Ethanol Archives - Page 2 of 4 - Common Sense Evaluation

Yes… Americans are finally starting to connect the dots.

This sums it up pretty well.

What do the Democratic-led Congress and OPEC have in common? Both sit on vast amounts of oil, and are content to leave it in the ground and let prices soar. Fortunately, Americans are catching on.

New polls show that Americans, far from thinking that we can do nothing, want Congress to drill, and drill some more if necessary, to break the energy crisis.

A Pew Research poll out Wednesday found that 47% say exploring and drilling for more oil and building new power plants should be the top priority for U.S. energy policy, up from 35% in February. And 50% now say they favor drilling in ANWR, up from 42%.

That follows a Rasmussen poll in June showing that 67% of Americans support drilling for more oil, and 64% think it will help bring down the price of energy.

President Bush understands this shift.

“We can help alleviate shortages by drilling for oil and gas in our own country, something I’ve been advocating ever since I’ve been the president,” he said Wednesday. “I’ve been reminding our people that we can do so in environmentally friendly ways. And yet the Congress, the Democratically controlled Congress, now has refused to budge. It makes no sense.”

He’s dead right. In fact, Democrats in Congress for nearly two decades have rejected drilling for more oil, building more refineries or developing more nuclear power. Since 1990, there have been 46 attempts to boost America’s energy supplies. Only Democratic opposition keeps us from having more.

Alaska’s National Wildlife Reserve, for instance, holds 10 billion barrels of oil, enough for 1.5 million barrels of oil a day. That would be a 20% increase in current U.S. oil production. Slam dunk, right?

No. President Clinton refused to OK development of ANWR back in 1995. When President Bush brought it up again in 2002, he couldn’t get Democrats to support it. So no oil.

Likewise, Democrats have refused to drill for our Outer Continental Shelf oil resources, an estimated 89 billion barrels of crude. Nor do they want to disturb the 1 trillion barrels of oil locked underground in shale deposits stretching across the Rocky Mountains.

It isn’t just Congress. In his bid to win the presidency, Barack Obama has flip-flopped on many things, but he stands squarely with Congress’ naysaying Democrats in rejecting more drilling.

Democrats have failed to live up to their promises, and now we hope the American people hold them accountable.

It was January 2007 that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made her now-infamous “Energy Independence Day” pledge. In it, she vowed to “truly declare our energy independence” by July 4, 2007.

Yet here it is a year later, and, as the Business & Media Institute notes, the price of gasoline has skyrocketed 85% to $4.09 a gallon.

You start to understand that this has been the intent all along. Democrats hate the very stuff — oil — that makes our economy and way of life possible. By doing nothing, they know prices will soar.

Just like Saudi King Abdullah, OPEC’s de facto leader, who this week said Americans must “adapt to” high oil prices, Democrats want you to embrace higher prices — and lower standards of living.

That’s why Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can call coal and oil a “sickness.” He actually believes it, and thinks your suffering from higher prices is therefore noble. It purges the disease — oil.

Americans today face spiraling costs for food and gasoline thanks to the Democrats’ ideological nearsightedness. Higher energy costs are feeding into higher prices for everything, especially food.

Americans have to let politicians know they can’t get away with ruining our economy, and that Congress’ inaction is intolerable.

If you’d like more energy to fuel our economy and lower prices, we have a suggestion: Call your congressperson and tell him or her you want more energy — or you might vote for someone else. It might be the best expenditure of energy you make this year.

Amusing

Democrat-Controlled Congress May Be Trying to Destroy America with $11 Per Gallon Gasoline

July 5, 2008 gags

This article may have an element of truth to it. It does appear that Liberals want to destroy this nation, and have done everything they can to create an energy crisis.

Let us look at a simple fact. We have our own natural resources, but the socialist left won’t allow us to use them. The leftist keep preaching about how we should invent magical new energy technologies right now, at this moment, while at the same time demand we stop using oil. These fools don’t realize that in the mean time between inventing new energy technologies, it would be wise to develop our own natural resources, then we wouldn’t have to buy foreign oil from gangsters like Hugo Chavez and places like Iran, the number one supporter of terrorism worldwide.

Oil at $300

You would think that this story is right out of science fiction. But the facts appear to be that the US Democrat-controlled Congress intends to destroy the Republican middle class with $11 per gallon gasoline.

The Democrats’ base — wealthy white “limousine liberals”, and very poor people — won’t be harmed, but the families who live in suburbia will be devastated.

The multi-millionaires like billionaire Senators John Kerry & Jay Rockefeller, financial speculator George Soros, filmmaker Michael Moore, and actors George Clooney & Meg Ryan can easily pay for their auto and private jet fuel. Poor people are forced to take public transit.

Here’s the reasoning behind the move.

