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Dumbing Down America’s CollegesThe process that began in the 1960s to transform America’s elementary, middle and high schools into places where students could literally graduate without being able to read their diploma, where the teaching of mathematics was reduced to mush without rules, and where it was more important for students to feel really good about themselves than having to measure up scholastically with millions in foreign nations, has now reached the campuses of America’s colleges and universities.
Wake Forest University, Bates, Bowdoin, and a few other small schools have recently decided to make the SAT optional for students applying for admission. Their argument for getting rid of these tests is that it will fling open the doors to “diversity” among the student body. Wake Forest President Nathan Hatch made the ludicrous claim that jettisoning the SAT would help the school, “move closer to the goals of greater educational quality and opportunity.”
Have you visited my blog? I post almost daily and usually take a look at the day’s events and personalities. It’s a good way to get a different point of view than the mainstream media shovels every day. Greed, Fear, and the Price of Oil While the elites of the world, flying around in their jet planes and being driven around in their limousines, keep telling the rest of us that we are “addicted to oil” and must begin immediately to throw billions of dollars at solar, wind and other forms of “alternative” power, the rising cost of a gallon of gas has surely informed the proletariat that the world runs on oil. Capitalist, Communist, Republican, Democrat, Shiite or Sunni, Hindu or Jew, Catholic or Protestant, Buddhist or Pantheist, Asian or African, Native American or Inuit, all nationalities and all faiths at some point during the day must pause to worship oil. It is the single most historically transformative energy source since the discovery that coal could be burned to produce steam. What is the real price of oil and how is it determined? My friend, Seldon Graham, a petroleum engineer and oil industry attorney, knows more about such things than I. Let’s embrace some truth. “The oil price used by the media is not the actual current oil price, but, instead, the future price of some unidentified oil established by gamblers on the New York Mercantile Exchange.” Those “gamblers” include hedge and pension fund managers and financial institutions of various descriptions. What they are doing is perfectly legal. “The actual current oil prices are ‘posted prices’ (see Title 10 Code of Federal Regulations, # 212.31 for the definition) which are lower than OPEC, i.e. foreign oil prices.” The media could, if they had the brains to do so, find the correct price posted weekly on the Department of Energy website.
In an excellent, lengthy and detailed article in Spiegel, a German publication, its authors note that, “Searching for secure and long-term returns, major investors turned their attention to the commodities indexes, investments that promised substantially higher returns than investing in the stock market. The more the funds invested, the higher the prices went, especially since the market for speculative commodities securities is very small. Even minor shifts in the portfolios of large mutual funds can quickly drive up the price of oil.” So, the price of oil has lost its relationship with the amount of oil available to the global marketplace and everything to do with the shift in investment strategies. The price is being artificially inflated or as it is commonly called, “a bubble.” The good news is that such bubbles inevitably burst. The bad news is that new bubbles in other commodities will arise as old ones fade. The most effective way to lower the prices is to show some respect for the immutable law of supply and demand. To put it another way, if the United States was to open access to its vast reserves of oil on and off-shore, the price would in time begin to drop. Graham recently noted that, “U.S. oil is $3.70 a barrel cheaper than OPEC oil.” Multiply $3.70 per barrel times the 10.1 million barrels of foreign oil imports per day. That represents a savings of $37 million to American gasoline consumers if the U.S. replaces its dependence on imported oil. Most Americans are under the mistaken impression that a U.S. oil company like ExxonMobil is huge, but it is only the 14th largest in the world and is small in comparison with the oil companies owned by foreign governments. Owning only a tiny percentage of the world’s known oil reserves; ExxonMobil buys 90% of the crude oil that it refines for the U.S. oil market from foreign producers. The Democrats, in league with a number of major environmental organizations, have long engaged in the demonizing of U.S. oil companies. They are, along with a handful of Republicans in Congress, the reason we are being held hostage to foreign oil because for decades they have opposed any domestic drilling. It was a Democrat, former President Jimmy Carter, who first imposed a “windfall profits” tax on the oil industry in 1980 and the result today is 60% less exploration and drilling in the United States. Why engage in the multi-billion dollar risks of exploring and drilling for oil here when the government will take your profits from you? Why build new billion-dollar refineries? Compared to the profits made by the pharmaceutical, high tech, financial, and other industries are lower, but no one in Congress is talking about seizing their profits. Loose talk of nationalizing oil refineries or the entire industry is yet another reason for U.S. oil companies to hold off making the investments necessary to provide Americans with their own oil. The current futures prices of a barrel of oil are driven by those gambling that events such as