Obama Administration Intentionally Balloons Energy Prices For Political Reasons. Where Is Press Coverage?

Good stuff. When Senator Obozo said back in 2007/08, that under his plan, energy prices would necessarily sky-rocket...everyone should have taken notice. But of course, the lame-stream media chose to ignore that comment. Since when do higher energy prices benefit anyone? Oh...perhaps it was to help Solyndra, and other green energy firms...that was yet another brilliant failure of this miserable administration, coming at the expense of tax payers.

Dear Twyla, first of all Mr. Obama cannot just call the oil compnies and tell them to raise prices and tell me have you heard about the demand for oil in India and China. I sent Mr. Obama an e-mail suggesting that he could put thousands of people to work across the country repairing our roads and bridges so we hopefully will not have another bridge collapse like we did in Minn. and he replied to me that he is trying to do that. If I remember correctly he said he had over 6 billion dollars ready to use but the republicans say no, ??????. Now I do not know you but it sure seems that there are still an awful lot of prejudice, bigotted and hateful people out there that do not like Mr. Obama just cause he is black. I did not say you were but people that go to church should remember that we are all his children. I still have not heard back from Mr. Redcan yet, I think he is a redneck and does alot of talkin behind his secret profile.

Twyla, there is no other way to say this,........YOU ARE STUPID and YOU CAN`T FIX STUPID.

I only have one question about this..why do we need to drill more and refine more at the sake of our ecology when we are for the first time since 1949, the United States exported more gasoline, heating oil and diesel fuel last year than it imported, the according to the Energy Department ...

to offset weak U.S. demand, refiners exported 439,000 barrels a day more than were imported the year before. In 2010, daily imports averaged 269,000 barrels, according to the Petroleum Supply Monthly report....

It's obvious we have no shortage..so why is this all a problem?...

The Idea that your going to stop using oil by switching to electric cars and trucks is a joke.

The most efficient use of oil is to produce power at the point of use. right now that is in the internal combustion engine in your car. You have to burn either oil or coal to generate the electricity then you have to transmit it to the point of use. We have neither the generating facilities or the transmission networks to support a large scale switch to electric cars.



Stopping the oil drilling ion the gulf is just plain foolish. The fisherman are going to fish themselves out of a job anyway. Catches of wild stocks are shrinking all around the world and fisheries are not only seeing a decline in volume but more and more juvenile fish are being caught. Putting US oil workers out of work doesn't stop the drilling , instead of the US doing it Cuba and Mexico are drilling in the gulf, neither have the the regulations and controls that the US has.

Aether-

Here's a simple solution for you. Find those companies with "astronomical profits" and invest in them.



What you'll find is that it isn't the size of the profit - it's the size of the investment relative to profit that matters. That's why those "insanely profitable" companies the unions and lefties babble on about tend to post large DOLLAR profits, but the prices on the stocks don't go up that much.



Would you rather own a stock that had 100 shares outstanding and made $1000 or one that made 10 trillion dollars and had 10 trillion shares outstanding? If you went for the one that made 10 trillion dollars, you fail the math quiz.



Go look at Exxon Mobils outstanding float of shares and then take a look at those "astronomical profits" and do the same with other companies. If you find one that meets the high return versus investment ration, buy it and sell it as it peaks. Then go spend the money and maybe hire some people. If you do that, you'll have had more of a positive impact on this economy than Obama has had. (And share your data with me - I've got a big house and a larger car and the price of energy and gasoline is going up so fast I'm looking for new revenue sources.)



As for your rememberances of Charles city, I think I've said this before, but I spent about 24 years there. 3 of them in diapers, 7 in grade school, 3 in junior high and the rest of them pretty much stoned. I dried out and went to college later and don't spend a lot of time even thinking about the place anymore as other than as a concept. I don't say that to be anything but apologetic as i can't really do to much to expand the banter.



I remember faces, events and certain things - but I was never strong on geography. (I get lost in Seattle sometimes and I've lived here more than a decade.) It exists these days as a backdrop for my writing and I'll be the first to admit that other than the highway and the truck traffic, probably most of what I remember of the place has been bulldozed, boarded up, or died of boredom.

