Liberals like Mike McIntyre think buying up feed corn to brew “Corn Likker” and putting it into our gas tanks is a new novel idea - he claims to be an NC native but he seems more like a “revenooer”. Bet there are still quite a few folks around who understand about drivin around with a tank full of “white lightnin”.

He not only has driven up the cost of gas but the cost of food too! But then trial lawyers like him have never understood the real cost of anything!

This war, which involves energy, should be producing a new “Victory Garden”. We should be developing energy sources that are in our collective backyard. We should be drilling for all known and suspected oil resources (and why not paint the oil well pumps that dot the countryside in red, white and blue).

We should reverse Bill Clinton’s action of preventing the use of low sulfur coal from Utah. We should remove the ability of the NIMBYs to run to court to prevent development of existing and new energy sources.

We should reverse the restrictions on drilling in ANWR and off the coasts.

We should remove the impediments to building new nuclear power plants.

We should make the building of refineries easier.

To win this war of energy and economics we need to use the resources we have, we cannot continue to tie the hands of those who can help us win.

First we must defeat the NIMBYs and then we can defeat the external enemies!

Legislative “Special Session” Trashes Representative Government

Citizens of New Hampshire who fail to follow the activities of their state government do so at the peril of their freedom and property. A stark demonstration why took place this week.

On Wednesday, June 4th, Governor Lynch invoked an obscure, nearly obsolete provision of the New Hampshire Constitution to call a “special session” of the Legislature, to convene that very day, a day in which the Legislature was already scheduled to meet in regular session and was in fact actually assembled in Concord and conducting business when his proclamation was officially issued. Why did he do this?

He did it because House and Senate rules prevent the introduction of new bills this late in their regular annual sessions unless authorized by a two-thirds vote of each chamber. Governor Lynch wanted a new bill introduced that would allow the borrowing of over $100,000,000 in order to cover the record budget deficit he and his fellow Democrats in the Legislature have run up. He realized that House Republicans, who comprise over one-third of its membership, would never accede to such a bill; that we would instead demand dealing with the deficit by rolling back the Democrat spending spree of the past two years that has created it. But if he were to call a “special session” of the Legislature, not only could a new bill be introduced, but new rules of procedure, stifling inquiry of and opposition to it and guaranteeing its immediate passage, could be adopted by simple majority vote.

And so it came to pass that immediately after completing the business of Wednesday’s regular session, we were called into special session, and all the normal safeguards to open government and mature consideration of proposed legislation were summarily jettisoned. The Governor’s bill, which few of us had even seen before we were required by our newly-adopted rules to debate and vote on it that very day, was not referred to a committee; was not given a public hearing; and was not discussed, voted on and forwarded to the full House with a committee’s written recommendation. So outraged were House Republicans by the resulting caricature of representative government that we staged a walkout that brought matters to a standstill for two hours, before yielding to the inevitable and watching the Undemocrats have their wicked way with Lady Liberty.

I had never expected to witness such an egregious, cynical display of raw political power in the Legislature of this state, and I hope never to again. The Lynch administration and legislative Democrats would do well to heed Alexander Hamilton’s warning: “[N]o man can be sure that he may not be tomorrow the victim of a spirit of injustice by which he may be a gainer today. And every man must now feel that the inevitable tendency of such a spirit is to sap the foundations of public and private confidence, and to introduce in its stead universal distrust and distress.”

Gregory M. Sorg, R-Easton

Member of the NH House

Grafton District 3

God gave this country all the resources we need and we would be fine, if we weren’t too stupid to harvest them.

The OPEC minister will look you in the eyes and say the following:

‘We are at war with you infidels. Have been since the embargo in the 1970s. You are so arrogant you haven’t even recognized it. You have more missiles, bombs, and technology, so we are fighting with the best weapon we have and extracting on a net basis about $700 billion/year out of your economy. We will destroy you! Death to the infidels!

While I am here I would like to thank you for the following:

Not developing your 250-300 year supply of oil shale and tar sands. We know if you did this, it would create millions of jobs for US citizens, expand your engineering abilities, and keep the wealth in the US instead of sending it to us to finance our war against you b*******.

