militia to protest our withdrawal as too slow.
We are following the Nobama timetable to leave Iraq, so the Iranian Shiites can exterminate their enemies for ten centuries, the Sunnis.
Human life is more important than vengeance. As much as we want answers in life, the last thing you want to do is risk the lives of others for self gratification. There has to be a line the separates us from them. How many times have we been involved in foreign actions that wound up causing more trouble. Israel is a major faux pas in our history. There is no excuse for displacing Palestinians in order to accommodate any people from any land, regardless of faith. There were agreements made long ago with the Palestinian people, and it seems we assisted in violating those promises.
(More Below) Read More »
Nationally, Drill Here, Drill Now seems to be the only issue where Republicans are gaining any traction with voters during 2008. For those who donâ��t know, Drill Here, Drill Now started on the website www.americansolutions.com. A couple of mouse clicks on the American Solutions website will take you to a screen with friendly welcome from none other than former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Read More »
In a previous commentary, I pointed out that Georges Bush, Senior and Junior; Dick Cheney; David Addington; along with the entire Carlyle Group; are on the same payroll as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Nouri Maliki, and Muqtada al-Sadr. I omitted several other names from that list including those of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. When one examines recent history, one must consider the following: the former Soviet Union began implementing a free market economic system in 1983. A mere 25 years later, Moscow boasts of having the most billionaires in residence of any city in the world, among them Wally Putin. When this Muscovite consortium of oil billionaires challenged the management authority of British Petroleum in Russia, Putin, overnight, went from being the face of modern Russia to a throwback to the Brezhnev years. In response to Putin�s rejection of western influence over his new cash cow, the United States and Western Europe formed political and economic alliances with neighboring Georgia and launched an effort to enroll this �pro-democracy� state into NATO. Thus began the current conflict.
It is no coincidence that Bush and Putin were together at the Olympics when Putin boldly announced that the invasion had begun, reminiscent of two mafia dons meeting at a racetrack. This new battlefield is yet another turf war where oil is the prize rather than heroin. The only good news is that the greed and corruption among Russia�s �leadership,� is so thorough and pervasive that little or no money has been allocated for the modernization of the Russian war machine. That fact, coupled with the reality of the depletion of American military power resulting from the Iraq fiasco, when East meets West on the field of battle in Georgia, this war may have to be fought with knives and clubs.
On 29 July there were 1,000 U.S. and 600 German military personnel in Georgia for a military exercise.
International Partners Build Skills During Exercise
By Tim Kilbride
Special to American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, July 29, 2008 â�" An international security cooperation exercise taking place in the former Soviet republic of Georgia is teaching lessons that will be applied in Iraq and around the world, the U.S. commander in charge of the exercise said today.
Army Brig. Gen. William B. Garrett III, commander of the Southern European Task Force (Airborne), is serving as exercise director for Exercise Immediate Response 2008. He told online journalists that the series of training programs and cross-cultural activities is designed to reinforce the participating militaries� existing skills, teach new ones and forge professional bonds among the forces that will serve them in future partnerships.
The exercise, taking place outside the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, has united forces from several nations to participate in small-arms, combat lifesaver and situational training exercises. Countries involved include the United States, Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Armenia.
�To accomplish all these events, we are forced to live together, work together, train together. And this combined approach, in my view, has provided an opportunity to learn about different cultures and also to promote understanding and cooperation between our forces,� Garrett said.
Situational training involved �tough, realistic counterinsurgency� drills based on an Iraq scenario with small-unit live-fire exercises, improvised-explosive-device recognition and response, and simulated helicopter evacuation of wounded troops,� Garrett said.
Those skills will be put to use by the Georgians� 4th Brigade when it deploys to Iraq in 2009, he said.
�What I kind of consider the golden nugget in all of this,� Garrett said, �is a fully digital command post exercise that we conducted to train the 4th Brigade commander and his staff on the procedures they will employ in Iraq.�
At the same time, the small-unit drills �encouraged independent decisions by leaders, while providing soldiers with immediate target feedback,� Garrett explained.
The exercise involves about 1,000 U.S. troops, 600 Georgian soldiers, and teams of roughly 12 people each from Azerbaijan, Armenia and Ukraine. Representatives from Armenia and Azerbaijan requested to come back next year with larger contingents, Garrett said.
The location of next year�s exercise is still to be determined. Poland and Bulgaria have played host in previous years.
Garrett indicated the focus during this year�s remaining time would switch to strengthening professional ties, with events including a sports and culture day.
