Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Credit due

I believe in giving credit where it is due; even if it is someone that I do not care for, or frequently disagree with.

Obama is due some credit. I do not like what he stands for, overall. I do not like how he has weakened and disrespected our Constitution and Bill of Rights, but I have to agree with the items he discussed during last night's SOTU speech.

All of those points are worthy of accomplishing. However, I have to wonder, why after 6 years in office with a Democratically controlled Congress, has he now put forth this agenda when he has a Republican controlled Congress?

As sure as the sun will rise in the east, and no matter how well meaning or noble the legislation, the Republicans will defeat it; even if the legislation has no offensive riders attached, Republicans will oppose it simply because they did not sponsor it and it came from a Democrat.

Both sides are guilty of these childish actions. I am sure anyone reading this has experienced a toddler throwing a temper tantrum. That is exactly how our Congress acts. They really will "cut off their nose to spite their face".

I am so sick of politicians of every ilk and kind! I have come to the opinion that regardless of their affiliation, they are childish, greedy, power-hungry, spoiled and completely lacking in integrity or any moral character.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Falling gas prices

As usual, the news media will not delve deep enough into this subject, and the politicians are definitely not going to speak out on this.

What I have to say below is easily verifiable if you care to just do a little research. I will not provide links to all of my material because I am of the opinion that if you are weak-minded you will merely accept what I post and consider it to be true. Only those that are capable of reason and logic will truly benefit from validating this article.

Primarily, our gas prices are controlled by OPEC. Yes, the oil companies also add an outrageous profit margin, but the base commodity of crude oil is still determined by OPEC.

Due to the cost of imported crude oil, the oil companies here in the U.S. began investing in fracking. This method has been around for quite some time, but it has gained popularity again because it can extract more oil from the oil shale that our country sits on top of. Yes, it is a dirty business and there needs to be improvements, but that is for another article.

Due to the increase production of domestic oil, our imports from OPEC have substantially dropped. Obviously, OPEC is not happy about that. However, this increased domestic supply is much cheaper than the import price, so the prices naturally went down.

OPEC, seeing the danger of falling demand for their oil, and suffering tremendous financial loss, has lowered their prices to compete. Their publicly stated goal is to continue to lower the price until it is no longer financially viable for the U.S. to pump domestic oil. OPEC has stated it is willing to do anything to keep the monopoly, and once they are secure in their position, they will raise the prices back up to where they were previously, and most likely, higher, to make up for their losses.

So, we have a foreign government that has publicly stated that they want to control our economy their their machinations and our elected leaders do not do anything about it. Our media, who only reports what the administration approves, won't accurately report on it, if at all.

Our country has a chance, right now, to break the monopoly of OPEC. We need to place a levy and/or import quotas on imported oil so that it remains profitable for the U.S. to continue to improve our production and safety and perhaps to further explore other means of fueling our cars, such as hydrogen fuel cells or better battery technology.