 |
 |
||
|
|
|||
 |
|||
|
|
|||
|
Are These People Stupid, Nuts or Both?There are two states on opposite sides of the nation where, if something really stupid can be proposed, they represent the most fertile ground. I speak, of course, of New Jersey and California. I happen to know a lot more about New Jersey since I am born, raised, and still residing here in my old age despite all the hype about retiring in Florida. I hold a degree from the University of Miami, Coral Gables, so I have fulfilled my Florida quota, but if you want a front row seat to idiocy, there is no better place than my home state or California.
“We are really talking about something that is irrelevant to the overall dependency on oil,” said Pallone. “What we need to do is (to) be moving to alternative energies and most importantly (to) conservation.” Referring to the effort in Congress to permit the use of our own national oil and natural gas resources from the continental shelf and elsewhere, Pallone said, “I can’t think of an idea whose time is less appropriate than this one.” Meanwhile, anyone filling up their automobile gas tank that day was paying out $4.00 per gallon for the privilege. In fact, there was a rumor going around that quite a few Americans were upset over the failure of Congress to permit some—any—degree of energy independence. That might account for the historic single-digit disapproval rating for Congress that was announced shortly after Pallone and his pals got through bloviating about the evils of oil. How does one go about achieving “conservation” of oil if, at the same time, the entire nation depends on it to get anywhere? By conservation, one must assume that Pallone and the rest of the Democrats mean leaving it untapped and thus requiring Americans to import it from other countries. Pallone raised the tired bogyman of an offshore oil mishap that would harm the pristine beaches of New Jersey, but failed to mention the many offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico that withstood Hurricane Katrina without a single mishap. Indeed, they fared much better than the city of New Orleans. Meanwhile, Sen. Menendez raised the specter of California beaches—he’s from Jersey City—allegedly destroyed by a spill long ago. I personally have been to the beach in Santa Monica and all I saw was a lot of people enjoying it. Sen. Lautenberg, a man who, if reelected, will be 548 years old by the end of his next term complained that, “A plan to drill here is no plan at all. It’s a handout, simply a handout to the oil companies. It’s a terrible idea. And drilling will do nothing to cut today’s gas prices.” Apparently, like the entire Democrat Party, the Senator has never heard of the immutable law of supply and demand. He’s also wrong about cutting today’s prices. If these morons had gathered to announce that leases had been granted to explore and extract oil from offshore New Jersey, the price of oil in the world’s mercantile exchanges would definitely respond. Every time a new reserve of oil is found, the price of this global commodity reflects the potential of a new supply. The price per barrel drops. The newspaper report of the event did not quote Gov. Corzine, but he is so in the tank for “alternative” energy that the prospect of offshore oil must keep the man up at night. Let’s assume he thinks the idea of oil rigs offshore (most would be completely out of sight of land) is a very bad idea. So why is Gov. Corzine a vocal proponent of vast fields of wind turbines whirling their blades around (but only when the wind is blowing) in full sight of beachgoers? Corzine is positively crazed for wind farms, particularly if they are located offshore. One proposal in March of this year envisioned the construction of up to 118 wind turbines “rising hundreds of feet above the water.” The project costs are estimated at more than $1 billion and, for the record, there are no offshore wind farms operating in the United States. One such proposal that would have spoiled the view from the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Massachusetts was opposed by that famous family and a coalition of local residents. So the Democrat political equation is oil rigs, bad. Wind turbines, good. Only you can’t run your car on wind power. In fact, wind and solar power combined provide less than 5% of all the electricity generated in America. The issue facing Americans these days is oil, oil, oil. We have lots of it if Congress will just let the oil companies explore and drill for it in desolate places like ANWR or difficult places like the ocean deeps. “Every time we try something to create energy independence,” said Pallone, “We are fought tooth and nail by these oil guys.” If you combined all the oil resources owned by the investor-owned oil companies, it would constitute about 4% of the world’s known oil reserves. These are the same companies that pay billions in taxes to the federal and state governments every year and, so far as the Democrats are concerned, they are the problem. The citizens of New Jersey actually have it in their power to replace Sen. Lautenberg in the upcoming national elections. Do you think they will do it? Do you think they are going to vote for Sen. Obama? At least the Governor of Florida, like John McCain, has decided offshore oil rigs are not such a bad thing after all. Oh, wait, I forgot. Those guys are Republicans. Enjoy these weekly commentaries? You can enjoy more when you visit our daily blog. Not a Depression, but Hard Times Ahead The mainstream media thrive on bad news. It loves floods, wildfires, hurricanes, and other natural calamities as opposed to the lack of drama from thousands of flights when no planes crash, countless ocean transits when no ships sink, or even murder rates that decline. If there is insufficient bad news to report, the media begins to forecast highly speculative bad news. “Blue Chips have worst June since Depression” was a recent headline in the business section of my local daily newspaper. If you think you keep hearing and reading the word “Depression”, you’re right.
