A couple nights ago, I posted a quick entry here about Barack Obama on domestic oil.

Levi Pearson, a friend and a fellow local geek, got right on my case about some issues he had with what I said and left some comments. He had some really good points and most people will miss out on these because now they're buried in the thread of comments attached to the original article.

Also, this weekend, Pete Ashdown, owner of Utah Internet service provider XMission and former candidate for US Senate, posted a status update on his Facebook site that the Salt Lake Tribune had published an opinion piece he wrote about Utah's national GOP delegation and their... seemingly hypocritical grandstanding on energy and domestic oil production issues.

As a result of the back-and-forth with Levi and Pete, and my own research and introspection, I decided it would be best to write another entry explaining what I've learned and what I've concluded.

I'll admit, looking over what I originally wrote in my previous entry, it was a fluff piece. I was ranting without any facts or figures to back me up. That's not to say I think I was wrong. In fact, I think I've found information to back me up.

Pete's opinion piece was a pretty level-headed argument that Utah's GOP representatives (and presumed congressman-elect) and senators are unfairly pointing fingers at democrats and generally just adding to the dysfunction that is our congress.

Rob Bishop

I completely agree with Pete that Sen. Hatch and Sen. Bennett have way too much non-action under their belt to answer for to be out touting their newly discovered position on energy policy. This is especially the case for Hatch who has plenty of seniority. They both need to be voted out of office as soon as possible, in my opinion.

Rep. Bishop, I actually like. I looked at his voting record both since the Democrats have gained majority control of congress and before and found, while he treads a little closer to the party line than I would like, he votes the way I would like on most issues.

Now, I was concerned that I saw he vote NO on a bill last year (HR 6), the Creating Long-term Energy Alternatives for the Nation act. This sounds like the kind of bill I would want an elected official representing our state to vote for, but then I looked at the details. This was one of the "first 100 hours" bills that Pelosi pushed when the Democrats first took control and contains broad, sweeping legislation to enact price controls on oil companies, remove select subsidies and deductions given to oil and natural gas producers, and add taxes on oil imports and domestic production to fund investment in alternative fuels and alternative energy.

California representative Wally Herger had some remarks on this legislation that were spot-on:

"A truly balanced energy bill would begin with the serious problem of record gas prices and reducing America's dependence on foreign sources of energy and then proceed with creating incentives that would unleash the power of American inventiveness and creativity in order to develop the next generation of energy technology and supplies. H.R. 6 relies on an outdated and failed belief that Washington knows best. Over 1,000 pages of legislative text contains little in the way of broad-based incentives, but is chock-full of new regulations and a higher tax burden, which will do little, if anything, for consumers. A better approach would get Washington out of the way and allow market-oriented solutions to provide for an affordable, diverse, and secure energy supply for America."
-- 17 December 2007

Another representative, Don Young of Alaska made a more ideological remark about the proposed legislation.

"I am wearing this red shirt today; it's the color of the bill that we are debating, communist red. It is a taking."
-- 23 January 2007

Anyway, back to Pete's article! It's probably just a coincidence this opinion piece came out the Sunday after a group of House republicans took to the floor of the house after the House had adjourned, to protest Pelosi not allowing an up or down vote on a bill that would allow more domestic oil production. Rob Bishop was the only member of the Utah delegation to join this group and I applaud him for standing on the issue like he did.

Where was Chris Cannon? Who cares? There's a reason he got tossed in the primaries and his absence almost says it all.

Jason Chaffetz

Pete threw a barb at Jason Chaffetz for going on a trip to Alaska telling the press he believes all our energy woes are attributable to the democrats. I agree with Pete that such a comment is, well, stupid. I went and looked for a media report on Chaffetz's comments. Sure enough, it's a pretty glaring comment and shows Chaffetz is, in some regard, just like every other person who has ever run for office and made vague, unsubstantiated criticisms of the opposition party.

"There's no doubt that Democrats are the problem. We've done what they've suggested, and look at the results -- since (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi took over, gas prices have doubled,"
-- 18 July 2008

I know enough about the factors that have fed into the rising gas prices over the last five years to know that a Democrat majority in congress beginning January 2007 isn't to blame. However, I do think the factors that led to the Democrat Party wresting power from the Republicans is part of the problem.

That being said, Chaffetz was quoted in the same article saying something that reminded me why I'm glad I helped make him the GOP nominee for the congressional race:

"We have to explore every facet of development that's available -- wind, solar, hydro, nuclear -- we have to move forward on all fronts."

Pete's proposed solution... Re-run Carter?

Pete praised Jimmy Carter (which makes me a little worried about Pete) and his energy policy.

"It is more revealing to look further back to the much-maligned President Carter who, in 1979, during the first oil crunch, set goals for our country so we'd never see a second energy crisis. "Carter proposed that U.S. automakers attain a whopping 48-mile-per-gallon fuel efficiency by 1995. He demanded that we curtail imported oil by imposing fees. Finally, Carter proposed windfall taxes on oil companies to fund alternative energy and a goal of generating 20 percent of our power from solar by 2000. "

I think we now know solar power still isn't a viable source of "core" electric power. Otherwise, Pete would be running XMission on solar power, right? I've read some estimates that solar power might begin to be viable in as little as five years. I think it's fair to say President Carter's plan was a wee bit unrealistic.

And then there's Carter's "double-edged plan" to impose fees or tariffs on imported oil and then tax the heck out of domestic oil compnnies or penalize their profits.

I fail to see how this would have helped anything or how doing the same thing today would help anything. All this would do is hurt consumers more (with even higher prices at the pump) and possibly result in gasoline shortages.

Hurray for Jimmy Carter!