(Tim Kilbride works in the New Media directorate of the Defense Media Activity.)
Her trip to Tbilisi, capital of the former Soviet state of Georgia, adds to US-Russian tension over a deal Rice signed Tuesday in Prague to deploy part of a US missile shield in the Czech Republic, a former Soviet satellite.
Washington and Moscow have traded accusations of fanning separatist fires in Georgia itself, where violence has flared in the past week in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two regions that broke from Tbilisi after the Soviet collapse. A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to reporters accompanying Rice, accused Russia of "greatly escalating"
military and political pressure on Georgia with possibly dangerous consequences.
"It is our belief that a military cycle of escalation will simply develop a momentum of its own and could lead to a catastrophe in the region," the official said, warning of "fighting that would be horrific in human terms."
He accused Russia of sending more forces, including paratroopers, into Abkhazia and allowing Russian officers to lead separatists into firefights with Georgian troops.
He believed total Russian troop numbers remained below an internationally set cap, but said these and other actions "were not consistent with its supposed position" as a peacekeeper there and "seemed to be provocative."
He urged Russia to "resume its role as a neutral arbiter of peace rather than a party to the conflict, which Russia is in danger of becoming."
Due to dine Wednesday with Georgia's pro-Western president, Mikheil Saakashvili, Rice came to support Georgia's territorial integrity and sovereign "right" to seek membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Hours before her arrival, Russia's foreign ministry issued a statement accusing Georgia of carrying out actions "capable of taking the region to the brink of a new armed conflict."
The ministry said those who "shield the provocateurs and blame everything on Moscow are doing a great disservice to the Georgian leadership and strengthening its sense of impunity."
The statement explicitly referred to the US State Department.
After meeting US President George W. Bush at the Group of Eight summit in Japan, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the signing of the missile defence agreement in Prague had left Russia "most distressed."
"Russia isn't going to get hysterical but will be studying countermeasures," Medvedev said, in a reminder of previous Russian threats to target European neighbours in response to the US missile shield.
Russia's foreign ministry made a more specific threat on Tuesday, saying that if the US missile shield was deployed near Russia's borders, "we will be forced to react... with military resources."
Russia has long argued that it regards the US missile system, which so far calls for a powerful radar tracking station in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles, possibly in Poland, as a threat to its own security.
Washington insists it is solely aimed at shielding the United States and its allies from missile attacks from "rogue" states such as Iran.
Meanwhile, Georgia's Saakashvili says he wants his country to become a member of the US-led NATO military alliance, a move viscerally opposed by Russia.
The Russian foreign ministry on Wednesday said it thought Georgia may have been involved in at least some of a string of bombings in Abkhazia last week that killed four people and injured 16 others. Georgia has denied involvement.
Russian peacekeepers have also accused Georgia's military of making fighter jet flights over South Ossetia in violation of a ceasefire. Georgia has denied this, saying that in fact four Russian jets had illegally overflown the area.
Abkhazia and South Ossetia gained de facto independence from Tbilisi after fighting brief but bloody wars against Georgian forces following the Soviet Union's 1991 collapse.
Tbilisi says the regions are an integral part of Georgia, but has offered Abkhazia autonomy within Georgia.
In Berlin, meanwhile, the US European Command said US troops have started joint training exercises with soldiers from Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Ukraine, underlining the region's strategic importance.
EUCOM, based in the southern German city of Stuttgart, said the exercises had begun Saturday at Vaziani military base, less than 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the Russian border.
Monday 04 August 2008
by: Dean Baker, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
As global warming threatens the arctic circle, Congress debates controversial calls from the Bush administration and many special interests to start drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (Photo: Jonathan Hayward / AP)
Senator McCain and the Republicans in Congress are calling Senator Obama and the Democrats environmental wimps for refusing to allow the oil industry to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, environmentally sensitive offshore areas and anywhere else they please. The Republicans are claiming that the Democrats don't care about Joe Sixpack, who now has to pay $4 a gallon for his gas. Nor do they care that most of this oil is now imported.
In addition to concerns about the environment, one major reason that Democrats oppose drilling is that Joe Sixpack will never notice the effect of any oil recovered from these areas, even if we did allow drilling. According to independent experts such as the Energy Information Agency, there is too little oil in the offshore protected areas to have any noticeable impact on gas prices.
READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE:
http://www.truthout.org/article/the-compromise-drill-anywhere-plan
Read More »It is amazing how someone as certifiably dumb as John McCain can make remarks such as: "Senator Obama doesn't care about off-shore drilling. His solution is to put more air in our tires...etc." and there are actually even Democrats who join in to stupidly smirk with McCain. As I pointed out in a previous post, Obama's suggestion to keep the proper psi in our tires would save the USA 200 million barrels of oil each year. AND THIS IS STARTING NOW, not 7 or 8 years out from today when we might be able to reap the benefits of off-shore oil which is estimated to be no more than 200 million additonal barrel a year.
If Americans are going to take back our Democracy, we are going to have to start acting a lot smarter than the neocons and their puppets like McCain and Bush.
And in addition to getting smarter, we are going to have to become full time participants in our Democracy if we hope to even have a prayer against the 35,000 lobbyists for special interests who swarm the halls of Congress. We are going to have to plug in our Emails to at least weekly, if not daily notices regarding legislation that is before Congress AND we are going to have to notify our elected officials how we feel about it if we hope to influence votes. It doesn't take that much time. It doesn't--maybe an hour a week. We need to form new habits for participating in our government.
Read More »Yes I deleted my last post and decided to post something more useful. McCain is up to the same old tricks that he used against this fellow Republicans during the primary. He just keeps repeating lies about his opponents as if it were the truth. I heard him time yammering on mainstream media saying that Obama is against Off-shore drilling (which is not true). Obama is opposed to the type of corporate welfare offshore drilling that McCain supports but Obama supports offshore drilling with caveats. Then McCain smirked and said "Senator Obama thinks you should keep your tires inflated." ((snicker snicker)) WELL, guess what? I heard tonight that by following such a recommendadtion we could save 200 Million barrels of oil each year.
McCain is dumber than a rock! He graduated fourth from the bottom of almost 900 students. That is dumb. Please remember that--he obviously can't.
MYTH: McCain tried to trivialize Obama’s message regarding properly inflated tires, and once again he fell flat on his own Republican face.
FACT: Obama was right. You can improve your gas mileage by around 3.3 percent by keeping your tires inflated to the proper pressure. Under-inflated tires can lower gas mileage by 0.4 percent for every 1 psi drop in pressure of all four tires. Properly inflated tires are safer and last longer. The equivalenet savings is $0.12 a gallon. (On a 12 gallon tank this amounts to $1.44 cents each time you fill up. If you fill up your tank at $3.96 a gallon twice a week–one month = $11.52 savings. All this just from properly inflated tires. Obama was right. McCain is silly.
Go to this site to learn more:
What is actually happening is a lowering of the standard of living in this country. We tend to think - because we've been told - that the standard of living here has always been high.
That is not correct. That standard has only existed since the end of World War II. Life here was always hard and things are just being put back to the way they always were.
That is to say - a very rich few, a small middle class, and a great many have nots. The main difference is there won't be any free land in the west.
Of course I am supporting Obama, so I am a little bothered by these claims, but even if I were not, I just think it is silly to point our fingers at one group and say it's all their fault.
Because of this, I was inspired to write this post, after doing some research of course.
While many Pols may be blocking new drilling leases in places like ANWR, Alaska (which just so happens to be a Wildlife Refuge, hence the name A-rctic N-ational W-ildlife R-efuge) and currently off-shore oil sites along all three major coastlines, this may account for part of why oil prices are high, it is by no means the only or prime factor involved.
Additional Factors? Read On, my friend, read on!
Factor 1 - Production/Refining
Current US Oil Consumption = 20.7 million barrels/day
Current US Refining Capacity = 17.4 million barrels/day
And yet, we have fewer refineries now than we did in 1982 (149 today compared to 301 in 1982) and we have not built any new refineries since 1976. Why? Simple. They are too expensive. Refineries can take 10+ years to get permitted and built and can cost upwards of $3.5 Billion to build. With this type of time and capital expenditure, it could take 13+ years for a single refinery to become profitable. Companies just aren't wiling to do this.
With this being said, I would love for these "Drill Heads" to explain to me how we are going to refine all this "new oil" that we pull out of ANWR and other areas, when we already can not refine enough gasoline to meet our current needs. We are already importing refined oil as well as unrefined oil. Do they just want us to drill for more oil here in the US so we can then ship it to another country to be refined and then ship it back to the US for public use? Wouldn't this be costly as well?
