People who hate America are flush with money from oil sales -- we should
stop subsidizing them by becoming more energy independent.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By James P. Pinkerton



June 15, 2004 | When I think about Ronald Reagan's legacy, one question
haunts me: Was his national energy policy also, inadvertently, a
terror-subsidy policy? A quarter-century later, it appears that Reagan's
presidency helped bring to America a plentiful supply of energy -- and also
oil-financed terrorists.

In 1973, during America's first energy crisis, brought on by the Arab oil
embargo, President Nixon declared a national goal of "energy independence"
by 1980. For the rest of that decade, Republican and Democratic presidents
alike emphasized such independence, to be achieved by a combination of
statist means -- price controls, conservation decrees, Uncle Sam-funded
ventures such as the Synthetic Fuels Corp. But they didn't work. In 1973,
oil imports accounted for 26 percent of U.S. consumption; seven years later,
in 1980, imports had risen to 38 percent of the national total. In the
meantime, oil prices had soared 1,300 percent.

Enter Reagan, a free marketeer and avowed opponent of "utopian schemers." On
July 17, 1980, as he accepted the Republican Party's presidential
nomination, he declared, "Those who preside over the worst energy shortage
in our history tell us to use less, so that we will run out of oil, gasoline
and natural gas a little more slowly." The Gipper continued, "Well, now,
conservation is desirable ... But conservation is not the sole answer to our
energy needs. America must get to work producing more energy." Reagan's idea
was to liberate the oil companies from controls, as part of his belief in
"getting government off our backs." In my role as a low-level staffer on his
campaign, I cheered those libertarian words.

And I cheered more as the newly inaugurated 40th president swept away all
the Nixon-Ford-Carter-era rules and regulations -- although he also helped
kill off solar-power programs, a legacy of the loathed Carter presidency.
Yet at that time, few complained. Indeed, what came next was a miracle of
the marketplace: During Reagan's two terms, oil prices fell by
three-fourths, and the real output of the U.S. economy grew by a third.

Lower prices? More wealth? What's not to like? Only this: The market
produces miracles, but it's nonetheless blind; it makes no distinction
between a barrel of oil pumped in Oklahoma and a barrel pumped in Saudi
Arabia. If the foreign crude is 1 cent cheaper, that's what Adam Smith's
"invisible hand" selects. Oil, said the Reaganites, is just another
commodity; it doesn't matter where it comes from. So while the economy
boomed, the vision of energy independence withered.

And thus the catch: The free market lowered the price of energy, but since
the United States was a high-cost producer, domestic production was a big
loser. And the long-term decline in U.S. oil production -- accelerated, too,
by environmental concerns -- continued through the Reagan years and has kept
on ever since. Today, the United States imports 59 percent of its oil; it
has gone from being one-quarter dependent on foreign sources to three-fifths
dependent.

And what happens to the dollars we export in return for this oil? Many of
them go to our mortal enemies. New York Gov. George Pataki, referring to the
trillions that the United States and the West have sent to Arab
"oilocracies" over the past 30 years, has spoken of a "terror tax." That is,
we send them money and they send us al-Qaida. And the problem could get
worse. Even assuming that Saudi Arabia follows through on its plan to
increase production, the desert kingdom could easily take in $100 billion in
the coming year, around a quarter of that from the United States.

Yet despite -- or perhaps because of -- all that money, Saudi Arabia is
becoming "Osama Arabia." In light of the continuing attacks on Americans and
other foreigners working in that nation, it is worth taking a closer look at
what it is doing with its petrodollars. The desert kingdom recently
announced a crackdown on "charities" caught funding terror, but the targeted
groups were relatively small. The just-dissolved Al-Haramain Islamic
Foundation, for example, distributed a mere $50 million a year. Meanwhile,
the Saudis are promising to set up a new, "transparent" philanthropic
entity, the Saudi National Commission for Charitable Work Abroad, which is
to give away $100 million a year. Even assuming that that $100 million is
all "clean," one is left wondering what the Saudis will do with the other
$99.9 billion they'll receive for oil over the next 12 months. A Washington
source told me that Saudi Arabia has in fact given an average of $4 billion
a year in "foreign aid" over the past decade.

