I've been a fan of the fair tax since it's inception... Boortz has it sealed up tight- and fault can't be found in it.. It is exactly as it sounds- it's fair.. I don't mind paying taxes for the things we need to make this country run, safe, and moving forward- I just have an issue with the thieves.. The fair tax addresses that easily- but it will never happen.. why asks you? because the ones running the show right now are the ones profiting from the tax system as it is..

I find it of great humor that the fair tax has been around for over ten years, yet if you ask any elected official they play dumb, as if they've never heard of it before.

 

Never say never.

A Republican is sitting in Teddy Kennedy's seat.
Americans in greater numbers are behind the GOP budget proposal.
Unions are losing their grip on American industry.

And the list continues.

 

I hope you're right VDub.. I really do..

I could care less about the party line.. they're all evil bastardos, it's my opinion.. I would love to see the entire system flushed out from top to bottom over the next eight years.. I would love to see Americans voted in and those patriots representing the area that hired them instead of the party line thy chose.. And I'd love to see the lobbyists controlled.. Mostly, I'd love to see term limits and the elimination of their retirement programs.. I'd love to see the representative make only 25+ over the area they represents medial income.. plus travel expenses..

I don't think any of that will ever happen..

I just can't scrap the feeling that these guys are looting- they know the ship is sinking, and they are out to get whatever they can as fast as they can before everyone realizes the ship is sinking.. I really don't want that to be so, but it's the feeling I get by watching and reading all the crap going on..


they need to do as HeyYou said- and get fuel off the market.. they also need to lift the moratoriums on refining right here at home.. this is crazy..

 

Yeah, the speculators are driving up the price, but the weaker dollar does not help the situation; however, I did read an article in the last week or two that scientists in Spain have cracked the "aging" process, so to speak, in what makes carbon become oil after a few thousand years of cooking in the earth. They have developed a process where algae converted into fuel has exhaust emissions from a factory run through and -- bingo, synthetic gasoline that would come in under $1.50/gal.

 

Their behavior over the past 15 years or so is perfectly consistent with that.

I keep seeing a Thelma and Louise thing going on. They didn't set out on a journey to destruction, but once things went just so far it made a strange kind of sense to drive over the cliff.

 

ok unfortunatly with my situation (not working) i dont have cable, and have no idea whats going on in the world really.......now is this "drill baby drill" thing going to lower prices?

 

it's a catch phrase more than anything.. the promise is to tap into our own supplies of crude and be less dependent on the rest of the planet for the stuff- you know, to break the dependency on foreign governments who hate us..

it's a really effective catch phrase with those who don't really think it through.. because there is a heckuva lot more to it than tapping into it and capturing the sticky crap..

as soon as such a moratorium would be lifted, the angling would commence.. folks would angle for their 'cut', and a legion of middle men would appear much like the middle men that exist now in the world market.. that would have to be negotiated like a boulder in the trail- and THAT is the part that makes trading in the world market difficult to begin with.. the country would have to redesign the way it's handled financially.. sounds difficult? it's not.. it's when people start angling that makes it difficult.

the concept of 'drill baby drill' is based on either supplying our own needs (and we would be at least ten years out from that if we started tomorrow)-

OR, tapping it and holding it, and when other countries get stupid and attempt to raise the index, we flood the market with our own and drive their prices down.. just the threat of that would keep other countries more honest- and it would trip out the futures market too.. If our regulators had that pawn in place it would be a game changer.. the thought would be 'if your oil breaks $xx a barrel, we will release xx barrels to stabilize it.. what this would do is the other markets oil (OPEC for instance) would toe the mark below where our 'release' would be.. it would stabilize the market. Gas would be back to 'supply and demand', as opposed to fear mongers driving the market as they are today..

guess what? there are people getting FILTHY rich playing this game of chess with futures trading.. and these people are lobbying the folks we sent to represent us in the legislative branch and the executive branch- and they are protected by the judicial branch.. all three components of our government are tainted with the greed and corruption that keeps that flow of cash picking up momentum and further and further from the reach of regulation.. In short, we're totally screwed.

 

You might have left "it through" off the end and been no less accurate.

The biggest problems we face today are all caused by blind adherence to ideology. If it were widely understood, "free market capitalism" would be rejected by all but about 100,000 Americans, and maybe 300,000 people worldwide -- instead, it's not widely understood so it has hundreds of millions of supporters, including those who are greatly harmed by it. Sound bites and slogans are accepted as facts, even when patently false, by people who never go any further than the television for information.

