Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on KTBB AM & FM, Friday, March. 11, 2011.
Did you see the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray? If you did, you will recall that he kept waking up in a hotel room in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania on the morning of Groundhog Day. Each morning, the alarm clock would flip over to 6 a.m. and out the speaker would come the strains of Sonny & Cher singing “I Got You Babe.”
No matter what he did in the ensuing 24 hours, he always woke up to “I Got You Babe” and it was always Groundhog Day.
With respect to oil and gasoline prices, I’m beginning to feel like Bill Murray. Despite having suffered $4.00 gasoline in the summer of 2008, despite a bunch of palaver from the left about “green energy” and “ending our addiction to oil” and despite the best efforts of the oil industry to produce new and rich oil fields right here at home, we still find ourselves facing $4.00 gasoline as if we, like Bill Murray, are condemned to live the same dysfunctional day over and over.
Groundhog Day was allegorical with respect to Bill Murray’s character’s life. Our energy policy is similarly allegorical with respect to our fiscal policy.
Let me explain.
The world market for oil is in extremely delicate balance. The unrest in Libya has jeopardized a mere two percent of daily oil output and as a result prices have spiked by more than 30 percent. The world oil market sits on such a knife-edge that a very small change in supply touches off a very significant increase in the price.
Thus it is extremely frustrating that huge quantities of oil from known formations on our own soil and in our own waters are being kept off limits by wrong-headed federal policy.
In 1973, the Arab oil embargo led to the creation of the Department of Energy. Its mission was to end America’s dependence on imported oil. It has succeeded in going through billions of dollars and employing thousands of well-paid bureaucrats but it has accomplished nothing with respect to brining about energy independence.
The American oil and gas industry, however, has been hard at work. Huge advances in exploration and drilling technology have served to discover and make recoverable vast reserves of oil that at one time we either didn’t know existed or could not produce economically.
America is sitting on trillions of dollars worth of oil. That would be great news were it not for the fact that federal policy is keeping that oil off limits.
To deal with high oil prices, the president does not propose to open up known oil reserves to drilling. He is floating instead the idea of releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an attempt to push down prices by momentarily increasing supply.
Never mind that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was not created for the purpose of mitigating the market. It was created so as to avoid Armageddon in the event world oil supply was seriously disrupted.
Once again, the president proposes to spend saved wealth, in this case oil that has been being put aside since 1975, rather than permit the creation of new wealth by allowing the production of domestic oil reserves.
At least he’s consistent.
The president’s reckless spending is depleting wealth that has been accumulating for generations. Concurrently, his policies stand in the way of economic growth.
See the parallel?
Our parents and grandparents left us a free, vibrant, dynamic and wealthy nation.
It is not just this administration, but it is most egregiously this administration, that has depleted that wealth – to the great detriment of those who will inherit from us.
Are you embarrassed?
I know I am.
How can you dare to set there and say Obama did this. You need to look at Cushing Ok and see that there is plenty of oil. Its just not where we need it. Was it Obama’s fault when gas went to $4.00 a gallon a few years ago. NO so lets see who really deserves the credit? When a ship full of oil leaves Ak and it get traded 7 8 9 times and every one of those trades make money is all of that going into Obama’s pocket? Well no. Is it Obama’s fault for Gadafi and his country. No All I hear from you people is what he has done wrong so What has he done right? According to you nothing. You need to look at where we were two years ago and loosing 700k jobs a month. He had nothing to do with. At least we are gaining. Since the Republican revival how many job bills have they put forth.00000000. Not one. This country was on the brink of depression and all you have done is kick the horse that wasn’t in the race. Stop hating and post something positive for once. Stop your one sided hating. Who got us in this mess? Republicans.
I am so sick and tired of the repeated attempts at redistibution of wealth by this Socialist administration. The fundemental changes are here…the ruination of America has begun…the Progressive Socialist leadership in the White House wants nothing more than the total destruction of our capitalist way of life and to turn us all into wards of the state. The failure to allow drilling in our own borders, the failure to eliminate our dependence on OPEC is a death sentence for America. 2012 can NOT get here soon enough.
