A Change in Energy Policy

Last summer, oil peaked at $147/Barrel and begand to descend when President Bush announced that he was resinding the Presidential Ban on off-shore drilling. Since that time, the oil bubble has burst. Oil is now trading at rougly 25% of it's peak price. This is consistent with the pattern seen with other commodity bubbles.

It appears now that President Obama is about engage his energy policy. He will soon move to suspend any new off-shore drilling. We will build no new refineries. We can not use coal. We can not use nuclear power. We hear a lot about what we won't do to produce energy, but nothing about what we will do to produce it. From these new policies, you would think we had too much energy, not too little.

The really interesting part of all this is that this policy will transform of our heavy dependence on foreign oil into absolute dependence on the federal government.

Because our failure to build more refineries creates an artifical restriction on our capacity to produce gasoline, and our demand for gasoline will surely rise again, the 'market' for gasoline will cause the price of gasoline to rise. The Oil Companies make their money as a percentage of the sell price. They make more money when gas sells for $4/gal than they do when gas sells for $2/gal. Consequently, when gas goes up, they make more money. This profit will be demonized, and the governmnet will be that as an excuse to nationalize the oil industry. Then our fuel supply will be managed by the same nameless, faceless folks who have done such an admirable job managing Social Secuity, running Fannie May and Freddie Mac, regulating banks, and running the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Because it will be managed at the Federal level by Federal Civil Service employees, they will be completely unaccountable for failure. We are about to see new levels of mismangament, corruption, and incompetence. Because energy will be administered by the federal government, you can soon expect 'energy' entitlements to help ease the inequity of distribution that our capitalist society has imposed on the poor. It is, after all, the federal government's responsibility to ensure an equitable distribution of the resources.

We are moving from a 'free people' to a 'social people', from independence to dependence, from a proud and self-reliant people to an empoverished mob reduced to begging at the public trough for more and more scarce energy resources. With federal involvement, drilling bans, bans on coal and nuclear energy, be assured that private dollars will run away from exploration and development of energy resources.

This is change that you can believe in.

Conflits of Interest

A few years ago, I heard about a priest at a dying little parish. Once a strong and thriving church, in the course of the last ten years or so, everyone watched and wondered as Sunday attendence withered from 300 to 200, to 100, to 50, to 29. Seems that every year or so, a few parishioners would raise 'issues' and 'concerns' about finances or spending. Priests are apparently above reproach and are not bound by ethics, so they are easily able to easily manouver and manipulate meetings and votes. The parishioners raising the concerns are easily labeled troublemakers. They simply can not be tolerated. Consequently, no holds are barred and they were ostericized. But, who would have expected so many "troublemakers" in such a single church? None the less, no troublemakers equals no problems.....sort of.

Unfortunately, as the attendence fell, so did the giving. Apparently a lot of the troublemakers had been tithers, and had histories of being big givers for special projects. Luckily, though the cash flow of the church was drying up, the spending habits of the parish did not have to change because deficits were covered by the reserve fund. As luck would have it, the very same people who had given to the reserve fund were the ones who had become troublemakers and had left the parish. They were no longer there to object when the memorial money they had given for dedicated purposes was diverted into operating expenses. Promises are so easily broken when you are above reproach.

As the reserve fund was drawn down over the years, and the end of the money comes into sight, the priest became concerned. The end of the reserve fund, and consequently the end of the parish, will clearly arrive prior to his retirement.

What's a good priest to do?

Set up a 'special fund' at the parish to encourage the elderly parishioners to bequeith money to the church, of course!

Time passes on, but few parishioners do. Depending on your particular perspecive, that may not be a good thing. Now, money is really tight at the parish. The reserve fund is almost empty.

Call me cynical, but when a elderly parishioner falls ill and is hospitalized, and the priest goes to visit and to pray over the parishioner, what's he praying for?

The parishioner?

If the parishioner survives, the priest may not make it to retirement. If parishioner passes, then the parish profits. So, what's a priest to do?

He will do what he has always done. He's a good priest.