If anything has become abundantly obvious over the past 10 years, gas prices are going up and they really don’t appear to show any sign of slowing. Rest assured, people are making money off this, be it the oil companies with record profits, or politicians with record tax revenue. The people who aren’t making money off of it are you and I.
I regularly spend upwards of $50 to fill the fuel tank in my Volkswagen. Don’t even get me started on the pickup truck, I’m almost glad the engine is broken right now.
New Jersey Democrats are working to implement a ban on off-shore drilling from Maine to North Carolina.
Now maybe the states from Maine to North Carolina are fine with our dependence on foreign sources of energy – but shouldn’t the individual states have a say in it? After all, Lautenberg and his cronies have absolutely no problem proposing tax increases on gas and other energy sources to pay for the decades of waste in the Garden State.
We need a new way of thinking that acknowledges the current state of energy costs by not only implementing stopgap solutions to bring immediate relief to consumers… but also involves PERMANENT tax relief to the producers and resellers from the top through the bottom, including incentives to small business owners that enable them to sell fuel at a lower cost – plus the immediate lifting on drilling bans off-shore, within the contiguous United States, and Alaska, including the lifting of moratoriums and bans on improving domestic refinement capacity. Alternative energy is great, but if I’m spending so much fulling up my 34mpg Volkswagen that I can’t afford a 50+mpg hybrid or diesel based vehicle – what the heck will alternative sources do for me?
Yes, I’ll admit that burning fossil fuels is bad for the environment, but our environment is designed to DEVOUR CO2, and RE-USE WATER, two of the primary components in automotive exhaust. The technology is there to create cleaner burning fossil fuel based engines (catalytic converter anyone?). The technology is THERE to create motors and vehicles which provide outstanding performance as well as outstanding MPG. To give up on the Internal Combustion Engine because a bunch of greenies spend more on lobbyists than Joe Commuter who has an hour commute every day, or people who just want to STAY WARM when they take a shower or survive a frigid winter does not give those arrogant pricks the right to dictate policy. Last I checked, the multi-trillion dollar budget that comes from the pocket of people like you and me SHOULD have more say than a bunch of disgruntled hippies who could care less about the plight of folks like me.
Lets continue to develop hybrid, solar, electric, fuel-cell, and other technologies – but for the sake of our economy and our citizens who are forced to decide between gasoline, fuel oil, and food – do not give up on the ICE until we’ve got something better!
America used to innovate! Now we consistently bend to the whim of knee-jerk reactions to junk science and rumor, where once we lead the world in technological development, now the so-called bastions of Socialism (ie France) lead the WORLD in DOMESTIC NUCLEAR ENERGY PRODUCTION. Nobody’s asking the middle eastern oil conglomerates or other world powers with vast oil reserves to cut back. We’ve got a massive investment in the future infrastructure of Iraq and its oil supplies – and people are actually fighting to keep oil companies from utilizing the resources! Lets have that war for oil! It wouldn’t be the first time brave Americans fought and died to protect the former economic sovereignty of the USA.
I get it, the environmentalists have a weak argument and a fat wallet, money always wins in rock, paper, scissors until someone finally has the BALLS to cut through the bullshit!
I don’t give a rats ass that China is finally enjoying the motor vehicle in vast numbers, welcome to the party! All the more reason that we should be exploring every single opportunity of our vast domestic resources, including oil production and refinement, so that the world economy and the absurdly high cost of oil right now does not dictate whether or not I feel like driving due to the high cost of gasoline!
America needs to rethink its priorities, and it needs to start with telling jackasses like Lautenberg and his ilk that those of us who don’t have all their bills paid by taxpayers that they can GO TO HELL.