Rick Armstrong Tyler, Tx
Didn’t see GROUNDHOG DAY, but know what you mean. This is just another PROOF that whatever the government seeks to “help”, they always end up forming a “department” that sits on their collective rears drawing huge salaries but produce NOTHING! I remember the 70’s rationing of gasoline. I also remember in the early 70’s gas was 25 cents a gallon! Course that was before the rationing began. There is NO SENSE in our paying so much for gasoline. Oil RUNS our society from the food we eat to the clothes we wear…we can not get away from NEEDING oil no matter what this man in the whitehouse says. Windmills can not produce the products oil does in our society. Solar panels can NOT produce the products oil does in our society. These are bandaids on a cut jugular! What world this man in the whitehouse lives in, is not the same one I live in…I do not know WHERE he is coming from. It is strange that this man in the whitehouse is constantly having parties with fancy food, going on trips all over the world and playing golf on a regular basis, yet he expects us to tighen our belts to conserve. His extravagant lifestyle at OUR expense is not only reckless but immoral. But then living the life of Riley at OUR expense and expecting US to knuckle down is what all dictators do. It is clear to me that obama is fiddling while America burns!!!
I love the common liberal response to “Drill Now”. Liberals always say it will take X years before that will help. If we started drilling here X years ago we wouldnt be here now. Rember whe President Bush announced that we “might” begin drilling here? It drove the price back down. A Government who truly wanted to end our dependance on foreign oil could do a couple of very simple things. Announce that starting immediately ALL known oil fields are now available for drilling weather on shore or off. They could simultaneously announce that new nuclear plants could be built. Then they could offer an award of tax breaks to the company that is first to develop viable cost effective alternative energy. Let the greatest asset that is in the United States loose to solve our problems, that asset is the individual entreprenur.
Anyone with a brain can see that the Socialists are the true haters. They demonize, demonize, demonize everything with which they disagree without one scintilla of common sense to decry the deliberate choking of our economy and debasement of Liberty taking place right under their nose due to Socialism, itself. Real unemployment of 17-20%, the suppression of the energy industry by outrageous regulations due to junk science adopted by the EPA, and the horrendous and uncountable debt increase ($223 billion last month), is simple testimony to this fact.
Trying to reason with Socialists is a complete waste of time. They live in a different universe. They will only be happy when the citizenry and all industry are turned into a serfdom that is ruled by an elite corps of academic pin-heads that claim OMNISCIENCE (all knowing). If this happens our country will have reverted to the era of Divine Right of Kings common to the Middle Ages, except that the Socialist/Marxist dogma will replace the Church.
Forward to the Past
It feels like they’re handing out used years now. I think they gave us this one back in 1978. I remember it felt exactly like this. If everything goes like it did then, we’ll be doing gas lines this summer and buying it only on even or odd days. Inflation should hit double digits by August. Now if the president starts taking foreign policy advice from his daughters…..
He’s already tried to blame the whole mess on our poor attitudes. The very least he could do is go walk around the Japanese nuclear reactors that melted down like Carter did at Three Mile Island. That sort of thing is awfully reassuring you know.
I also remember when a gallon of gas passed the price of a gallon of milk. I remember back then wondering whether they could figure out how to run a car on skim milk instead of petroleum. I mean petroleum only leaves you with plastics and asphalt after you refine out the gasoline. With milk you get cheese and sour cream! How much better is that?
Tom King – Tyler, TX
“Since the Republican revival how many job bills have they put forth.00000000. Not one.” post by John Allen.
Mr Allen do not be a stupe. The government does not, will never and never has created jobs (except gov’t agencies that take our freedoms away). Tell me one “job bill” that creates jobs. There is no job bill that hires 10,000 technicians at Microsoft. The private sector creates jobs. The government has to take the bits out of industry’s mouths and loosen the shackles on their hands and feet to allow them to operate in the free market. But, you say, why does this administration do everything in their power to stop free enterprise and turn this country into a socialist state? Mr Gleiser answered that, “The president’s reckless spending is depleting wealth that has been accumulating for generations. Concurrently, his policies stand in the way of economic growth.” REMEMBER . . . THE GOV’T DOES NOT CREATE JOBS, PRIVATE INDUSTRY, SMALL BUSINESS, ENTREPRENEURS, BIG BUSINESS CREATES JOBS. They can only do so when gov’t stays out of their way.