Using gas to attack the middle class

Since 2006, the price of gas has increased by more than 55%. That is the effect of a Democrat-controlled Congress and Executive.

The tank of gas that once cost $20 to fill is now $30. To put that in perspective, let's do just a little math...

• In the U.S., the average driver drove 13,476 miles in 2010 (the last year for which data is available)
• The average MPG of a model-year 2007 car in the U.S. is 31.2 (combined)
• These numbers equate to a total of 432 gallons of gas purchased each year.

In 2006, a typical American would have spent about $975 for gas. At current gas prices, a typical American will spend nearly $1,600 for gas this year.

For the wealthy, this difference is trivial. But it matters a lot to a middle-class family. And the Democrats in the Senate and White House simply do not care.

Sources:

• Federal Highway Administration
• Bureau of Transportation Statistics

A Great Use for Solar

Fox News reports that Nissan is launching a hybrid cargo ship, with 281 photovoltaic solar panels supplementing the vessel's massive diesel engines. 

Most cargo ships use diesel-powered electricity generators to power the thousands of electrical devices on-board - from radar equipment to lighting to coffee makers and iPod chargers. The solar panels render the generators unnecessary, thus significantly reducing the amount of diesel fuel burned on each trip.

This innovation is in addition to more conventional energy-saving elements like LED lighting throughout its hold and living quarters, and low-friction paint for the hull.

Look for more of these kinds of efficiency gains in the shipping industry. They realize it's a sound investment, and will help us stretch our finite natural resources.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/02/04/nissans-solar-powered-hybrid-cargo-ship/#ixzz1lVnuBD5W

Energy Indepenence is possible

The fringe environmentalists want us to believe that so-called green energy is vital to our national security. We need to be independent of foreign oil in order to stop supporting regimes that are hostile to our interests. But they are lying.

If they were truly serious about energy independence, then they would stop blocking the development of the abundant natural resources in our own backyard. The North Slope pipeline in Alaska can safely transport upwards of 2.2 million barrels of oil each day from the oil fields to the refineries. Currently, there are three untapped oil fields in Alaska: the National Petroleum Reserve, the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, and the 0.0087% of the 23 million acre ANWR that is necessary to begin oil production. Those fields contain an estimated 60 billion barrels of oil. At the peak transport capacity of 2.2 million barrels a day, that is over 70 years of production.

Is that a permanent answer? No. But it is a safe and affordable alternative to foreign oil that would give us time to develop other non-petroleum based fuel sources.

If our government was serious about energy independence, they would open these areas up for oil production.

Not much has changed

The death of the master terrorist marks an important achievement; as a country we've meted out a measure of justice. And while the administration basks in the glow of this genuine achievement, the rest of us return to daily life, and the realities of gas prices, inflation, persistent un- and under-employment, and a staggering national debt.

Gas prices seemed to have plateaued at around $4.00 per gallon (regular). At least, in my little part of the world, prices haven't changed much in the past 10 days or so. But I believe this is short-lived. The current price of a barrel of oil dropped to below $100 last week, but it's on its way back up:

Surely these prices reflect the news coming from the Trans Alaska Pipeline (link requires subscription) that tells of production issues on the a significant source of our nation's power supply. While all of this goes on, there seems to be no appetite for expanding the supply of oil.

So get ready for even higher gas prices in the coming months.

Source for the oil price graph:
Crude Oil Price By OIL-PRICE.NET

Speculators - a persistent mythology

Fact #1: At current production rates, the world's crude oil output is approximately 3.8 billion gallons each day. That's over 91 million barrels each day.

Fact #2: The closing price of crude oil on April 28, 2011, is $112.76 USD.

The current liberal explanation for the rising cost of crude oil is that "speculators" are manipulating the market in an effort to drive up prices and create some sort of windfall for themselves. How would that work? What sort of actions could an individual or group take that would raise the price of oil, without raising the costs of producing that oil? The only way to raising the price of anything without raising the underlying costs is to do one of two things: increase the demand for it, or reduce the supply of it.

If we take for granted that a small group of investors can't cause millions upon millions of people to desire more oil, then their only choice is to reduce the supply of available oil. And how could they do that? By either keeping it from being produced in the first place, or by buying up available oil before it can get to consumers.

Returning to the facts stated above...

Barrels Produced per day: 91,373,613
Price per barrel: $112.76

So in order to buy a day's worth of oil ... or 0.27% of the oil produced in a year ... someone would need to come up with $10,303,288,613 USD.

It's not possible to cause the kinds of price increases we've seen by taking only 0.27% of the supply off the market. You'd need to take at least 1% of that supply, or over $50 billion worth of oil, to move the price. And then you'd need to store it somewhere. And then, in order to make a profit off of this action, you would need to have enough money to buy and sell oil that you weren't storing. That's ridiculous. The only entities with that kind of available cash are sovereign governments.

Bottom line is this.

Speculators are not to blame for a 65% rise in oil prices. The cause is that democrat policies have unnecessarily restricted the production of oil, so that the market cannot respond adequately to the demands of a modern, powered world.

Liberalism attacks the poor: Radical Environmentalism

One of the most amazing contradictions of modern politics is the claim that liberal policies intend to help the poor and underprivileged. I'll return to this theme often. Today, we'll examine the cruelty of the radical environmentalist agenda.

This chart (please click to enlarge> gives us a crystal-clear view of the dramatic rise in gas prices since 2004 ... when the democrat party took over Congress and began pushing a far-left economic agenda ... and again since 2008, when that agenda began to be implemented by the current presidential administration.

Radical environmentalists believe this is a good thing. They believe that this will force the economy into reduced dependence on fossil fuels.

But who is most impacted by the price of gasoline? It is the working class. They have to pay for gasoline ... and this increase means that a far greater proportion of their income is going to be spent on just getting to work. And that means that less of their income is available for food for their family, for clothing for their family, and for charitable contributions to those that could use the help.

The rise in gasoline prices ... which can be tied directly to regulatory changes made in the past two years ... is a cruel tax on the poor.

Source of the chart: Gasoline Price History