If your sick and tired of paying an arm and a leg for gas then please call Nancy “Nine Percent” Pelosi at (202) 225-4965 and ask her to return the House to session NOW to consider serious energy legislation that not only pursues a greater investment in renewable energies and technologies, but also provides for increased domestic drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), the oil shale areas, and the 10-02 Area of ANWR.
Feel free to pass her number on to everyone you know.
Russia’s brutal invasion of Georgia makes one thing perfectly clear and should serve as a wake-up call to all Americans. We need to Drill Here and Drill Now! The invasion shines the light on the need to dramatically reduce or cut off our dependence on foreign oil. Why would the U.S. want to expose the American economy to the potential risk of being held hostage by a couple of oil pipelines that run through the old Soviet empire? Do we really want OPEC, Hugo Chavez, and Vladimir Putin to control our energy prices? Or will we be brave enough to seize our own energy independence? Expanding domestic oil exploration and refining is vital for our national security and the security of our allies.
Its time for Congress to get off their corrupt lazy asses and pass an energy bill that includes drilling on all federal lands and offshore, plus the development of alternative forms of energy.
Republicans need to jump all over this and explain it to the American people.
This editorial from IBD is spot on and backs up my point.
Energy: Russia’s bloody invasion of a smaller neighbor whose territory includes a vital oil pipeline has left many people wondering: What can we do? Plenty, it turns out — including some things right here at home.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced he was halting Russia’s air and ground attack on Georgia, but someone forgot to tell Russia’s military.
It has continued its brutal assault, with news reports that Russian troops have started looting, raping and savagely attacking Georgian civilians.
It’s clear former President Vladimir Putin, not his handpicked successor Medvedev, is calling the shots. Putin’s made no secret of the fact that he wants to depose Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and set up a pliant puppet regime, giving him de facto control of Georgia’s oil pipeline — the main conduit to Europe from the oil-rich Caspian Sea that’s not on Russian soil.
Why would Russia do this? As we note elsewhere on this page, roughly a quarter of Europe’s energy comes from Russia. This tightens Putin’s stranglehold on Europe’s economy and gives him all the diplomatic leverage he needs.
If you don’t believe this, look at the EU’s weak response to the crisis in Georgia. It “brokered” a cease-fire that is essentially a total capitulation by Georgia to Russian demands. Appeasement is back.
After Putin’s bullying, Europe is less likely to object to Russia’s profiteering from Iran’s nuclear program, or Russia’s brutal war against Chechnyan separatists, or its intimidation of Eastern European countries. Europe has no sticks for Russia — only carrots.
That’s not the case with the U.S. Start with President Bush’s pledge Wednesday to support Georgia, an ally in the war on terror, and send it aid. Bush warned Russia the U.S. might not support its “aspirations” to join diplomatic, economic and security groups.
We’ve already canceled joint NATO-Russia naval exercises, scheduled for this weekend. And we can turn the G-8 nations back into the G-7. Russia has shown that it doesn’t deserve to be counted among democratic, economically free nations.
But there’s more we can do:
• Russia wants badly to join the World Trade Organization. Put that on a back burner until it starts behaving.
• Russia is scheduled to hold the 2014 Winter Olympics at the resort of Sochi, 15 miles from Abkhazia, the other Georgian province that Russia just invaded. Cancel it, and give it to a more deserving host.
• We’re building a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. We should accelerate our plans, and broaden participation.
• Russia took in about $27 billion in foreign investment last year. We should limit capital flows to make sure Western capital and technology aren’t used to build Russia’s military.
In short, if Russia wants a Cold War, we can give them one.
One other thing: Congress should, as a matter of national security, pass a broad energy bill that includes drilling on all federal lands and offshore, plus the development of alternative energy.
When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats deny the U.S. badly needed sources of new energy, they make America more vulnerable to energy blackmail. Russia’s gambit should remind us that energy policy is too important to be held hostage to special interests and domestic politics.
We have huge amounts of potential energy to be developed — at least 130 billion barrels of conventional oil reserves, 800 billion more in oil shale, massive supplies of natural gas, coal, burgeoning solar and wind technologies, and the technological ability to build the world’s most efficient and safe nuclear power plants.
Yet today, Americans get nearly 70% of their oil from overseas, making us vulnerable to blackmail by the likes of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Iran and now even Russia. Developing the full range of energy sources we have available may be the single most effective way of ensuring our nation’s security.
Does a day ever go by that angry Muslims somewhere aren’t demanding apologies?
A new Nissan commercial airing in Israel has offended the oil-rich Arabs. The commercial shows a group of Arab sheikhs enraged at the sight of a Nissan car known for its fuel efficiency. One man pounds his fists on the car and is then held back by his companions as he shouts at it, “You’ve ruined my house!” (Colloquial Arabic for “You’ve put me out of business!”).