Where's all the money going? Nobody really knows. And nobody -- at least in
the United States -- seems very interested in finding out. On Saturday, the
New York Times reported that a task force on Saudi terror funding at the
Council on Foreign Relations is about to announce that Riyadh has "not fully
implemented its new laws and regulations, and because of that, opportunities
for the witting or unwitting financing of terrorism persist." But, the Times
notes, one sentence was deleted from the task force's final document -- "The
Bush administration has done very little to push the implementation of the
rules and regulations" -- possibly at the behest of the Bush White House.

Thus even after 9/11 and the resulting war on terror, the U.S.-Saudi
relationship appears fundamentally unchanged. Saudi Arabia sells us oil
while telling us -- via high-priced P.R. spokesmen and lobbyists -- that it
is our ally. In return, America offers the Al-Saud family a geopolitical
security blanket and a cloak for financial transactions.

The consequences of the free market's "invisible hand" are now visible:
People who hate America are engorged with American money. Having worked for
the Gipper for five years, I believe that if he were in office today, he
would concede that blind fealty to the free market has brought unintended
consequences -- big-time. And so he would take a second look at renewable
energy. Although Reagan believed in free markets and limited government, he
was pro-science; he strongly supported the space program, for example, and
the never-built superconducting supercollider. Reagan also would understand
what was required to win the war on terror -- the de-funding of those who
are funding terrorists, even at the risk of upsetting big GOP
constituencies.

It's time for a geostrategic shift -- and a return to the idea of energy
independence. It's time to revisit energy conservation; we must get serious
about hydrogen, solar, wind and other renewable-energy sources.

It won't be easy to gain complete energy independence from the oilocratic
foes we are financing, but at least we can start reducing the terror tax.
After a long detour -- and after realizing that the free market is
paradoxically aiding our worst enemies -- we can get back on the path to
energy independence.

On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 22:45:18 GMT, "Jim" wrote:


People who hate America are flush with money from oil sales -- we should
stop subsidizing them by becoming more energy independent.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By James P. Pinkerton



June 15, 2004 | When I think about Ronald Reagan's legacy, one question
haunts me: Was his national energy policy also, inadvertently, a
terror-subsidy policy? A quarter-century later, it appears that Reagan's
presidency helped bring to America a plentiful supply of energy -- and also
oil-financed terrorists.

In 1973, during America's first energy crisis, brought on by the Arab oil
embargo, President Nixon declared a national goal of "energy independence"
by 1980. For the rest of that decade, Republican and Democratic presidents
alike emphasized such independence, to be achieved by a combination of
statist means -- price controls, conservation decrees, Uncle Sam-funded
ventures such as the Synthetic Fuels Corp. But they didn't work. In 1973,
oil imports accounted for 26 percent of U.S. consumption; seven years later,
in 1980, imports had risen to 38 percent of the national total. In the
meantime, oil prices had soared 1,300 percent.

Enter Reagan, a free marketeer and avowed opponent of "utopian schemers." On
July 17, 1980, as he accepted the Republican Party's presidential
nomination, he declared, "Those who preside over the worst energy shortage
in our history tell us to use less, so that we will run out of oil, gasoline
and natural gas a little more slowly." The Gipper continued, "Well, now,
conservation is desirable ... But conservation is not the sole answer to our
energy needs. America must get to work producing more energy." Reagan's idea
was to liberate the oil companies from controls, as part of his belief in
"getting government off our backs." In my role as a low-level staffer on his
campaign, I cheered those libertarian words.

And I cheered more as the newly inaugurated 40th president swept away all
the Nixon-Ford-Carter-era rules and regulations -- although he also helped
kill off solar-power programs, a legacy of the loathed Carter presidency.
Yet at that time, few complained. Indeed, what came next was a miracle of
the marketplace: During Reagan's two terms, oil prices fell by
three-fourths, and the real output of the U.S. economy grew by a third.

Lower prices? More wealth? What's not to like? Only this: The market
produces miracles, but it's nonetheless blind; it makes no distinction
between a barrel of oil pumped in Oklahoma and a barrel pumped in Saudi
Arabia. If the foreign crude is 1 cent cheaper, that's what Adam Smith's
"invisible hand" selects. Oil, said the Reaganites, is just another
commodity; it doesn't matter where it comes from. So while the economy
boomed, the vision of energy independence withered.

