Running on Fumes?

Just read an excellent article about what is driving the price of gasoline in the U.S. and around the world.  I’ve been telling my friends that the whole “running out of oil” doomsday scenario is all a bunch of hooey.  Seems even the standard notion of “supply and demand” has been ripped away from the crude oil industry.  Oil prices have been artificially inflated because of fat-cat Wall Street commodities traders… not the infamous “Big Oil” companies (run for your lives, we’re all gonna die!!!)

You see, us peasants get to tighten our belts and – in some cases – suffer, so global financial companies like Goldman Sachs get rich “speculating” on the oil supply.  Pipeline breaks somewhere?  Price of oil goes up.  Oddly enough, by the time the traders hear about the pipeline break – it has most likely already been fixed.  Who cares?  Let’s make some money (on the backs of the peasants.)

And, let us not forget our glorious government.  (Pick one.)  I’ll pick the United States, since I happen to live there.  The U.S. Federal Gasoline Tax is 18.4 cents per gallon.  I live in the State of Mississippi, where the state tax is an additional 18 cents per gallon.  I also happen to live on the Gulf Coast – where we have a lovely man-made sand beach with a concrete seawall.  Those of us who live in the three coastal counties of Hancock, Harrison and Jackson get to pay an additional 3 cents per gallon which supposedly goes towards maintaining the seawall.  (You know all that sand that blows up onto Highway 90 when the winds are high and from the south?  The Seawall Tax is where the money comes from to pay the crew that sweeps all that up into trucks and takes it to Jackson so the State Legislature can use it for the sand traps at their golf courses.)

Oh, I almost forgot… we also pay an another 0.4 cents per gallon for an “Environmental Protection Fee.”  I guess that is to cover all the Red-Necks who dump their old oil down storm drains when they’re working on their pick-up trucks in the back yard.  Thanks, GreenPeace!

O.K.  So, that gives us a grand total of 39.8 cents per gallon in Federal and State taxes in Mississippi.  I believe that’s right, but I always sucked at math.  But, it is close.    I mean, gee whiz, don’t they tax the oil companies?  If you live in the U.S., figure yours out if you want.

On top of that, the oil companies themselves only make 9.5% profit from each barrel sold.  Compare that to 22.5% for the Application Software industry and 10.2% average on your local water utility company.  When is the last time you bitched about the price of water?  Hell, in most places you can’t even drink tap water.

Clearly, it’s not “Big Oil” making all the money here… it’s the Wall Street suits and the taxes.  But, fear not!  The evidence indicates that we are looking at a price “bubble.”  Same thing that happened to all the Dot-coms when the Internet Bubble burst will likely happen to the price of oil.  Then everything will just be hunky-dorey, right?

Screw it… I’m moving to France.

Related Links:

Economics 101: The Price of Gas

Gasoline Tax Rates By State

UP, UP AND AWAY: What’s Really Driving the Price of Oil?

Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment Redux?

Apparently, some closeted racists have discovered a covert way to kill more black people.  Did you really expect government-funded scientists to consider the possibility that sludge from industrial and human waste might contain toxic substances?  Get real…

Related Link:

Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male

Parental Rights are being Stolen

This is the incredible story of a family ripped apart by over-zealous social workers in Worcestershire, England.  As America continues to lean towards nationalized health care, the story is a grim reminder of how run-away governments can ruin our lives.  Over a simple, well-deserved swat on the back-side, these parents were thrown in jail, interrogated and threatened because their son and a friend trumped up a story to police of abuse, starvation and “deprivation of toys.”  The resulting “investigation” has ruined their lives.

Nationalized heath care and the bureaucracy that props it up is simply a way for the government to control how we raise our children and live our lives.  People have become so afraid of properly disciplining their children (i.e. spanking, which is not equal to beating/abuse) that they have abandoned all traditional, tried-and-true methods for controlling unruly children.  Instead, allowing government medical personnel to prescribe mind-altering drugs to reign their children in.  Sometimes triggering psychotic breaks that end in violence and death.  We all need to take our parental rights back from the government before we loose our children to the New World Order.  Now – or be enslaved.

The Big Picture

(I know it is April Fools Day… but, I assure you, this post is NOT a joke.)

Unless you live under a rock, you’re aware of the theory of “peak oil”.  Everybody knows this, right?  We’ve been taught since childhood that oil comes from dead dinosaurs.  Well, certainly the notion is a bit more complicated than that… but, for the most part, oil comes from what is left of the decayed organic matter that was around millions of years ago.

 I accepted this believe without question until I was well into my 30s.  But, now… not so much.

 You see, I came to the realization one day that the primary thing governments use to control their masses is fuel and the lubrication that drives the machines that drive our economy.  “Petroleum” means literally “Oil from Rock.”  And, I have come to firmly believe that it is just that.  Oil is created continually by the intense pressures deep inside the earth.  It percolates up through the various layers of crust and picks up organic material along the way.  Thus giving the impression that it is a product of the decay of organic matter.

Don’t believe it?  Is it an assault on the very core of your being?

Good… it should be.  But, you should have the courage to delve a bit deeper.  Don’t just scream and run away.  There is more and more evidence to support this belief.  NASA recently discovered that one of Saturn’s moons – Titan – has more hydrocarbons than Earth’s entire oil reserves.  It freaking rains from the sky!

Obviously, Titan was once teeming with dinosaurs and rain forests!  Wow!

Then there are the deep-water researchers who claim that the hydrogen-rich fluids venting from the Lost City Hydrothermic Fields of the Atlantic Ocean are created by abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons in the center of the earth.  Imagine that…

What you may not realize is that the governments and oil companies of the world know this already as they gouge us at the pumps.  Oil supplies are a political and social hammer to pound the world with and the handle is about to fall off.  They know that one day they won’t be able to keep it a secret any longer.  When that happens, people will understand that the inflated gasoline prices we pay now are simply a method of control.  A way to make the economy shift generally in one direction or another so that they may control a wide variety of things… from food prices to you-name-it.

They know their time is running out.

However, the primary function of power is to do whatever is necessary to maintain it.  How do they do that?  What other thing could they possibly come up with that could wield such control over billions of people.

Carbon Dioxide.  CO2.

You see, the great myth of man-made global warming is the mechanism the powers-that-be will use to keep us under control once the cat is out of the bag on “fossil fuels.”  It is simply a way for the government of every nation to devise new taxes/penalties on individuals and corporations based on their “carbon footprint.”  Tax on your bar-b-que?  You bet.  How about a “mileage tax” on your car?  How about a 1% Global Warming Tax on everything you buy?

It is all about staying in power.  It is all about control.

Just remember… Hurt not the oil and the wine. 

Related Links:

Truckers Pull Rigs Off Road, Others Slow to Crawl in Loosely Organized Protest of Fuel Prices

Abiotic Oil Debate

Discovery backs theory oil not ‘fossil fuel’

New data: Maybe oil isn’t from dead dinos

Titan’s surface organics surpass oil reserves on Earth

World needs more CO2, environment confab told