Patrick’s Rants

This morning the Fox affiliate was reporting that John Edwards was having an affair and sneaking out of a hotel room while reporters were following him. Their source was the Enquirer. I mean if it was in the Enquirer then it must be true. So when are we going to start hearing about all of the alien abductions and sasquatch ordering pizza and then refusing to pay for it? Fox spends nearly half of each news hour covering auditions for American Idol (pretending that it’s news instead of an unpaid 30 minute commercial for a show on their network) and now their source is the Enquirer? There’s only so much stupid reporting that one can take. If only Andrea would move to another network.

We made a commitment to you that when the time came, we would do
everything we could to help Cindy Sheehan. That time is now.

Cindy Sheehan is making a courageous run for the Congressional seat
in San Francisco, to challenge Nancy Pelosi, who has done nothing but
cave in to the Bush/Cheney criminal war agenda, while the approval
rating of Congress drops into single digits for the first time ever.

(more…)

Everyone’s pointing the finger at everyone else. The oil companies blame the “speculators” for the high cost of oil and gasoline at the pumps. George Bush and John McCain want to drill offshore and in the arctic reserve saying that it’s the Democrats fault for the high prices.

Here’s the truth. Gasoline stations make pennies per gallon on the sale of gasoline. If they don’t sell something else, they are slowly circling the drain. Credit card processing charges alone are killing them. It’s not the gas stations that are raising the price of gas.

Speculators are betting that the price of oil will go up or down. They don’t actually control the price, they merely bet on the direction. Anyone who knows anything about the commodities market knows that the so-called speculators do nothing to actually set the price - except to bet that the price will go one way or another.¹ The commodities market also helps to smooth out the price and you will find that the oil companies participate in the commodities markets to enhance their profits and even out their costs. The oil companies are reporting record profits². If it were truly the speculators - and only speculators - causing this price rise, then the oil companies would have the same profit margins as they did in the 90s. But that’s not the case is it?

The truth about the high price of oil is complex. It’s not going to be solved by drilling for more oil. It’s not going to be solved by lifting bans that protect wildlife, the coast, fishing industries, etc. The first reason is that while drilling might be safer today than it used to be it’s going to take a long time to get that oil into the pipeline and the risk to the environment is simply not worth it. Gas will be at $10.00 per gallon before we start to see oil begin trickling into the supply chain.

I’m going to be political here and blame the high cost of gasoline right at the Administration’s feet. I wrote about Dubya funding hydrogen research nearly two years ago. While funding for research that promises some possible returns 20 years from now, it does nothing to increase the supply or reduce the cost of oil today and will not work in today’s automobiles.³ So that’s strike one against Bush. The fact that he and Dick Cheney have heavy ties to the oil industry mean that even if this were a genuine initiative it’s highly suspect. Congress and Bush need to support research like that being done by Conoco Phillips and Tyson Foods⁴ which would create a renewable diesel fuel source⁵. That’s funding fuel that can be put into today’s cars.

Congress and Bush can modify the Farm Bill and fund subsidies for farms that produce ethanol feed crops. Without getting into all of the other politics of the farm bill, paying someone to leave their fields fallow to prop up food prices can be replaced by paying the farmers to redirect their output. The farmers get essentially the same result; prices remain steady and they are being paid to work instead of being paid to not work as the fallow payments encourage. Engines that can use ethanol in up to 85% concentrations exist today - the hang up is not having the premixed fuel. The other thing they can do is reduce or eliminate tariffs on imports for use in ethanol production (not to compete with food).

Cheney and Dubya need to release their energy summit meeting notes. It’s not top secret. If there’s nothing to contribute then why did they have the meetings? If all they did was toss some bones to the energy companies and Kenny Boy and twist a bogus energy crisis in California⁶ into a recall campaign against a Democratic governor, then we need to know that too. There is nothing top secret about electricity. And hey, if it’s OK for Dubya and company to listen in on my private phone conversations (and if I have nothing to hide I won’t mind will I?) then it’s damn sure OK for me to read what Kenny Boy and Dick had to say about my electric bill.

The credit crisis - as it’s being called - is a major contributor to the price of oil. Bankruptcy reform, a laissez faire attitude about the middle and lower class, and a hands off approach to the housing market all contribute. Pretending that we’re not in a recession doesn’t help. With our financial markets slowly melting down, the value of the dollar vs. other currencies is sliding. Oil is traded worldwide in US dollars. So when the Canadian dollar is twice the US dollar (when it used to be $.70 US) means that the price of oil hasn’t really changed. Consider if the dollar is only worth half of what it once was - the price of oil at $130 bbl is really equivalent to $75 a few years ago compared to the value of the dollar on the world market. (I’m simplifying this a little - well, maybe a lot, but you get the drift). None of this affects people in Dubya’s income bracket. They don’t care. You won’t see Dick bicycling to work any time soon so none of this will change.