Middle Eastern military conflicts will reduce the daily flow of oil to the world. Uppermost in the minds of many is the potential for a military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities. This could lead to an effort by Iran to close the Straits of Hormuz through which flow some 40% of Middle East oil to the rest of the world. The alternative is an Iran that can threaten oil producing nations in the Middle East with destruction. Iran would also be able to threaten Europe and other nations with its long-range missiles. This is why Arabs are praying daily that Israel will attack Iran for them. There is no “peak oil” in the sense that the Earth is running out of oil. Vast new discoveries, plus the existence of known, but untapped reserves are testimony that there are century’s worth of oil to be had, but it will cost more because of the difficulty of accessing it beneath oceans or in places like the Arctic or refining lower quality crude oil. Another factor affecting oil is the poor management of national oil companies such as those in Mexico, Venezuela, and Russia where the political control and misuse of funds play a role in decisions to ignore exploration and drilling because it is costly and because these governments use their oil industry as piggy banks to prop up their regimes. Finally, the demands of expanding economies in China, India, and elsewhere in the world have increased their need for oil and the competition for existing supplies. This brings us full circle back to the obvious need for exploration and drilling here in the United States. American consumers are paying more in part because of the policies of Congress and the White House of prior administrations. The one thing the Bush administration has made clear has been its desire to open up ANWR and the continental shelf to drilling, but instead we are all being impoverished by our own elected representatives. That’s worth thinking about in November when we must decide to vote for Barack Obama who wants to impose another windfall tax on U.S. oil companies or John McCain who, at the very least, favors off-shore drilling. Every site requests a donation and, yes, the Center does as well. We don’t ask for big donations, but just about any donation of any amount contributes to the upkeep of our website and the maintenance of our communications program. And people do contribute! To them, we say a very big THANK YOU! This nation is in serious trouble because it has people in very powerful elected positions that say crazy things. That, for example, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) who is the Senate Majority Leader:
Where does one begin to dissect this totally idiotic statement? Well, fortunately, my friend Ron Arnold, Executive Vice President of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, has a response. “The one thing we fail to talk about is how much America needs fossil fuel. Coal powers 22%, oil 40%, natural gas 22%, nuclear and hydropower 11%. Biofuels, wind and solar less than 5%. Junking fossil fuels for non-existent substitutes is sick. We’ve got to get rid of infected politicians.” Arnold is probably citing overall national percentages, but I can tell you that just over 50% of all the electricity in the nation comes from coal-fired plants. In a nation of more than 300 million people and growing, we need more coal-fired and nuclear plants for electricity. As for transportation, oil in the form of gasoline and diesel represents virtually every car and truck on the highway today. We have nearly as many cars and trucks as people, about one per person in use. Since Sen. Reid is not even vaguely concerned with reality, the actual percentages are superfluous. Where did this loony Senator come up with the notion that coal and oil make people sick? I suspect he’s been reading too much of the “dirty fuel” propaganda that the environmental organizations have been publishing of late. It’s all a part of the Big Lie that carbon dioxide (CO2) is such a threat to the Earth’s atmosphere and climate that it must be drastically reduced. The fact that energy use generates CO2 might just have something to do with this lie. Here, though, is a bit of truth as tiny as the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 constitutes 0.038% of the Earth’s atmosphere. The rest is mostly water vapor (H2O). CO2 plays virtually no role whatever in terms of the Earth’s climate. And part of the Big Lie is the intention to impose “carbon taxes” on every single activity of mankind, thus generating billions for governments around the world to waste and corrupt officials to steal. Others, like Al Gore, will engage in the buying and selling of utterly worthless “carbon credits” that will make them as wealthy as the oil sheiks. Why actually have to produce a commodity like oil when all you have to do is print up some certificates that say it’s okay for you to bake bread or make candles or do anything else that requires energy? The other crazy thing I keep hearing from people like the Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is, “You can’t drill yourself out of an energy crisis.” Oh yes, you can! It is just about the only way the price of oil can be reduced. It is called supply and demand, but apparently the members of Congress think that this immutable law can be or should be suspended. That’s crazy too. The process that began in the 1960s to transform America’s elementary, middle and high schools into places where students could literally graduate without being able to read their diploma, where the teaching of mathematics was reduced to mush without rules, and where it was more important for students to feel really good about themselves than having to measure up scholastically with millions in foreign nations, has now reached the campuses of America’s colleges and universities.