Thanks for limiting defense department purchases of oilsands from your neighbors to the north. We love it when you confuse your allies.

Thanks for over-regulating every segment of your economy and thus delaying by decades the development of alternate fuel technologies.

Thanks for limiting drilling off your coasts, in Alaska, and anywhere there is a bug, bird, fish, or plant that might be inconvenienced. Better that your people suffer! Glad to see our lobbying efforts have been so effective.

Corn based Ethanol. Praise Allah for this sham program! Perhaps you will destroy yourself from the inside with these types of policies. This is a gift from Allah, praise his name! We never would have thought of this one! This is better than when you pay your farmers NOT TO GROW FOOD. Have them use more energy to create less energy, and simultaneously drive food prices through the roof.

Thank you, US Congress!!!!

And finally, we appreciate you letting us fleece you without end. You will be glad to know we have been accumulating shares in your banks, real estate, and publicly held companies. We also finance a good portion of your debt and now manipulate your markets, currency, and economies to our benefit.

THANK YOU, AMERICA!’

April 10, 2008

McIntyre Backs Measure To Lower Gas Prices

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Congressman Mike McIntyre is supporting legislation to lower gas prices, put money into the pockets of Americans, and save taxpayer dollars.
Congressman McIntyre stated, “Gas is way too high! We must do all that we can to help provide relief to our citizens as we approach the summer months when demand increases and prices will likely continue to rise.

If you are having a sense of dejavu - you are not alone!

Just a year ago he proudly sponsored another bill:

Congress targets gas gouging, oil cartels

By: Dave Pearson, State & National Editor
Issue date: 5/31/07 Section: State & National

Gas prices are a nationwide concern, even at the highest level. The U.S.
House passed two bills last week aimed at affecting the price consumers pay for gasoline.

Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., sponsored a bill titled The Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act, which allows the Federal Trade Commission to investigate and fine companies for charging exorbitantly high prices.

That worked really well didn’t it - the “High Prices” then were under $3 a gallon! We can’t afford him sponsoring more bills “affecting the price consumers pay for gasoline.”
Support Will Breazeale for Congress - NC-7

Cross posted from aWILLtoWIN.blogspot.com

Today, unless someone has found a new use - like selling “Adult” items or storing construction and maintenance equipment for the oil wells - they sit empty. BP and Stuckey’s seem to be the latest to toss in the towel, at least those were the ones that still had signs. They are probably the casualties of the change from gas guzzlers to gas sippers.

Leaving Topeka I was reminded of another drive down I-70 during another “energy crisis” summer of ‘73 I think. While people were standing in line some places to buy gas, we took a road trip to the annual National Council of Corvette Clubs convention in Indy.  We went in a caravan across I-80 to get there - not sure why. Had no trouble getting gas going there. Maybe that was because one of the ‘vettes had a need to stop for oil every 100 miles so we just topped off. My ‘63 ‘vette had broken a few weeks before so we made the trip in an AMC Hornet wagon. The group included at least 4 Corvettes plus one on a trailer. the truck pulling the trailer was filled with about 50 cases of “bootleg” Coors. Coors was not sold east of the Mississippi - this predated the Smokey and the Bandit movie by several years. The proceeds for selling the beer paid for the whole trip for those of us who chipped in to buy it (at someone’s employee discount price as I recall).

Anyway, we did not all return together - different work schedules. I decided to go the I-70 route and stop at a friend’s in Topeka. Got there early Sunday with an empty gas tank and no open gas stations to be found. My friend made several calls looking for any open station selling gas in the city - found none. When we were ready to leave that night my friend pulled out a 5 gallon jerry can he had stashed and added it to our tank. That hornet got about 18 mpg (it had the V8)  so we knew the 5 gallons would not really get us far.

We headed West, looking for gas at every little crossroads. When we were about on fumes I made the decision to go to the next station we found that looked like it might have gas when it opened Monday morning and park at the pump and sleep in the car.

