I've been reading up on the horrors of this "Enron loophole" bill that President Clinton signed in the year 2000 and let me just say that on the surface I don't see the problem, exactly. Comodities have always traded in future contracts as far as I know, and not present circumstances. They say the price of oil is now 40% too high, and how the price of oil has quintuppled in the eight years of the Bush Adminestration. There has to be more to it than that. What Enron did to us in California seems to have only tangental connection to this Clinton "loophole". That was just bad planning and poor business sense by Gray Davis. It would seem to me that the easiest thing to do to end this round of speculation is for the government tomorrow (or today) to say they are going to pick up where Jimmy Carter left off in 1979 and exaustively explore all alternative forms of energy. And if supplies are as high as people like Thom Hartman say they are then the price should collapse with nothing to sustain it and the ones most punished will be those who speculated the most heavily, just like in the real estate market. According th Hartman, apparently what the government has been doing is granting all sorts of lease or whatever contracts to oil companies to gain controle of the product, but then they refuse to pump the oil from the ground and prefer to sit on it. I would certainly to the extent possible bring anti trust actions against OPEC, and were I the government I would revoke these permits, if possible, and give them to smaller oil companies who will guarentee to pump the oil and sell it at a lower price. Certainly tax laws could be brought to bear or new ones written so that it just no longer paid for oil companies to sit on oil they own rather than to drill it. How about an oil assets tax or something that's really steep? Clearly the problem is not lack of refineries has had been alledged. Apparently the oil companies don't WANT to build new refineries; things are just peachy the way they are, as far as they're concerned. I'm sure there are lots of other laws being violated, though, and perhaps a new laws that need to be written that are both cleaverly and aptly worded and get the job done by sticking it to the oil companies. Of course Democrats have charged that taking business overseas is encouraged by our tax laws. Also John Mc Cain apparently supported Air Bus, some French company, against Boeing Aircraft, a comestic company. What we need is economic policy that puts America first and that includes the awarding of government contracts. Conservatives love to call liberals "Un-American" but from here it seems as if the shoe is clearly on the other foot.
What Obama needs to do in his speeches is spell out all the economic realities to Americans and make them realize that these Neo Cons do not have America's best interests at heart. Of course you realize that is gasoline really reflected the price of oil today it'd be selling above five dollars a gallon. But Obama doesn't need to tell the people that. But for instance the unemployment rate is a lot higher than 5.5%. They said it was 13% for able bodied males between 20 and 55. This is up from 11% in 1998 and 1988 and up from 9% in 1979 and from six percent in 1968. The economy was pretty darned healthy in 1968. All of the people who are under-employed or those discouraged workers no longer even looking for a job should be counted. Of course this bloated labor market keeps wages down because people are afraid they'll be next to be on the unemployment line, so it's kind of economic control of the workers by fear.
In terms of progress on the Impeachment bill, it has been suggested that Nancy Palosi and other congress people don't want to bring the 35 Articles up because of that "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" argument. The reasoning goes that congress is corrupt therefore they don't feel "morally right" about exposing the corruptness of others. The argument is completely idiotic. I don't care if Nancy Palosi is a mass murderer- - I still want her to bring up this impeachment bill before congress. If she has committed any "sins" in the past, then this action will go tword her redemption. More to the point it would seem that we need another spring house cleaning in November. The 2006 purge of congress apparently wasn't thorough enough and we need to get more overtly reformist people in congress next time, to work with our new president, Berock Obama. Mc Cain says he claims to care about people's economic problems. If he's serious about that then he should be humble and say "I don't know anything; please inform me and tell me what I need to do" to his economic advisers. Somehow I get the feeling John Mc Cain is not quite the ignoramus he claims to be with all of those lobbiests hanging around. My fear about this Presidential campaign is that it won't be pursued with enough vigor.
Let me just say a little about the I Phone II, or whatever it's being called 3 G or whatever. It would still seem that businessmen prefer the Blackberry. As far as I've been able to glean, other phones are still cheaper and get the job done better, with more flexability than the I phone. All the new I Phone does is let us know that Apple is not completely stupid. Just to change the subject slightly- - - are IQ tests for our kids really going up now? Have all these electronic gismos they carry with them made them smarter- - or could Sir Isac Newton with a slide rule still blow any of them out of the water? Back in the day, "Logic" and "Rhetoric" used to be taught in our institutions of higher learning. Are people still taking these? You know a lot of these skills are highly applicapable to math and science. I sometimes get the idea that the youth are today are more Drugged out than stimulated by the technology of today. Am I right?
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