The so-called “Global Oil Crisis” is an invention of the US liberal ruling class, which has successfully managed to export their disastrous ideas worldwide. Oil supply and demand has been on knife-edge balance for years. With the growth of the newly well off Chinese and Indian car-consuming populations, oil consumption has been rapidly increasing in the developing world even as it has been dropping in the US. No wonder India and China, with nearly half the world’s population, refused to sign on to the Kyoto “global warming” treaty.

Cheap energy — and specifically oil — is what made America the powerhouse of the 20th century. When gasoline was $1 a gallon in the US, it was $2-3 a gallon in high-tax Europe. Low US excise taxes enabled the country to grow and our vast middle class to prosper. Even today, the American consumer is paying $4-$5 per gallon of gasoline while his European counterpart is paying $10-12.

To meet this new energy shortfall, economists would assume that the rational market would increase the supply of oil and other oil-substitute energy supplies. But they would be wrong.

First, US the anti-nuclear lobby got the nuclear power industry banned from building new safe and clean fifth-generation power plants, abandoning the field to countries like France, which runs its super-fast trains on nuclear plants scattered throughout the country. In fact, fully 90% of France’s electricity comes from 59 non-polluting “carbon neutral” nuclear; they also recycle 99% of the spent fuel into new fuel using a breeder reactor at the La Hague chemical complex. We don’t do this either.

Next, the eco-greens got the drilling for new known American oil reserves in the barren wasteland of the Alaska ANWR’s near-coast sites, and along the east and west-coasts of the continental US, and in the Gulf of America. Now China & Venezuela are set to start drilling off the coast of Cuba – but not Exxon or Chevron. They’re forbidden by law.

Then, the construction of new modern and efficient US-based refineries has been halted for 40 years. So there is a perennial shortage of heating fuel in the winter and gasoline in the summer. One hurricane can take out 5% of the nation’s refining capacity for months. A 5% shortfall can now easily cause a $25 price increase.

Meanwhile, the nation’s electricity generators, primarily fuelled by coal-burning plants, were forced to convert to natural-gas, previously mostly used in industry, agriculture and home heating. This has, in turn, driven the price of natural gas through the roof, from $3 per thousand cubic feet to over $11.

Finally, the hundreds of older existing oil fields and pumping derricks were closed and not allowed to re-open due to “environmental concerns”. California alone has scores of older fields just waiting to be re-opened to increase the US oil supply. And these could be re-opened in a matter of months, not years.

But wait, there’s more.

To make matters worse, Congress then mandated using a toxic and polluting chemical — ethanol — inefficiently converted from corn, to help alleviate the oil shortage. Corn farmers promptly sold their commodity to the highest bidder, the ethanol refiners. The price of corn-based foods, like cornflakes – and sugar, chicken, milk, eggs and beef has now shot up.

In the process, a minor supply-demand problem has been artificially legislated into a full-blown crisis. The stock market’s response has been predictable: down, down, down.

The liberal solution, of course, is for Congress to raise taxes, increase the fuel excise tax, and force industry to adapt wacky “carbon credit” schemes to line the pockets of the rich liberals who are capitalizing on the global warming scare by selling newly-invented credits, like Al Gore’s new company is doing. Wrong. This will stress the mostly-Republican middle class even more.

So what is the solution? What’s right for America is wrong for the limousine liberals. It’s simple, really. Unleash the supply-side forces of economics.

Open up domestic oil drilling immediately. Turn back on the older wells now capped off. Fast-track new safe nuclear power plants. Stop creating global food shortages by killing off corn-based Ethanol production. Waive the punitive duty on cheap Brazilian sugar cane ethanol. Plant lots of domestic switchgrass for cleaner & cheaper ethanol manufacture. Begin a crash construction program of 50 new advanced nuclear power plants nationwide. Stop burning up natural gas to generate electricity. Build new clean coal-burning electric power plants nationwide (China is turning one per week for the next 5 years), and construct coal-to-oil conversion plants. The Germans were doing this in WWII. Alternative-energy sources like cheap 4th-generation solar panels will ramp up as their prices continue to fall.

In other words, return to the old policy of cheap domestic energy that has made America the powerhouse (pun intended) that it once was. The US will become oil-independent of our enemies whose treasuries are now overflowing with a flood of newly-printed dollars we’ve been using to pay our oil bills with, and the dollar regain its strength as the world’s reserve currency.

And the irony? All of this can be done now with results beginning in 90 days, and using new super-clean super-efficient and environmentally-friendly technology. The result: oil will drop down to well below $100 per barrel and the economy will once again boom. If France and China and Brazil can do it, why can’t America? Why not indeed?

Oil sells for $145 per barrel mostly because of artificially-created supply-side shortages. A small part of its price is also determined by speculators and uncertainty over a future cut-off of oil from the middle east that a war with Iran could cause. Assuming that Iran’s nuclear bomb program is destroyed by Israel this fall — with or without America’s help – look for oil to spike up to $250-300. And 40 years of congressional bumbling will be the cause.

