Friday, April 29, 2011

Gas Prices




Last week the Lord High Muckety-Muck, Barack Hussein Obama, gave another of his great speeches to explain to the American people why gasoline prices are once again skyrocketing.  Was anyone really surprised when the gist of the speech was, “Blame someone else.”?  That has always been his favorite mantra, nothing is ever his fault.  For two years he blamed everything that he failed to do that he has promised was to be his number one priority on George W. Bush.  Now it seems that some people won’t let him keep up that sad old song, so now the fault lies with, get this, Speculators.  Oooooh, those evil oil speculators, trying to predict how high oil prices will go are somehow pushing the price higher.  The sad part is, at least 30% of the people of America will believe that.  They will automatically assume that some filthy rich people are setting prices high just so they can make obscene amounts of money.  Let me try to explain this where even the libs can understand it.  As the price of gasoline creeps higher, people will find ways to cut back on the amount of gasoline they have to buy.  Sales will decline and profits will suffer.  That is cutting off your nose to spite your face. 
There is more than one reason that gas prices are soaring, but they all involve President Barry Sotoroe’s policies.  One of the many campaign promises that Obrainless broke was to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  The policies of this administration seem to be designed to increase our dependence on foreign oil.  We could stop importing oil within 10 years if the government would just let us.  There is more oil in the ground in this country, most of it on government-owned land, than in all of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and Yemen combined.  The technology for extracting it now exists and we could be totally energy independent if we just exploit it.  Shell Oil Co. has spent billions getting ready to drill on Alaska’s North Slope.  Everything seemed to be in order when the EPA suddenly cancelled their permit.  Why?  Because it turned out that in the permit application Shell forgot to consider the greenhouse gas emissions from the trucks carrying the drilling equipment to the site.  “Oh NO!!!” That could have raised the CO2 level in the atmosphere by half a part per TRILLION! So a project that has already cost Shell Oil Co. over $5 Billion and would have brought millions of barrels of oil to American markets is summarily cancelled.
Let’s not forget the Billions of barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico.  The Obama Administration stopped all drilling in the Gulf after the BP oil spill.  In spite of a court order to begin issuing permits to again start drilling the EPA has continued to drag their feet and not allow U.S. companies to drill.  However, Brazil’s state-run oil company has been given permission by the president himself to drill in the same area that American rigs have been outlawed.   You just can’t take a person seriously who says he’ll end our dependence on foreign oil who takes away our ability to do so.
Of course, the Incompetent-in-chief blames the big oil companies for the high prices and demands that all tax breaks to the big oil companies be stopped immediately.  He even has the Department of Justice investigating them for fraud.  Okay, is this the same DOJ that put together a year-long sting operation complete with infiltrators with aliases and fake buyers to bust an Amish farmer for selling raw milk? Do you really think that they will catch any of the big bad CEO’s? 
Now is a good time to bring up El Presidente’s apparent selective hate for big business.  Notice no lefty is going after Apple, just Big Oil.  While the left is quick to give you a figure of the obscene amount of money Big Oil made last year, they fail to point out that their profit margin was only around 8%.  That means that your oil stock, (and yes, if you have a mutual funds account you own oil stock) only gained 8 cents on the dollar, while if you had instead invested in Apple Corporation you would have seen a profit margin of 44%.  At least the oil companies did pay taxes on their profits which is not something that you can say for GE.  No, GE made over a hundred billion dollars profit last year and didn’t pay a penny of taxes.  Go figure.
I could also go into how inflation is also affecting gas prices but most of you are already getting glassy-eyed, so we’ll explore that in a later piece.  For now, just remember.  The price of gasoline lies not at the feet of Big Oil, but at the front door of the White House.

