Tag Archives: Venezuela

How About An Energy Policy That Gets Some?

The Democrats’ plan on fixing our country’s energy problem of high prices and foreign oil dependency is to punish the only people here that can help, our own oil companies. And as an added bonus, we continue to be dependent on OPEC, Venezuela, and Russia for resources that we have, but are not willing to get.

But wait! There’s more! By campaigning on creating punitive taxes upon our own oil companies, Democrats will also depress the incomes of millions of Americans who are invested in America’s energy industries either directly or through retirement and IRA accounts. We’re talking about the 50k/yr ‘hard working Americans’, people like our first responders, fire and police departments, teachers, factory workers, hospital workers, nurses and nursing home workers, small business owners and their employees.

The irony here is, the very people these Democrats say they are going to help, will actually be hurt twice. In their retirement account, and at the pump. The Democrats know it isn’t a solution, and the dumb masses will buy into the notion that the pain they feel is caused by Bush instead of these lawmakers. The fraudulent impression, or spin, is that the Democrats in Washington are the only ones who really care about them. The only ones that want to help them. All that, and a little dash of class envy and anti-capitalist rhetoric tossed in for good measure. For them, the party comes before the country.

Will robbing the oil companies of their profits and trying to control their industry via the tax hammer, without permitting them to get to our own resources and build more refineries, make the prices go higher or lower? This is a rhetorical question. For those educated in government schools, the answer is it will drive prices HIGHER.

This country needs a leader who will set a goal, equal in size to putting a man in space or a man on the moon. A short-term goal designed to get enough oil, gas, clean coal and nuclear energy within our own borders, including the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico, in order to increase supply. Only then will we see prices fall. The long-term goal would be of course, to invent and develop alternative kinds of energy that will reduce, if not replace the need for fossil fuels.

Oil prices would start falling on the day we adopt an energy policy intended to make the United States an oil producer instead of an oil buyer. And it would only get better as we would bring it to fruition.

Chavez Nationalizes Steelmaker Ternium-Sidor

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took over, stole, nationalized the largest steelmaker in Venezuela, Ternium-Sidor. Chavez’s minister of basic industries and mining, Rodolfo Sanz, has been appointed as the new company president, and has given the company until the end of June to hand it over.

In the past two years the Venezuelan state has taken over foreign-controlled companies (Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips) including cement, telecoms, oil, gas and electricity firms, print and broadcast media. Now the hemisphere’s idiot, President Hugo Chavez, is taking over the steelmaker after trade union talks broke down last month. The workers wanted better pay and benefits.

A better example could not be made to highlight the failure of socialism and communism. While sitting on one of the worlds largest supplies of natural resources, the Venezuelan people can’t afford what little food is still on shelves in the grocery stores, some of which have also been nationalized.

And yet, he is still the dictator that Democrats love to coddle.

related links: Venezuela takes over steel firm

Chavez May Thank Democrats for H.R.5351

Yes, he can thank Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) and 36 co-sponsors, all democrats, for passing H.R.5351, to provide incentives as only Democrats can. What they call tax incentives, is actually an $18 billion tax increase on oil companies and oil producers. But not all companies and producers. CITGO, Hugo Chavez’s oil company (as opposed to the other U.S. oil companies that he seized in Venezuela last year) would be exempt.

So this is how Democrats in Washington plan on fixing our energy problem of high prices and oil dependency? You punish the only people here that can help, and you reward the hemisphere’s idiot, Hugo Chavez. And as an added bonus, we continue to be dependent on OPEC, Venezuela, and Russia for resources that we have but are unwilling to get ourselves.

On February 27, the Democrat-led U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 5351 — legislation that increases taxes some $18 billion on American oil and gas producers — guaranteeing higher prices at the gas pump for U.S. consumers — while at the same time leaving intact tax breaks for Venezuela’s state-run oil company CITGO.

That’s right; the House-passed legislation exempts one of the most anti-American dictators in the world, Hugo Chavez, from the massive tax increase.

The Sierra Club, a Democrat special interest group, refers to this bill as ‘climate change legislation.’ No surprise there. The next stop for the bill is the Senate. Now would be the time to let your senators know your objection to this bill.

related link: Center for Individual Freedom

Why Is Citgo On Our Navy Bases?

Did you know that Citgo is on every Navy base in the United States? To me, there is just something wrong with doing business with a dictator like Chavez, who, with his new bud Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has all but declared war on us. So why should our Navy be doing business with Citgo U.S.?

According to an official at Pensacola NAS, it is because the Navy put that contract out for bid and Citgo was the only company to offer a bid. I find it hard to believe that no other ‘domestic’ oil company bid for the job but will allow for the possibility.

The good news is that the contracts, there are two, are going to expire in 2008 and 2010, according to the official I spoke to at Pensacola NAS. Unless we are prepared to invade Venezuela to insure Chavez performs on his contracts, I think the risk to our national security is not worth taking and we should look to another truly domestic supplier. Granted that Citgo U.S. employs U.S. citizens, but so does Exxon and the rest of them. I’d rather give the business to the company that I trust would perform on the contract under any and all circumstances than to trust Chavez to not shut off the supply.

A stronger case for being self-sufficient where our oil production is concerned cannot be made when you have to trust people like Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez. Trusting him is more like playing a game of Russian roulette with a fully loaded weapon.

The solution to this dilemma is to simply get another vendor to bid and find out why none of them bid on it the last time. Are our US owned oil companies not able to compete? Was the request for bids written in such a way that Citgo was the only company that could meet the criteria?

My sympathy goes out to all those dedicated U.S. employees who make a living working for Citgo U.S. because it isn’t their fault that Chavez is an untrustworthy idiot. My fondest wish is that all of them can find jobs in the industry with other oil companies and give Hugo Chavez a present on the next May Day celebration by walking out the door on May 1, 2008.

related links, Get Citgo out of our military bases