And thus the catch: The free market lowered the price of energy, but since
the United States was a high-cost producer, domestic production was a big
loser. And the long-term decline in U.S. oil production -- accelerated, too,
by environmental concerns -- continued through the Reagan years and has kept
on ever since. Today, the United States imports 59 percent of its oil; it
has gone from being one-quarter dependent on foreign sources to three-fifths
dependent.

And what happens to the dollars we export in return for this oil? Many of
them go to our mortal enemies. New York Gov. George Pataki, referring to the
trillions that the United States and the West have sent to Arab
"oilocracies" over the past 30 years, has spoken of a "terror tax." That is,
we send them money and they send us al-Qaida. And the problem could get
worse. Even assuming that Saudi Arabia follows through on its plan to
increase production, the desert kingdom could easily take in $100 billion in
the coming year, around a quarter of that from the United States.

Yet despite -- or perhaps because of -- all that money, Saudi Arabia is
becoming "Osama Arabia." In light of the continuing attacks on Americans and
other foreigners working in that nation, it is worth taking a closer look at
what it is doing with its petrodollars. The desert kingdom recently
announced a crackdown on "charities" caught funding terror, but the targeted
groups were relatively small. The just-dissolved Al-Haramain Islamic
Foundation, for example, distributed a mere $50 million a year. Meanwhile,
the Saudis are promising to set up a new, "transparent" philanthropic
entity, the Saudi National Commission for Charitable Work Abroad, which is
to give away $100 million a year. Even assuming that that $100 million is
all "clean," one is left wondering what the Saudis will do with the other
$99.9 billion they'll receive for oil over the next 12 months. A Washington
source told me that Saudi Arabia has in fact given an average of $4 billion
a year in "foreign aid" over the past decade.

Where's all the money going? Nobody really knows. And nobody -- at least in
the United States -- seems very interested in finding out. On Saturday, the
New York Times reported that a task force on Saudi terror funding at the
Council on Foreign Relations is about to announce that Riyadh has "not fully
implemented its new laws and regulations, and because of that, opportunities
for the witting or unwitting financing of terrorism persist." But, the Times
notes, one sentence was deleted from the task force's final document -- "The
Bush administration has done very little to push the implementation of the
rules and regulations" -- possibly at the behest of the Bush White House.

Thus even after 9/11 and the resulting war on terror, the U.S.-Saudi
relationship appears fundamentally unchanged. Saudi Arabia sells us oil
while telling us -- via high-priced P.R. spokesmen and lobbyists -- that it
is our ally. In return, America offers the Al-Saud family a geopolitical
security blanket and a cloak for financial transactions.

The consequences of the free market's "invisible hand" are now visible:
People who hate America are engorged with American money. Having worked for
the Gipper for five years, I believe that if he were in office today, he
would concede that blind fealty to the free market has brought unintended
consequences -- big-time. And so he would take a second look at renewable
energy. Although Reagan believed in free markets and limited government, he
was pro-science; he strongly supported the space program, for example, and
the never-built superconducting supercollider. Reagan also would understand
what was required to win the war on terror -- the de-funding of those who
are funding terrorists, even at the risk of upsetting big GOP
constituencies.

It's time for a geostrategic shift -- and a return to the idea of energy
independence. It's time to revisit energy conservation; we must get serious
about hydrogen, solar, wind and other renewable-energy sources.

It won't be easy to gain complete energy independence from the oilocratic
foes we are financing, but at least we can start reducing the terror tax.
After a long detour -- and after realizing that the free market is
paradoxically aiding our worst enemies -- we can get back on the path to
energy independence.


When driving through France, one can see a nuclear power plant around every
curve, it seems. France has not, to my knowledge, had a nuclear incident. Why do
we not use more nuclear power? Is it politics?

John H

On the 'Poco Loco' out of Deale, MD
on the beautiful Chesapeake Bay!

Was the very liberal left who got new nuclear power plant construction
prohibited. Look at both Japan and France for how many plants have been
built since.

"Jim" wrote in message
...

People who hate America are flush with money from oil sales -- we should
stop subsidizing them by becoming more energy independent.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By James P. Pinkerton



June 15, 2004 | When I think about Ronald Reagan's legacy, one question
haunts me: Was his national energy policy also, inadvertently, a
terror-subsidy policy? A quarter-century later, it appears that Reagan's
presidency helped bring to America a plentiful supply of energy -- and
also
oil-financed terrorists.

