Predictions for Obama administration; Coal

By now, most of the non-Today Show watching world is aware that Barack Hussein Obama wants to "bankrupt" the coal industry.




Even though you have already seen the film, I have downloaded and uploaded it here with a separate program because Youtube videos have a habit of disappearing.

We already suspected that he would effectively make gasoline off limits to ordinary Americans. Without coal, we will be unable to heat and light our homes or businesses. The loss of jobs goes well beyond the 120,000 referenced in the film. When businesses can no longer afford heat or light, the loss of jobs will be catastrophic. The damage to our economy will be permanent. Those jobs won't return just because a moderate Republican might be elected in 2012 to replace Obama.

And what is Obama's excuse for destroying the coal industry - a hoax.

Energy policy under Obama; price controls, shortages, lines

Gasoline prices have fallen tremendously in the past four months. But if they return to their previous levels [Spring-Summer 2008], it is a safe bet that Obama's solution will involve some kind of price controls or rationing or both. That is the only solution of which a leftist/socialist can conceive. [Obama and a Democrat Congress will never allow drilling or the construction of new refineries.]

But remember, price controls cause shortages. You will find yourself waiting in long lines at the gas station if price controls are ever enacted. A worst-case scenario would make gasoline almost totally unavailable [except for high government officials]. Your car would be useless and you would be forced to relocate to the nearest city in order to maintain employment - unless you are lucky enough to work near your existing home and your occupation does not depend upon travel. This forced relocation would be labeled a "transition" by the Obama administration and the MSM/DNC. Government funds would be available to help defray the cost of the "transition" to city living and to make available low cost, subidized housing in the city [and a greater number of overcrowded public buses].

For further reading.




A good hobby to learn now might be bicycle repair. Bicycles will become a more popular method of transportation under an Obama administration. You might want to start hoarding bicycle tires and accessories for your own future use or for their resale value during the coming "transition."

This is one prediction about which I will be glad to be wrong.

Bicycle tires - your future investment portfolio?





Your future residence?

China drilling for oil in Key West; Cuban lease; U.S. "no zone."

While the United States continues to prohibit Americans from drilling for oil in ANWR and elsewhere, the Chinese are drilling off of Key West, Florida pursuant to a Cuban government lease. House Republicans have issued a press release:

By prohibiting the United States from taking part in the same type of energy exploration that the Chinese are conducting just miles off our shores, the Democratic Majority on Capitol Hill continues to prove itself complicit in an energy crisis that has saddled American families and small businesses with gas prices that have reached $4.05 per gallon today. Do congressional Democrats actually believe China has more ingenuity and more concern for the environment than the United States?

Instead of initiating our own drilling program, we are debating proposals by people like Barack Hussein Obama to tax corporate profits - profits that could otherwise be used for exploration and technology.

More information at DU and Gateway Pundit(36 Chinese wells, U.S. no zone).

"No zone" where U.S. companies are prohibited from drilling - H/T Gateway Pundit


It should be no surprise that China would be drilling in the Carribean. China already has troops in Haiti and maintains control over the Panama Canal.

Michelle Malkin posts the story of yesterday's vote by the Democrats in Congress (House Appropriations Subcommittee) to disallow drilling by U.S. companies offshore. Gateway posts an update.

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

When the free market does the exact thing liberals have been itching to do through taxation, they pretend to be appalled by high gas prices, hoping the public will forget that high gas prices are part of their agenda.

Ann Coulter

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

Democrats in Congress promptly introduced [in 1993] an "energy bill" that would put an additional 25-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline to stop "global warming," an atmospheric phenomenon supposedly aggravated by frivolous human activities such as commerce, travel and food production. This is the Democratic Party. That's their program.

Ann Coulter

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter - conservation vs. civilization

We're Americans. This is a prosperous country. We will not live like Swedes. We want 18-ton Ford Exploro-cruisers, cell phones, CDs, hot showers, blow dryers, DVD players and jet skis.

Fuel is the metric of prosperity, and conservationism is an acknowledgement that we are in decline of prosperity -- that this is the beginning of the long bleak twilight of civilization. If you posit that we have fixed energy sources and we have to ration them, then we are dying as a species.

The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man's dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet -- it's yours. That's our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars -- that's the Biblical view.

Producing oil isn't so bad for the environment anyway. During World War II, our boats were going at breakneck speed to get oil to England (what with the war and all). There were oil spills everywhere. Half the beaches in the United States were slathered in oil. Six weeks later all the birds were back.

You couldn't get rid of the environment if you tried. Alaska is immense, caribou love the Alaskan pipeline, they've grouped there, frolicking and leaping over the pipeline ... but I'm lost in an irrelevancy. The point is: We need oil for our CAT scan machines, airplanes, computers and refrigerators.

Ann Coulter - October 12, 2000

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

How many times do Democrats have to tell us they want to raise the price of gas for the average American before the average American believes them? Is it more or less than the number of times Democrats tell us they want to surrender in the war on terrorism?

It's as if a switch goes off in people's brains telling them: The Democrats can't be saying they want to destroy the lives of people who drive cars because my father was a Democrat, and the Democrats can't be this stupid!