I'm a resident of Louisiana and can personally tell you that the price of gas is directly affected by the fact that Louisiana is responsible for 30% of the nations petroleum and natural gas production. Due to President Obama's moratorium on oil we have around 30,000 residents who are no longer employed. The minor wildlife problems that were created due to the oil spill are minor in comparison to the peoples lives who were destroyed due the moratorium. The fish are still biting and the shrimp are still in mass numbers off the coast of Louisiana. Went to Venice last week and limited out on specs and reds. Stopped in to New Orleans and they had plenty of locally caught shrimp and oysters to supply Acme with. The media sensationalized this "catastrophe" and caused the direct increase of gas prices. If you do some looking back at the gas price, it was around $1.40-1.50/Gal. when Bush left office.... it's around $3.10-3.30/Gal. now... If we started drilling more and upped our supply (there's that supply/demand some of us actually learned in school) we could drop the price giving all Americans more money in there pocket to spend on other things, which spreads the money around and grows our economy. Lafayette, LA alone lost around 15,000 jobs due to that moratorium. One of the guys we used to work with made valves for rigs and used to make a decent living, he's now back trying to work for a roofing company because there is no longer any demand for the valves he makes.

Aether-

You didn't read the article - I can tell. The administration doesn't set prices, but it can take productive fields out of the equation and build impedements. Please -read the article.



And yes, the energy companies are very profitable. No doubt. They also operate on a very large capital base. In the end, it's not the amount of money that is brought in, it is the number of ways it is divided. Power companies are some of the most well distributed companies in the world. If you have a pension, 401K or participate in any other form of interest bearing financial instruments - chances are you have some ownership of one or more. That doesn't mean you'll ever get rich on it. In the end, and 8 billion dollar profit divided by the overs of 8 billion shares would still be $1.



Charles City was indeed near clear lake. was not a big town compared to the coasts, but probably qualified as the big city to most Iowans. My family was involved in food production though as you probably know as you say have read my stories. We did not raise our own food - but where I lived the "richer kids" all had parents that owned acreage and made their living from the crops.



Oddly enough, now that I live in suburban Seattle, we actually do grow and raise some of our own food - more as hobby than anything else. We have a few cows I refuse to even acknowledge because I don't want to think about what happens next, and a neighbor actually harvests from our fruit trees and bushes and gives us a percentage of the sales.



That said, I make no claims about having worked in farming or energy as I have said - but a big part of what I do is studying major market research and understanding supply chain issues for a mid-sized oil company. (At a prior job, I managed part of the account for another much larger multi-national.) I frankly know more about oil than I want to - and sometimes it keeps me awake at night.



Anyway - I sense this conversation is coming to a close. I read my prior posts and apologize for my sarcasm - but still feel that if Exxon Mobil was doing what the Obama administration is doing, their CEO would be frog marched through thes streets.

Twyla, I knew you grew up in Iowa, I take the time to read your stories and comments...



Charles City, that is up there by Clear Lake, isn't it? That is a major metropolitan area compared to where I grew up.



When I said you were ignoring things, I meant you totally bypassed my response to your 'side stepping' post. I also worked in the big oil/electricity industry for a while and I've seen the numbers. I set up Dominion's (which is no longer in existence, but Virginia power and electric is) SAP system. I can tell you haw much they were profiting in 2004. Those numbers are astronomical!



The fact is, Obama and the administration do not set the price of oil or energy. It is a publicly traded commodity. OPEC decides how much it wants to sell. The only real federal input into oil prices are the lease of the land and taxes on gas.

Aether-

Funny - I grew up in Iowa too. Charles City. Small world.



I am sorry I see a macroview but don't do the conversation justice. For all you tell me I ignore, I do much work with this industry. I am not in energy - but i am very close to it. Each day at my finger tips I have rack pricing, delivery points and demand figures. I know details of E15 and E85 and how it is subsidied, problems with how it is marketing and dispensed, and what the elasticity is in pricing structures.



We have real data on what happens when major supply goes off line for any period of time. The effects are not pretty and have much more impact than people deciding not to buy a slurpie at the end of their fill-up. Much, much worse.



You want $10 gas - then you want $10 gas. The rest of us don't and I think we will win this argument. When solar, wind, etc. become economical, they will replace oil, but that's economics. Until then, oil will win. That's not just my view - that is basic economics that will govern politics the world over. Not my argument - it's reality.



