The reason you are paying over $4 a gallon for gas and our other energy costs are going through the roof is Congress! It isn’t George Bush’s fault, it is no coincidence that since the liberal Democrats took over both the House and Senate that our gas prices have almost doubled since. Also our economy has been going down because they have been down taking it down since Bush was elected president and they accused him of talking down the economy when he pointed out the problems cause by 8 years of the Clintons and the largest tax increase in history they brought us when he was running for office.
If you think the economy is bad now elect Obama and see what happens.. From what I hear from him “change” is to raise the taxes on everything! If you are barely getting by now wait until he raises taxes on energy, income, social security, medicare and then passes socialized medical care. It will totally collapse our economy. The reason medical care is so expensive is government has mandated hospitals give treatment to everyone who can’t or don’t want to pay for it, including millions of illegals which has about bankrupted the emergency rooms here in Arizona and forced the closing of a couple of them. They mandate what doctors will get for medicare which isn’t enough. This forces doctors and hospitals to pass on these unmet expenses to us in order to stay in business. My 90 year old grand parents just had to be moved out of the long term hospital care because the hospital wasn’t getting enough from medicare to keep the unit open and was loosing millions of dollars a year. There isn’t ONE damn thing the federal government does right or well and you want to put them in charge of your medical care??? Look what they have done with social insecurity and medicare! There isn’t anything the government can give you that they didn’t take away from you or someone else in the first place and the vast majority of people get back far less than is taken from them. There isn’t the constitutional authority to do most of what they are doing in the first place and the things they should be doing like protecting our boarders they are not doing.
The only people who pay taxes are the end consumer of the product or service that is taxed. If you raise the taxes on the “evil oil companies” they have to pass on the increased cost of business to the people who buy their products. If they didn’t they would eventually go out of business. You can not sell products for what they cost to make or less and make a profit that keeps your business operating. If you have a 401K or other retirement or investing plan you own a portion of oil and other business, if the business in your portfolio aren’t making a profit, neither are you on your investments. Anything government does to affect their profits affects YOU! If you think you are under taxed you are an idiot.
Back to energy, this is what I started to write about (I could rant about the problems with our government all day..) This is an excerpt from Glenn Beck’s website that was in his email news letter tonight. Glenn is about the only one on TV (CNN afternoons) that is telling it like it is. I don’t care for his radio show much but you HAVE TO WATCH HIS TV SHOW!! Thank God for PVR’s (hard drive based VCR with out the Video tape, I do have full time 48+ hour job) He is talking to Representative Chris Cannon from Utah’s 3rd congressional district.
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Glenn Beck: Oil shale the answer?
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/196/11464/
“GLENN: All right. So what is the — your bill takes all of the burden out of congress and puts it on the President’s desk?
CONGRESSMAN CANNON: Well, yeah. He is the executive and what it does is it gives him the ability to cut through seven years and make that seven weeks and so you sit down and you say, what do we need to do to protect the environment and what’s the process we’re going to use. And there are various processes that are very different and they are going to have different constraints. But then you give the President the authority to come to a conclusion and give a permit in a short time and then you monitor, see what’s going on. You may have to adjust that permit over time but at least you get people producing oil.
” ” “..
GLENN: Yet the will in congress is not. I’ve got a guy here who’s been waiting for a while to talk on the air and I’m going to put him on the air. His question is don’t you think that congress is intentionally trying to sabotage our economy for the election. Give me a reason here, Chris, why congress is doing the things that they’re doing. Why are they doing this? This is not in our economic long-term health by any stretch of the imagination to keep us shackled to terror states.
CONGRESSMAN CANNON: Yes, Saudi Arabia funding Al-Qaeda, Iran funding Hezbollah, Hamas. Human events had an article two weeks ago about an Iranian funded terrorist camp in the Venezuela. You know, we’re paying these people to undermine our interests and we’re propping up a —
GLENN: So what is stopping the congress? What is the motivation of congress to not free our hands?
CONGRESSMAN CANNON: Well, if you look at the numbers, they’re fascinating. The bulk of Republicans will vote to drill in ANWR, to drill in the continent she will, to drill in the Midwest to drill for shale. About 90%, in some cases a little more, a little less of Democrats vote against that and with the reps cans who vote against this and the Democrats who vote against this, we’ve not been able to get those things passed. We passed the right — there’s a prohibition against drilling in the Alaskan national wildlife preserve but we have to overcome what’s positive law. We passed that in the House a couple of times and the Senate actually passed it as well but the times we passed it in the House and the Senate didn’t pass it, then we had problems with a potential candidate being the critical vote there. So we have to get — the American people have got to express themselves on this issue and we’re about to put up a website called dollargas.us. I think it’s up yet but we want the American people to be saying we want a dollar, a dollar and a quarter gas. That’s where it ought to be. And if we were producing our own gas, our own oil out of our own resource here in America, one, we would have cheaper gas. And two, we wouldn’t be funding our enemies.
GLENN: Chris Cannon from the great state of Utah. Thank you very much. We’ll look at the bill. What is the bill number?
CONGRESSMAN CANNON: Oh, it’s — I think it’s 6811, but I apologize.”