Acknowledging that global warming is real, reducing energy dependence on the rest of the world through innovative technologies that don’t require a complete change in the type of cars that we drive (that type of change is ten+ years in the making according to Cringley) and doing things like adding more bike lanes will reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Riding your bike to work one day a week for a five day work week reduces your auto fuel bill by 20%. Asking US Citizens to sacrifice a little would reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Installing just a few more wind turbines and a couple more solar panels will help too. Actually funding research that will help today and tomorrow will help. Hell even giving new technologies the same breaks that are currently given to oil companies would even the playing field and eliminate the need for drilling over a short period of time.

1. I started writing this a few days ago and yesterday (2008/06/25), that big fat idiot blow hard Rush Limbaugh was telling his listeners the exact same thing, although I didn’t hear him remind listeners that oil companies participate in the commodities markets. If you dare, the link to that part of his show - where he got it partly right - is here. I’m posting a follow up with the other things that commodities markets do/how they operate.
2. Oil company record profits
3. Robert X. Cringley restates that in his column, It’s the Platform Stupid, presumably he has done the research that backs up his “platform” or type of car claim. He revisits the energy topic in What a Difference a Day Makes
5. The original fuel source for diesel engines is said to be peanut oil, a renewable source of diesel fuel.

Status of Conoco Phillips, Tyson Foods collaboration.

6. Enron, led by Ken Lay, is now know to have caused the energy shortages in California including rolling blackouts by manipulating supply, exploiting deregulation all while calling for more deregulation.

If you’ve been following what the recording industry cartel has been doing to people (running roughshod over the legal system, extorting funds from paralyzed individuals, dead people, grandmothers and little children) you will - no doubt - enjoy this sliver of hope and sanity offered by a judge in Florida.
Recording Industry vs. The People

In a surprising move against the music industry a judge has ruled against the RIAA.

The entire ruling is available in PDF format.
Just having files on your computer is not considered infringement if we follow this ruling. Making copies of your CDs to play on your computer and your MP3 player will not be considered infringement. And it shouldn’t be. There is a concept of fair use that consumers have been able to fall back on. If I buy a CD I can listen to it in my car, on my MP3 player and I can make copies for backup purposes. Note that I wrote, “if I buy a CD”. I don’t personally (nor by extension do any of my family members) download music that I haven’t paid for unless the creators have made it available. Nor do we trade CDs or any of the other stuff that is explicitly illegal. The fair use stuff I’m going to keep doing.

This is why some people call it Digital Restrictions Management:
Don’t bother to try listening to your music on another computer. You don’t own it, you don’t have the right to play it, Bill Gates gets to decide when, where and how you listen to music you bought rented from him.
And in case you didn’t follow the links in the story, Major League Baseball isn’t without its own faults.
I want my music, my movies, my entertainment unlocked and available for me to play when where and how I want. I will not buy restricted or encumbered music.

• The housing market is crumbling, but we’re not in a recession.¹
• The financial markets are crumbling, but we’re not in a recession.
• Interest rates are at an all time low (except that doesn’t translate to lower credit card or home mortgage rates), but we’re not in a recession.
• More American citizens have fallen out of the middle class and are now below it and the increase in living standard has stagnated during Dubya’s reign.
  

  Essentially, for as long as we have records, when there have been economic expansions people have gotten raises, which is to say their pay has increased more quickly than inflation; their buying power has grown. That’s happened in every economic expansion since World War II, until the current one, or the now past one. Between 2000 and 2007, the typical family did not actually get a raise.

  ²

• The government is spending billions of your dollars to entice you to spend, but we’re not in a recession.
• Several airlines have filed for bankruptcy protection with most just stopping all services, but we’re not in a recession.

Remember, everything that the government tells us (epitomized by the movement of Dubya’s mouth) is true; Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, Saddam personally funded Al Qaeda, we’re winning the war against terror, I showed up for all of my National Guard service, the country’s not in a recession.

1. Housing, in general
2. Middle Class survey story

You might find that the machines are less than perfect.
The Columbus Dispatch : County’s voting machines examined

Bush is making a speech on TV…. I had to turn it off. It’s a wonder that anyone can listen to him at all, he sounds like a five year old learning to read, sounding out his words and repeating or changing the words that he’s trying to form. It’s like fingernails on a chalkboard, only not as pleasant.

The State of New Jersey was going to send some voting machines to Ed Felten to check out. The voting machine company, Sequoia Voting System sent him an email threatening to “protect their intellectual property rights” which you can read on Felten’s blog Freedom To Tinker.

The Brad Blog goes into more detail, even encouraging the readers to contact the New Jersey Attorney General to impress upon her the importance of elections that are open, error free and not subject to being subverted. Here’s my email:

I understand that your office has declined to order testing of electronic voting machines manufactured by Sequoia Voting Systems. Based upon reports available across the internet, Sequoia machines have errors that may affect election outcomes. These machines need to be verified to ensure that democracy is not subverted. Your state, as most states, has open records laws. We should expect no less from our voting machines; that our vote is counted by observing the proper operation of the voting machines.