Remove the Democrat fingers from the throat of energy production

What to do about oil? First it went from $60 to $80 a barrel, then from $80 to $100 and now to $120. Perhaps we can persuade OPEC to raise production, as some senators suggest; but this seems unlikely. The truth is that we're almost powerless to influence today's prices. We are because we didn't take sensible actions 10 or 20 years ago. If we persist, we will be even worse off in a decade or two. The first thing to do: Start drilling.

It may surprise Americans to discover that the United States is the third-largest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. We could be producing more, but Congress has put large areas of potential supply off-limits. These include the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and parts of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. By government estimates, these areas may contain 25 billion to 30 billion barrels of oil (against about 30 billion barrels of proven U.S. reserves today) and 80 trillion cubic feet or more of natural gas (compared with about 200 tcf of proven reserves).

What keeps these areas closed are exaggerated environmental fears, strong prejudice against oil companies and sheer stupidity. Americans favor both "energy independence" and cheap fuel. They deplore imports -- who wants to pay foreigners? -- but oppose more production in the United States. Got it? The result is a "no-pain energy agenda that sounds appealing but has no basis in reality," writes Robert Bryce in "Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of 'Energy Independence.' "

Unsurprisingly, all three major presidential candidates tout "energy independence." This reflects either ignorance (unlikely) or pandering (probable). The United States imports about 60 percent of its oil, up from 42 percent in 1990. We'll import lots more for the foreseeable future. The world uses 86 million barrels of oil a day, up from 67 mbd in 1990. The basic cause of exploding prices is that advancing demand has virtually exhausted the world's surplus production capacity, says analyst Douglas MacIntyre of the Energy Information Administration. Combined with a stingy OPEC, the result is predictable: Any unexpected rise in demand or threat to supply triggers higher prices....

On environmental grounds, the alternatives to more drilling are usually worse. Subsidies for ethanol made from corn have increased food prices and used scarce water, with few benefits. If oil is imported, it's vulnerable to tanker spills. By contrast, local production is probably safer. There were 4,000 platforms operating in the Gulf of Mexico when hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit. Despite extensive damage, there were no major spills, says Robbie Diamond of Securing America's Future Energy, an advocacy group.

More here

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Brookes News Update

Dire warnings of an economic collapse plague the US economy: The cause of the current economic problems is very simple: Bad economics. Instead of closely examining the monetary theory that got us into this mess economists have started playing the blame game
Inflation v. unemployment?: Critics of a fight inflation first policy are committing a serious and inexcusable error. The unemployment they are attacking is not the cost of fighting inflation at all - it is the price that must be paid for having inflation
The real costs of the greens' carbon tax: Considering the amount of anti-warming evidence that is accumulating, I think people are entitled to question the motives of those who are using hysterical language to try and bulldoze us into adopting policies that would savage our living standards while simultaneously increasing government control over our lives
Obama's Academia Nuts: William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn bombed New York City police headquarters in June 1970, the U.S. Capitol Building in March 1971 and the Pentagon in May 1972. Ayers stated on Sept. 11, 2001: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough". Despite the vicious record of this unrepentant terrorist Obama picked him as a friend and adviser. That tells us what Obama really thinks about America
Obama, Clinton and capitalism: It's OK for them, but nobody else: Although Obama has done extremely well for himself in our free-market economy he still has the 'audacity' to demonize others who have done well for themselves, and to propose economic policies that, if implemented, would radically change our nation into something more akin to a Western European socialist state
The future you save might be your own: Instead of forcing curly cue light bulbs upon us and ethanol, with some initial government assistance legislatively and financially we could tap into a virtually limitless (at least for several hundred years) supply of coal to produce oil

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ELSEWHERE

Media support voter fraud: "On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote, upheld Indiana's requirement that voters present photo identification before casting ballots. Yesterday the Associated Press published a dispatch titled "Advocates: Voter ID Ruling May Disenfranchise US Voters." It ran 15 paragraphs, required two reporters (Deborah Hastings got the byline; David Lieb "contributed"), and was totally one-sided, offering not a single argument in favor of voter ID requirements. It's possible that the AP did another dispatch titled "Advocates: Voter ID Ruling Helps Prevent Fraud," or some such, but we couldn't find it in a Factiva search."

Clinton blasts Bush for not stopping a project that Bill OK'd: "Hillary Clinton loves to tell the story about how the Chinese government bought a good American company in Indiana, laid off all its workers and moved its critical defense technology work to China. It's a story with a dramatic, political ending. Republican President George W. Bush could have stopped it, but he didn't. If she were president, Clinton says, she'd fight to protect those jobs. It's just the kind of talk that's helping her win support from working-class Democrats worried about their jobs and paychecks, not to mention their country's security. What Clinton never includes in the oft-repeated tale is the role that prominent Democrats played in selling the company and its technology to the Chinese. She never mentions that big-time Democratic contributor George Soros helped put together the deal to sell the company or that the sale was approved by her husband's administration."

Democrat Congress loves rich farmers: "Prominent Los Altos developer John Vidovich and various family members in the Sandridge Partnership of Sunnyvale were the nation's biggest recipients of automatic government payments to farmers last year, receiving more than $1 million, according to a new analysis of federal data by Environmental Working Group. Known as direct payments, the subsidies go mainly to big farms growing a handful of crops. In the Sandridge case, that is mostly cotton, wheat and peanuts grown on farms controlled by the partnership in the Central Valley. Vidovich did not return a call for comment. More than $5 billion in direct payments are made each year to growers of corn, wheat, rice, cotton and a few other crops based on past production, regardless of market conditions or even whether the crops are still grown. The payments are heavily weighted to the biggest producers, with the top 10 percent getting two-thirds of the subsidies."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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