In 1973, during America's first energy crisis, brought on by the Arab oil
embargo, President Nixon declared a national goal of "energy independence"
by 1980. For the rest of that decade, Republican and Democratic presidents
alike emphasized such independence, to be achieved by a combination of
statist means -- price controls, conservation decrees, Uncle Sam-funded
ventures such as the Synthetic Fuels Corp. But they didn't work. In 1973,
oil imports accounted for 26 percent of U.S. consumption; seven years
later,
in 1980, imports had risen to 38 percent of the national total. In the
meantime, oil prices had soared 1,300 percent.

Enter Reagan, a free marketeer and avowed opponent of "utopian schemers."
On
July 17, 1980, as he accepted the Republican Party's presidential
nomination, he declared, "Those who preside over the worst energy shortage
in our history tell us to use less, so that we will run out of oil,
gasoline
and natural gas a little more slowly." The Gipper continued, "Well, now,
conservation is desirable ... But conservation is not the sole answer to
our
energy needs. America must get to work producing more energy." Reagan's
idea
was to liberate the oil companies from controls, as part of his belief in
"getting government off our backs." In my role as a low-level staffer on
his
campaign, I cheered those libertarian words.

And I cheered more as the newly inaugurated 40th president swept away all
the Nixon-Ford-Carter-era rules and regulations -- although he also helped
kill off solar-power programs, a legacy of the loathed Carter presidency.
Yet at that time, few complained. Indeed, what came next was a miracle of
the marketplace: During Reagan's two terms, oil prices fell by
three-fourths, and the real output of the U.S. economy grew by a third.

Lower prices? More wealth? What's not to like? Only this: The market
produces miracles, but it's nonetheless blind; it makes no distinction
between a barrel of oil pumped in Oklahoma and a barrel pumped in Saudi
Arabia. If the foreign crude is 1 cent cheaper, that's what Adam Smith's
"invisible hand" selects. Oil, said the Reaganites, is just another
commodity; it doesn't matter where it comes from. So while the economy
boomed, the vision of energy independence withered.

And thus the catch: The free market lowered the price of energy, but since
the United States was a high-cost producer, domestic production was a big
loser. And the long-term decline in U.S. oil production -- accelerated,
too,
by environmental concerns -- continued through the Reagan years and has
kept
on ever since. Today, the United States imports 59 percent of its oil; it
has gone from being one-quarter dependent on foreign sources to
three-fifths
dependent.

And what happens to the dollars we export in return for this oil? Many of
them go to our mortal enemies. New York Gov. George Pataki, referring to
the
trillions that the United States and the West have sent to Arab
"oilocracies" over the past 30 years, has spoken of a "terror tax." That
is,
we send them money and they send us al-Qaida. And the problem could get
worse. Even assuming that Saudi Arabia follows through on its plan to
increase production, the desert kingdom could easily take in $100 billion
in
the coming year, around a quarter of that from the United States.

Yet despite -- or perhaps because of -- all that money, Saudi Arabia is
becoming "Osama Arabia." In light of the continuing attacks on Americans
and
other foreigners working in that nation, it is worth taking a closer look
at
what it is doing with its petrodollars. The desert kingdom recently
announced a crackdown on "charities" caught funding terror, but the
targeted
groups were relatively small. The just-dissolved Al-Haramain Islamic
Foundation, for example, distributed a mere $50 million a year. Meanwhile,
the Saudis are promising to set up a new, "transparent" philanthropic
entity, the Saudi National Commission for Charitable Work Abroad, which is
to give away $100 million a year. Even assuming that that $100 million is
all "clean," one is left wondering what the Saudis will do with the other
$99.9 billion they'll receive for oil over the next 12 months. A
Washington
source told me that Saudi Arabia has in fact given an average of $4
billion
a year in "foreign aid" over the past decade.

Where's all the money going? Nobody really knows. And nobody -- at least
in
the United States -- seems very interested in finding out. On Saturday,
the
New York Times reported that a task force on Saudi terror funding at the
Council on Foreign Relations is about to announce that Riyadh has "not
fully
implemented its new laws and regulations, and because of that,
opportunities
for the witting or unwitting financing of terrorism persist." But, the
Times
notes, one sentence was deleted from the task force's final document --
"The
Bush administration has done very little to push the implementation of the
rules and regulations" -- possibly at the behest of the Bush White House.

