I am not one who ducks and covers every time the government attempts to cop-a-feel of someone else's money. But, the very notion of the Feds taking ownership of (or funding new) oil refineries places us at the same level on the food chain as Chavez in Venezuela. And you feel GOOD about that? Come on.
At this point, yeah, I don't have a problem with this and in fact, I think we should go further.
Energy has become a national security issue and whatever our nation can do to protect us from speculators, predators, and unnecessary global conflicts over energy, should be considered. In many ways, we are already doing it. Our government is currently protecting all kinds of for-profit institutions at the expense of the individual. We are spending hundreds of billions - if not a trillion - dollars in Iraq, a conflict that is basically over oil [as Ralph Nader has said, if Iraq's biggest export was carrots, we wouldn't be there]. So, there is already precedence to do something like this. About 30-plus years ago, this idea was proposed by Fred Harris, a Democratic Senator from Oklahoma who later ran for president, after we faced the last major oil crisis. The simple fact is that certain things need to be regulated to some degree. Energy, water, radio and television airwaves, political campaigns, the stock market, etc., all need to be policed in order to make sure that the public isn't ripped off or harmed. If we don't do this, we will continue to lose treasure and blood in natural resource conflicts across the globe.
3 comments:
I am not one who ducks and covers every time the government attempts to cop-a-feel of someone else's money. But, the very notion of the Feds taking ownership of (or funding new) oil refineries places us at the same level on the food chain as Chavez in Venezuela. And you feel GOOD about that? Come on.
At this point, yeah, I don't have a problem with this and in fact, I think we should go further.
Energy has become a national security issue and whatever our nation can do to protect us from speculators, predators, and unnecessary global conflicts over energy, should be considered. In many ways, we are already doing it. Our government is currently protecting all kinds of for-profit institutions at the expense of the individual.
We are spending hundreds of billions - if not a trillion - dollars in Iraq, a conflict that is basically over oil [as Ralph Nader has said, if Iraq's biggest export was carrots, we wouldn't be there]. So, there is already precedence to do something like this.
About 30-plus years ago, this idea was proposed by Fred Harris, a Democratic Senator from Oklahoma who later ran for president, after we faced the last major oil crisis. The simple fact is that certain things need to be regulated to some degree. Energy, water, radio and television airwaves, political campaigns, the stock market, etc., all need to be policed in order to make sure that the public isn't ripped off or harmed.
If we don't do this, we will continue to lose treasure and blood in natural resource conflicts across the globe.
BTW "billonotes," thanks for reading!
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