Gas my hit $4 by year-end

Yeah, they'd fund yet another Pentagon project, and would still privatize
education and everything that actually stands for some social cohesiveness.
If privatization is the goal, heck, I'm all for it, but then don't withhold
taxes if I don't get jack in return. Moreover, let the Army be privately
funded as well: if it makes its case convicingly, I will donate $. But the
way the system works right now is dysfunctional.

....pablo

 

I agree with the former, not the latter. The latter increases dependency and
fattens their margins. The former is still some time away, though. We're
getting nowhere near the point where other energy sources or far more
efficient use of existing resources prevail...

And note all I said is that I should have known where to plonk some money
down when GB got into office - *that* should have been easy to predict, and
yet I didn't... :-(

....pablo

 

Yah know .. it isn't as if, the profits of the oil companies are paying
for schools, roads, etc. Hell,
most of this money is being sequestered overseas where they can evade
income tax. It is a tribute
to the American economy to withstand so many parasites for so long. But
eventually, it, too, shall
fall. You cannot suck the blood out of anything forever...

 

I said -could-. 8^) Our govt. doesn't have to be as dysfunctional as
it is.

Unfortunately that's not what our admin. means by 'privatization'.
What they mean is they take tax dollars and hire contractors to do the
fighting. That's what's happening in Iraq right now.

 

I think the mercenaries are mostly ex-US military. Once they're
trained and have a little experience, they can do better for
themselves as commercial contractors than working in the US military.
They can get a lot more money, and also they're not subject to such
minor inconveniences as the UCMJ, Geneva Convention, etc. etc.

 

I thought that the army outsourced its non-combatant roles (eg. cooking,
cleaning, hauling) to
companies which got big bucks but were unreliable (somehow, it is harder
to get a wage-earner
to driver a kitchen truck into a 'hot zone' than it is to get another
soldier to do it).

 

Expensive gas makes alternative energy sources much more appealing -
solar, wind, biofuels, nuclear.

The one downside is that it also makes new oil exploration look more
appealing, but overall expensive gas is a great thing in the long term.

-Gniewko

 

Non renewable (or very slowly renewable) sources of energy will
eventually become more expensive
than renewable ones. The thing is, this cross-over can be reached
with varying amounts of 'pain' ...
it looks like we're headed for a particularly painful crossover.

 

True enough, but we seem to have waited too long.
Clean renewable energy sources and public transportation
should have been top priorities long ago. We should
have been spending at least one quarter as much on
that as we have on WMDs...

Maybe - depending on how expensive it gets and
quickly it gets there. Lower income folks are
going to suffer.

You could be right. Poor planning and desperate
last minute efforts to solve major challenges
rarely work out well.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=peak+oil&btnG=Google+Search


--

Ever wonder who benefits from the 150 MILLION
U.S. taxpayer dollars spent each DAY in Iraq?
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0223-08.htm
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=21

http://www.commondreams.org/
http://www.truthout.org/
http://counterpunch.org/
http://thirdworldtraveler.com
http://responsiblewealth.org/
http://globalresearch.ca/
http://www.wsws.org/

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is
not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public."
-- Theodore Roosevelt (1918)

Don't let bu$h do to the United States what his very close
friend and top campaign contributor, Ken Lay, did to Enron...

 

You hit the nail right on the head. If we were smarter when we were
riding the glut of
oil then we could have made the transition to renewable energy much
smoother (AKA more
painless). Due to the myopia of the energy biz we are in for some
pain and suffering
BTW: 20 years ago, the oil business decided to rename themselves the
energy industry
yet, they have done almost nothing about switching to renewable energy
sources - the
tragedy of this will be felt for decades to come. One thing about
renewable energy sources:
they are most likely to be independent of political boundaries and more
easily controlled by
those who own the technology. The American energy biz could have
re-taken the strangle
hold on world energy if they coudl see farther than their purse
strings. Sigh.

I am not worried about their future profits - screw 'em - I am bothered
that there was a win-
win situation available a couple of decades ago but those who could have
done it ignored it.
In the next few decades we will see many 'smaller' nations outstripping
the USA in internal
energy production because they had the foresight to develop it.

 

Myopia by the govt. and people, too. Living for the
moment sure can be fun but the price can be high. Reading
about the possible effects of a peak oil price spike
are enough to get a person concerned!


http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=peak+oil&btnG=Google+Search

-

Ever wonder who benefits from the 150 MILLION
U.S. taxpayer dollars spent each DAY in Iraq?
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0223-08.htm
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=21

"They are waging a campaign of murder and destruction. And
there is no limit to the innocent lives they are willing to
take... men with blind hatred and armed with lethal weapons
who are capable of any atrocity... they respect no laws of
warfare or morality."
-bu$h describing his own war crimes in Iraq.
http://www.robert-fisk.com/iraqwarvictims_mar2003.htm


http://www.commondreams.org/
http://www.truthout.org/
http://counterpunch.org/
http://thirdworldtraveler.com
http://responsiblewealth.org/
http://globalresearch.ca/
http://www.wsws.org/

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is
not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public."
-- Theodore Roosevelt (1918)

 

Good point. It wasn't just the Oil execs who were living for the moment ...

 

The petroleum industry has historically been short-sighted. If you
read Yergin's "The Prize : The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power", it
talks about the early days of oil exploration, where competing
companies would drill literally hundreds or thousands of wells into a
single oil deposit. Many of the oil fields were divided up into lots
barely big enough to hold a single oil derrick. This led to a
reduction of the natural underground pressure of the deposit, reducing
the amount of oil that could be extracted without having to use
secondary or tertiary extraction means. It also meant that they were
overproducing to the point where the market value of oil dropped under
ten cents per barrel, so they effectively screwed themselves in the
process. They ended up with oil deposits that were prematurely tapped
out, and millions of barrels of oil that they could barely give away.

And they'd do it all again tomorrow. If the price of oil suddenly
dropped to $25/barrel and looked like it would stay there for at least
a few years, I bet a lot of the research into alternative energy
sources would get moved to the back burner, if it wasn't abandoned
completely.

 

So what are you telling all your cohorts who were screaming for higher
gas prices to spur conservation efforts for all these years then?

 

I'm to the left of -most- people. Funny thing, I started out right in
the the middle, and I stayed where I was while the center moved
further and further to the right.

 

And when those CEOs and CFOs and those making 100k or more per year and
ultimately those big greedy corporations go bankrupt then what? What jobs
will there be? Who will you work for?

 

Heh... If so, I guess that means about $6.50/Imperial gallon in Canada.


I just gassed up this morning before work. It was $5.23/Imperial
gallon.

 

That is so true.

Look at some of the incomes of the drivers of these SUV's and they
don't really give a shit about the price of gasoline. They just gas and
go. But overall, I read that the sales of SUV's are down. But fuel
consumption is still going up, as I also read?

Interesting though, propane has been holding at about 68 cents/liter
here in Canada.

 

And when those CEOs and CFOs and those making 100k or more per year and
ultimately those big greedy corporations go bankrupt then what? What jobs
will there be? Who will you work for?
[/QUOTE]
Work for yourself... It isn't as if CEO's and CFO's invented jobs

 

Not all of the people that drive SUV's can automatically afford the
gasoline. Thanks to leasing, lots of people can buy more car than
they can really afford.