obama and oil

[Gerry Clinchy]

Yesterday I received an email about the ANWR area. I didn't post it here since I wasn't able to verify its contents.

It showed photos of Alaska that were very gorgeous, but stating those are not the areas where the drilling area is! In fact, the drilling area is a very tiny area of the entire ANWR. The area where drilling would take place are actually desolate & grim.

I did forward it to some close friends, and one of them responded:

When this question first came to my attention I asked "XXX" about it. Since they are from a politically involved family in Alaska. They said that the "wild life area " was established to help Alaska become a state. A family member was a big deal newspaper publisher and in a conversation with some Gov't official it was suggested that, establishing a wild life Area might help the chances of Alaska becoming a state . SOoo they picked the most desolute, worthless, isolated area and it became "A Wildlife Area" and Alaska was accepted as a new state.
I wish I had stored that email it was much more clearly stated.


The establishment of this area as a refuge was a political joke.

It's kind of interesting that this whole controversy over the ANWR area has evolved from a political expediency that appears to have had little thought related to the actual ecological importance of the area in question ... but rather, had more to do with what area might be of least importance to the future commercial development of Alaska.

Unintended consequences?

I would agree with Brian that the POTUS, and most of our politicians, are very out of touch with the man-on-the-street.

Even now the Fed is worried about "deflation" ... obviously they have not visited the grocery store! (They have people to do that for them). Obviously, their incomes suffer only marginally from the increase in gas prices, alone, while it can be much more significant for the fellow driving 30 miles to work each day.

They want to take away the deduction for home mortgage interest. How about taking away the deduction for mortgage interest only for the "second home". There are about 535 people who benefit most from the second-home deduction. Those people might be?

We speak so often of the increase in %-age of those under the poverty line. That is typically attributed to the benefits given to the rich through lower taxes. We rarely consider that those who have fallen below the poverty level were once taxpayers, who finally had nothing left to give as a result of the laws politicians made that took more income away from those in the lower end of the middle class. It became easier to collect govt largesse for being poor than to work harder to have more disposable income.

We pay our legislators enough so that they are no longer on a part with the constituency. A lot of our founding fathers were farmers, and the time they served their country ended up costing them, rather than reaping big benefits. I believe that legislators should not be forced into poverty for serving, but perhaps we have made them too soft WRT to the realities of life faced by their constituents?

[BrianW]

So was the Bush family out of touch with reality in 2008 when oil was $140 a barrel??????????????

I refuse to get in your "way back" machine. 2008 can't be changed.
I am dealing with 2011 and the current POTUS, ie "reality".
Care to discuss how PBO's decisions/policies today might affect how many of of us will have jobs tomorrow/next week?

My employer sub-contract builds programmable circuit boards with surface mount technology (PCB/SMT) for various contractors, including defense companies like GD.
The company was told by "the business brainiacs" that to survive in the modern business model, you've got to "cut the fat", "go lean", "reduce on hand inventory", "get it in & get it out" etc etc. So the company did and it's surviving but not thriving. Now our suppliers have to pass along their UPS/Fedex increases, as do we or reduce/stop making a profit.
We don't get raise our debt ceiling any time we like, like PBO apparently has no problem with in his current "employment". We don't get to put out platitudes instead of performance.
We're in a toughly competitive industry as it is when things are going well.
PBO has no grounding in the real world and it's showing.