Thus even after 9/11 and the resulting war on terror, the U.S.-Saudi
relationship appears fundamentally unchanged. Saudi Arabia sells us oil
while telling us -- via high-priced P.R. spokesmen and lobbyists -- that
it
is our ally. In return, America offers the Al-Saud family a geopolitical
security blanket and a cloak for financial transactions.

The consequences of the free market's "invisible hand" are now visible:
People who hate America are engorged with American money. Having worked
for
the Gipper for five years, I believe that if he were in office today, he
would concede that blind fealty to the free market has brought unintended
consequences -- big-time. And so he would take a second look at renewable
energy. Although Reagan believed in free markets and limited government,
he
was pro-science; he strongly supported the space program, for example, and
the never-built superconducting supercollider. Reagan also would
understand
what was required to win the war on terror -- the de-funding of those who
are funding terrorists, even at the risk of upsetting big GOP
constituencies.

It's time for a geostrategic shift -- and a return to the idea of energy
independence. It's time to revisit energy conservation; we must get
serious
about hydrogen, solar, wind and other renewable-energy sources.

It won't be easy to gain complete energy independence from the oilocratic
foes we are financing, but at least we can start reducing the terror tax.
After a long detour -- and after realizing that the free market is
paradoxically aiding our worst enemies -- we can get back on the path to
energy independence.

"John H" wrote in message
...



When driving through France, one can see a nuclear power plant around
every
curve, it seems. France has not, to my knowledge, had a nuclear incident.
Why do
we not use more nuclear power? Is it politics?

John H

Perhaps they haven't begun thinking about what to do with the waste yet.
Neither have we. Or you. I suspect you don't think about it because you
don't feel the problem will become critical until you're dead. I, on the
other hand, give a damn about the world my son and his children inherit. I'm
funny that way.

"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...
"John H" wrote in message
...



When driving through France, one can see a nuclear power plant around
every
curve, it seems. France has not, to my knowledge, had a nuclear
incident.
Why do
we not use more nuclear power? Is it politics?

John H

Perhaps they haven't begun thinking about what to do with the waste yet.
Neither have we. Or you. I suspect you don't think about it because you
don't feel the problem will become critical until you're dead. I, on the
other hand, give a damn about the world my son and his children inherit.
I'm
funny that way.



Then you better worry about the excess radiation releases and mercury
release (major source for mercury in pelagic fish) from coal use. Much more
nasty than Nuc plants. We can bury the waste, which is not very much cubic
meter wise in the middle of a mountain in the desert, or in an old salt
mine, or in an underground nuclear explosion cavern.

On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 20:19:18 -0400, John H wrote:

When driving through France, one can see a nuclear power plant around
every curve, it seems. France has not, to my knowledge, had a nuclear
incident. Why do we not use more nuclear power? Is it politics?


Several reasons, the first being nuclear power is expensive power.
Reactors are expensive to build, maintain, and decommission. Secondly, we
still do not have an adequate solution to the nuclear wastes produced.
Much of it is stored on site, clearly a temporary solution when the wastes
will be radioactive for thousands of years. Also, I believe I read
somewhere that uranium supplies are running short.

Some interesting (and depressing) reading on the energy situation can be
found at:

http://dieoff.com/

John H wrote in message . ..
On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 22:45:18 GMT, "Jim" wrote:


People who hate America are flush with money from oil sales -- we should
stop subsidizing them by becoming more energy independent.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By James P. Pinkerton



June 15, 2004 | When I think about Ronald Reagan's legacy, one question
haunts me: Was his national energy policy also, inadvertently, a
terror-subsidy policy? A quarter-century later, it appears that Reagan's
presidency helped bring to America a plentiful supply of energy -- and also
oil-financed terrorists.

In 1973, during America's first energy crisis, brought on by the Arab oil
embargo, President Nixon declared a national goal of "energy independence"
by 1980. For the rest of that decade, Republican and Democratic presidents
alike emphasized such independence, to be achieved by a combination of
statist means -- price controls, conservation decrees, Uncle Sam-funded
ventures such as the Synthetic Fuels Corp. But they didn't work. In 1973,
oil imports accounted for 26 percent of U.S. consumption; seven years later,
in 1980, imports had risen to 38 percent of the national total. In the
meantime, oil prices had soared 1,300 percent.