You want a bike? Take a bike. Tell my husbands mother to take a bike, this doesn't work. Tell my neighbor in the service industry to pack his tools in a backpack, take a bike, and reduce his appointment schedule and revenue potential to accommodate the reduced ground he can cover, that doesn't work either. Tell the people of Minnesota to take a bike - that doesn't work either.



Tell people living in apartments to grow their own food - that doesn't work. Telling people in downtown economic zones to be close enough to ride their bikes to work but also have so much land they can grow their own food, well, that doesn't work either.



But that works or you - good.



Actually go read that report sometime - not for me, but for you. Drilling in the gulf? It's in there, but not the whole subject. Decide for yourself whether the Obama administration is artificially creating high prices in the energy business.



If it was Exxon Mobil doing this, would you object to it? I think so.



Does it hurt the elderly, the poor, and the middle class, absolutely. Or maybe you see different but I don't see how.



Great minds - the best - have been trying to replace oil since the Carter administration. If it was easy, it would be done. It's not. Promising technologies are there. Give them 20 years, good things happen maybe. In the meantime, we need oil.



That's reality. A few bikes and chickens help a bit - but nothing is going to stop what you hate so much, those rigs in the gulf. If we don't do it, the Chinese and Brazillians will. Thats a fact. They might be a few hundred miles farther away, but it will happen and since they will be deeper in the water then, more spills are likely. Thats reality too.



I argue the devils position in all of this. You think I love oil? No. I just know it will be years - decades even - until we can replace it, and without it, very, very bad things can happen.

wasananny, you are very wrong in some ways and very right in others. You see I do base my opinions on what others tell me. I don't know where you grew up, but I grew up in a developed country where teachers told me things, parents told me things, elders of all sorts told me things. That is sort of how education works...people tell you things. Perhaps with a little more education you would know how to spell my username properly and with even more of that same education you would understand it's origins. But that is just my opinion based on what others have told me, feel free to ignore it.



All of this, "we can't continue without big oil" crap is getting to me. Out of one side of your mouth you are saying, 'we need to get off the drug we call oil' and out of the other side you are cheering the mantra, "Drill baby, Drill!" In fact, when you do that you stay in exactly the same place you started.



Alas, you know very little about bees. You could use some 'observation' here. Come out to the farm, put in a little hard work and i will teach you all about them. You see Honey bees don't actually sting very often. I mean, sure you **** them off and they sting you, but we have protective clothing for that purpose. I have only been stung once at the farm, and amazingly enough, it was by a wasp, not a bee.



I want to know why it ****** you off so much that I live a healthy life, I grow my own food, sell it to the local chefs and give the left overs to the fresh food banks? Why does it upset you so that I ride my bike to work and use very little oil? I assure you, it helps you out in the long run.

WOW AFTER READING THE LINK,AND ALL THESE COMMENTS I HAVE TO SAY: GOOD DEBATE GUYS.LETS TRY TO KEEP THE NAME CALLING OUT OF IT THOUGH.AND NOW MY COMMENT:



OBVIOUSLY BIG OIL IS NOT GOING AWAY FOR MANY MANY YEARS TO COME.BUT WE DO NEED TO START LOOKING FOR THE SOLUTION NOW.THE PLANET DEPENDS ON IT .

AS FOR THAT ARTICLE,I HAVE TO SAY-THAT ****** ME OFF IN 2 WAYS



1-IT REMINDS ME HOW MAYOR BLOOMBERG RAISED CIGARETTES TO 12 BUCKS HERE IN NYC.WHY,BECAUSE HE FELT IF THE PRICE WAS HIGH ENOUGH PPL WOULDNT SMOKE.OF COURSE WE SMOKE MORE NOW AND WE GOTO THE BOOT LEGGER FOR $8 PAKS



OBAMA'S DOING THE SAME THING.I TOTALLY AGREE HE'S RAISING THE COST ON PURPOSE AND THATS TO MAKE BIG OIL START USING SOME BRAIN POWER TO FIND NEW SOURCES OF ENERGY.WITH CHINA HAVING THAT "NEAR MONOPOLY " ON RARE MATERIALS WE ALL GONNA BE WORKING IN A SWEATSHOP-I DONT THINK THAT THESE BATTERIES ARE THE WAY TO GO EITHER



2-THE OIL COMPANIESD OBVIOUSLY WANNA KEEP THINGS STATUS QUO SO OF COURSE OBAMA HAS NO CHOICE BUT TO RAISE THE PRICES BECAUSE HES TRYING TO GET THROUGH TO THE OIL COMPANIES.THATS WHY HE WANTS TO TAKE THE SUBSIDARIES AWAY AS WELL.