Oh, and while we're talking about windfall profits, consider that oil companies make about 8.5% profit. If that's going to be considered a windfall profit, what happens to companies in other industries like Publishing (34% average profit), Health Care Facilities (48% average profit), or Hotels (10.6% average profit)?!

Generally, I agree with Pete that we need to do something big, akin to the Apollo program or the Manhattan project, to get our country into a better energy situation. I also believe it will take years to accomplish the goal.

I believe the solution is for the government to get out of the way of business, within reason. Pete seems to think a massive government program is called for and he even insinuates that we may need a repeat of The Great Depression before the public agrees with him.

Maybe the ideal solution is something in between.

Levi and relief from gasoline prices

Levi criticized my claim that simple policy changes could lower gas prices to as low as $3.00/gallon or $2.50/gallon. That would represent a 33 to 42 percent drop in price. Yeah... Levi... I think you're right on this one. I don't know what I was smoking, but that's clearly quite a long shot.

That being said, I do believe that a combination of Summer driving season ending within the next month and, possibly, congressional policy changes on increased domestic production, could very well result in lower gas prices. Perhaps a more realistic estimate would be 10-15%. That would bring us down to the neighborhood of $3.65/gallon. You won't be hearing much complaining from me if that happens.

Levi, facts, media, and Glenn

One thing in Levi's comments really hit me hard:

"Most of my googling turned up articles reporting on opinion polls, which show that a majority of respondents believe that drilling for oil will reduce gas prices in the short-term. This, frankly, disgusts me. We're not lemmings, we should get facts and draw our own conclusions, not get our coverage of the issue solely based on some vague percentage of support in the polls. What a tremendous failure of the media!"

Levi's right. There's a symbiotic relationship between elected officials, public opinion, and media coverage of issues. The rise of a plethora of cable news sources, Internet news sources and more has resulted in news (and opinion) that is short on facts. In fact, it seems increasingly obvious that opinion makes the news as much as news does.

Levi has commented to me before that he thought a certain stance I had on an issue was indicative of "Glenn Beck thinking." I took that to mean he was inferring that I didn't really have a substantive opinion of my own on the issue, that I was just repeating what I had heard from talk radio.

Talk radio does get a bad rap for that -- that listeners are nothing more than lemmings or foot soliders lined up for marching orders.

I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh a lot. That was before I got hooked on Glenn Beck. Looking back, I think Rush is more of, dare I say, a shill for the Republican Party, than I was willing to admit. He's been very vocal about not liking John McCain this year and that would represent some independence from the party, but I think he's still quite beholden.

But Rush Limbaugh isn't the "blowhard" a lot of people like to make him out to be. If a caller phones into Rush's program and whines about this or that and says something like "Rush, I know we live in a democracy, but this is insane!" Mr. Limbaugh will stop everything and take five, ten minutes, however long it takes, to help this caller (and all the people listening) understand that we do not live in a democracy, we don't want to live in a democracy, and here's why: bam, bam, bam. He'll lay it all out and I have to respect the guy for using his forum to actually educate his listeners and not just indoctrinate them.

Anyone who has listened to (or watched) Glenn Beck for any significant length of time knows he's got a pretty cool team of researchers working for him on both his radio program and his TV show. They fact-check just about everything before it goes on the air. In addition, Glenn seems very sensitive about the typical talk-radio rumors that always go around. For example, lately it's that Barack Obama won't pledge allegiance to the flag, that he's not a Christian, etc. In fact, this last week, a guy called into Glenn's radio program to point out Obama's hypocricy in saying he was embarrassed that Americans don't know many foreign languages but that he delivered all his Europe speeches in English. Then, the caller thought it would be funny to add a little something. Read below and observe as Glenn deals with it.

CALLER: Well, you know, I'm not really sure about when he went to, oh, the Muslim countries. But I have a feeling he speaks their language, though.

GLENN: See, now wait a minute. I don't even know what that means. Why would you even go there?

CALLER: Well, because I'm just the evil conservative.

GLENN: Well, you know what? You know what? You give conservatives a bad name when you -- no, listen to me, Cliff.

CALLER: Okay.

GLENN: When you insinuate that Obama is a Muslim and he's not a Muslim, you give conservatives a bad name. You give people a bad name because that is the kind of argument where you lose immediately. You say something like that and nobody worth their salt listens to you anymore about what you have to say about Barack Obama. Don't say those things. There's no reason to say those things. You know what? You say something like that and then I stop looking to see if Obama ever, the elitist, ever did say, "You know what, you go over to other countries, I'm sick of these Americans" because I no longer believe you. I don't think you have any credibility at all.

--28 July 2008

To kind of get back on topic here, I admit a chunk of my opinion is shaped by what Glenn Beck says, but I'm willing to go with it because I know he (and his people) have done their work. Plus, Glenn encourages his listeners to learn for themselves and often gives them the sources where they can find the facts  themselves.

Facts to back me up

So, I went out looking for articles written by "experts" in energy policy and found a lot of what I was looking for at The Heritage Foundation.

• Supply, demand and gasoline prices by David Kreutzer, Ph.D.
• Oil speculators help consumers at the gas pump by David Kreutzer, Ph.D.
• Oil: Open up federal lands by Ben Lieberman
• No drilling? No excuses by Ben Lieberman
• More Energy Supplies, Not More Taxes and Regulations, Are What We Need by Ben Lieberman
• Lifting the Offshore Drilling Ban: A Positive Step in the Fight against High Energy Prices by Ben Lieberman

And here are a couple other articles I found.

• Death of Reason, Again? - Article on windfall profits by Bruce Bartlett
• Oil Company Profits and Tax Collections: Does the U.S. Need a New Windfall Profits Tax? by Jonathan Williams and Scott A. Hodge of The Tax Foundation

Whew. I'm tired.