Just after making that decision we came upon a lighted sign that said GAS. Pulling in we asked how much we could buy (many stations were limiting to 10 gallons) - he said fill it up!

It held 18 gallons I think, got us to Limon, CO where they sold us 10 gallons and we made it home in time for me to go to work Monday morning. I’m pretty sure that station is no longer open, though the building may still stand.

Amazing to think now, that “crisis” ’causes so many problems - one of the greatest was all the gas pumps that could not be set for gas prices over 50 cents per gallon. Some stations had to adjust their pricing to the half gallon while others simple put signs up telling customers the price was double the amount shown on the pump.

Just this week I heard the current “crisis” is causing some stations with older pumps problems because again, they were not designed to register prices this high. The more things change - the more they seem the same.

Visually the new has a much greater impact - the towers looked to be around 100 feet tall and the blades probably 60 feet. The 100 or so visible from I-70 extend from about mile marker 220 through 235. In that 15 miles there is not a lot else to look at and there are no high prices oceanfront properties to complain about the disruption of their viewscape (is that a real word?). In fact the only actual local “resident” I saw were a live coyote, several dead deer and a couple live hawks.

Now I am not sure of the cost benefit analysis on these wind turbines but they seem pretty expensive at least on the upfront construction side. I couldn’t see the underground foundations but they had to be significant to hold those towers upright in high winds.

As a reminder that the area does see high winds and sometimes violent storms was underscored when I saw the specially designed tornado chase car heading east - I was heading west. Seeing the building storm to the west I was wondering - were they leaving because that storm did not have tornado potential or because it had too much potential!

But the towers have to be designed to withstand those winds - maybe not the tornadoes but winds in the storms that pass through the area seemingly daily in the summer often approach 60 to 80 mph.

Each tower seems to have disrupted an area of farm land that looked to be about a quarter acre and the existence of the tower precludes any irrigation systems. So it looks like all the area around the towers can only be used for grazing cattle.

Would be curious to see how much taxpayer money is involved in the construction of these wind machines. Are taxpayers guaranteeing the construction costs? Are the owners of the land collecting farm Bill payments for not using the land to grow some crop or other? Are these really generating significant amounts of energy or are they more involved in generating carbon credits for Algore to use in assuaging his conscience for jetting around the world and heating his mansion.

The other thing to see when driving through Kansas on I-70 are the oil wells. And there are a lot of them. The “grasshoppers” bobbing up and down, pumping the oil out of the ground and into a small nearby storage tank. It used to be most of these little pumps would sit idle, some sort of quota - only so many barrels a month. That no longer seems to be the system, perhaps the price of oil made a difference.

As for the visual impact, theses oil wells are perhaps not as stylish as the wind turbines but they are much smaller. Even with the storage tank, which is often shared by several wells, the disruption of the land is less per well than per wind tower.

Each oil well has a net cash flow into the government coffers, not out. They are taxed by the state and or county as property. The state may have a severance tax on the oil extracted, the feds do have taxes all along the line on the profit seen by the land owner, the company that owns the well itself, the company that transports it, again on the company that refines it and, the biggest taxes of all by the state and the feds on the final refined fuel dispensed into the tanks of cars like mine.

Our country runs on energy. We need it or our standard of living will fall. We should be using the energy available to us, all the sources. Wind energy seems to be a coming thing at least in Kansas. It will probably not be a viable source everywhere. Not everyone wants these massive towers blocking their view (ask Sen. Kennedy). Today, the electricity they produce cannot be uses to move people and products as efficiently as petroleum based fuels. Turning valuable crops into fuel (ethanol) is not viable, never will be - food will win that battle. Nuclear should be pursued, green peace and their ilk must be defeated for that to happen.

At this time the most obvious solution to our energy dependence on other countries is to fully develop those resources we have. That includes hydro, wind, geothermal, coal, oil and nuclear. The only ones that can be expanded quickly and with proven technology are oil, gas and coal. We can drill more wells in more places and dig more coal. We have known reserves of each of these sources but they have been placed off limits by legislative and judicial action.

