Posted on 04/24/2006 12:12:45 PM PDT by Crackingham
He could do all of that. But, also, rescend the Toon's exec. order tying up Utah shale oil deposits. I heard on Boortz today (don't remember source) that there is some 1 trillion barrels of oil that could be recovered. Enough at current consumption to last 100 years.
the sad thing is if they can't figure out a simple problem like this, how are they going to figure out the more complicated ones?
This is what I've been thinking, too!
This won't have any affect on gasoline prices. Since the final price is a function of supply and demand, and gasoline taxes do not affect the supply, rmoving the taxes will result in the same price that we have now, since demand will not change much either (that is, it would increase a bit if the price was reduced by the amount of the tax, which, given the same supply, would quickly drive prices back up to their current levels)
On the other hand, your comment about clean air mandates - particularly in reference to the various federally mandated reformulated fuels - is spot on. Mandatory fuel formulations not only add a lot of cost and complexity to the manufacture and distribution of gasoline, but they typically reduce automobile gas mileage by 5% and result in an effective 5 - 10% loss in refinery capacity, due to change up and other associated downtime.
Eliminating the silly ass reformulated fuel requirements would effectively add 5 - 10% additional supply while reducing costs and complexity and have ZERO real impact on the environment. And Bush could do it TODAY!
Bears repeating, especially given the high number of seedy characters (i.e., terror-supporting regimes) that profit off of it.
As for lowering gas taxes, I'm opposed to that for two reasons: One, it probably won't have much effect on the price, because the price is scarcity-driven. Two, it will just make it that much harder to make the income tax cuts permanent. And income taxes are far, far worse than gas taxes.
ping for later
Listen, the whole "eminant domain" thing is proven legal, so we just TAKE the entire coast of Calfornia and Florida (and the postage stamp sized chunk of ANWR) "for the public good".
The main reason for high gas prices, among a myriad of other concerns to the American people, is to GET US OUT OF OUR AUTOMOBILES. The less mobile the people, the easier to CONTROL the people. IMHO, Mr. P. won't be doing ANYTHING to benefit the American people. Never before in our history have we lost so much as we have in the past 15 years.
Often used comparison, but one that only looks good (but holds no real substance just the illusion of it). Unless, ofcourse, a family that has a vehicle with a fuel tank capacity of 26 gallons and fills up once a week also heads to their local supermarket and buys 26 gallons of bottled water/cheap beer/crappy wine/fave soft drinks/etc every week (in which case their weekly expenditure on gas would be cheaper than their weekly expenditure on 26 gallons of the other products at the prices you listed).
If American families are consuming bottled water/cheap beer/crappy wine/fave soft drinks/etc at the rate at which gas is consumed then that analogy would not be moot, but people don't drink 26 gallons of 'crappy wine' at 30 bucks a gallon (i.e total cost of 780 dollars A WEEK) or 26 gallons of 'really cheap beer' at 14 bucks a gallon every week (total cost of 364 dollars a week). Or even 26 gallons of bottled water at 8 dollars a gallon (i.e 208 dollars a week)! HOWEVER that family does fill up with 26 gallons of gas a week, and at 3 dollars a gallon that comes to 78 dollars a week.
Hence the comparison between gas and the other products simply doesn't hold water, because while the per gallon cost of gas is less than the per gallon cost of water/beer/wine/pop people do not consume those at the rate that they consume gas. Thus the example only looks good (and might make people not good at basic math feel good) but it is simply void of any substance whatsoever.
Also people do not buy 26 gallons of any of the above a week (26 gallons of 'crappy wine' at the price he listed of 30 bucks a week comes to 780 dollars a week) , but there are people who fill up their 26 gallon tank with gas a week. That analogy would only make sense if people consumed wine/beer/water at the same rate that they consume gas.
I don't see how that's the case. Government control - particularly federal government control - over us has increased as we've become more mobile.
Price is the point at which supply = demand. Which article of the Constitution gives the President the power to meddle with either supply or demand of any commodity?
I thought not....
We need more refining capacity.
I wondered if the president could suspend the clean burning fuel mandates by executive order or if it would require legislation. It seems to me he temporarily suspended them last year after Katrina. We he allowed them to be re-imposed is beyond me. Almost no one other than Al Gore would have noticed, and only a few more would have cared, if they had just been permanently done away with at that time. As you say, clean engine technologies over the last 10 years make these EPA clean fuel mandates totally redundant.
The last time we lost this much freedom this fast? The Depression.
The time before that? The Civil War
Um - you are incorrect about Peanut Brain - he was not POTUS in 1976 nor was there a gas shortage that year. He tried some foolishsness in 1979 as did R Milhous Nixon in 1974. FACTS , buddy, facts!
Bush's fault.
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