SO MY POINT IS THAT U ALL ARE RIGHT IN SOME WAY BUT THE BOTTOM LINE IS THAT WE NEED TO SAVE THE PLANET BECAUSE-DUH-WE LIVE HERE.



AND TO THE PERSON PICKING ON THE LIZARDS-DONT FORGET THE CIRCLE OF LIFE

THAT LIZARD PROBALY KILLS A INSECT OR BUG OR SOMETHING THAT IF THE LIZARD WAS GONE WOULD THE OVERPOPULATE AND DESTROY SOME CROP OR GOD FORBID,YOUR PRECIOUS OIL.YOU HEAR IT ALL THE TIME.

PLZ EXCUSE THE CAPS

Funny how you tend to ignore all of the points of my last post, Twyla...you brought them up after all, now your only real rebuts are 'Grow up'. Well, guess what, I am grown up and I realize that it is irresponsible to continue down the same road we have been on for the last 100 years! We as a nation need to grow up and move beyond fossil fuels.



I have already admitted that we can't totally stop our use of fossil fuels right now, but we can make huge strides with a little effort. I think it is kind of funny how used to your easy life you have become. "OMG! I can't get a banana! Where is my Pineapple! We need OIL!"



Like you, I believe, I grew up in Iowa. A little town south of Des Moines called Churchville, on a farm. When I was 5 I was working, I was growing, I was feeding the animals. I was eating local and sustainable then and latter I became spoiled like you. I guess that is what you mean by being 'grown up'. Well now I guess I'm returning to my youth.



You are wrong about not being able to feed our population without oil, I feed myself everyday without it. All I need is a little muscle, water, some compost and seeds from last year, to feed me and my family. Take some personal responsibility...but I guess that wouldn't be the grown up thing to do, would it?

Sky-

Your a kid. I like you, but theres' a big picture.



Oil stops. Food stops. Period. Oil stops. Electricity stops. Period. Oil stops. Jobs stop. Period.



It won't be that way someday - but it is today.



I appreciate your heart - I really do. But go back and read what I said.



We don't have enough cars on the road that don't use oil - and won't anytime soon. We don't have enough mass transit to make a difference for the 100's of millions.



We depend on oil too much - I'm agreeing with everyone here on that.



But - the Obama administrations cynical policies of artificially inflating the cost of energy isn't going to fix a problem that scientists have been working on since the Carter era just because he says so.



Here's the deal. We depend on corporations to help us solve these problems. (Even the government invests in the private corporations to do the work.) They lose revenue due to higher costs of energy, they have less to invest. Simple economics. Enough lose of revenue, they leave the country or they go out of business.



We need to keep the economy moving to correct this. We start playing games and it's all over for the U.S.



I'll say it again and adults will listen. (Sky - be an adult or don't.) The country has too many people right now and is too geographically dispersed to make an oil-less society a reality anytime soon.



Oil is necessary. You want to live without it, do, but the world will not.



You want it different? Me too. From your mouth to Gods ears. But we start shutting down oil before we have something else ramped up and there will be riots in the streets. We simply cannot keep the economy going and feed our population without it.

Wow wasananny, I have to say you can really put the u in uninformed! You really know how to show others how very little you know about this, applause, applause. I'm only being an *** because you were an ***. "Do unto another as you would unto yourself." Please though give me a break I'm laughing too hard. I can't stop!!! Why don't you go do some research, and become informed before you go insulting people who know more than you!! Sorry I am usually pretty nice but I thought you needed a taste of your own medicine. You're welcome.