Get Congress and the courts out of the way and we would be far less reliant on foreign suppliers and our economy would flourish. Stay this course and our economy will be even more dependent on foreign tyrants.

And now in this YouTube - he makes it clear where he stands on the 2nd Amendment and why when I sat directly in front of his seat in the Senate Chamber he really meant it when he said “I’ve got your back!”

This Farm Bill Asks American Taxpayers To Support Still Higher Subsidies During A Time Of Record Farm Income

The United States’ booming farm economy makes it impossible to justify further increasing subsidy rates and establishing additional subsidies for some crops. With rising food prices and farm income at an all-time high, Congress should not be looking to increase the burden on taxpayers by forcing them to further subsidize the part of our economy that is setting records.

• Congress wants to increase farm bill spending, even though America’s net farm income is projected to be $92.3 billion this year – 51 percent greater than the 10-year average. Additionally, farm equity is expected to increase $280 billion this year.
• Congress also wants to increase the subsidy level for crops, even though crop receipts are valued at $174 billion – a 21 percent increase from last year.

The actual increase in spending under the proposed farm bill is nearly $20 billion, not the $10 billion that Congress is claiming. The additional spending not being acknowledged by Congress includes:

• $4.5 billion not counted as a result of a budget gimmick to shift the timing of payments;
• $4 billion in illusionary savings created by cutting off funding for certain programs, including disaster assistance; and
• $1.4 billion in new tax provisions.

Congress Should Not Jeopardize America’s Support For The Farm Bill By Increasing Subsidies Without Real Reform

The lack of reform in this bill puts future farm bills in jeopardy by eroding overall support for farm programs.

• The farm bill fails to adequately reform payment limitations and instead allows for excessively high limits on the level of allowable income for receiving farm subsidies. The Administration originally proposed to lower to $200,000 the Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) limit for receiving farm program subsidies. Congress wants to allow subsidies to continue for married couples who farm and have adjusted gross income of $1.5 million and for people with AGI of $500,000 who are not full-time farmers.
• The farm bill fails to reform crop subsidies by increasing instead of decreasing the subsidy level for many crops at a time of record crop prices and record farm income. This legislation would establish additional subsidies for dry peas, lentils, small chickpeas, and large chickpeas. This amounts to adding crops to more subsidy programs.
• The farm bill not only fails to reform the sugar program but actually increases government intervention to drive up sugar prices. This law would support sugar at nearly double the world market price and control supplies to assure that domestic growers meet 85 percent of domestic consumption. Any excess supply, which could be available for food production, would be owned by the government only to be auctioned to ethanol facilities at a huge loss.
• The farm bill fails to reform the marketing loan program by refusing to eliminate provisions that allow producers to lock in large subsidies when prices are low but then wait to sell their product when prices are high – collecting both the subsidy and the high market price.
• The farm bill fails to include an important reform that would save lives by allowing up to a quarter of our largest food aid program to be available to purchase food near the crisis area.

In Addition To Lacking Reform, The Bill Would Also Roll Back Previous Progress

Under current law, crop subsidies kick in only when the price drops below a certain level, but the conferees want to remove that limitation and allow unprecedented and uncapped subsidies at any price. Subsidies would kick in if the price lowers as little as 10 percent below the two-year average, which could result in billions of dollars of additional subsidies.

The bill also restricts international emergency food aid, putting millions of people at risk and undermining our ability to save lives. This provision would alter current law by restricting the ability to redirect food aid dollars for emergency use, limiting the government’s ability to respond to emergencies.

The bill walks away from conservation. The Administration is disappointed that the Conservation Title is nearly $4 billion less than the Administration’s proposal. It reduces enrollment in Wetlands Reserve Program WRP by thousands of acres, falling short of the President’s goal of 250,000 acres enrolled per year. The bill dismantles the sodsaver proposal that would protect native grasslands from being cultivated to capture subsidies.