Enter Reagan, a free marketeer and avowed opponent of "utopian schemers." On
July 17, 1980, as he accepted the Republican Party's presidential
nomination, he declared, "Those who preside over the worst energy shortage
in our history tell us to use less, so that we will run out of oil, gasoline
and natural gas a little more slowly." The Gipper continued, "Well, now,
conservation is desirable ... But conservation is not the sole answer to our
energy needs. America must get to work producing more energy." Reagan's idea
was to liberate the oil companies from controls, as part of his belief in
"getting government off our backs." In my role as a low-level staffer on his
campaign, I cheered those libertarian words.

And I cheered more as the newly inaugurated 40th president swept away all
the Nixon-Ford-Carter-era rules and regulations -- although he also helped
kill off solar-power programs, a legacy of the loathed Carter presidency.
Yet at that time, few complained. Indeed, what came next was a miracle of
the marketplace: During Reagan's two terms, oil prices fell by
three-fourths, and the real output of the U.S. economy grew by a third.

Lower prices? More wealth? What's not to like? Only this: The market
produces miracles, but it's nonetheless blind; it makes no distinction
between a barrel of oil pumped in Oklahoma and a barrel pumped in Saudi
Arabia. If the foreign crude is 1 cent cheaper, that's what Adam Smith's
"invisible hand" selects. Oil, said the Reaganites, is just another
commodity; it doesn't matter where it comes from. So while the economy
boomed, the vision of energy independence withered.

And thus the catch: The free market lowered the price of energy, but since
the United States was a high-cost producer, domestic production was a big
loser. And the long-term decline in U.S. oil production -- accelerated, too,
by environmental concerns -- continued through the Reagan years and has kept
on ever since. Today, the United States imports 59 percent of its oil; it
has gone from being one-quarter dependent on foreign sources to three-fifths
dependent.

And what happens to the dollars we export in return for this oil? Many of
them go to our mortal enemies. New York Gov. George Pataki, referring to the
trillions that the United States and the West have sent to Arab
"oilocracies" over the past 30 years, has spoken of a "terror tax." That is,
we send them money and they send us al-Qaida. And the problem could get
worse. Even assuming that Saudi Arabia follows through on its plan to
increase production, the desert kingdom could easily take in $100 billion in
the coming year, around a quarter of that from the United States.

Yet despite -- or perhaps because of -- all that money, Saudi Arabia is
becoming "Osama Arabia." In light of the continuing attacks on Americans and
other foreigners working in that nation, it is worth taking a closer look at
what it is doing with its petrodollars. The desert kingdom recently
announced a crackdown on "charities" caught funding terror, but the targeted
groups were relatively small. The just-dissolved Al-Haramain Islamic
Foundation, for example, distributed a mere $50 million a year. Meanwhile,
the Saudis are promising to set up a new, "transparent" philanthropic
entity, the Saudi National Commission for Charitable Work Abroad, which is
to give away $100 million a year. Even assuming that that $100 million is
all "clean," one is left wondering what the Saudis will do with the other
$99.9 billion they'll receive for oil over the next 12 months. A Washington
source told me that Saudi Arabia has in fact given an average of $4 billion
a year in "foreign aid" over the past decade.

Where's all the money going? Nobody really knows. And nobody -- at least in
the United States -- seems very interested in finding out. On Saturday, the
New York Times reported that a task force on Saudi terror funding at the
Council on Foreign Relations is about to announce that Riyadh has "not fully
implemented its new laws and regulations, and because of that, opportunities
for the witting or unwitting financing of terrorism persist." But, the Times
notes, one sentence was deleted from the task force's final document -- "The
Bush administration has done very little to push the implementation of the
rules and regulations" -- possibly at the behest of the Bush White House.

Thus even after 9/11 and the resulting war on terror, the U.S.-Saudi
relationship appears fundamentally unchanged. Saudi Arabia sells us oil
while telling us -- via high-priced P.R. spokesmen and lobbyists -- that it
is our ally. In return, America offers the Al-Saud family a geopolitical
security blanket and a cloak for financial transactions.

