Why are they so angry?

If I was constantly bombarded with the heaping shovels full of horse crap coming out of the mouths of people like Rush, Hannity, Savage, Valentine, Malkin, Coulter, Kristol, Krauthammer, Hume, etc., etc. I too may start believing that our rather moderate President is a communistic devil, the Democrats his evil minions and that the wicked darkness their doing.

I would say it also has to do with a political awakening for many of these people. For many years they have unwittingly sat back and accepted or even worse, endorsed those policies that have been destroying our country from the inside out i.e. the weakening of our civil, worker, environmental & human rights, deficits induced by tax policies that benefited the well-connected, socialism for the rich and corporate welfare.

The fact is there are many people out there that are getting left behind. They live in a reality they don’t understand and they’ve been raised with obstinate ideologies that use words like “ought” and “should,” which only leads them to find disappointment. They’ve also been taught to believe that change and different cultures should be feared; they’re losing “control” and they wish to return to a world that never was.

But the truth is that there has always been people like this. They have fought every progressive initiative this country has ever enacted and surprisingly the history shows that they have used almost identical methods. The GI bill and many of the benefits for soldiers and veterans, which have built the middle class and created the economy we have come to take for granted, was adopted despite their resistance and shouts of “socialism.” Government programs implemented by government bureaucrats like Medicare, Medicaid and nearly every piece of infrastructure in this country, as well as governmental mechanisms used to protect citizens and businesses alike, have had vicious resistance from “red” baiters.

These same people cheerfully endorsed policies like the invasion of Iraq (or Vietnam and Korea) which will cost this country blood, treasure (upwards of $3 trillion) and respect in the world - where’s their indignation? When Bush and the Republican party passed the multi-trillion dollar tax cut without offsetting the loss of revenue with a loss of services, where was the outrage? When they passed the deficit enhancing $1 trillion Medicare prescription drug benefit who was crying “socialism!” at the town hall?

Or take it a step deeper: when the Republicans failed to mobilize to end abortion, to add a constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage, or failed to put forth policies to reform the health care system for the 6 years when they had total control, who was putting together astroturf bus tours to stir up rage? These problems just didn’t happen overnight but rather have been neglected for decades and Republicans have offered us only more of the same.

Nobody who is a regular visitor to the Fox news channel or AM talk radio would believe this but when you get past their self-interested propaganda and look at what’s truly happening in this country, you may come to realize that the Democrats are acting patriotically by doing what hasn’t been done for so very long, in order to pull the cord on the parachute before we smack into the jagged bottom of the abyss. The rip cord is attached directly to health care and if you don’t like the size of the federal government, believe it is over-extended and takes too much of our hard earned money, than the behemoth that is health care spending in this country, whose yearly costs is equal to all the tax revenue that the federal government takes in in a year, you must conclude that we must radically reform it.

As for the tea baggers, they’ll shout and bitch and moan but despite their declarations that this is being “shoved down their throats” the reality is that Americans overwhelmingly support reform and being that all that is reaching them is disinformation about the proposals, we’re going to get it, whether they like it or not and believe it or not, it’ll be good for this country. Finally.

(Cover photo by Flickr user cosmocatalano used under a Creative Commons license.)

Oil Company (Profit) Equation: High Gas Prices + Campaign Contributions = Control

If offshore drilling is truly seen as viable band-aid to lowering gas prices, following the same logic why shouldn’t we just colonize the moon to deal with the foreclosure crisis?

I find it utterly amazing at just how far and wide fascist propaganda travels when it has enough money and ignorance behind it. Analyst agree, offshore drilling would have no effect in the short-term and hardly any effect in the long-term on gas prices.

“It would take at least a decade for oil companies to obtain permits, procure equipment, and do the exploration necessary to get the oil out of the ground, most industry analysts say.”

New offshore drilling not a quick fix, analysts say

Has this problem arisen for merely political reasons? No you say, there is actually an underlying, fundamental problem here? Hmmm? Then don’t you think we should address that fundamental problem and ask why the oil companies and the Republican Party are pushing offshore drilling so hard? After all the oil companies are already sitting atop millions of acres of land and offshore drilling permits, yet they aren’t presently drilling. Well, why not?

I think the better question is, why would they want to?

If this was merely a case of free market fundamentals than why would the oil companies want to add more oil supplies to the market when the price for their product is peaking? Am I missing something?

IS THERE A SHORTAGE OF OIL?

Are they not able to keep up with demand?

There are no gas lines or shortages of oil-based products at our stores. For the American consumer the price is the problem and not the availability of oil and oil-based products. That’s what makes this a political problem.

But from an economic standpoint the consumers are continuing to pay the price. Sure, there has been a slight decrease in demand but that only works to stabilize the price and ensure that more people continue paying that high price. Then if we put ourselves in the shoes of oil executives whose sole job it is to increase profits for their company, and we follow fundamental principals of supply and demand, why would want to increase supply? After all the price for oil is stabilizing and we’re not having a problem meeting demand.

The economic reality is that the oil companies are making record profits - and why wouldn’t they? They have a monopoly on a finite resource that is in high and growing demand by every society on earth!

Why would they want to add additional supply to the mix if that was in fact possible by drilling offshore? Why would they want to lower their prices and thereby decrease their own profit? It doesn’t make economic sense. No company would want to do that, especially when they know that there’s no place else for our country to go to satisfy its demand for energy.

Doesn’t it make sense that the oil companies want additional permits to drill offshore because they want control over these resources and the profits that they will yield in the future? For-profit companies don’t want there to be a decline in prices for the main product they sell. They want a monopoly and they want to control the price. That’s econ 101.

Wake up and smell the hydrocarbons. We’re locked in to these guys and they know it. Unless we start doing things radically different its only going to get worse. Offshore drilling is not the answer. And drilling 10 years ago would have had a negligible effect on prices today.

Creating a solution to decentralize energy in the form of alternatives that work most effectively in the geography where they are needed would have had a tremendous effect on prices if that policy had been adopted just 10 years ago.

Take it a step further and if we would have listened to Jimmy Carter 31 years ago (”Carter Tried To Stop Bush’s Energy Disasters - 28 Years Ago“) we wouldn’t be in this predicament today.

“With the exception of preventing war,” said Jimmy Carter… “this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes.

…It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century.

…We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren.

…We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.

…The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation.

… He called the new energy policy he was proposing, [T]he ‘moral equivalent of war’ — except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy.”

You may have heard similar sentiments coming out of the mouths of conservative oilmen like T. Boone Pickens. Isn’t it funny how conservatives suddenly become progressives when they finally see a profit motivation? Who knows, hopefully one of these guys will finally see the light ($$$) in global warming to start doing something about that too!

(Cover photo by Flickr user Lollie-Pop used under a Creative Commons license.)

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