And who decides what you're going to see on television? Rich people who learned long ago (from Edward Bernays and Philip Cotler) how to profit hugely by controlling the media.

By way of example: Most Americans accept on faith that the GOP stands for fiscal restraint and smaller government, and that the Democratic Party stands for big government, foolish federal spending, and a nanny state. This is simply because most Americans have no freakin' clue beyond what the electric lobotomizer tells them -- for as long as I've been alive, GOP control of the White House and Congress has always led to bigger deficits, increased national debt, and increased intrusion of the government into the lives of private citizens. Democratic administrations trend in exactly the opposite direction.

I don't have any political party affiliation, and in fact quit voting after the unconstitutional theft of the 2000 presidential election in which the SCOTUS took democracy away from the people. I especially distrust all Republicrats, both factions of the unnamed party of the ruling elite. Anyway...

Not so long ago, the only significant players in the liquid fuels market were big refiners and airlines -- but when the real estate bubble popped, investors who'd bailed out of it had to find somewhere else to make their capital gains (which are taxed at a lower rate than your earned income or mine). They turned to commodities, and in addition to taking control of the liquid fuels market they've also been hitting heavily on the rest of the market, most of which ends up in your mouth or on your back. (It's not just fuel prices cranking up grocery bills. Fuel prices are a factor, but not the only one.)

Ya wanna fix those commodities markets in one swell foop? Change the regulations so that only qualified buyers can participate, and make one of the qualifications that the buyer must physically take possession of 60% of the product represented by the paper. Bingo. No tank farm? No crude oil for you. No silo? No corn for you. A commodities market operated on this basis would still perform the function of stabilizing prices and ensuring that producers can get a fair price for their crops/critters/oil/etc. What it wouldn't do is allow rich middlemen to suck the wealth out of the pockets of us common folk. This flies in the face of "free market capitalist" ideology, but screw ideology. Reality is a much nicer view of the world.

 

Just wanted to say: thank all of you for the clarifying the underlying causes of one of the chief problems with our society today. I had a grasp of it before this, but seeing all of it explained here in no BS language has greatly expanded my understanding of what exactly is going on.

As a college student with a new found fondness of all things sociological, I can say that this thread is satiating a facet of my appetite to understand the goings on of the World at Large.

Please, continue... I'm listening (well, reading), even if no one else is. Describe this symptom of our broken system.

At the risk of sounding like a nut-job: perhaps there is something that can be done about it (that's right, I'm back-pedaling my previous statement). We can speculate what should be done until the until the sun explodes, but it won't get anything accomplished. Action is necessary. Enough people supported by an independent not-for-profit organization can be a somewhat powerful force. Petition? Reform party? Flying monkeys?.... Ideas? Bueller?

 

Just wanted to add, without going all political since this isn't the proper forum for it: In 2006, the composite (foreign and domestic) first domestic purchase cost of crude oil averaged $60.24/barrel -- in January 2011 it was up to $85.66. Meanwhile, "upstream costs" of production have fallen. The most recent numbers I can find are for the end of 2009, when upstream production costs (cost of finding and lifting) had fallen 18.6% on a trend that has been downward since 2006.

Primarily, first domestic purchase cost of crude is "whatever the market will bear". The cost to produce a barrel is lower now than it was five years ago, but the landed price has increased more than 40% and the commodities traders are adding another 20% or so to that before it gets to the refiners.

I read recently that upstream costs (finding and lifting) are right around $29/barrel, but I don't have the raw data source to prove it. Whatever it truly is, it's certainly much less than half of the first domestic purchase price.

Just a little politicking: Does anyone believe that the US would give a fiddly-fruck about the civil unrest in Libya if it weren't for the fact that all of our European NATO allies are dependent (to some extent) upon (BP's) Libyan oil? With Libyan fields shut down, our European buddies will pay more for oil even though supply still outweighs demand and even though production costs are lower now than they were five years ago, because they're scared. The same way millions of morons here bought up all of the duct tape in February of 2003 because they were scared (by a gubment that was building popular support for its planned invasion of Iraq). And with the Europeans willing to pay more because they're scared, we pay more because we're scared they'll get "ours".

I'm curious to see the oil company profit reports this morning. They'll be cause for outrage, certainly.