Finally some common sense

In a long overdue call, we now see the leaders of the GOP calling for additional drilling, exploration, refinaries and nuclear power plants. Instead of these fuzzy headed, hypothetical solutions of "renewable energy" which is completely unproven, let's do something in the interim to conceretely lower eenergy prices and reduce dependence on foreign oil. Our country runs on fossil fuels, our whole economy is driven (no pun intended) by it. We can't flip a switch and turn off our fosssil fuel thirst. So we can sit around and do nothing, or we can start building our infrastructure to meet oour energy needs while at the same time seeking more efficient means of providing the power we need.

This is probably the smartest and least politically pandering thing ever to come out of a politician's mouth...

SPRINGFIELD, Mo — Sen. John McCain called Wednesday for the construction of 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030 and pledged $2 billion a year in federal funds “to make clean coal a reality,” measures designed to reduce dependence on foreign oil.

In a second straight day of campaigning devoted to the energy issue, the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting also said the only time Democratic rival Barack Obama voted for a tax cut was for a “break for the oil companies.”

McCain said the 104 nuclear reactors currently operating around the country produce about 20 percent of the nation’s annual electricity needs.

“Every year, these reactors alone spare the atmosphere from the equivalent of nearly all auto emissions in America. Yet for all these benefits, we have not broken ground on a single nuclear plant in over thirty years,” he said. “And our manufacturing base to even construct these plants is almost gone.”

Even so, he said he would set the country on a course to build 45 new ones by 2030, with a longer-term goal of adding another 55 in the future.

“We will need to recover all the knowledge and skills that have been lost over three stagnant decades in a highly technical field,” he conceded.

Everyone hates nuclear energy and knows nothing about it. Worried about greenhouse gases? Build nuke plants and get tons of efficient electricity with virtually no greenhouse gas emissions. It works for the Frenchies, and if they can make it work, why can't we?

Meanwhile Newt Gingrich is calling, along with McCain and President Bush, for increased oil exploration and extraction in America.

Newt Gingrich Calls on Congress to Allow More Oil Drilling in the U.S.

DALLAS, Tex. — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called on Congress to help ease our energy woes by allowing more drilling in the U.S., as President Bush released Wednesday a four-point plan to increase domestic fuel production.

"The problem is not the big oil companies, the problem is not the foreigners, the problem is not begging the Saudis," said Gingrich. "The problem is getting Congress to do its job."

Gingrich said that 73 percent of Americans support drilling in presently restricted areas of the U.S. if it is done in an environmentally friendly way.

Hey, here is a novel idea. Instead of being held hostage by unstable and hostile regimes because they hold all of the oil cards, maybe we should drill for our own offshore and in the vast regions of America where no one lives.

Think there is no difference between McCain and Obama? McCain wants us to become energy self-sufficient to maintain our standard of living. Obama wants to regulate ourselves into Third World status. McCain wants to generate safe and affordable energy. Obama wants to dictate what we can drive. Want to see what an Obama presidency will mean?

Urgent: House Democrats call for nationalization of refineries

House Democrats responded to President's Bush's call for Congress to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling. This was at an on-camera press conference fed back live.

Among other things, the Democrats called for the government to own refineries so it could better control the flow of the oil supply.

Welcome to the Glorious Workers Refinary Comrade! State control was a huge hit in the former Soviet Union. That would be great, put the same incompetent people who run the IRS in charge of refinaries. There is a solid energy policy. We need to start take concrete steps NOW, instead of wringing our collective hands and hoping for some miracle fix.

Drill and build

The economics of corn

Is there anything more midwestern than a cornfield? It is just a part of the landscape for those of us who grew up in places like Ohio, Indiana, Nebraska. We knew the seasons as the snow melted off the bare fields, the tractors started plowing and planting, corn started sprouting, grew tall, turned brown, got harvested and it all started over again. Cornfields are what people from the coastal cities fly over when going to a different coast.


Everyone complains about gas prices, but most people haven't a clue as to what is causing this or what the ramifications are. That is not intended to be self-congratulatory because I have taken a couple of courses in Econonomics at college, but rather just a fact that most people have had little exposure to economics and spend little time really thinking about how everything works together. Most people view each economic event in a vacuum. Gas prices are just arbitrarily changed. Milk prices inexplicably go up. Things just happen and aren't related to one another. That is simply not the case. Our economy and the world economy in general is tightly interwoven.

Ethanol versus oil production

There is a growing problem in America that gets little notice. Corn production is expected to be down from 13.1 billion bushels in 2007 to 12.1 billion bushels in 2008, and of that crop 4 billion bushels will be used for ethanol. As corn prices rise and as more and more corn is used for ethanol, it makes feed for cattle, chickens and hogs more expensive. It makes milk more expensive. It drives up the prices of other crops which in turn drives up the cost of rice and flour and other staple foods. Yet our agricultural and energy policies bear little resemblance to reality.

We have spent tons of money getting farmers to not plant crops, and meanwhile urban sprawl has been eating up farmland. We find ourselves late to the game, trying to replace oil with ethanol when oil prices are spiking instead of developing this technology when prices were still low. Fear mongers on the radical environmental fringe have convinced us to fear nuclear power, which could provide all the electricity we need with virtually no greenhouse gas emissions and yet those same radicals carp constantly about not signing the Kyoto Accord. We could cut back on all of those coal fired electrical plants but it isn't an overnight process and we have lost decades where instead of building and improving nuclear plants, we are shutting them down at huge expense and belching pollution into the air from coal plants. The same mentality is true of our agriculture policy, made in the halls of monstrous office buildings in D.C. by people who probably have never driven a tractor or seen livestock outside of a county fair or petting zoo.

Agriculture should be our second greatest strategic asset after our military forces, given our climate and vast areas of arable land. Food should be to us what oil is to the middle east. But we have squandered that advantage and are importing grains from other nations when we could easily grow our own. Is it any wonder with policies like this that our food prices and gas prices are spiking?

Gas prices are what motorists see because they pay attention to the gas prices and the news makes a big deal out of it, but what is missed are the more subtle price increases in food and staple goods as it becomes more expensive to move freight by train, truck and plane. Just this week, Fed Ex lowered profit expectations again because of increased costs. This filters down as it becomes more and more expensive to do business and profits shrink, jobs are lost. It is all interconnected. I fear that we are not seeing the worst of the economic slowdown, but rather are just beginning.

Agriculture is the backbone of our economy. Taiwan and Sri Lanka can make computer chips. Japan and Mexico can make cars. Europe can...well, most of the workers in Europe are unemployed so they don't make anything. Saudi Arabia and Qatar can drill oil. But no one else can feed the world as efficiently as we can. That we have forgotten that is a national tragedy and a strategic error. It is high time we start to figure out how to maximize our food production capabilities before our food supply becomes hostage to foreign powers the same way that our energy supply has become, before Hugo Chavez uses food against us the way that thugs in the Middle East do. The American farmer has for decades fed the world and that must continue if we are to avoid becoming a Third World economy.