Nice. No really, you really showed him! You showed him how little you know about the situation. I like you twyla your my friend, but you just don't realize what's going on. First of from what I can see he was using the bike as an example, not a permanent solution. Second of all it is a lot easier to switch than you realize. We already have cars on the road that are a lot more energy efficient than gas burning monsters. We have the technology to do it, just not the guts. Then last but not least lets look at it from a different point of view. Lets say you are a whale, you just got into the gulf looking for warmer waters. You're just swimming along when suddenly the water around you turns black, and you can't breathe. You die a painful death because some ******* humans made a mistake that could have been prevented. Look at the big picture, it's not all about us, and our needs. It's about the planet, and what we can do to keep it healthy. WE SHARE THIS PLANET WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT. IT IS SELFISH TO BELIEVE THAT THE ONLY VICTIMS ARE THE PEOPLE WHO LOSE THEIR JOBS BECAUSE WE THINK WE SHOULD MOVE ON FROM OIL! WE NEED TO REMEMBER THAT WHAT WE DO TO HELP OURSELVES HAS A GIGANTIC IMPACT ON EVERYTHING THAT SHARES EARTH WITH US!! I HAVE SEEN BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPES AND HABITATS RUINED BECAUSE OF DRILLING. I LOVE HIKING IN UTAH WHICH IS RIDDLED WITH DRILL SITES, AND IT TAKES AWAY FROM ITS NATURAL BEAUTY. We need to leave oil behind along with other fossil fuels, or we are gonna wipe ourselves of the face of the planet!! That is bad enough, but I refuse to punish innocent bystanders who only try to live their lives!!! Please realize we are destroying lives that may not be human but are still as valuable.

Actually, this wasn't a posting about republicans at all. I was just pointing out that this is a pretty complex world we live in.



I actually posted a link to an official government publication that documents how the Obama administration is using energy price manipulation to push a political agenda. It's wrong and it's destroying jobs.



And to your point, it would be just as evil if a republican did it. (Probably more so in your mind.)



Your silly continued insistance that we can all live on bicycles gets sillier every time you mention it though. Golly you carry a computer too!



Now, try to ride that bike in the winter in Wisconsin when it's 10 below, maybe carrying groceries for a family of four. (Or MInneapolis, Detroit, or any city in the north half fo the country. That's a whole lot of us.)



What a joke.



And your ancestral home or whatever, lets tell it like it is. (I believe its NOLA right). It's had oil rigs out there for decades, and things worked just fine. One accident and you want to take us all back to the stone age? that's not going to happen.



So what's your position here - those oil rigs were out there all that time and you just didn't know you were "getting raped? "



So we stop drilling and all is going to be well tomorrow. Gas prices will go up and no ones job or pocket book will be effected? (Heck, we can all raise chickens and bike to work!!)



So that - and of course the idea that one political party is the root of all evil - is your position?



Well, here's reality, and I don't even care what your silly response to it is.



If we stopped all the drilling tomorrow, three other countries I can name will still be drilling in the gulf and probably a few I can't think of.



All of them will have less stringent environmental controls than we do, and all of them are going to charge us materially more for the energy which we won't stop buying because there is no magic solution to this problem.



(Even if our country outlawed the purchase of this energy, the Indians and Chinese would still buy it. Oil companies are multi-national corporations. They go where the oil is.)



You can completely ignore the needs of a nation what houses a couple of hundred million more of us than you, but gosh I'm sorry that most of us will be getting our eggs at the store for years to come and will be driving cars too. We're just not nearly as bitchin as you are.



(Gosh, he can ride a bike and carry a laptop at the same time. Ain't he just the greatest?)

What are you talking about? Carter was at a -3.3% at the end of his term! What am I side stepping?



Despite your attempts to mislead, there are facts to back up what I am laying down here, you just seem to have a lot of excuses for why the republicans record on the economy is crap. The last Republican that had a surplus was Nixion, and well we all know about his problems. Every other republican since has added to the deficit! You don't seem all that grown up at all.



You want to talk world economics, bring it. You seem to know very little about it. Rome lost it's economic hegemony because it tried to take over Europe, England lost theres because they tried to do the same thing, and Bush lost America's hegemony because he tried to adapt the Middle East. He attacked Iraq, for what? WMD's that did not exist? BS, it was a vendetta. It had nothing to do with bringing justice to the masterminds that attacked us. Thank god we now have a president that had the foresight to go after Bin Laden! Bush really didn't care, he said so himself.



