Blow-Out.

First, go to the bottom of this page and watch the Keith Olbermann Youtube video about who is really to blame for the abuse of crude oil prices. I'll wait.

Welcome back. Now where was I? Oh, yeah!

So we all know by now that the oil companies are colluding among themselves, with the aid of certain senators, to raise oil prices, right? There is no oil shortage, there are no lines, there is plenty of gasoline for all. The current insulting rise in fuel prices is just another example of the Enron-ization of oil futures.

So why are the oil companies bellyaching about drilling off the Florida coast, or in places like ANWR?

Pure greed. Just because they want it. If they thought your grandmother had crude oil up her butt they'd be there tomorrow with a writ of emminent domain and a bottle of KY jelly.

First, the oil companies are sitting on 10,000 American oil leases they're not even trying to tap for oil.

Second, there's no way to get extra gasoline to the public because now, and for the foreseeable future, there are no new refineries being built. What we got is what we got and it's actually an over-supply at the moment as people are driving less.

Third, even if the oil companies increased American output of crude by 500%, which is impossible, we'd still only supply 10% of the oil we need. And we'd still use 24% of the rest of the world's oil supply.

Basically, we suck.

Here's a couple of things we can do:

(1) Change the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 to include the word "oil", which would almost instantly reduce gas prices at the pump by half.

(2) Tax electric power usage by one cent per kilowatt hour and plow that money into a desert-based solar and wind power system that is run by the Department of Energy. (This would have cost me an additional $4 last month. Big whoop.) As the system comes online and builds capacity electricity prices will begin to fall, eventually negating the tax and more. This would result in a cheap, dependable, long-term electric resource that will a new generation of electric and/or hydrogen powered vehicles and result in less gas burned.

We can either work together to make this country work better or we can continue to let the oil companies treat us like chumps. It's as simple as that.

=mike=