The consequences of the free market's "invisible hand" are now visible:
People who hate America are engorged with American money. Having worked for
the Gipper for five years, I believe that if he were in office today, he
would concede that blind fealty to the free market has brought unintended
consequences -- big-time. And so he would take a second look at renewable
energy. Although Reagan believed in free markets and limited government, he
was pro-science; he strongly supported the space program, for example, and
the never-built superconducting supercollider. Reagan also would understand
what was required to win the war on terror -- the de-funding of those who
are funding terrorists, even at the risk of upsetting big GOP
constituencies.

It's time for a geostrategic shift -- and a return to the idea of energy
independence. It's time to revisit energy conservation; we must get serious
about hydrogen, solar, wind and other renewable-energy sources.

It won't be easy to gain complete energy independence from the oilocratic
foes we are financing, but at least we can start reducing the terror tax.
After a long detour -- and after realizing that the free market is
paradoxically aiding our worst enemies -- we can get back on the path to
energy independence.


When driving through France, one can see a nuclear power plant around every
curve, it seems. France has not, to my knowledge, had a nuclear incident. Why do
we not use more nuclear power? Is it politics?

John H


Good question. I'd think that we would have the ability to provide
safe, economic nuclear energy. I think the reason is in the back
pockets of a certain group of politicians, where the big oil companies
reside. They have a big bargaining tool, money!

"John H" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 22:45:18 GMT, "Jim" wrote:


People who hate America are flush with money from oil sales -- we should
stop subsidizing them by becoming more energy independent.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By James P. Pinkerton



June 15, 2004 | When I think about Ronald Reagan's legacy, one question
haunts me: Was his national energy policy also, inadvertently, a
terror-subsidy policy? A quarter-century later, it appears that Reagan's
presidency helped bring to America a plentiful supply of energy -- and
also
oil-financed terrorists.

In 1973, during America's first energy crisis, brought on by the Arab oil
embargo, President Nixon declared a national goal of "energy
independence"
by 1980. For the rest of that decade, Republican and Democratic
presidents
alike emphasized such independence, to be achieved by a combination of
statist means -- price controls, conservation decrees, Uncle Sam-funded
ventures such as the Synthetic Fuels Corp. But they didn't work. In 1973,
oil imports accounted for 26 percent of U.S. consumption; seven years
later,
in 1980, imports had risen to 38 percent of the national total. In the
meantime, oil prices had soared 1,300 percent.

Enter Reagan, a free marketeer and avowed opponent of "utopian schemers."
On
July 17, 1980, as he accepted the Republican Party's presidential
nomination, he declared, "Those who preside over the worst energy
shortage
in our history tell us to use less, so that we will run out of oil,
gasoline
and natural gas a little more slowly." The Gipper continued, "Well, now,
conservation is desirable ... But conservation is not the sole answer to
our
energy needs. America must get to work producing more energy." Reagan's
idea
was to liberate the oil companies from controls, as part of his belief in
"getting government off our backs." In my role as a low-level staffer on
his
campaign, I cheered those libertarian words.

And I cheered more as the newly inaugurated 40th president swept away all
the Nixon-Ford-Carter-era rules and regulations -- although he also
helped
kill off solar-power programs, a legacy of the loathed Carter presidency.
Yet at that time, few complained. Indeed, what came next was a miracle of
the marketplace: During Reagan's two terms, oil prices fell by
three-fourths, and the real output of the U.S. economy grew by a third.

Lower prices? More wealth? What's not to like? Only this: The market
produces miracles, but it's nonetheless blind; it makes no distinction
between a barrel of oil pumped in Oklahoma and a barrel pumped in Saudi
Arabia. If the foreign crude is 1 cent cheaper, that's what Adam Smith's
"invisible hand" selects. Oil, said the Reaganites, is just another
commodity; it doesn't matter where it comes from. So while the economy
boomed, the vision of energy independence withered.

And thus the catch: The free market lowered the price of energy, but
since
the United States was a high-cost producer, domestic production was a big
loser. And the long-term decline in U.S. oil production -- accelerated,
too,
by environmental concerns -- continued through the Reagan years and has
kept
on ever since. Today, the United States imports 59 percent of its oil; it
has gone from being one-quarter dependent on foreign sources to
three-fifths
dependent.