You want to talk Al Queda? Guess who gave them money and weapons...yep a republican named Bush! If they would have not had those resources, they would not have been able to plan the bombings that you are talking about...but I'm the one that is side stepping things, I'm the one that needs to grow up...Please!



I carry all of my papers and a computer in a massager bag when i ride, it weighs very little. Sure there will be a need for fossil fuels for a while, but the more we develop, the more we innovate, the lees we will need it. It seems like you are just making a lot of excuses to stay in the caveman days where the liberals are the ones that want to move forward. Get with the program or get out of the way, you people are hurting America. A place where my ancestors have been for longer than anyone can remember! A place that I love and what is your plan? To destroy it by rape? My dukies and my fishies? Isn't that what you said?

Yes, the whole problem of the world is due to a republican President .



(You seem to side-step the economy when Carter was in office and the deficits from that other big war - you know they "war on poverty " what we spend there makes Iraq look like chicken feed. Clintons surplus - largely funded by Reagans strategy that ended the cold war+ one time internet bubble fortunes that burst in 2001) - also seems to escape your grasp.)



Everyone has so much spare time they can afford to ride bikes 20 miles at a time and none of us need to cart around tools, brief cases, etc.



(You seem to elegantly side-step the very realistic concept that if a lot of us decided to live like this, you couldn't afford to live that way anymore. Simple economics would drive you out unless you are a lawyer making six figures. Also the need to ship in whatever you use like the computer you're typing on. No one grew that on a farm - nor the hundreds of miles of cables that keep it linked to the internet.)



Al Queda only attacked because Bush was evil.



(Those earlier attacks - two - on the world trade center didn't really happen. Or maybe Bush planned those too!!!!)



If Reagan hadn't driven the Soviet Union from existence using the only real advantage we had - money - they would have laid down their guns and bombs anyway and we wouldn't be spending any money on defense nor living in a cold war situation.



Wow, I wish I could think so simply and forget about things like world economics, energy needs for even basic services, where things are grown and the logistics needed to get them to population centers, etc.



But some of us have to be grown ups so the rest of you can sit around and ***** about how the world works.

I'm not going to be able to address all of these points right now, but I will address a few.



Do you think the travel restrictions after 9/11/01 were stupid as well? I find it interesting that you don't seem to see the harm that the oil spill caused and the devastation to the region it would cause if it were to happen again. The oil spill was not caused by a failure of regulations and dangerous cost cutting measures by the companies involved. These regulations need to be in place before any new drilling takes place.



You really know little about me or the region I live in. I am an urban farmer in my spare time, I bought abandoned property after Katrina and made it into a farm. The granola, the berries and the eggs, even the honey I use is all produced about 5 blocks from my house, by me! The only thing I really buy is the milk and it comes from a dairy about 10 miles from me. My lunch was a farm fresh salad that I made with Horseradish buttermilk dressing, all local except for the capers I put on it and those I already had. So you see, I put my money where my mouth is, I produce and eat locally. I sell my produce to businesses that cook with local product. I can assure you that probably .00001% of my breakfast and lunch came in via truck!



Why can't people ride a bike 20 miles to work? I do most days, right after my run, I ride to the gym, take a shower and go to work. This whole process takes me about an hour and a half. Maybe it would reduce the health care costs as well, I'm sure it would.



We are only in bad straights because a Republican president and and republican congress started the snowball rolling down the hill. If you remember, the deficit got so high because Reagan decided to take out huge loans and then when he couldn't pay then the eurobanks decided to demand bullet payments at high interest rates. Bush did little or nothing to help. Clinton was elected and the deficit was at a negative 9%. Bush was elected and the deficit increased by 27%.



BP has promised money, but very few here are actually seeing anything. BP did not write us a check and they certainly are not doing anything to directly help the region.

Here's a place we can start to meet in the middle.



I'm certainly not against working towards alternative fuels - and my posting had lttle to do with the large number of tax incentives,etc. Obama has made to encourage growth in these areas.



I also think we need to improve safety - but lets be realistic. That bridge flaw went unnoticed by the best minds in government and private industry for decades. We can complain about the problems all day, but millions of cars, ambulances, food deliveries, etc. went over the water for years and did a world of good. If we were to weigh the benefits of that bridge, it was probably a good thing and will be better next time.