Amusing

Alaska Governor to Harry Reid: Start drilling in ANWR

June 25, 2008 gags

The stranglehold the Liberal Congress has on American prosperity is astounding. These corrupt bums must be voted out in November for this nation to survive.

A copy of the letter is at the bottom of this post for your reading enjoyment.

Alaska guv to Sen. Reid: Start drilling in ANWR!

In a letter to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other key leaders, Alaska Republican Gov. Sarah Palin urges Congress to allow drilling for oil on the Outer Continental Shelf and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northern Alaska, an area she calls “the most promising unexplored petroleum province in North America.”

“What will it take for Congress to enact comprehensive energy policy?” Palin asks in the letter, dated yesterday. “In my opinion, the debate about energy policy is no longer theoretical and abstract. Our failure to enact an energy policy is having real consequences for every American in their daily lives and has begun to affect America’s place in the world.”

Palin, whose name appears on lists of potential vice-presidential candidates, concludes with a bold challenge: “I don’t think it’s overly dramatic to say that his nation’s future and the quality of life for every American are dependent on the decision you make or don’t make in the next few months.”

Last week, Reid called Sen. John McCain’s call for offshore drilling “nothing more than a cynical campaign ploy that will do nothing to lower energy prices and represents another big giveaway to oil companies already making billions in profits.”

Lumping Palin in that accusation would prove difficult, as the governor made headlines earlier in her term for taking on Alaska’s oil and gas commissioner, who was also the GOP state chairman, for ethics violations. More recently, she worked with bipartisan support to win an increased tax on oil companies’ profits.

Palin says in her letter she does not guarantee a price drop with drilling in ANWR but argues increasing domestic oil supply would “help reduce price volatility” and “send a strong message to oil speculators.”

“Yet, there is an even more important point,” Palin writes, contending America must take measures to decrease dependence on foreign oil, since “U.S. petrodollars are financing activities that are harmful to America and to our economic and military interests around the world.”

Environmentalists and Democrats in Congress long have argued against increased drilling in the U.S., favoring instead conservation and alternative fuels. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama’s website promises $150 billion in increased spending to develop new fuels and renewable energy sources.

Palin’s letter argues against looking only to those approaches, pointing out a need for domestic oil production to supply the economy’s many products made from petroleum, not just gasoline.

“The soaring prices of chemicals, plastics, fertilizer and other products – and the loss of jobs – graphically illustrate this point,” the letter states. “We must recognize that is will be many years, if ever, before we discover alternatives to the petroleum-based products that every American uses in our daily lives.”

Palin addresses the concerns of environmentalists about drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR.

Oil exploration and development “can be conducted in a safe manner,” she writes, pointing out the footprint of oil development facilities in ANWR would take up “less than 2,000 acres” of a refuge roughly the size of South Carolina.

Amusing

Suprise, Suprise, Suprise! Obama Has Deep Ethanol Ties

June 23, 2008 gags

Do you want CHANGE? Well don’t look to Obama for it. He is just a typical Liberal politician, who panders to special interests and now wants to buy the presidency of the USA.

My bologna has a middle name, it’s H-u-s-s-e-i-n.

Obama, from corn-wealthy Illinois, has deep ethanol ties

When VeraSun Energy inaugurated a new ethanol processing plant in Charles City, Iowa, last summer, some of that industry’s most prominent boosters showed up. Leaders of the National Corn Growers’ Association and the Renewable Fuels Association, for instance, came to help cut the ribbon — and so did Sen. Barack Obama.

Then running far behind Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in name recognition and in the polls, Obama was in the midst of a campaign swing through the state where he would eventually register his first caucus victory. And as befits a senator from Illinois, the country’s second-largest corn-producing state, he delivered a ringing endorsement of ethanol as an alternative fuel.

Obama is running as a reformer who is seeking to reduce the influence of special interests. But he also has advisers and prominent supporters with close ties to the industry.

His friend and surrogate, Tom Daschle, a former Senate majority leader from South Dakota, serves on the boards of three ethanol companies and works at a Washington law firm where, according to his online job description, “he spends a substantial amount of time providing strategic and policy advice to clients in renewable energy.”

Not long after arriving in the Senate, Obama briefly provoked a controversy when he twice flew at subsidized rates on corporate airplanes of the agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, which is the nation’s largest ethanol producer and is based in his home state.

His Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, advocates eliminating the multibillion- dollar annual government subsidies that domestic ethanol has long enjoyed. He also opposes the 54-cent-a-gallon tariff that the U.S. imposes on imports of ethanol made from sugarcane, which packs more of an energy punch than corn-based ethanol and is cheaper to produce.

Obama favors the subsidies, some of which end up in the hands of the same oil companies he says should be subjected to a windfall profits tax. He also supports the tariff, which some economists say may well be illegal under the World Trade Organization’s rules but which his advisers say is not.