Posts Tagged ‘energy’

It’s spring and gasoline prices are soaring in Milwaukee, a trend that has become as predictable as the sunrise.

The price for a gallon of regular gasoline in metro Milwaukee is running nearly 40 cents a gallon higher than the U.S. average price, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service.

The national average for a gallon of regular is $3.52. The price in metro Milwaukee is $3.90. This time last year, a gallon of regular was selling for $3.88 in Milwaukee on average.

Read more by Joe Taschler of the Journal Sentinel

If we look at what’s skyrocketed in price (healthcare, college tuition), we find they are government funded and supported. This is not a coincidence.

Inflation is generally viewed as a monetary phenomenon (print money excessively and you get inflation), but let’s use a very simple definition: any loss of purchasing power. If your income buys fewer goods and services, for whatever mix of reasons (geopolitical, weather, monetary, fiscal, etc.), that’s inflation “on the ground.”

–SNIP– What differentiates medical and college costs from everything else? The Federal government’s direct role in these markets. The Central State directly spends over $1 trillion a year on Medicare and Medicaid, and controls private spending with rules and regulations.

As for college costs: could their incredible expansion have anything to do with the Central State backing $1 trillion in student loans?

Read more by Charles Hugh Smith at charleshughsmith.blogspot.com

Retail gasoline prices in the U.S. Midwest were as much as 50 cents higher than in the rest of the country. By Monday, the price of a gallon of regular unleaded jumped 13 cents from last week in Detroit to settle at $3.99. The spike in retail gasoline prices follows a series of pipeline spills in Wisconsin and refinery shutdowns in Chicago and elsewhere. The impact of the string of industrial incidents on consumers in the region may be short-lived, but retail prices rarely decline as fast as they increase. The ‘cluster of bad luck’ leaves refineries shut down at a time when the region is using “summertime gasoline,” a blend not manufactured very much outside of the Midwest.

Read more by Daniel Graeber of OilPrice.com

The Green River Formation, a largely vacant area of mostly federal land that covers the territory where Colorado, Utah and Wyoming come together, contains about as much recoverable oil as all the rest the world’s proven reserves combined, an auditor from the Government Accountability Office told Congress on Thursday.

The GAO testimony said that the federal government was in “a unique position to influence the development of oil shale” because the Green River deposits were mostly beneath federal land.

Read more by Terence P. Jeffrey at CNSNews.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ-4gnNz0vc

The environmental agenda has been infected by extremism—it’s become an economic suicide pact. And we’re here to challenge it.

A few years old, but still funny if you’re not North Korean, from The People’s Cube

Lying is not going to rebut Newt Gingrich’s compelling understanding of America’s energy policy and huge energy reserves.

In a speech that the Gingrich campaign has begun broadcasting around the country, and which is posted at Newt.org, Gingrich presents a unique new vision for a booming American economy. I think you will find it pathbreaking. It is so compelling that it drew Obama into a transcontinental debate with the former Speaker, the first exchange that Obama has decisively lost since he appeared on the national stage.

Read More By Peter Ferrara at The American Spectator

President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico is an act of national insanity. It isn’t often that a president makes a decision that has no redeeming virtues and — beyond the symbolism — won’t even advance the goals of the groups that demanded it. All it tells us is that Obama is so obsessed with his re-election that, through some sort of political calculus, he believes that placating his environmental supporters will improve his chances.

Aside from the political and public relations victory, environmentalists won’t get much. Stopping the pipeline won’t halt the development of tar sands, to which the Canadian government is committed; therefore, there will be little effect on global warming emissions. Indeed, Obama’s decision might add to them. If Canada builds a pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific for export to Asia, moving all that oil across the ocean by tanker will create extra emissions. There will also be the risk of added spills.

Now consider how Obama’s decision hurts the United States. For starters, it insults and antagonizes a strong ally; getting future Canadian cooperation on other issues will be harder. Next, it threatens a large source of relatively secure oil that, combined with new discoveries in the United States, could reduce (though not eliminate) our dependence on insecure foreign oil.