The same could be said for the oil rig out there. It was a catastrophic failure discovered after the fact on an oil rig configuration as far removed from common oil rig design as the space shuttle is from a common aircraft.



(There's a reason it required special permits and even waivers to operate - most of the oil rigs floating around out at the mouth of that river don't operate in nearly that deep of water.)



Shutting down all drilling based on that rig disaster makes as little sense as stopping all commercial air travel in the wake of the Challenger disaster.



Unfortunately - this is what is taking place - just one of many politically motivated moves by this administration to push and agenda and unfortunately this one is costing us money and jobs.



I don't care where you live, what you ate this morning probably came in via truck and that shipment got 25% more expensive in the last 6 months due to largely unncecessary acts put into action by this administration. You also paid more to cook it - a lot more - for similar political theatre.



You might not believe that, but experts everywhere in the energy business say its' true, and they actually don't have a lot of good reasons to **** off an administration that has provedn time and time again it is willing to be fairly ham fisted in dealing with them.



Past that, to adddress it. The lie - and it is a lie - that oil will be going to $300 a barrel anytime soon is a wet dream by speculators. There are oil shale deposits, abandoned wells, and untapped reserves all over the country that would go back into production if the price were half that and some are actually going back on-line now. (Theres a reason why ever major study says that the U.S. will be a bigger oil producer than Mexico before the end of the decade.)



And to your point - you need to understand this because its something that all adults need to understand. Living without oil any time in the near future is a pipedream. Just look at the logistics. People in LA, Atlanta, and other major cities can't ride 20 miles to work on a bike and there's not enough buses, trains or other forms of transport available to move even half of them if they tried and not enough production to build the capacity if we built nothing but buses for years.



If everyone moved to the cities, anyone not making 6 figures would be squeezed out of current housing. The could build skyscrapers for years and not absorb the populations required.



Hybrids are great, but depend on a wealth of minerals available only from Asia (read China.) One of the things holding back production on Hybrids is availability of materials to build batteries in an economical matter. (Great minds have been working on this for years It's getting better, but no magic bullet coming soon.)



There simply is no solution out there, and bringing our economy to a halt while we look for one is not only punative and foolish but starves our corporations and public institutions of the revenue they need to work on the problems. It also starves us regular Americans as we lose our jobs and the economic engines that keep us employed.



I'm all for a better tommorrow, and I actually applaud Obama for putting together a lot of the grants and tax credit programs he put together. I just wish he wasn't beating up the companies now that took advantage of them and holding the up as some sort to tax cheats.



We're in pretty bad straights right now, and it's not going to get any better by importing more of our energy nor putting people out of work. I'm as sorry as anyone that some fishermen are losing their jobs, but last time I checked, BP posted a multi-billion dollar bond to help, and I'll bet you dollars to donuts they fix their mess a hell of a lot faster and more efficiently than FEMA fixes NOLA.

No, we should build safer bridges and make sure that we have are safe to drive on. duh! That is the point, if you don't make the drilling rigs safer, then don't allow them to drill until they do. If you can't collect oil without destroying the earth, then don't allow them to collect oil until they can.



The steps we take today as a nation, will make us stronger in the future. When oil is going for $300 a barrel or worse, if we have a better source of clean, green energy, we will be the leaders of the world for business. Why? Because we will be able to supply the energy for less money, companies like that, so do people.



Why do you think Obama was pushing for high speed rail? because we could transport fish and the like for less money, and in a cleaner way. There are ways to run boats on cooking oil instead of diesel. People do it with cars all of the time with great success.



If the oil workers are out of work and suffering as you say, why do they get into a training program and find a different line of work? Certainly if they cut all of the IT jobs because of safety issues I would retrain and find a new line of work.



I'm sure your *** is just fine (for an old broad), but hopping on a bicycle wouldn't hurt it a bit.

Wow Aether

We lost a bridge a few years ago in Minneapolis. Are you proposing that we shouldn't build bridges anymore? We had a refinery fire in California too. Should we give up on gas completely?



How much should we give up because of an accident? Should we give up drilling completely and all go live in caves? Any idea how bad it would have been if we had stopped shipping oil in tankers after the Valdez?