At the end of the commercial, the voice-over says, “It’s clear the oil companies won’t like you.”
The Nissan advertisement is brilliant and perfect for the Western market and all those fed up with the spectacle of trillions of dollars flowing to some of the most undeserving, hostile and greedy people in the world.
Gulf states may boycott the Nissan Motor Company as a result of an Israeli TV commercial that depicts Saudis angered by a fuel-efficient car, a Saudi official has said.
The new campaign by Renault-Nissan caused an uproar in the Gulf when it showed a group of Saudi oil barons screaming and attacking the Renault-Nissan vehicle.
“It’s my opinion that Nissan made a huge error by igniting these [racist] instincts,” official Hani al-Wafa told MBC TV, a Saudi-run station headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. “We need to apply punishments… against these things. In order for Nissan to keep its interests in the region, it must apologize.”
Israeli advertising and marketing agency Inbar Merhav Shaked, which developed the Renault-Nissan campaign, declined to comment.
In January, Israel partnered with Project Better Place, a company that aims to reduce petroleum dependency through the use of electric cars.
Through the government initiative, Israel hopes to mass-market electric vehicles by 2011. Denmark is also investing in electric cars at a national level.
Project Better Place partnered with Renault-Nissan to provide the electric vehicles featured in the new commercial.
“It’s a humorous campaign that was loved by both the Jewish and Arab worlds,” Daniella Ribenbach, the spokeswoman for Nissan in Israel, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday. She declined to make any further comments on the matter.
Hadar Goldman, co-owner of the Zarmon Goldman advertising agency in Tel Aviv, said he hoped Saudis would tolerate humorous and exaggerated commercials.
“If we have a sense of humor, I expect them to have one as well,” he said.
Nissan’s electric vehicle, introduced on Wednesday, is set to go on the market in Japan and the United States in 2010, and globally by 2012.
The car was designed to provide more power than hybrid models, and emits zero emissions.
During test runs, the car was quiet and produced no engine noise – a trademark of electric vehicles. Details such as cruising range have yet to be determined, Nissan officials said.
Having fallen behind rivals Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. in hybrids, Nissan has made the electric vehicle the pillar of its green strategy.
The Saudis are shown leaving a hotel and encountering the new, fuel-efficient vehicle. One man pounds his fists on the car and is then held back by his companions as he shouts at it, “Hawks should peck at you day and night.”
At the end of the commercial, the voice-over says, “It’s clear the oil companies won’t like you.”
This is a great editorial. It clearly highlights the socialist crap Obama and the Democrats are trying to ram down our throats with their Windfall Profit nonsense.
I’ll tell you what a Windfall Profit is. How about an empty suit first term senator with zero accomplishments being nominated for President by a major political party?
The “windfall profits” tax is back, with Barack Obama stumping again to apply it to a handful of big oil companies. Which raises a few questions: What is a “windfall” profit anyway? How does it differ from your everyday, run of the mill profit? Is it some absolute number, a matter of return on equity or sales — or does it merely depend on who earns it?
Enquiring entrepreneurs want to know. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama’s “emergency” plan, announced on Friday, doesn’t offer any clarity. To pay for “stimulus” checks of $1,000 for families and $500 for individuals, the Senator says government would take “a reasonable share” of oil company profits.
Mr. Obama didn’t bother to define “reasonable,” and neither did Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat, when he recently declared that “The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy.” Really? This extraordinary redefinition of free-market success could use some parsing.
Take Exxon Mobil, which on Thursday reported the highest quarterly profit ever and is the main target of any “windfall” tax surcharge. Yet if its profits are at record highs, its tax bills are already at record highs too. Between 2003 and 2007, Exxon paid $64.7 billion in U.S. taxes, exceeding its after-tax U.S. earnings by more than $19 billion. That sounds like a government windfall to us, but perhaps we’re missing some Obama-Durbin business subtlety.
Maybe they have in mind profit margins as a percentage of sales. Yet by that standard Exxon’s profits don’t seem so large. Exxon’s profit margin stood at 10% for 2007, which is hardly out of line with the oil and gas industry average of 8.3%, or the 8.9% for U.S. manufacturing (excluding the sputtering auto makers).
If that’s what constitutes windfall profits, most of corporate America would qualify. Take aerospace or machinery — both 8.2% in 2007. Chemicals had an average margin of 12.7%. Computers: 13.7%. Electronics and appliances: 14.5%. Pharmaceuticals (18.4%) and beverages and tobacco (19.1%) round out the Census Bureau’s industry rankings. The latter two double the returns of Big Oil, though of course government has already became a tacit shareholder in Big Tobacco through the various legal settlements that guarantee a revenue stream for years to come.
