Showing posts with label Keystone XL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Keystone XL. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Constituent service by Anne Kuster

Anne Kuster, our democrat US Rep, just voted for higher furnace oil prices and higher gasoline prices. And voted to import oil from hostile countries in the middle east, as opposed to friendly Canada. She cast a vote against the Keystone XL pipeline.  Why or why did we re elect her instead of Marilinda Garcia?

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Just one more favor to call in.

The Senate turned down Keystone XL by just one vote.  All the Republicans and 14 Democrats voted for it, but that's one short of 60 votes.  You'd think that an old Senate hand like Mary Landrieu,  who has been there for 18 years, would have been able to scrape up that one last vote.  Surely in 18 years she has down some favors for people.   You'd also think that fellow Democrats would give her a vote she needs for survival just out of party feelings of solidarity.  I guess not.   Joseph Stalin once said "Gratitude is a disease of  dogs."  Looks like Democrats feel the same way. 
   Instead of throwing a life ring to a living breathing fellow party member, Senate Democrats let her drown in favor of the Greenie mythology of Global Warming.  Nice people. 

Sunday, April 27, 2014

The Big Enchilada, jobs, jobs, and more jobs.

And everyone likes this one.  Turn the economy around, get hiring people, have jobs for everyone, enough jobs that workers can quit companies they don't like and be able to find another job.  That will bring wages up. 
   But to win the election, the GOP has to spell out HOW it is going to achieve this nirvana.  Voters want specifics.  Such as:
1.  Start the Keystone XL pipeline.  It will get crude oil shipments off the rails and into a pipe.  It brings oil in from one of our closest allies.  It will lower the price of gasoline and furnace oil.  It will allow US export of fuels to our friends around the world.
2. Repeal Sarbanes Oxley.  This 1000 page law is welfare for lawyers, an intolerable burden on companies, and has driven merger and acquisition business out of New York.  Getting rid of Sarbanes Oxley will make it easier to run a business, and business is what employs people. 
3.  Repeal Dodd Frank.  Another 1000 page law, welfare for lawyers.  Dodd Frank sets up ways for taxpayers to bail out firms "too big to fail".  Replace Dodd Frank with some anti trust action, any company too big to fail is clearly a trust, and needs to be busted.  Dodd Frank tells Wall St speculators that they can take any sort of risk, when things go bad Uncle will bail you out. 
4.  Reform corporate income tax.  For instance, money earned overseas should not be subject to US income tax.  Companies that make money overseas should be free to bring the money back to the US and spend it.  Right now Uncle takes 35% of every dollar brought home from overseas.  At this rate, it makes sense to leave the money in overseas banks earning a couple a percent rather than investing it back here at home.  And, that 35% corporate tax rate is the highest in the industrial world.  No wonder companies are sending jobs overseas, the taxes are lower. 
 5.  Reform the US patent system.  Right now no one can bring any new product to market without some patent troll suing for patent infringement as soon as the product makes a little money.  Look are the $600 million award against Blackberry some years ago.  Blackberry is filing for bankruptcy today.  Patents are granted for ridiculous things, like whether it takes one click or two clicks to place something in an internet shopping basket.  This constant threat of mickey mouse lawsuits makes getting a start up company off the ground harder.  It's the start ups  that employ people. 
6.  Remind every one that a $10 minimum wage doesn't put more money in worker's pockets, instead  it throws them out of work.
7.  Repeal the "Corporate Average Fuel Economy" (CAFE) requirements.  Four dollar a gallon gasoline is all the incentive anyone needs to build fuel efficient vehicles.  The current CAFE requirement of nearly 50 mpg makes new cars ridiculously expensive, leading to lower car sales and people refurbishing old cars to keep them running longer. 

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Pipelines need few workers to operate

We have Barack Obama bad mouthing Keystone XL pipeline project because, once built, it won't employ all that many people to run it.  News Flash, that's why we lay pipelines.  They get the product to market cheaply.  Cheaply means a small number of workers.
   We need Keystone XL to furnish a generous supply of vital fuel and chemical feedstock to Gulf refineries.  With supplies from Keystone, those refineries will stay in production and their thousands of workers will remain employed.  With out the pipeline, they have only the dwindling Texas fields and the offshore gulf wells to supply crude.  When those run dry, bye-bye refineries, bye bye refinery jobs.  That's why we need that pipeline.  Obama apparently doesn't understand this.  Neither does our well educated, journalism majoring media.
   Looking past just refinery jobs, fuel and chemical feedstock form the basis of the US economy.  Without dependable supplies, industry dries up and blows away. 
   Every day that Obama holds up Keystone XL brings us one day closer to bankruptcy. 

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Support your constituents.

We have a Democratic US rep from New Hampshire, a far northern and rural state.  We are so far north we touch Canada.  Winter up here lasts into May.  We had four inches of fresh snow at my place just seven days ago.  We all heat with oil.  $4 a gallon oil.   One oil delivery can set us back $700.  
  We are a rural state.  We don't have mass transit, commuter rail, light rail, plain old diesel bus service or even taxis.  Up here we drive to work, every day.  At $3.70 a gallon.
   We are not addicted to oil.  We use as little as possible.  But we must get to work.  And we must heat our houses.
   We want lower prices for essential fuel.  Now we have a project to pipe vast amounts of crude oil to American refineries from a friendly neighboring country. That will be turned into gasoline and furnace oil, vastly increasing the supply.  We all know the law of supply and demand, increase the supply and the price goes down.  Plus building the pipeline will put a lot of unemployed people to work and increase demand for a zillion different industrial items. 
  And so how does our gallant Democratic US rep vote? 
  Annie Kuster voted to kill the pipeline.   Just to support all her constituents. 
  We better remember in November.  Or Kuster will have us all living a Hiawatha lifestyle.