John A. Wilson
President
Conservative Action Project of Union County

Sunday, April 3, 2011

What's So Great About America

As far as the age of a country goes, America is fairly young.  We've been around for only 235 years.  Countries like France, Germany, England, China, India and Japan have been around for 5 to 20 times that long. Yet, in our relatively short history, America has become the richest, most prosperous country in the world.  Less than 9 percent of the world's population own a car while 89 percent of American households own at least one car.  And that's just the tip of the iceberg.  If you earn less than $37,000 a year you are living below the poverty line in the U.S.  That's a little over $101.00 per day.  The poverty line worldwide is, are you ready for this, $1.45 per day.  A person in a third world country that makes a mere $2.00 a day is doing quite well if he has a job that pays every day.  How did we get to be so wealthy?

We tend to take freedom for granted in this country.  We can say anything within reason and expect no legal repercussions.  We can publish anything we please as long as it isn't a blatant lie that harms someone else.  We can go where we please and chose what kind of work we wish to put our hand to.  It is hard to imagine living in a place where your speech is regulated or you are assigned a job and you must work at it for your whole life.  Think of what it would be like if we had to go to City Hall and request permission to go and visit another town.  People all over the world live in just those conditions and even worse.  How did we get to be so free?

When someone says that we can't do something, we immediately ask, "Why not?"  We don't just bow down before a strong government machine and do their bidding.  A man with a dream can start a business in his own garage and, with hard work, can become the richest man in the world.  Some of the wealthiest people in the history of this country began with nothing, but through determination and a "never quit" attitude became millionaires.  And anyone with a little drive and a lot of elbow grease can start their own business in this country and live very well.  Name any challenge and an American can come up with a solution to it.  As this country was growing, people by the thousands moved farther and farther west.  Some settlers were so remote that they had no one to rely on but themselves.  And those people hacked a nation out of the wilderness.  How did we get to be so independent?

Any architect will tell you that to build a good building you must begin with a good foundation.  Without a firm foundation the building will topple.  But before you build the foundation proper groundwork must be done.  Only when the proper groundwork is laid, a solid foundation can be built and then you can build from there.  And that brings us to the answer to the questions that I asked earlier.  Our founding fathers, may God bless each and every one of them, knew the importance of proper groundwork and a solid foundation.  The groundwork to make this country as great as it has become was already laid for them.  If you read the words of the founding fathers, not just the words that the political correctness police have cleared, you will find that they relied on The Holy Bible to provide the groundwork to support the foundation that they were laying.  Then with belief and Faith in God they hammered out the greatest document ever written, The U. S. Constitution.  It covered only four pages of parchment.  A copy of it could be rolled up and stuck in your pocket.  And with that document in their pockets and The Bible in their hands, Americans set out to tame this land and give us the country that we love today.

A direct result of the Constitution was the Free Market System.  With the free market, you can compete for the consumer's dollar.  If you have a good or service to provide and the public wants it, you can become successful and live the American Dream.  Today many Socialist leaders deride the free market system.  They say it doesn't work and is a total joke.  Really?  I think Bill Gates would argue that point.  The late Sam Walton would have given you a two hour lecture on it.  Now here is the irony, one of the biggest critics of capitalism is Michael Moore.  He has become a multimillionaire by making movies attacking people who have become multimillionaires.

Did I say that this country is perfect?  No, I didn't.  Man is imperfect and anything that he makes, even with the guidance of the Lord, is going to be imperfect.  The only time a perfect country can exist is if there are no people in it. We look with greed and envy at what our neighbors have that we don't and say that this country is unfair.  Unfair?  Does your neighbor have something that he or she got unfairly, or did they just work harder to have more.  Aesop tell the fable of the grasshopper and the ant.  The ant worked hard all summer laying up stores for the winter while the grasshopper danced and played music while the weather was good.  When winter set in the grasshopper was hungry and he saw that the ant had plenty to eat so the grasshopper became bitter and jealous of the ant.  

This great country has had a checkered past.  We have made mistakes and have worked hard to correct them.  The founding fathers knew that the Constitution was not perfect, so they included in it the means to change it if need be.  No, this country is not perfect, but compared to any other country in this world it's a great place to be.  Come to think of it, this blog itself is a testament to the freedom and wealth that we enjoy in America.