By Jack Lee
Pump prices got your attention? It’s got mine and this looks like it could be the main issue of the presidential race in Nov. Voters are mad and they are blaming both parties for not doing something to head off this major crisis.
Democrats refuse to budge, they say we need to move off carbon based fuels, and while thats just great, what do we do in the meanwhile, what’s the alternative? They are blocking drilling in 80% of our known oil producing regions at a time when we need a little relief and that isn’t so great! They are being foolish at our expense once again.
Republicans, despite once having full control of the Senate, Congress and the Presidency to do something didn’t have the foresight or if they did, they didn’t have the will, I will let you tell me which is worse. Now the Arab’s and Iran can punish the West and bring down great nations by playing games with oil production and prices.
You say Europe is far worse off with their high fuel cost so that should be some consolation? Not really. Consider this, the average vehicle in Europe gets 41 mpg…they have been playing the high pump price game long before us and this is the result. We’re still somewhere around 18 mpg. In effect Europeans pay less out of pocket for fuel than Americans, thanks to high MPG cars and very low cost mass transit (and that includes a superior rail system). A rail commute of 100 miles in Europe will cost you about 1/4th of what it does here, but here you’re lucky if you can find a train going where you want, never mind the price and if you do find a train going your way, you could ride a bike and get there faster.
America is a big country and we were designed to use the automobile. We ship by truck and by train and if we can’t it’s as if we just took a knife in the heart. The Arabs know this. Iran knows this, and they are all only too happy to knife us, even if it means taking down half of Europe in the process…were all infidels anyway.
Between the “no drilling for oil side” and the gang that represents big oil, we the consumers are basically S-O-L. Even if we said OK… lets all shift to bio fuel, we’re still years away from having anything close to meeting the demand. So what do we do in the meanwhile? We pay. And we pay whatever the oil monopoly tells us to pay… because they own the oil and we can’t drill for our own, it’s the perfect storm.
What OPEC is doing is pure capitalism and if they want to charge $500 a barrel for oil then so be it, we will die economically of course, but we can die smiling knowing it was capitalism not communism that killed us.