The Administration Worked Continually With Congress In An Effort To Develop A Better Farm Bill

More than a year ago, President Bush put forth a reform-minded, fiscally responsible farm bill proposal that provides a strong safety net and funds emerging priorities. It includes:

• A strong but targeted safety net for farmers. It would reduce the AGI limit for receiving farm subsidies to $200,000, which would end subsidies for wealthy people living in Manhattan and elsewhere. It would end the pick-your-price phenomenon that allowed large subsidies even when crops are sold at high prices. It would provide gap crop insurance coverage and revenue-based countercyclical payments to better support farmers when they really need it.
• Nearly $8 billion to protect our natural resources through conservation programs.
• Nearly $5 billion to improve nutrition assistance programs and increase support of fruit and vegetable producers.
• More than $1.6 billion to advance renewable energy research – targeted to advancing cellulosic ethanol.

Unfortunately, conferees wrote a bill that fails to implement any meaningful reform, exceeds the spending baseline by nearly $20 billion, and uses budget gimmicks to pay for much of this increased spending. Moreover, conferees inserted unrelated trade provisions outside the scope of the farm bill.

The Administration also agreed in principle to increased spending as long as acceptable offsets are provided, and even submitted to Congress a list of acceptable spending offsets. Unfortunately, Congress exceeded an acceptable increase and failed to adequately offset it.

The Administration made clear that any agreement to spend $10 billion or more on farm programs must include real program reform. Instead, the Congress added new crops to subsidy mechanisms, increased crop subsidy levels, and included nearly $20 billion in additional spending, without significant reform.

Congress should extend the current farm bill for a least one year. President Bush last week made clear that this is not the time to ask American families who are already paying more in the check-out line to pay more in subsidies to support a record-setting farm economy.

John McCain - to his credit says he wants to win with a positive message. here’s hoping it works. His latest ad:

Of course the Obama folks will claim it is a negative ad because it implies that under Obama all these things won’t happen.

Oh here is a link to what she said - I was just, like, setting the stage for her brilliant remarks:

News reports have him attending meetings with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in DC after the NC votes were tallied but neither swayed him. Perhaps he understands the voters in his district better than the national party machine does. Every Presidential election since McIntyre was first elected in 1996 the district has cast a majority vote for the Republican. George W. Bush carried it with 54%. Even Bob Dole won there!

McIntyre knows that he needs votes from people who will not vote for the Democrat at the top of the ticket, either Hillary or Obama. He also knows that his district will also vote to re-elect Sen. Elizabeth Dole this fall. He doesn’t want to make any of them angry with him. In fact, he might just want to show up at campaign events wearing Dole and McCain lapel stickers. After all the rank and file Democrats will automatically vote for him just because he is a Democrat but those Blue Dogs, the Reagan Democrats – the Conservative Democrats who have voted for him in the past might just slip and support one more Republican as they scroll down the ballot. With Conservative Republican candidate Will Breazeale, a Major in the Army Reserve and an airline pilot, he faces his strongest challenge since his fist election.

Congress Needs to Take On Cost Overruns — Too often, the lawmakers can’t agree on where there is waste in government. The problem is that everything in Washington, D.C. seems to have an army of lobbyists and powerful lawmakers playing defense at the slightest hint of trouble. But we think a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) can break the impasse.

The report found that the 95 Department of Defense (DoD) weapons programs worth $1.6 trillion had had a total of $300 billion in cost overruns. The GAO has been doing this analysis of programs annually since 2000 and cost overruns and delays are actually worse than when they first started tracking.

Read the Rest of this Wastebasket…

Pet sitting this weekend we fired up the kids’ propane grill to do some steaks. When we took them off I said “he likes to run if a while after cooking to burn off the stuff on the grill”. And then forgot to shut it off.

So I took the empty tank for a re-fill. Not realizing that other energy costs have gone way up - and hearing from my daughter whose house uses propane for heat - I was prepared to pay considerably more than the $12 it cost me back in 1999 to fill the 20# tanks to run the space heater while building my daughter’s house.

I don’t understand how that 20# tank was only $13? Was I getting ripped off back in 1999 or has someone slipped a sprocket now?

HT to GraniteGrok