Re: [Amc-list] Days of Whine & Roses

["RetroRalph" <retroralph@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think that proper regulation is the answer to this, also.  Those 
governments agencies pretty much all bit the dust from the years of the 
Carter through the Clinton administrations (late 1970's through the 
1990's.  We cannot leave the fox guarding the henhouse especially where 
the resources or services are critical to the stability of our nation. 
This regulation was in place before our politicians decided to relax the 
grip and let those businesses run their industry and leaving trust to 
the free market system.  This was our oil and gas and our transportation 
and communications industries all critical to our well being.  And they 
can be taken over in time of crisis and controlled by the government but 
then released when the crisis is over.  Usually this is a war time 
action.

The great electrical futures contract trading debacle by our Enron Corp. 
which had taken control of Portland General Electric left all their 
customers in the Northwest paying around twice the previous rates and 
they actually bankrupted some California Utility Companies when they 
needed guaranteed electric power for some periods and guess what??? 
Enron traders had it all sewn up and it had been cross traded until the 
price was way over inflated.  This was done by futures trading 
malpractices...  Guess what has been going on with crude oil.  Who owns 
it all now.  The hedge funds, bankers for the crude oil futures traders. 
Our major investment firms operating without the necessary oversight and 
driving the prices up on the crude oil... And they have not stopped the 
trading yet... Still investigating, apparently.  (This was all indicated 
in recent Senate investigation hearings)

Go get them boys.  They are your congressmen, too.  Start hollering at 
them.  They left the gates open on this.  They've been taking time off 
and going on free trips and free power lunchs and meetings and tours at 
exotic places and they haven't been buying their own tickets.

We must open our domestic resources and get some refineries going and we 
don't need all the red tape and inspections and permits and all the dang 
roadblocks to git it done.  Oil prices are killing our nation's 
industries and throwing many of us out of work.  We must free up those 
resources and refine it safely and get it in our distribution system as 
soon as possible and there should be no excuses for holding things up. 
We are already hurting.  Truck shippers are paying great penalty 
surcharges, over 75% on volume or truckload shipments and nearly 38% on 
small shipments.  Airlines are raising rates because of fuel cost and 
some have tripled within the last year.  Some are just closing their 
doors.

These trucking penalties have doubled in this last year.  You can look 
for yourself:
http://www.abfs.com/resource/fuelsurcharge.asp?bhcp=1  This is the fuel 
surcharge history and scale for fuel prices published by ABF Freight. 
If you paid $100 for a load of freight hauled before, now it costs $175. 
This oil pricing is costing us all, and it's costing us now. And its 
going to go on until congress makes it stop and takes some remedial 
action.

Why do you suppose most prices are going up and up?  That oil pricing is 
affecting everything.  And when people lose their jobs most of them lose 
their new homes... especially if they've been stretching their resources 
to cover their payments.  Now we have housing market problems.  It's 
been snowballing folks.

We have alternate fuel resources to develop also.  I guess they can get 
oil out of oil shale, which I thought was some kind of rocks that we 
have so much of around Wyoming and Colorado and other places.  And we 
can do the same thing with coal as I understand, but maybe not as easily 
and then one may produce cleaner fuel than others, and meanwhile our 
inventive people can research and produce some better alternatives. 
Heck, we've had pretty good electric cars in this country since the 
early 1900's.  And I saw the video with the inventor dude in Florida 
said he runs his car about a hundred miles on a cup of water.  That's 
pretty good huh?  I suppose there's more to that story.  I did watch him 
on the video light a torchs that doesn't burn his hand but yet will melt 
down a rock.  He was interested in welding with it.  Looks pretty good 
to me...

My Dad had his own acetylene generator back on the farm in SoDak and he 
was welding with that stuff.  It's the same stuff we go to the welding 
shop and buy there.  That generator worked pretty good but you had to be 
careful with it and make sure the relief valve worked right.  All you 
needed to run it was some calcium carbide and some water and it made all 
kinds of flammable gas.  That was in the 1940's.

So there are answers out there.  I just hope the right folks get to 
moving with a way out of this mess.  Some people ought to go to jail 
again like in the Enron debacle.  They do a lot of harm.   We should get 
after these politicians, they keep thinking they should do favors to 
those backslapping lobbyists for our big businesses.

Now quit stirring me up.  I got to get my work done.  And Frank will 
probably get mad at me, too.
______________________________________________________________
Ralph Ausmann  -  Hillsboro, OR -

________________________________________________________________________

From: Frank Swygert   Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2008 7:14 AM
Subject: Re: [Amc-list] Days of Whine & Roses

Of course we can't execute or prosecute someone for making a killer 
profit. Nationalizing the refineries would be unconstitutional 
(confiscating private property) as well, and I don't think the 
government is the best entity to run them. Both prosecuting and 
nationalization are not realistic -- any congressman who thinks so is an 
idiot and has no idea about how a refinery or the economy in a free 
country works.

What WOULD work, however, is price regulation. The government (or rather 
a government body/committee) would have to approve price in creases, or 
more realistically with fluctuating prices, a formula for setting 
prices. Basically this would be saying "you can make only x amount of 
profit". It's been done before, and some states do the same.

Electricity is cheaper in South Carolina than anywhere else I've lived. 
Part of the reason is that the state itself owns or co-owns a good 
portion of the generating plants, and prices are regulated. Most people 
by electricity from regional co-ops. The co-ops can't raise prices 
without asking the regulatory commission first, and they have to have 
good reason. In the past they have sometimes raised the cost when the 
increase is submitted rather than waiting, but then credit customers if 
the requested increase is turned down or reduced. My electricity cost 
was roughly twice what I pay now when I was in Delaware, and at least 
25% cheaper than anywhere else I've lived (Idaho, Georgia, Mississippi, 
Delaware, and SC... not using Japan in the comparison, utilities were 
high there!).

-------------
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:18:59 -0400
From: Brien Tourville <hh7x@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

*Congressman Maurice Hinchey [D-NY] serves the District I live in
here in New York.
*
Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), member of the House Appropriations
Committee and one of the most-ardent opponents of off-shore drilling

We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how
much gets out into the market.
-- 
Frank Swygert 


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