And what happens to the dollars we export in return for this oil? Many of
them go to our mortal enemies. New York Gov. George Pataki, referring to
the
trillions that the United States and the West have sent to Arab
"oilocracies" over the past 30 years, has spoken of a "terror tax." That
is,
we send them money and they send us al-Qaida. And the problem could get
worse. Even assuming that Saudi Arabia follows through on its plan to
increase production, the desert kingdom could easily take in $100 billion
in
the coming year, around a quarter of that from the United States.

Yet despite -- or perhaps because of -- all that money, Saudi Arabia is
becoming "Osama Arabia." In light of the continuing attacks on Americans
and
other foreigners working in that nation, it is worth taking a closer look
at
what it is doing with its petrodollars. The desert kingdom recently
announced a crackdown on "charities" caught funding terror, but the
targeted
groups were relatively small. The just-dissolved Al-Haramain Islamic
Foundation, for example, distributed a mere $50 million a year.
Meanwhile,
the Saudis are promising to set up a new, "transparent" philanthropic
entity, the Saudi National Commission for Charitable Work Abroad, which
is
to give away $100 million a year. Even assuming that that $100 million is
all "clean," one is left wondering what the Saudis will do with the other
$99.9 billion they'll receive for oil over the next 12 months. A
Washington
source told me that Saudi Arabia has in fact given an average of $4
billion
a year in "foreign aid" over the past decade.

Where's all the money going? Nobody really knows. And nobody -- at least
in
the United States -- seems very interested in finding out. On Saturday,
the
New York Times reported that a task force on Saudi terror funding at the
Council on Foreign Relations is about to announce that Riyadh has "not
fully
implemented its new laws and regulations, and because of that,
opportunities
for the witting or unwitting financing of terrorism persist." But, the
Times
notes, one sentence was deleted from the task force's final document --
"The
Bush administration has done very little to push the implementation of
the
rules and regulations" -- possibly at the behest of the Bush White House.

Thus even after 9/11 and the resulting war on terror, the U.S.-Saudi
relationship appears fundamentally unchanged. Saudi Arabia sells us oil
while telling us -- via high-priced P.R. spokesmen and lobbyists -- that
it
is our ally. In return, America offers the Al-Saud family a geopolitical
security blanket and a cloak for financial transactions.

The consequences of the free market's "invisible hand" are now visible:
People who hate America are engorged with American money. Having worked
for
the Gipper for five years, I believe that if he were in office today, he
would concede that blind fealty to the free market has brought unintended
consequences -- big-time. And so he would take a second look at renewable
energy. Although Reagan believed in free markets and limited government,
he
was pro-science; he strongly supported the space program, for example,
and
the never-built superconducting supercollider. Reagan also would
understand
what was required to win the war on terror -- the de-funding of those who
are funding terrorists, even at the risk of upsetting big GOP
constituencies.

It's time for a geostrategic shift -- and a return to the idea of energy
independence. It's time to revisit energy conservation; we must get
serious
about hydrogen, solar, wind and other renewable-energy sources.

It won't be easy to gain complete energy independence from the oilocratic
foes we are financing, but at least we can start reducing the terror tax.
After a long detour -- and after realizing that the free market is
paradoxically aiding our worst enemies -- we can get back on the path to
energy independence.


When driving through France, one can see a nuclear power plant around
every
curve, it seems. France has not, to my knowledge, had a nuclear incident.
Why do
we not use more nuclear power? Is it politics?

John H

On the 'Poco Loco' out of Deale, MD
on the beautiful Chesapeake Bay!

It is a combination of 3 things: the expense; the red tape it takes to go
through before construction can even begin; and lastly, the NIMBY
principle.

"Calif Bill" wrote in message ink.net...
Was the very liberal left who got new nuclear power plant construction
prohibited. Look at both Japan and France for how many plants have been
built since.

Horse****! Big oil doesn't want nuclear energy. What group of
politicians cozy up to big oil, and their money?

basskisser wrote:
"Calif Bill" wrote in message ink.net...
Was the very liberal left who got new nuclear power plant construction
prohibited. Look at both Japan and France for how many plants have been
built since.

Horse****! Big oil doesn't want nuclear energy. What group of
politicians cozy up to big oil, and their money?



The "liberal left" is dumb Bill's rationalization for everything in his
life he doesn't like.