Factor 2 - Non US Production
Most of us have probably also heard the occasional person blame OPEC for our current oil woes. While again, they certainly have an influence on oil prices (just as refining does) they are also only one of the factors involved. What most people don't know is that we actually import less than 50% of our oil from OPEC countries. In fact most recently it was 47.28%. Clearly production control over 47% of our oil will certainly affect our prices and I am by no means suggesting that it doesn't. What we fail to recognize is that we are not the only market they sell to, and as far as world demand goes, they have not had huge outcry from all of their purchasers to increase production. Additionally, they produce oil for profit, and if it were your business, why would you sell your product for less than what you could get for it? What can we do about it? Well, we could start buying more oil from Non OPEC countries that prove they are willing to sell us oil for less.
Factor 3 - The Open Market
As with other commodities like gold, oil is traded on the open market. You can trade oil and gasoline just like you can do with gold, stocks, and bonds. This also impacts our oil prices due to people expecting oil to become more and more valuable over time causing them to purchase this commodity, which in turn sends the price up. If we increase refining/production or reduce demand we could impact prices, but again we are not the only people wanting to buy and use gas and other oil products, so the amount of the impact is unknown.
Factor 4 - Inflation/Dollar Devaluation
As we all know, inflation has a major impact on the price of goods and services. Over the past 40 years, the US dollar has lost over 80% of it's purchasing power, meaning and item that cost you 16 cents in 1968 would cost you 1 dollar today. When you look at it from the perspective of 1 dollar it may not seem like much, if you look at from the perspective of a house, it is huge. Take for example my home. Today it costs $150,000 for my 3/2 suburban home but in 1968 it would have cost a mere $24,000. That's a pretty big difference, a $126,000 difference in fact. Overtime, as the dollar declines in value (or as inflation goes up whichever way you prefer to look at it) this raises the cost of what we buy. Gas in 1968 a gallon of gas cost about 34 cents/gallon. Today it costs an average of $4.02/gallon. If inflation were the only cause then gas would be around $2.15 - wouldn't we all love that! :)
Factor 5 - Oil Company Profits
I have also heard people on the left (my peeps) complaining that oil companies are to blame. The greed of these companies is the great unspoken evil of our time. While again corporate greed is a factor, it is by no means the main factor. When Bush took office in January of 2001 (technically February since he was not sworn in until the 20th of Jan) the price of oil averaged $29.00/barrel or $1.52/gallon for gasoline. Today oil closed at $134.86 per barrel or $4.02 per gallon. If you do a simple ratio on this, if oil companies increased their price per gallon at the same rate as the increase of oil prices then a gallon of gas would cost you $7.07. So, even though the Big Oil companies have been making record profit, they have not been increasing the price of gas at the same rate that the price of oil has been increasing. They have however, made quite a bit of money off of the other products derived form oil such as fertilizer.
A special note about drilling leases, off-shore and other-wise:
There are currently over 6,000 leases that the oil companies have that are not being utilized. Some of these are offshore leases and some are not. Many are asking the oil companies to use these leases rather than trying to obtain new leases. In rebuttal - I have heard some Oil Company Representatives say that they are not using them because it is bad land and doesn't have oil, or at least not enough oil to make it worth it. OK, so why are you paying the lease then? Why don't you stop paying for land that can't be used? Doing this would be more in line with your corporate charters that state that you cannot knowingly make financial decisions that are bad for your companyâ??s bottom line. Are you telling me that you all are choosing to spend money you don't have to for land that you can't use? Are you saying that you are knowingly going against the best interest of your company and it's shareholders? Are you saying that you are knowingly violating your corporate charter? Do you not realize that doing this can get your company's "C" status stripped away?
If you believe the oil companies when they say that the land is bad and doesn't have oil, then you should be upset that the oil companies are not lowering their expenses by getting out of bad investments like these unusable leases; and if you do not believe them when they say it's bad land, then you should want them to use those leases before they get more.
All in all, I think it's fair to say that there are many factors involved in the increase of oil and gas prices. Every thing from demand to production, to the market and more. I write this to ask you to think about it more in depth the next time you hear any politician or pundit blame any one of these factors for our current situation. My suggestions? Try to shop smart for gas (not all gas stations are priced equally) and do your best to reduce your own dependence on oil. You could try to get a car that gets better gas mileage, or see if your boss will let you work from home, or work an alternative schedule like 4 ten hour days instead of 5 eight hour days, or take public transportation at least 1 day per week. I know that these suggestions are not feasible for everyone, which is why I believe that our only true recourse is to starting investing in/using alternate fuels.
Thanks for reading!
Don't believe me? Check it out for yourself:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
http://www.factcheck.org/...
http://www.westegg.com/...
Posts