Finally, Obama’s decision forgoes all the project’s jobs.

Read more by Robert Samuelson at RealClearPolitics.com

Obama rejects the Keystone XL pipeline and blames Congress.

The central conflict of the Obama Presidency has been between the jobs and growth crisis he inherited and the President’s hell-for-leather pursuit of his larger social-policy ambitions. The tragedy is that the economic recovery has been so lackluster because the second impulse keeps winning.

Yesterday came proof positive with the White House’s repudiation of the Keystone XL pipeline, TransCanada’s $7 billion shovel-ready project that would support tens of thousands of jobs if only it could get the requisite U.S. permits. Those jobs, apparently, can wait.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal

President Obama’s jobs council called Tuesday for an “all-in approach” to energy policy that includes expanded oil-and-gas drilling as well as expediting energy projects like pipelines.

“[W]e should allow more access to oil, natural gas and coal opportunities on federal lands,” states the year-end report released Tuesday by the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

The report does not specifically mention the Keystone XL oil pipeline, but it endorses moving forward quickly with projects that “deliver electricity and fuel,” including pipelines.

“The Council recognizes the important safety and environmental concerns surrounding these types of projects, but now more than ever, the jobs and economic and energy security benefits of these energy projects require us to tackle the issues head-on and to expeditiously, though cautiously, move forward on projects that can support hundreds of thousands of jobs,” the report says.

Read more by Andrew Restuccia at TheHill.com

by Sen. Ron Johnson

Americans are frustrated over Washington’s inability to address our nation’s economic and fiscal problems. That’s why I have been working with a growing group of senators and House members to develop a plan that can build public support for solutions. It’s called “America’s Choice.”

America’s Choice seeks to highlight the differences between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party led by President Obama. It could do so over the coming months by presenting to the country, through a series of votes in the House of Representatives, the battle between those who believe in broadest terms in limited government and freedom and those who promote government control and dependency.

What are the choices these votes could present? Growing government spending and debt or growing the private sector and reducing government. Limiting energy development or using America’s energy resources. Punishing success or pro-growth tax reform. A government takeover of health care or repealing ObamaCare and replacing it with patient-centered, free-market reforms.

The alternatives are stark.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal

Call your congressman.

Is the Light Bulb Ban a Bright Idea? Kiss Your 100 Watts Goodbye! from Popular Mechanics

The Obama administration is setting the stage for the dismantling of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and poses the greatest threat to its existence today, according to House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings.

The 800-mile pipeline cost $8 billion to construct in the 1970s, and has moved more than 18 billion barrels of crude oil. Three oil companies constructed it, in the face of significant opposition from environmentalists, in response to the 1973 Arab oil embargo.

The federal government approved the pipeline as part of a strategy to secure domestic alternatives to oil from the Middle East. But the Natural Resources Committee notes that the law authorizing the then-controversial pipeline’s construction came with a caveat: If the pipeline should ever cease being viable, it must dismantled.

That day could come within the next decade.

Read more by John Rossomando, 8/25/2011, at The Daily Caller

by Sarah Palin, 8/09/11

In the coming days we’ll sort through the repercussions of S&P’s downgrade of our credit rating, including concerns about the impact a potential interest rate increase would have on our ability to service our suffocating $14.5 trillion debt.

I’m surprised that so many people seem surprised by S&P’s decision. Weren’t people paying attention over the last year or so when we were getting warning after warning from various credit rating agencies that this was coming? I’ve been writing and speaking about it myself for quite some time.

–SNIP– Our destiny is still in our own hands if we pick ourselves up and act responsibly and quickly. We must all get involved. Concerned Americans must seek truth, work harder than ever, and be willing to sacrifice today to ensure freedom tomorrow.

Please get engaged in 2012 electoral politics and support experienced, vetted, pro-free market fiscal conservatives who will dedicate all to preserving our Republic and protecting our Constitution.

Read more at http://www.tothepointnews.com/content/view/4626/87/

Liberals are pro-choice on abortion, but are not pro-choice on consumer items.