Will someone please ask this question of the candidates?

You say you want us to not be dependent on foreign oil. Then please tell me: What should we do when the Saudi's decide not to lose market share, and they proceed to once again crush the fledgling alternative fuels industry, by opening their spigots until oil drops below $60 per barrel again?

Background:

In the early eighties alternative energy was all the rage. Yet when the price of oil dropped, those industries collapsed. Hundreds of millions of dollars were lost. Communities that had sprung up around shale oil projects in Colorado are now ghost towns. Solar energy became a joke. Today, the price of oil is high enough to support alternative fuels without subsidies if the alternative production were ramped up to obtain critical mass. Investors still remember though, and aren't willing to totally comit enough to build out the infrastructure and ramp up production to the point where subsidies wouldn't be needed. Oil is no different than real estate. There are some who thought we'd never see prices of homes drop like this. Oil will fall like a rock when the Saudi's want it to - just long enough to crush our dreams of being energy independent. I would eat dirt every day, if it would mean we wouldn't have to give one penny to those OPEC bastards.

Our laws don't permit cartels, so I propose this solution:

Impose an import tax on every gallon of oil from an OPEC nation, only to the extent that it is necessary to keep the price of oil up to the minimum dollar amount required for the alternatives to be competitive - until they can obtain critical mass? No subsidies. If enough industrialized nations join us, the wahabbi nut jobs and other sponsors of terrorism will be brought to their knees, drowning in their own oil. If OPEC collapses, we can insist on having real substantive cooperation on defining terrorism, etc. before considering eliminating the tax.

Note: The cost of providing financial aid to dictators, so that we can keep the oil flowing......... and our military expenses in the region should absolutely be known when considering the true cost of a gallon of middle east oil.

Forget the candidates (notice the OTHER candidates have been ignored): we need the private sector to use good old American ingenuity. Keep the government out.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Yes; the private sector has certainly served us very well of late.

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"Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states...Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."



~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In terms of invention, research and development and that sort of thing, yes.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

So what has the Government done for you lately? besides seeing that the economy is tanked and the value of your investments tank...? HUH?


in terms of Energy research.. the Dept Energy has been doing research in alternative fuels for 25 years.. and there is nothing to show for it.

Another failure of government.

Unfortunately the line between government and private industry has been blurred. Nearly all of congress is on the bankroll.

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No party holds the privilege of dictating to me how I shall vote. If loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot. If there is any valuable difference between a monarchist and an American, it lies in the theory that the American can decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn't. I claim that difference. I am the only person in the sixty millions that is privileged to dictate my patriotism.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

That is so true.. another reason for throwing all of them out.. and a reason for term limits.

99% of the time, I'll say the private sector does things better than the gov't., but the private sector can't establish a safe bottom.

Today, we have bankers and homeowners crying for the gov.'t to buy up mortgages to establish a 'safe bottom'. Give me a break. I'd rather they create a safe bottom for energy prices (or we'll never be energy independent)instead of pandering to the ignorant masses who only want to be free of OPEC oil when the price is high. We're a bunch of whining addicts. Personally, I believe foreign oil will still influence our policy decisions for the next thirty years, unless we create a safe bottom by taxing OPEC oil just enough to let the alternatives compete. We probably need a guranateed minimum price of $60 to $70 per barrel to avoid having to tax OPEC oil. Why not have OPEC pay for it, instead of taxpayer subsidies? Is there some reason we wouldn't want to only tax OPEC oil? If so, I'd say it may be that the oil majors (EXXON, etc.) are entangled with these people. Screw them.

We need some brave souls to tell the public that too cheap of oil isn't good for us. Does the party which I once related to the most, have the courage to say the hell with the free market when it causes the Saudi's to be able to hold a gun to our head? It's no different than undersanding that we can't let the terrorists game our values to the point where it makes us stupid. If my party can't see that, then we're either too greedy or someone is too intent on maintaing the status quo, in which case we deserve to lose.

The computer that you are sitting at and typing on, was first created by the government. The first world's first programmable computer was made in Germany in 1941, paid for by the Nazi government. The first non-programmable electric computer was for the US government for census calculations (in 1890). Internet, came from the government. Jet engine. GPS. Satellites (which allow for tv, cell phones, and most forms of communication). All of these were paid for, not by the private market, but by the government, most of which for the military, and afterwards migrated to the private sector.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

... maybe so, but the government did not make it available to the public at affordable prices and provide the software to make it useful.

Reality is what sets the leftists from the rest of the world.