Wake Forest University, Bates, Bowdoin, and a few other small schools have recently decided to make the SAT optional for students applying for admission. Their argument for getting rid of these tests is that it will fling open the doors to “diversity” among the student body. Wake Forest President Nathan Hatch made the ludicrous claim that jettisoning the SAT would help the school, “move closer to the goals of greater educational quality and opportunity.”
Have you visited my blog? I post almost daily and usually take a look at the day’s events and personalities. It’s a good way to get a different point of view than the mainstream media shovels every day. Greed, Fear, and the Price of Oil While the elites of the world, flying around in their jet planes and being driven around in their limousines, keep telling the rest of us that we are “addicted to oil” and must begin immediately to throw billions of dollars at solar, wind and other forms of “alternative” power, the rising cost of a gallon of gas has surely informed the proletariat that the world runs on oil. Capitalist, Communist, Republican, Democrat, Shiite or Sunni, Hindu or Jew, Catholic or Protestant, Buddhist or Pantheist, Asian or African, Native American or Inuit, all nationalities and all faiths at some point during the day must pause to worship oil. It is the single most historically transformative energy source since the discovery that coal could be burned to produce steam. What is the real price of oil and how is it determined? My friend, Seldon Graham, a petroleum engineer and oil industry attorney, knows more about such things than I. Let’s embrace some truth. “The oil price used by the media is not the actual current oil price, but, instead, the future price of some unidentified oil established by gamblers on the New York Mercantile Exchange.” Those “gamblers” include hedge and pension fund managers and financial institutions of various descriptions. What they are doing is perfectly legal. “The actual current oil prices are ‘posted prices’ (see Title 10 Code of Federal Regulations, # 212.31 for the definition) which are lower than OPEC, i.e. foreign oil prices.” The media could, if they had the brains to do so, find the correct price posted weekly on the Department of Energy website.
In an excellent, lengthy and detailed article in Spiegel, a German publication, its authors note that, “Searching for secure and long-term returns, major investors turned their attention to the commodities indexes, investments that promised substantially higher returns than investing in the stock market. The more the funds invested, the higher the prices went, especially since the market for speculative commodities securities is very small. Even minor shifts in the portfolios of large mutual funds can quickly drive up the price of oil.” So, the price of oil has lost its relationship with the amount of oil available to the global marketplace and everything to do with the shift in investment strategies. The price is being artificially inflated or as it is commonly called, “a bubble.” The good news is that such bubbles inevitably burst. The bad news is that new bubbles in other commodities will arise as old ones fade. The most effective way to lower the prices is to show some respect for the immutable law of supply and demand. To put it another way, if the United States was to open access to its vast reserves of oil on and off-shore, the price would in time begin to drop. Graham recently noted that, “U.S. oil is $3.70 a barrel cheaper than OPEC oil.” Multiply $3.70 per barrel times the 10.1 million barrels of foreign oil imports per day. That represents a savings of $37 million to American gasoline consumers if the U.S. replaces its dependence on imported oil. Most Americans are under the mistaken impression that a U.S. oil company like ExxonMobil is huge, but it is only the 14th largest in the world and is small in comparison with the oil companies owned by foreign governments. Owning only a tiny percentage of the world’s known oil reserves; ExxonMobil buys 90% of the crude oil that it refines for the U.S. oil market from foreign producers. The Democrats, in league with a number of major environmental organizations, have long engaged in the demonizing of U.S. oil companies. They are, along with a handful of Republicans in Congress, the reason we are being held hostage to foreign oil because for decades they have opposed any domestic drilling. It was a Democrat, former President Jimmy Carter, who first imposed a “windfall profits” tax on the oil industry in 1980 and the result today is 60% less exploration and drilling in the United States. Why engage in the multi-billion dollar risks of exploring and drilling for oil here when the government will take your profits from you? Why build new billion-dollar refineries? Compared to the profits made by the pharmaceutical, high tech, financial, and other industries are lower, but no one in Congress is talking about seizing their profits. Loose talk of nationalizing oil refineries or the entire industry is yet another reason for U.S. oil companies to hold off making the investments necessary to provide Americans with their own oil. The current futures prices of a barrel of oil are driven by those gambling that events such as Middle Eastern military conflicts will reduce the daily flow of oil to the world. Uppermost in the minds of many is the potential for a military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities. This could lead to an effort by Iran to close the Straits of Hormuz through which flow some 40% of Middle East oil to the rest of the world. The alternative is an Iran that can threaten oil producing nations in the Middle East with destruction. Iran would also be able to threaten Europe and other nations with its long-range missiles. This is why Arabs are praying