As for the fishermen out work, won't they also be out of work if they can't afford diesel fuel to run their boats? (Those boats don't run on wind you know. Even if they did, the refigerators and required to get the fish to market as well as the trucks themselves require gasoline.)



And on bicycles and my ***, my *** is pretty spectacular for an old broad, thanks for asking.

This is all you need to know.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrLTmIz3wCk&feature=player_embedded

There are several thousand people that are out of work because of the oil spill, they are called fishermen and women, the people that worked the oyster beds, and the people who processed the fish and oysters. What is putting a big old oil rig in the gulf going to do to help them? BP is paying the out of work oil workers, there was a fund set up for them.



The bottom line is that it is the oil companies responsibility to make the process safe, if they can't do that then they should not be able to drill period. If you are worried about high gas prices, by a hybrid or get off your fat *** and get on a bicycle!



The earth will survive for a lot longer without humans than humans will survive without the earth. Look at all of these nasty storms that are happening right now, you can't tell me that you are so uneducated to believe that humans are not causing this.



Florida doesn't allow drilling off it's coasts...why do you think that is? Because they know their biggest attraction is the earth, the ocean, the sand beaches. Why should Louisiana allow it? We are the sportsman's paradise, it says it right on our license plates. How many tourist dollars are we going to lose because of the oil spill? Hundreds of thousands.



The Federal Government does not own oil booms. That is the responsibility of the oil company and the state, why didn't Jindal deploy oil booms faster? It is his sworn duty to protect the state and he failed miserably. He listened to the wrong people and now he has dead dolphins washing ashore.



There are more hybrids on the roads now than ever before, it takes car manufactures time to make them and it takes people time to buy them.



Obama is making it better, you are just too blinded by the elephant standing in front of you to see it.

There was plenty of that type of coverage when GW was pres.



But now you see... a lib has the office... Whole new ball game.



The press doesn't want to hurt their boy...

I can think several thousand workers in your state who disagree with you.



Also, there are workers all over Alaska that would like more drilling in their neck of he woods, if only the federal government would allow it.



A hundred million or so automobile drivers would like to see some refineries in this country to lower the cost of gasoline too - and refining can be done in areas well away from population centers - but the federal government stops that too.



And how about that lizard that might stop drilling all over pieces of Texas that depend on drilling for their livelihood. When those people lose thier jobs and go onto welfare, who is going to feel for their lost livelihoods? I



How about the people who are living on the edge right now and about to lose their homes? Is Obamas blind ambition to turn off our energy by raising prices sky high going to give them a place to sleep at night?



But hey, I'm glad that a once ina lifetime spill that Obama and his team failed to stop makes your little ducks and fishies feel all better. (Obama sent lawyers and federal bureaucrats instead of sand bags and booms and left the ships capable of sifting the oil out of the water idle because they only cleaned 97% of the oil during a single filter step instead of the 98.5% mandated by federal law. Wow, that's a man of action.)



Regardless, you can bet that drilling in the gulf will start again soon - at least temporarily. Obama has an election to win and he's going to have to put some of the other southern states back to work now that he's lost Florida due to his fumbling flip-flop of a policy on giving Isreal and the Palestinians.



And those green energy proposals? I bet you can count the number of consumer facing gas stations in your area that support things like electric cars and true alternate fuel vehicles on one hand. (There are over 130,000 gasoline stations in the U.S., and after 10 years of initiatiaves, less than 1 in 20 is prepared to fuel these new wonder vehicles that Obama keeps promsing.)



A final point to chew on there Aether - when you consider that the oil consumption isn't stopping, and that all we're doing is having the production and refinement done in countries with next to no environmental laws at all, we're not really saving the environment anyway.



In fact, the Obama policies are actually making things worse.

The URL was not found on the server..



Try this: http://oversight.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1301:report-impact-of-statements-by-president-energy-secretary-about-raising-energy-costs-on-americans-seen-in-administration-policies&catid=22:releasesstatements />


At any rate, I understand why he didn't want to continue to drill in the Gulf, i live down here, I've seen the lives and wildlife and habitat ruined. But hey if you think it is such a wonderful idea, let they drill next to your house.