CANNON INTRODUCES LEGISLATION TO END DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL
http://chriscannon.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=93388
Another Glenn article on energy.
Glenn Beck: Time to drill!!
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/196/11377/?ck=1
Here is some thing you can do to encourage congress to quit screwing around and do something about our ever increasing energy costs.
Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less.
A Real Change Campaign to Lower Your Gas Prices petition
Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less petition
One reply on “Energy Independence and other issues.”
ENERGY INDEPENDENCE FOR AMERICA
In the early 1970’s America imported only about 30 percent of its oil. Due mostly to the federal government’s interference in the free market and the passing of legislation by congress that restricts the development of American oil fields, America is now importing 60 percent of its oil with some of that oil coming from countries that are less than friendly to the United States. Our government leaders, including those in congress, have allowed our country to become too dependent upon the oil production levels of foreign nations that has not only resulted in higher prices at the gas pumps, but has also endangered our national security.
The demand for gasoline has risen dramatically in America due mostly to population growth, but virtually no new refining capacity has been added in decades to meet the increases in demand. No amount of congressional grandstanding about price gouging will change this economic reality. Members of Congress routinely point their fingers at the oil companies that make about eight to ten cents profit on a gallon of gas. In 2004, the US Energy Information Administration reported that the oil industry in the US made $42.6 billion in profits after spending billions of dollars on researching, drilling, transporting and refining their products. On the other hand, in that same year, Federal and State governments collected $58.4 billion in taxes from the oil companies without investing a dime. Who is gouging who? Corporations do not really pay taxes. They just pass along the cost of the taxes to the consumers in the form of higher prices.
The Ethanol subsidy program is a prime example of how our government’s interference in the free market has led to higher prices. Subsidies amounting to $10 billion a year are given to corporate corn farmers, even though Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline and it takes about 200 pounds of corn to produce enough ethanol to fill the average gas tank. It takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel to produce one gallon of ethanol because corn must be grown, fertilized, harvested and trucked to ethanol producers. It also takes 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. Ethanol is so costly to make that it wouldn’t make it in a free market without being subsidized by the government. Ethanol related congressional legislation has resulted in the following:
1) Big corporate corn growers (who are also big campaign contributors) get a $10 billion dollar annual subsidy from the American taxpayers,
2) American consumers wind up paying more for gasoline at the pump because of the ethanol requirement in gasoline, and
3) the program is responsible for dramatic increases in the prices of corn and other grains worldwide, which has led to severe food shortages and food riots in other parts of the world.
How is this government program successful? We need more free market competition and less government interference.
America must approach the issue of energy independence much the same as we did when the USSR put their first Sputnik satellite into orbit. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy motivated the nation and promised to put a man on the moon within 10 years. If we can put a man on the moon, land unmanned space vehicles on Mars, we can surely develop a strategic plan to become energy independent in ten years by increasing the domestic production of oil while at the same time encouraging the development of environmentally safe alternative energy technology that would free America from its dependence on foreign oil. Freedom from oil dependence is also in the best interests of our national security. Depending on foreign governments for our oil supply, some of which may be less than friendly to the United States, is definitely not in the best interest of our nation’s security.
It is time for Congress to stop listening to the socialist environmentalists who would turn our nation into a third world country by prohibiting us from using our own natural resources. America has the natural resources and the technology to solve our energy needs. It is estimated that ANWAR has 10.4 billion barrels of oil which is 200 billion gallons of refined gasoline. The outer continental shelf is estimated to have 86 billion barrels of oil which would be over a trillion gallons of refined gasoline. On top of that there is an estimated availability of 2 trillion barrels of shale oil in the Western United States. If Congress had opened ANWR to drilling a decade ago the nation would be that much closer to lessening its dependency on foreign oil today.
We must meet our energy needs with a 10-year strategic plan that provides a balanced portfolio of drilling, research and development that will ensure our economic and environmental future. The plan should include the following:
DRILL AND DEREGULATE NOW: We should drill for oil and natural gas in the United States, using our best environmentally friendly techniques under our own rigid environmental controls. We should take a comprehensive approach by allowing offshore drilling, eliminating regulations that restrict refining, and suspending harmful tax rules that discourage domestic oil production.
DEVELOP NEW SOURCES OF ENERGY: Congress must repeal federal regulations and taxes that impede the development of new energy sources. Alternative sources should prove their viability in the free market. Any source that truly is cheaper and cleaner, yet still reliable, will not need much government help to develop. I support legislation that will provide investment tax credit to help encourage the development of solar energy, fuel cell and wind energy technology.
REDUCE THE RESTRICTIONS ON COAL, NATURAL GAS AND NUCLEAR ENERGY: I support the repeal of federal regulations that hinder the development of coal, natural gas and nuclear energy and also support the repeal of all federal subsidies granted to these industries. These sources of energy and power will prove their worth in our free-market economy without excessive government interference and subsidies.
Here is the link to the Position Paper in PDF and Word formats:
http://www.FreedomCandidate.com/PositionPaper-EnergyIndependence.pdf
http://www.FreedomCandidate.com/PositionPaper-EnergyIndependence.doc
John Wallace
Candidate for Congress
NY’s 20th Congressional District
http://www.FreedomCandidate.com