daily that Israel will attack Iran for them. There is no “peak oil” in the sense that the Earth is running out of oil. Vast new discoveries, plus the existence of known, but untapped reserves are testimony that there are century’s worth of oil to be had, but it will cost more because of the difficulty of accessing it beneath oceans or in places like the Arctic or refining lower quality crude oil. Another factor affecting oil is the poor management of national oil companies such as those in Mexico, Venezuela, and Russia where the political control and misuse of funds play a role in decisions to ignore exploration and drilling because it is costly and because these governments use their oil industry as piggy banks to prop up their regimes. Finally, the demands of expanding economies in China, India, and elsewhere in the world have increased their need for oil and the competition for existing supplies. This brings us full circle back to the obvious need for exploration and drilling here in the United States. American consumers are paying more in part because of the policies of Congress and the White House of prior administrations. The one thing the Bush administration has made clear has been its desire to open up ANWR and the continental shelf to drilling, but instead we are all being impoverished by our own elected representatives. That’s worth thinking about in November when we must decide to vote for Barack Obama who wants to impose another windfall tax on U.S. oil companies or John McCain who, at the very least, favors off-shore drilling. Every site requests a donation and, yes, the Center does as well. We don’t ask for big donations, but just about any donation of any amount contributes to the upkeep of our website and the maintenance of our communications program. And people do contribute! To them, we say a very big THANK YOU! This nation is in serious trouble because it has people in very powerful elected positions that say crazy things. That, for example, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) who is the Senate Majority Leader:
Where does one begin to dissect this totally idiotic statement? Well, fortunately, my friend Ron Arnold, Executive Vice President of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, has a response. “The one thing we fail to talk about is how much America needs fossil fuel. Coal powers 22%, oil 40%, natural gas 22%, nuclear and hydropower 11%. Biofuels, wind and solar less than 5%. Junking fossil fuels for non-existent substitutes is sick. We’ve got to get rid of infected politicians.” Arnold is probably citing overall national percentages, but I can tell you that just over 50% of all the electricity in the nation comes from coal-fired plants. In a nation of more than 300 million people and growing, we need more coal-fired and nuclear plants for electricity. As for transportation, oil in the form of gasoline and diesel represents virtually every car and truck on the highway today. We have nearly as many cars and trucks as people, about one per person in use. Since Sen. Reid is not even vaguely concerned with reality, the actual percentages are superfluous. Where did this loony Senator come up with the notion that coal and oil make people sick? I suspect he’s been reading too much of the “dirty fuel” propaganda that the environmental organizations have been publishing of late. It’s all a part of the Big Lie that carbon dioxide (CO2) is such a threat to the Earth’s atmosphere and climate that it must be drastically reduced. The fact that energy use generates CO2 might just have something to do with this lie. Here, though, is a bit of truth as tiny as the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 constitutes 0.038% of the Earth’s atmosphere. The rest is mostly water vapor (H2O). CO2 plays virtually no role whatever in terms of the Earth’s climate. And part of the Big Lie is the intention to impose “carbon taxes” on every single activity of mankind, thus generating billions for governments around the world to waste and corrupt officials to steal. Others, like Al Gore, will engage in the buying and selling of utterly worthless “carbon credits” that will make them as wealthy as the oil sheiks. Why actually have to produce a commodity like oil when all you have to do is print up some certificates that say it’s okay for you to bake bread or make candles or do anything else that requires energy? The other crazy thing I keep hearing from people like the Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is, “You can’t drill yourself out of an energy crisis.” Oh yes, you can! It is just about the only way the price of oil can be reduced. It is called supply and demand, but apparently the members of Congress think that this immutable law can be or should be suspended. That’s crazy too.
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In a nation where it now costs thousands of dollars to fire an incompetent teacher, we have the specter of university and college presidents eliminating one of the most respected tools for measuring a prospective student’s ability to qualify for admission. The venerable SAT, the gold standard for measuring readiness for college for nearly 80 years, is slowly being eviscerated by colleges and universities.
The way oil futures prices are determined only started in 1978. It would probably be a good idea to eliminate this form of gambling, but the winnings they represent are legal and the risk of losing is too. “Federal investigations of gambling on oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange are futile,” says Graham. 
“The one thing we fail to talk about is those costs that you don’t see on the bottom line. That is coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick; it’s global warming. It’s ruining our country, it’s ruining our world. We’ve got to stop using fossil fuel.”