For your information, Dr. Gal Luft and Anne Korin of Set America Free advises that the Open Fuel Standards Act Legislation was introduced this week in the US Congress.
House: Bill number H.R. 6559. Cosponsors are bi- partisan.
Senate: Bill Number S.3303. Cosponsors: Brownback R-KS, Lieberman I-CT, Collins R-ME, Thune R-SD, and Salazar D-CO

Obama's imperial and presumptious manner will ultimately loose him the election.  The main stream pundits are fawning over the success of Obama's foreign excursion, with a common theme that he appears so presidential.  They contrast the images of Obama interacting with foreign leaders, speaking to throngs of euopeans, with John McCain who has been making a number of campaign stops at restaurants and convenience stores meeting with regular folks.  The conclusion is that Obama appears grand while McCain appears small. 

However, what the pundits fail to realize is that Obama's grandeur works against him as being out of touch with the common man.  Obama has fostered an imperial image in a number of ways.  His speeches often take on this messianic quality, even at one point claiming that he would be the one that would bring down the level of the oceans.  The settings of his speeches, with large throngs of people add to this sense of him being a larger than life figure. 

 

His actions also display his imperial and presumptious manner.  At one point he had a seal, somparable to a presidential seal, affixed to the podium when gave press conferences.  The seal had the image of the bald eagle and the phrase "yes we can" printed in latin onto the seal.  Ultimately the seal was taken away when he was ridiculed for it.  Today Obama held a joint press conference in France with the French president.  Obama probably felt that it made him look presidential, when it fact it made him look presumptious and arrogant to believe that he should already be taking on the role of the head of state of the United States.

 

In contrast, John McCain, who truly has had larger than life, heroic experiences, acts in a low key, humble, manner and down plays his accomplishments.  He rarely talks about his experiences in Vietnam and never talks about the contributions his military sons are making in Iraq.  Yet, it is this very low key manner that is connecting with the majority of citizens in this country.  A recent Rasmussen pole indicated that 58% of Americans believe that they share the same values as John McCain, while only 41% of Americans believe that Obama has similar values to them.  It will be interesting to see the pole results on this issue in the comming weeks.  My prediction is that the gap will widen with fewer Americans believing that they share similar values to Obama.  If that happens and the trend continues, then Senator McCain will be our next President.

 

The addition of wind, solar, and nuclear power will have no impact on our dependence on oil.  All of those sources of energy would be used to generate electricity.  However, when it comes to the generation of electricity we already are oil independent.  That is, virtually no electricity is generated from the use of oil.  Instead our electricity is generated primarily from coal, hydroelectic, and nuclear power.  Only 2% of our electircity is generated from oil based power plants.

 

It is in the area of trasportation that the majority of oil is consumed in this country.  Approximately 75% of the oil imported into this country is converted to gasoline and deisel to fuel our cars, trucks, and buses.  Hence, it is in the transportation area that we must find alternatives to oil.  The good news is that there currently are substitute fuels available -- ethanol, methanol, battery power, and natural gas -- and the technology available to immediately begin production of vehicles using these alternative fuels.

 

The most promising of these vehicles for immediate mass production are the hybrid cars, which use a combination of battery power and gasoline, and flex vehicles, which are capable of using ethanol, methanol or gasoline, or any mixture of these products.  Right now Brazil has become foreign oil independent having undertaken a program beginning in the 1970s to require that vehicles in Brazil be flex vehicles.  This has been possible because the automakers are capable of converting conventional vehicles into flex vehicles at a cost of only an additional $100 per car.  The flex cars in Brazil run primarily on ethanol that is produced from sugar cane grown in Brazil.  Currently more than half of the energy used by cars in Brazil is in the form of ethanol.  Right now there is a bill to promote flex vehicles in the United States, but unfortunately it is hung up in Congress.  Lets put the pressure on our congress by writing to our senators and congressmen to allow the bill to go forward.

However, the conversion of the American car fleet to flex or hybrid vehicles is not an immediate solution to our oil dependence.    

Vehicles have approximately a 16 year life span within the United States so existing gasoline cars will be with us for some time to come even if we were to begin selling only flex and hybrid vehicles immediately.  That is why it is equally important that we expand drilling in this country to take advantage of as many of our oil deposits as possible, including off-shore drilling.  This will not only have the longer range effect of reducing our dependence on foreign oil, but will also have the added benefit of having an immediate impact on lowering the cost of gasoline. (see my post Drill, Drill, Drill). 

 

Much of this article is based on information provided by a coalition of prominent citizens and non profit organizations called Set America Free.  Their website address is setamericafree.org.  Definitely worth checking out.

 

Allowing off shore drilling for oil will have a much more immediate impact on oil prices than Democrats opine.  Here's why.  Both producers  and purchasers of oil, base their decision making on the anticipated future supply and demand of oil.  It is well known that purchasers base what they will pay for oil on actual and anticipated supply and demand.  It is called the future's market, and much has already been written how oil has more than doubled in the last year.   Less well understood is that producers base their production levels on the anticipated future's price of oil, which will also have an impact on the future's market. 

 

Martin Feldstein an economist and former governor of the Federal Reserve, wrote an editorial in the July 1 issue of the Wall Street Journal explaining this.  Mr. Feldstein argues that oil producers consider their oil reserves in the ground as if it were cash in the ground.  Viewed from this perspective, economists are capable of predicting oil production levels.  Simply put oil producers will base their production levels on whether their oil reserves will earn more by selling the oil and investing the proceeds, or leaving the oil in the ground in anticipation of the oil being more valuable in the future.  So, if oil producers are, for example, able to get a 6% per year return on investing cash, but they anticipate that the price of oil will increase at 10% per year, they will produce less because they can get a better return on the oil by simply leaving it in the ground.  On the other hand if they anticipate that the future price of oil will be rising at less than 6%, or perhaps will even fall, they will produce more oil.

 

Currently oil prices have been increasing because oil inventories are tight.  However, if off shore oil drilling is approved, and oil producers anticipate that the future price of oil will be lower because of future increases in supply, then the oil producers will increase their production levels to sell the oil now at the higher prices.  In turn oil prices will come down and ultimately reach a lower price equilibrium at a price where it does not make economic sense for the oil producers to pump increasng amounts of oil.  The speed at which this will happen will be exacerbated by the downward pressure on oil prices, as purchasers will pay less for oil because of both actual and anticipated supplies of oil.  In short the price of oil will come down much faster than the time it will take off shore drilling to actually increase the supply of oil.  That is why drill, drill, drill should be the mantra of Washington politicians