Could Obama do more to lower the price of gasoline With gasoline prices expected to hit nearly $5 a gallon this summer, nba jerseys President Obama has come under fire from Republicans who suggest his energy policies such as a focus on alternative energies, as well as a decision to block the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada have helped force those price increases on cash strapped families. must do more Moncler Mens jackets goose down Collar Zip Red to abandon its dependence on foreign oil. Can the president reduce gas prices? Should he? There s not much to do By Joel Mathis Gas prices are high right now for two reasons near and dear to Republican hearts: Free markets and Iran. America is not the only consumer of gasoline in the world. That s never been the case, of course, but giant countries like India and China have seen their economies kick into overdrive in the last few years and moncler factory outlet uk growing economies require ever more energy for manufacturing and computers and all the other things that keep 21st centuries running. What s more, as those countries grow richer they re adding an increasing number of gasoline burning cars to their roads. Demand for oil is up, and will stay up. Americans can keep their low gas prices if they can figure out how to cripple other big economies an action that is neither plausible nor desirable. As for Iran: Oil experts say the diplomatic standoff with Iran over its nuclear program has already pushed the price of crude oil up by 20 percent. Republicans like to say the president hasn t been tough enough with Iran but observers say that an outright confrontation with that oil producing nation could add another 50 cents per gallon at the pump. We can t have our cake and eat it, too. We can t be hawkish on Iran and have cheap gas. Could President Obama take action to increase supply and lower prices? Maybe, but probably not by much. Most of the world s oil that is easy to access has been accessed; what remains is in difficult to extract locations underwater or in the so called "tar sands." We can get to it, thanks to the ingenuity of scientists and engineers, but it won t be cheap. Long term, gas prices are going to go up no matter what we do even if Republicans take the White House. But why give up such a cheap, easy campaign issue? Sitting on an ocean of oil By Ben Boychuk Obviously, the president cannot set gas prices day to day and thank goodness for that! But the president can certainly set policies that have short and long term moncler hat effects cheap moncler jackets outlet on what American consumers pay at the pump. Americans memories are short. So in case anyone forgot, the topic of high gas prices captured the public s imagination right around this time last year. President Obama s excuse at the time not entirely wrong, but not the whole story, either was the Libyan civil war. What Obama failed to mention was the effect of his moratorium on oil drilling Moncler Men and Women vamp wing Glossy black white Casual shoes in the Gulf of Mexico following the British Petroleum oil spill. More important, high deficits and huge debt continues to erode the value of the dollar, which is the international currency of the oil trade. gasoline consumption is down 7 percent or so. Yet gas prices are upwards of $5 a gallon in some parts of the country. Some, but not all. In the mountain states, Moncler Loire down Women coat with zip blue including Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, drivers are still paying around $3.50 a gallon. That s true in Gulf states like Mississippi and Alabama, too. Gas prices remain below average in North Dakota as well. The reason: Oil and natural gas are big businesses, taxes are low, and those states all have active oil refineries. The refrain of the past decade from utopians wishing for a world without the internal moncler clothing combustion engine is that domestic oil exploration and development is moncler men 2014 an expensive pipe dream. But what we ve discovered over time is the United States is sitting on an ocean of oil, and entrepreneurs are developing new methods of extracting it cheaply and efficiently. President Obama pines for biofuel made of algae. (Current price: About $33 a gallon.) Meantime, North Dakota s unemployment rate is 3.2 percent. Gas prices will fall, eventually. No thanks to this president s policies