If foreign nationals or sovereign funds thought that America was heading into a Depression, they would not be pouring billions into this nation’s economy as this is being written. True, the devalued dollar makes the purchase of property and investment in banking institutions and other entities more appealing, but at this point in time, they are calculating that their money will not be lost to a Depression. At the heart of the financial problems facing America today is cheap money. It is the job of the Federal Reserve to protect the value of the dollar. It is not doing that. It needs to raise interest rates, but it is reluctant to do that. America desperately needs to tighten its belt and correct some enormous abuses, i.e. the waste of billions on programs that should have been discontinued or modified years ago. It needs to correct truly awful financial practices such as the ever-growing national deficit and out-of-control federal spending. Huge “entitlement” programs, enacted in response to the last real Depression in the 1930s now threaten to bankrupt the government or require huge tax increases. There are idiotic mandates like that for the production of ethanol that drive up food prices and drive down mileage for every gallon of gasoline. The continued refusal of Congress to permit access and drilling for our vast national resources of oil and natural gas has left us hostage to foreign producers who are now reaping billions of U.S. dollars. Meanwhile the national infrastructure goes untended while bridges collapse, roads degrade and the electrical grid ages. My friend, Dr. Murray Sabrin, a professor of finance who has taught at Ramapo College’s Anisfield School of Business for 22 years, describes our problem saying that, “the political elites of both parties do not believe in the division of labor, the price system, fiscal prudence, personal responsibility, philanthropy, diplomacy, and non-intervention. In short, the political elites from the Right and the Left believe in collectivism. They abhor limited government.” You do not need to be a scholar to understand that the U.S. Constitution is all about limiting the powers of the federal government and you do not have to be an economist to understand that the more the federal government seeks to control, limit, or reward various parts of our economy, the worse the situation becomes. Collectivism is another word for socialism. It doesn’t work. It punishes people who do work. It rewards people who don’t. As the columnist, Robert J. Samuelson, continues to warn readers of his Washington Post column, “Capital markets are not just incidental to economic growth. They’re a force for both good and ill.” What we are witnessing is a combination of the credit binge in which Americans have indulged and a glacial shift of economic power resulting from globalization. When you add in massive federal handouts to farmers, 45 billion federal dollars spent on “climate change” research, a huge deficit, the ever-expanding federal and state control of property—the keystone of capitalism, the coming collapse of Social Security and Medicare, and the environmentalists’ deliberate destruction of parts of the economy such as the timber industry, you have the elements of a real Depression unless such policies are reversed and corrected. To put it another way, the federal government spent $24,105 per household in 2007, the highest total since World War II and an inflation-adjusted $4,000 more than in 2001. Interest on the federal debt last year was $9 trillion and it owed $5 trillion to public bond owners and the rest to other federal agencies because it has plundered the Social Security trust fund for operating expenses. The government is operating under a phantom system of IOUs to itself! What the federal and state governments have done is shift the payment of present commitments to future generations, your children and your grandchildren. When we reach a point where American workers can no longer afford to fill their gas tanks to drive to work, you will have an economy teetering on the edge of collapse. We’re watching massive financial institutions, banks and investment houses write off billions in bad debt or going out of business. We’re watching the cost of food and energy rise at alarming rates. One way to send a message to the people who got us to this point would be to vote out the current incumbents in Congress and to vote for candidates that oppose more and larger government programs. Whether voters understand this or will do this is unlikely. Like the French king, Louis XV, said, “Après moi le deluge”, after me the deluge, the next Congress and White House will either institute real change, not the fuzzy, feel-good “change” being promised, or much of America’s middle class is going to be in deep, deep trouble. Here’s a word of thanks to those of you who have sent a donation to the Center via this website. This funding is vital to our ability to continue to educate and inform visitors to this website and to maintain our communications programs. We hope you will join them if you have not already.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
In early July some of the Democrat heavy hitters who run New Jersey joined U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. in an event to lambaste the notion of actually permitting the exploration and extraction of oil way, way off the coast of New Jersey. On the podium was Governor Jon Corzine and both of New Jersey’s Senators, Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez. If mendacity has a particular odor to it, the stench of this event is probably still lingering over Belmar.
Few believe in the likelihood of an actual Depression in America. It would plunge the world into economic chaos. However, we are not in a Depression, nor even a Recession despite a slowdown in economic activity. Since 1982, the United States has experienced a Recessionary period for a total of only 16 months. Our economy is pegged at $14 trillion.