What can we do about high gas prices???, page 2

Sorry, chain emails won't work. As soon as I see a list of recipients, I delete. As soon as I see a request to forward, I delete. As do most people.

Besides, all Exxon-Mobil has to do is drop their prices a cent or two and it's end game. Once the resistance is broken, they can bring the price right back up. Not to mention their are other products from crude oil, diesel fuel, motor oil, plastic... you're talking about hitting one fraction of the profit market, nowhere near all of it.

The oil companies are reporting record profits because they are selling more fuel than before. The actual profit margin of 8% is dismally low. It's less than what the government gets in federal fuel tax for doing nothing; at least Exxon-Mobil provides a product. Yet the 'gas-tax holiday' proposed by Hillary and McCain will save the average American a grand total of $28 over the course of an entire summer. That's not a whole lot of relief, people.

If you want to 'fix' the problem, then there is a way, but it involves Washington DC. First, tax subsidies to oil companies should be stopped cold, unless the companies involved use American oil to produce American fuel at similar profit levels as they now make. ALL blending subsidies should be stopped immediately, as well as all subsidies that involve the transport of oil or fuel across national boundaries. We must also allow drilling where oil is, places such as the Caribbean coast off Florida, the Pacific coast, ANWAR, and pretty much everywhere else we find usable oil reserves. We also have to finally allow refineries to be built in the USA, without environmental costs that make them unprofitable.

Second, speculation on American fuel supplies mus be stopped completely. This is another bubble, created by people who produce nothing, but who make excessive amounts of money for producing nothing. They have, through collective manipulation of markets, caused the housing bust, the stock market boom (which will bust, make no mistake about that), the gold bubble (which will also burst, just not as bad as stocks), and now the oil bubble. This time, they are damaging national security by causing us to pay double what it should otherwise cost for a gallon of fuel, in a nation where fuel is the major driving force behind the economy. Unrestrained environmentalism has allowed them to succeed so greatly by making it economically impossible to produce fuel in the USA. And our government has done nothing more than try and appease lobbyists by creating a mass of regulations and taxes coupled with credits and exceptions that a NY lawyer would have a hard time figuring out.

And finally, we have to cut governmental spending, now! Our dollar is becoming worth less than the paper it is printed on, because anyone with half a brain cell can see there is no way we can ever repay the debt we have already rung up. When your Senator votes for $100,000 fior a new biking trail, kick him out rather than applauding him. He just drove your gas prices up. $1,000,000 for a road that goes to the middle of a forest so you can drive in it? Same thing, kick him out. $10,000,000 to research the mating habits of the South American tse-tse fly? Send him out with a landslide vote for taking your gas bill up another $0.50 a gallon.

It's simple really - we have destroyed ourselves by worrying about rats and birds and pretty pictures of barren wastelands while allowing personal agendas and politicians and greedy corporate interests to run wild behind the scenes. If you want to live in a cave without lights, running water, or heat, keep on with the status quo, keep listening to those idiots in the MSM. If not, you'd better change your ideas about how the world really works. We're running out of time faster than we're running out of money.

TheRedneck