In a tax bill on oil earlier this summer, no fewer than 51 Senators voted to impose a 25% windfall tax on a U.S.-based oil company whose profits grew by more than 10% in a single year and wasn’t investing enough in “renewable” energy. This suggests that a windfall is defined by profits growing too fast. No one knows where that 10% came from, besides political convenience. But if 10% is the new standard, the tech industry is going to have to rethink its growth arc. So will LG, the electronics company, which saw its profits grow by 505% in 2007. Abbott Laboratories hit 110%.
If Senator Obama is as exercised about “outrageous” profits as he says he is, he might also have to turn on a few liberal darlings. Oh, say, Berkshire Hathaway. Warren Buffett’s outfit pulled in $11 billion last year, up 29% from 2006. Its profit margin — if that’s the relevant figure — was 11.47%, which beats out the American oil majors.
Or consider Google, which earned a mere $4.2 billion but at a whopping 25.3% margin. Google earns far more from each of its sales dollars than does Exxon, but why doesn’t Mr. Obama consider its advertising-search windfall worthy of special taxation?
The fun part about this game is anyone can play. Jim Johnson, formerly of Fannie Mae and formerly a political fixer for Mr. Obama, reaped a windfall before Fannie’s multibillion-dollar accounting scandal. Bill Clinton took down as much as $15 million working as a rainmaker for billionaire financier Ron Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies. This may be the very definition of “windfall.”
General Electric profits by investing in the alternative energy technology that Mr. Obama says Congress should subsidize even more heavily than it already does. GE’s profit margin in 2007 was 10.3%, about the same as profiteering Exxon’s. Private-equity shops like Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins, which recently hired Al Gore, also invest in alternative energy start-ups, though they keep their margins to themselves. We can safely assume their profits are lofty, much like those of George Soros’s investment funds.
The point isn’t that these folks (other than Mr. Clinton) have something to apologize for, or that these firms are somehow more “deserving” of windfall tax extortion than Big Oil. The point is that what constitutes an abnormal profit is entirely arbitrary. It is in the eye of the political beholder, who is usually looking to soak some unpopular business. In other words, a windfall is nothing more than a profit earned by a business that some politician dislikes. And a tax on that profit is merely a form of politically motivated expropriation.
It’s what politicians do in Venezuela, not in a free country.
There is no logical reason for voters in November to elect and re-elect Liberal Democratic members of the US House and US Senate who have blocked for years and years new US domestic oil and gas production for highly partisan political reasons. Keep in mind that they went home and gas prices at $4.00 a gallon and in doing that said “screw you” to all us hard working Americans who can’t afford a vacation due to the ineptness of our Political leaders.
It’s time for Congress to get back to work and free America of its energy dependence.
When the lady in charge of a house is called a Madam, and the people in the house are, well, you know, then the house becomes a House of Ill Repute.
Dems Skip Town: Empty Promises Revealed
“This leadership team will create the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.”
-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Nov. 16, 2006
These kinds of promises are easy to make when the wind is at your back. That was then, in the wake of midterm elections, before $4-plus gasoline. It was before high energy costs helped drive our consumer-based economy into a tailspin. But most importantly, before the American people lifted their voices in outrage over the recklessness of an ironclad Democrat policy that willingly outsources our energy needs to the whims of foreign oil producers.
Right now middle-class Americans are suffering from expensive-energy induced inflation. We all know the adverse consequences pain at the pumps has wrought. So what does “the most open” House majority of all time do when a fair and honest debate over drilling doesn’t exactly help them?
They dodge the debate for weeks. They disingenuously lead the American people to believe that oil and gas won’t necessarily be a part of our energy needs in the future. They schedule votes on feckless energy legislation – see “use it or lose it” and oil speculation – to make it look like they are doing something. They justify their stonewalling as an effort to “save the planet,” impervious to the fact that other countries with far worse environmental track records will only intensify their drilling efforts.
But worst of all, they skip out of town for five-weeks without allowing a single vote or amendment that would meaningfully alter the imbalance of supply and demand that has triggered the spike in oil prices. This is a dereliction of duty of the gravest magnitude.
As Congressional Democrats sprint out of town for the August recess, most American families, mindful of the steep cost of traveling, will stay home. Instead of vacationing, Americans will go back to work. With the economy reeling from high energy prices, shouldn’t they expect lawmakers to make an effort to lower gas prices?
We are calling on the Democrat majority to promptly return to work and engage us in the drilling debate the country so desperately wants and needs to hear.
Sign the Petition: www.CallCongressBack.com and demand House Democrats to act to lower gas prices.