Oil prices are inching up again.

It would be easy (I know the dems like to do it) to blame the oil companies again, but alas they are creeping up for the same reason they skyrocketed before—market conditions.   If demand exceeds supply and/or there is uncertainty in oil producing countries or OPEC reduces production, conditions are ideal for increased prices and it doesn’t matter what BP, Shell, etc. do. Right now demand is exceeding supply, OPEC has reduced production and there is unrest in the Middle East (does IRAN mean anything to you.) and Russia’s supply to Europe is erratic because of pipeline disputes.

OK, if only we could blame it on evil companies like Halliburton (did you know that contrary to press rumblings and internet stories Halliburton isn’t an oil company. They do supply things to oil companies like parts and fire fighters, but they don’t explore for oil for or produce oil. I checked on goggle.)

If the gas prices go up even more check and see if the government has added another gas tax.   It fills government coffers and convinces you to buy a smaller car. I wouldn’t have discussed this until a young woman called a radio show and complained because she couldn’t fit her 3 car seats in the back of her smaller mini-van. The era of the 3 or more kids has passed. You can now have only 1-2 kids. The government, combined with environmentalists, has found a sneaky way to force you to reduce your family.

You must have a car seat even for an older child and you must drive a smaller car so you can’t have 3 car seats in the second row so you have to reduce your family size. Take that you Catholics and Mormons. 

There was a story in the Sunday, January 4, 2009 issue of the Chicago Tribune about a Russian town that loved an environmentalist who had convinced them to lobby the government for stricter standards so that a nearby lake was still pristine enough for rare species to survive. A picture accompanying the story showed the environmentalist standing by the lake wondering at its beauty. Meanwhile the town’s people who helped her lost their jobs when the town mill was forced to close. The environmentalist had little sympathy for those who were unemployed because of the mills closure. The lake was pristine and the people had never thought of the unfortunate by-product.   It’s a problem. You have to balance the rights of nature with the rights of men. In this case the snail darter and spotted owls win and we lose. That doesn’t mean I believe in pollution, but I believe that both nature and man can benefit with enough forethought, and men do not need to be destroyed by environmental concerns. 

We eliminated DDT because of its effects were bad for nature and in the process increased the death rate due to malaria for man. All we really had to do was reduce the amount of DDT we used and man was still saved from malaria and nature was protected.   But with our all or nothing at all philosophy we couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

We had the same problem with paper bags. Their production was bad for trees so we replaced them with plastic bags. Now, those are even worse for the environment and we’re being pushed to cloth bags. How long do you think it will be before someone figures out that the contamination from leaking meats is bad? The bags have to be washed and dried and we’re using more water, which is bad for the environment. The solution is to charge a tax for the bags (are you beginning to see a pattern here) thus benefiting government and soon, I’ll bet, the environmental groups.

If fuel efficient cars use less gas then how long will it be before we are told by governments that they need more revenue from gas taxes so they will put a gps in each car to determine how many miles it travels and tax us for the miles we drive and the gas we use. (This is already being proposed on the west coast.) It reminds me of the time that our natural gas company told us that we hadn’t used enough gas during a warm winter so they had to raise the price. 

So you see it’s a win/lose situation and the government will get its pound of flesh no matter what you do. Maybe we need to eliminate government. “>)

Is the water hot enough for you yet?