Ann Coulter

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

Al Gore defended the gas tax [proposed 26 cent increase in 1993], vowing that it was "absolutely not coming out" of the energy bill regardless of "how much trouble it causes the entire package." The important thing was to force Americans to stop their infernal car-driving, no matter how much it cost.

Ann Coulter

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

The last time the Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the presidency was in 1993. Immediately after trying to put gays in the military and socialize all health care, Clinton's next order of business was to propose an energy tax on all fuels, including a 26-cent tax on gas. I think the bill was called "putting people first in line at the bus station."

Ann Coulter

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

For decades Democrats have been trying to raise the price of gasoline so that the working class will stop their infernal car-driving and start riding on buses where they belong, while liberals ride in Gulfstream jets.

Ann Coulter

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

Imposing punitive taxation on gasoline to force people to ride bicycles has been one of the left's main policy goals for years.

Ann Coulter

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

I would be more interested in what the Democrats had to say about high gas prices if these were not the same people who refused to let us drill for oil in Alaska, imposed massive restrictions on building new refineries, and who shut down the development of nuclear power in this country decades ago.

Ann Coulter, April 26, 2006

Price Controls Cause Shortages - repost

In light of rising gas prices and the tendency of politiciams to take advantage of the situation, it seems that we need a reminder of one basic principal (before it is too late):

PRICE CONTROLS CAUSE SHORTAGES.

If you don't remember this or if your congressman needs a reminder, check out -

this link for a brief visit to the 1970's

or

this link.

We need to spread the word on this issue. [Check out this post for the importance of blogging about economic issues.]

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

For the House of Saud, oil wealth is a global jizya: an enormous wealth transfer from the economically productive world -- Europe, North America -- to Islam.

Mark Steyn

Price controls cause shortages

Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions are considering "price controls" for gasoline in the wake of the Katrina created price fluctuations. The Pennsylvania Senate recently passed a bill that limits the amount by which prices can rise during a "disaster emergency."

If this bill passes the House of Representatives, the next emergency will involve more than mere high prices. We will be faced with shortages as a result of the government's ham-handed price control measure.

Prices rise for a reason. Just before labor day weekend, prices rose because retailers and wholesalers feared that replacement supplies would be hard to come by or unavailable. Katrina ruptured pipelines, knocked platforms offline and generally disrupted supplies.

It is a basic law of economics that prices rise when the supply is restricted. Rising prices act as a regulator on the economy and on consumption of goods. Prices convey information. When prices rise, it tells consumers that the supply of certain products is limited. The long term result of a price increase will be that consumer habits will change. The popularity of SUV's will be affected as a result of a gasoline price shock. Our driving habits will change also. Those adjustments don't work when the government interferes with the price. We can whine about the devastation of Katrina forever, but it does not really hit home until we see it on the gas pump as we fill up our car. Only if we are confronted by the actual market price will we know that we must change our habits.

If those prices are prevented from rising, shortages result. Lawmakers cannot change the weather. The lawmakers cannot affect the supply (unless they allow drilling in the ANWR and elsewhere). Forcing the price to remain low while the supply decreases is a recipe for shortages and long lines.

Repeat after me -

"Price controls cause shortages."

If you are still confused, refer to the 1970's.

Will history repeat itself?









We paid more at the pump at the beginning of this month. We will continue to pay more. But we have not yet had to spend our evening waiting in a long gas line or searching for an open station. Pennsylvania's bill (and others like it) bring us one step closer to the nightmare of the Carter years. Or the Nixon years.

Similar policies have wrought havoc in the California electric industry:

California's electricity crisis is treated in the media as if it were some sort of natural disaster, like a hurricane. But the only fact of nature operating here is the hard-and-fast rule that whenever you come across a screw-up this big, you know the government is behind it.

The California Legislature created this problem about five years ago when it deregulated the wholesale market for electricity but fixed prices at the retail level, a policy that has made Cuba the happy, prosperous country that it is today.

Even the New York Times seemed to understand this idea when it wrote, "U.S. Price Controls Are Said to Worsen Power Shortage." [You can bet that the Times won't repeat that statement anytime soon - as long as there is a chance of screwing up the economy during a Republican administration.]

The same logic applies to the New York housing industry.

Here is a more academic discussion - complete with graphs.

As usual, Thomas Sowell hits the nail on the head:

Shortages where the government sets prices have been common in countries around the world, for centuries on end, whether these shortages have taken the form of waiting lists, black markets, or other ways of coping with the fact that what people demand at an artificially low price exceeds what other people will supply at such prices.

Years ago, Gary North provided advice on how we can survive and deal with government price controls:



I endured the gas lines of the 1970's because I was only a kid. It was unpleasant, but nothing more. Today, I would have to be the one to juggle a busy work schedule with the gas lines. I could no longer simply count on getting gas on the way home. I would have to allocate sufficient time each week for buying gasoline. The gas line would become a regular part of my calendar, like any other appointment. Evening meetings, social events, lunch appointments, business travel and family outings would be disrupted.

Let's not wait until it is too late before we put a stop to this nonsense. We cannot endure another decade like the 1970's. The Republican revolution of 1980 took place because we were tired of the 1970's. Let's not give in to those who seek a return to that unpleasant, miserable decade.
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