Alright, I've been listening to the Demo presidential candidates Hillary and Barack for months now, and they keep saying lots of the same things.
That's pretty normal for a campaign, especially one that's dragged on this long.
So it's not really the sheer repetition that drives me nuts as much as the message.
The more I hear certain things, the more annoyed I become.
One of those things is when the liberals start talking about gas prices.
The insanity.
They blather on and on about foreign oil and the crippling U.S. dependency on it.
Obama says America's 20-million-barrel-a-day oil habit costs our economy $1.4 billion a day, and $500 billion in 2006 alone. Every single hour, we spend $41 million on foreign oil.
Here's Hillary:
"I think it's time we kicked the oil men out of the White House. ... I will provide solutions to offer relief from record gas prices, end our addiction to foreign oil, protect the planet, and create millions of new jobs."
And from her Web site, there's this as we head toward Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary.
Pennsylvania's average gas price reached an all-time record high of $3.23 this week, and diesel fuel is over $4 per gallon in many places - even higher than the records set in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina. In Pittsburgh, the price of a gallon of regular gas has been steadily climbing. Today, it is $3.27. A month ago, it was $3.03. A year ago, it was $2.58. The typical Pennsylvania driver is paying nearly $1,100 more per year for gas than they did when President Bush took office.
Alright, now both of these liberal candidates have similar ideas on how we can solve this problem.
Mostly, the idea is that ethanol and other renewable fuels are the answer. If we can turn enough corn and switchgrass into ethanol, we're good to go.
Even if we turned every kernel of corn in American into ethanol, I'm pretty sure we couldn't end our dependency on foreign oil, but that's a different column.
What annoys me about their positions on energy is that it's liberals like them who exacerbated the problem in the first place.
Why aren't we drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve?
Why aren't we drilling for oil offshore?
Why aren't oil companies building new refineries?
Simple answer. Liberals stood in the way. Seems rather disingenuous to me to do everything in your power to limit domestic oil production and refining capabilities and then turn around and decry the level of dependence on foreign oil.
(These are the same guys who stand in the way of building nuclear power plants, although it is some of the cleanest, most efficient power available.)
And they find it so easy to talk about how obscene oil company profits are.
It is true that Exxon's profit was $40.6 billion in 2007. It's also true that was a company record.
But what you never hear is how that level of profit was dwarfed by Exxon's revenue, which was $404.5 billion. Exxon spent almost $200 billion on crude oil alone in 2007.
So when you do the math and arrive at a profit margin, which generally is a measure of a company's wealth and determines how much stockholders will make, we arrive at slightly more than 10 percent.
The average profit margin in the oil biz is around 8.3 percent, so Exxon is above average.
But come on.
If you were an executive at Coca-Cola or Microsoft and you had to report profit margins of 10 percent, you'd be handed your pink slip - and a giant golden parachute, I suppose.
Coke's profit margin last year was 20.7 percent. Microsoft's was 27.5 percent.
So why aren't liberals running around denouncing the fatcats at those companies for plundering and pillaging the American consumer?
And the drilling thing?
Consider this. The ANWR is 19.2 million acres. The proposal to drill was on 2,000 acres. That's .0104 percent. Let's put that in perspective. If the ANWR is Kosciusko County (346,200 acres), the drilling would occur on 36 acres. (A football field is roughly an acre.)
I say, let the drilling begin.
Of course, there would be no more refining capacity even if we could extract the oil.
There's a reason there haven't been any new refineries put on line in decades, and it's not because the oil companies have no desire to build them. It's because liberals have made it virtually impossible with regulatory roadblocks.
Which brings me to the second thing that annoys me about liberals like Barack and Hillary.
Outsourcing.
It's true that jobs are being outsourced. No question about it. The real question is why.
Labor costs are only part of the equation. Certainly, labor is cheaper overseas and creates savings for companies that outsource.
So let's talk about labor costs. How about those United Auto Workers at American Axle who are on strike? Did you know those guys - benefits included - make between $60 and $70 per hour? Their strike threatens to idle a local business, Explorer Van.
Democrats have long been allied with unions, voting for all manner of pro-union legislation. They made it easier for unions to strike, strengthened unions positions during collective bargaining and helped mandate that workers join unions.
To be sure, liberals have done a lot to strengthen unions and drive up U.S. labor costs.
But there are lots of other costs associated with manufacturing and those are out of whack, too, largely because of liberal policies.
There have been lots of studies completed on the cost of regulation to U.S. businesses.
The costs are staggering.
Businesses in this country feel handcuffed and strangled by regulations.
Of course, workers need to be safe and adequately paid for the work they do. We don't want any sweatshops. Of course, products need to be safe for consumers.
But it seems the regulatory pendulum has swung too far - to the left.
Right now, it's getting to the point where it just about costs too much for a business to do business in this country.
And anytime a conservative suggests that perhaps we could give companies a tax break to incentivize them to create jobs here in the U.S., liberals start screaming "corporate welfare."
It's fully nutty.
So beware.
Anytime a liberal comes telling you how he or she is going to fix problems like gas prices or outsourcing, just remember: It's decades of liberal policies that got us here in the first place.