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Could Ron Paul be America s Tommy Douglas Tommy who? I can just hear my American friends asking. He s just the Greatest Canadian of all time according to a poll taken in 2004, nba jerseys which is odd since he was a rather unprepossessing little man. He s dead now, of course. Tommy Douglas, the prairie preacher, became the premier of North America s first social democratic government (province of Saskatchewan) and went from that to federal politics where he championed, and eventually gained, universal health care for Canadians. Two seminal events shaped the young Tommy Douglas (as most Canadians know). The first was a leg injury he received as a boy before emigrating from Scotland to Canada. There were complications and the leg was going to be amputated until a Winnipeg surgeon stepped in and operated on it for free while medical students watched the procedure. The second was watching the infamous Winnipeg General Strike riots from a rooftop and witnessing an RCMP officer fatally shoot one of the workers. Both experiences shaped Douglas worldview. The son of a Scottish iron worker, Douglas began his career as a Linotype operator in a printing plant, but quit and went back to school to become an ordained minister. Long story short, he moved from the pulpit in a small Saskatchewan town to federal member of Parliament in 1935 and to socialist Premier of Saskatchewan in 1944. By 1962 he was instrumental in getting universal Moncler nible Women Glossy Casual tall coffee Boots medicare going for the province, retired as premier and went on to lead the fledgling federal New Democratic Party. So what s he got to do with Ron Paul? Coincidentally, both men have a dark stain on their records. Douglas once wrote a thesis favouring the practice of eugenics before the Nazis got into it. And Ron Paul has those racist comments in his newsletters from the 1980s hanging over him like a cloud. But there s more to it than that. Both men are spectacularly untelegenic. Both looked old Moncler Womens jackets down Glossy Zip Rose even when they were young: Skinny guys with suits that don t quite fit right. Both held true to their morals, values and ideals, and presented them in clear, plainspoken language. And both were marginalized, and in Paul s case still marginalized, by corporate funders and the mainstream media. In both cases big money and special interests actively worked against them. Whereas Tommy Douglas represented a Canadian citizen landscape that couldn t exist without a tightly knit, protective community (harsh climates tend to kill the less fortunate), Ron Paul represents a different history, one in which individuals are Moncler down Jackets Men no hat sky blue free to pursue their own livelihoods without undue interference from big government and by extension, big institutions and big corporations. It s the modern reiteration of the pioneering spirit of Ohio, the Midwest, West Virginia and the spirit that opened up the American west to the Pacific Ocean. It s based on independence, moral character and hard work. While we Canadians and some modern liberal Americans might see that as nave, Paul s views and policies are directly connected to America s roots creating equal opportunity for all. Which is why he strikes such as surprisingly strong chord among ordinary Americans. To them it s just plain common sense. Just as Douglas and his policies made sense to Canadians. Why is this important to Americans? Because Paul is the only candidate, including Obama, who is actually and actively addressing the American condition. He begins with American exceptionalism abroad, and clearly sees his own country as an unbridled imperial military power, spending blood and treasure on ventures, not moncler winter jacket women to protect Americans, but to protect the foreign moncler shoes uk interests of global corporations. banking elite. Fed in what amounts to forgivable loans. He goes on to say in another interview that the same kinds of low interest "loans" went to companies based in the Cayman Islands, and even to companies such as Toyota that were in direct competition with General Motors, which was also receiving huge bailouts at the same time. Does anyone down there find this just a little outrageous (not to mention bordering on criminal)? But who was responsible for uncovering the information? Moncler Men down Jackets hat yellow Ron Paul, who, through Congress, was able to crack open the Fed s books on the bailout years between 2007 and 2009. It was the first time in history that anyone had a look behind the highly secretive curtain around the Fed. Fed is now the de facto bank of the world, the first globalist bank. And both think, correctly, that this is not at all in the best interests of ordinary Americans. on this massive financial hijack, hiding behind Tim Geithner and the boys from Goldman Sachs. On the domestic moncler women coat sale front, both Ron Paul and Tommy Douglas supported civil liberties. In the 1960s Douglas called for an investigation of the RCMPs surveillance practices even while he was unknowingly being investigated by the RCMP. Meanwhile, on the other side of Paul s argument is Mitt Romney who seems, to the delight of global corporations everywhere, to have no position whatsoever, other than being Obama lite. And in Canada we have Stephen Harper. Enough said. Despite what liberals might think of Ron Paul, he just might go down in history as America s Greatest Politician as we look back at the prospect moncler coat reviews of the American empire collapsing, or even more disturbing, Canada being rolled into one North American union

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