Misplaced Blame

Americans are increasingly enraged about the price of gasoline, and rightly so. Skyrocketing gas prices are beginning to cut into the lifestyle choices to which most of us have become accustomed, forcing drivers to either cut back on driving or ditch their SUVs for small, fuel-efficient autos.

Oil companies and gas stations are easy targets for Americans' rage in the blame game. After all, somebody, somewhere is to blame for this mess. And it just so happens that the oil companies are making excellent profits for their stockholders, which good corporations are supposed to do.

Of course, the mainstream media never reports that the profit margin percentage for companies like Microsoft and Google is much larger than that of the oil companies. In the liberal blame-game, it is always politically correct to blame the oil companies.

But is it fair to blame the oil companies?

Consider some facts. In 1992 the price of a barrel of crude oil was about 15 bucks. By 1998, ten years ago, crude oil cost roughly $25 per barrel.

Within the last 10 years the price of crude on the open market has steadily increased as demand for the commodity has skyrocketed with China and India beginning to use oil increasingly in their growing economies.

That steady increase in the market value of crude reached an unheard-of $127 per barrel this month. That's roughly 100 bucks per barrel higher than in 1998.

Oil companies do not set the price of crude. The open market determines the price based upon investors/speculators. China and India are now using millions of barrels of oil, meaning, of course, that they are now near the top among the countries of the world in the production of 'greenhouse gases.'

Yet the United Nations granted both countries an exemption from its 'mandated' reduction in greenhouse gases.

With these two countries now using as much oil as most any other country in the world, and with our dependence on foreign oil still remaining at a fairly high level, it is no wonder that the markets have created a financial bonanza for crude.

When the oil companies are having to pay 100 bucks per barrel more for crude than they did 10 years ago, is it really a surprise that gasoline prices have skyrocketed when compared to the past?

The solution that many liberals are selling to a gullible public is to place a windfall profits tax on the oil companies. My friends, oil is already taxed at a rate that boggles the mind. For every 8 cents the oil companies make in profits, the federal government alone collects 18 cents in taxes, and that doesn't count state and local taxes.

In short, the federal government is making windfall profits off of the oil company profits.

So, why does the government need or want more?

In addition, the environmentalist nutcases have seen to it that not only are we forbidden from drilling for oil anywhere in the country but that we are blocked from building more nuclear power facilities or new oil refineries. No new refinery has been built in the U.S. for over 30 years.

Thus, if the answer is weaning ourselves off of foreign oil, how can that be done when a few very powerful extremists have tied our hands?

It should be noted that one of the environmentalists' favorite countries, France, is powered almost exclusively by nuclear energy to the tune of at least 80% of its energy needs.

With new technology that makes nuclear energy as safe as any type of energy on the planet outside of solar, there should be no reason why the U.S. should not build more nuclear facilities and shift to that form of energy as quickly as possible. Nuclear power also ranks with solar as the cleanest form of energy available.

But the answer is not 'taking oil company profits' out of the hands of stockholders in order to fund these alternative energy sources. We were ALREADY funding alternative sources until the environmentalist nutcases put a stop to it.

Ted Kennedy will not even allow windmill-generated wind power to be developed on the shoreline of Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Thus, who IS to blame for the current crisis? Look no further than the environmentalist movement, liberals like Ted Kennedy, and countries like China and India. The oil companies and your local gasoline vendor are no more to blame for the rising prices than your grocer is to blame for rising food prices due to the environmentalist insistence that we take crops and turn them into bio-fuel instead of food.