29 percent of voters —  including 37 percent of Democrats and 16 percent of Republicans — favor nationalizing the oil industry.

This is interesting…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1337248.stm

bobo,

And it’s only getting worse…my paranoia that is. Although, honestly, I’d consider it more like hopeful anticipation. If only I’d dare to dream!

Larry,

Do you honestly need someone to explain to you what would happen if the gov’t took over the means to pump and distribute fuel in this country? They can’t maintain the roads with the trillions they steal now. They can’t teach a kid to read in 12 years. They can’t do anything efficiently…except sell lotto tickets.

Would you let them take over food production too? I mean, lets be consistant.

And, as the one apparently entertaining the idea of taking another great leap forward over the debris of everything else gov’t has screwed up, shouldn’t you be the one explaining how gov’t confiscation of an entire industry would be a GOOD thing?

D.Toole,

Did you steal that word for word from a Kos diary? It sounds like it.

A tenet of liberal faith…an agreement, trade or otherwise. is only as good as the word of the people who make it and, a liberals word isn’t worth a gerbil fart. That Obama advocates (today, tomorrow could be different)starting a trade war then that only shows how monumentally stupid he is. Not that I don’t believe it. The man is an idiot surrounded by failed idiots and followed by squealing groupie idiots. And thats just the press.

I just can’t understand how people can let themselves be manipulated to such levels of servility. Whatever happened to the free minded Americans that would have laughed at such needy weaklings and house pets?

“There is a spector haunting America…“
I would be shocked to the heart attack stage if the United States nationalized anything. It is not going to happen.
  But it is intresting to note how the reactionaries here characterize socialism. Usually, anything that remotely helps poor people ,gives sexual or racial equality, even if it is totally within the framework of capitalism.
  A key, if not the key component of socalism, is government ownership of the means of production . Rest easy, Fortune 500 companies, you are safe,. I have yet to hear a Democrat advocate that.
  Personally, I am an economic agnostic.
I like the old Soviet joke about socialism vr. capitalism. “Under capitalism you have exploitation of man by man. Under socialism, its just the opposite.“
  R. Smith seems to be at his paranoid best today.

There is no reason the government can’t do a good job at anything; the reason its record is abysmal is because of the culture of government in America: its rules concerning purchase and service contracts are archaic and show obvious favoritism and cronyism.

That can (and should) be fixed.

But what we’re really concerned about here is oil prices. How can they be lowered?

OPEC is obviously being influenced by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They know that restricting production will keep the price high. and cause trouble in America, and, hence here in River City. How do we get them to increase production?

The far-right says threaten them with war, particularly a war with Iran. Well, that didn’t work in Iraq.

Obama has said that free trade agreements might be broken if oil prices don’t drop, but then backed down from that position. That actually might work, but using food as a trade weapon is not very appealing to the American public at large.

The Bush administration is reportedly entertaining the idea of offering weapons for oil.  This, of course is nothing new, but the people with oil don’t particularly want the weapons we would offer when they can get the kind they DO want from China, Russia or one of the Baltic states.

What has worked in the past is government-approved and backed business partnerships, where American oil companies drill in foreign countries. We already have such agreements with Canada and a couple of South American countries. We should move quickly to increase production there. This could be accomplished within 24 months.

This alone, however, would not bring the price of oil down. We would have to also 1) invest in battery and/or capacitor energy storage. If lithium-ion batteries could be improved upon in the same magnitude as they improved upon alkaline cells, we would be about to run all-electric cars 800 miles at highway speeds on a single charge. 2) We would have to invest in alternate energy production as a means of convincing the rest of the world that we are serious about being fuel independent. This would work, even if we were initially unsuccessful, as would probably be the case.

All in all, it can’t be easy. We need leadership in government that we have never seen before. Obama? Maybe.  McCain? Doubtful…

I am today!

The two posts below fail to say WHY nationalization is bad.

I found the survey itself scarier than the results.

A dumb person might think that locking up the oil assets will protect it, when in fact it could do the opposite. Plus there is some reason to expect the guv might do a better job of airport security but it would be hard to imagine them doing even a fair job at oil and gas production.

Few countries do a decent job, one reason why the global oil wells are pumping so meagrely, so scantily (I was going to use the word niggardly but some not possessed with a good vocabulary might take the wrong definition from that word). Scanty sounds like underwear. Miserly, that’s a good word.

Some draconian measure to protect our oil interests may be needed in the future but so far that is just really bad scifi.

I thought the question of whether private industry or gov. research grants could solve the energy problem was especially dumb. Not the answers. The question itself.

So far, neither one has done us much good, but it’s entirely conceiveable a trifecta could emerge, research leading to gov. incentives leading to private enterprise using those incentives to bring the results to market.

Instead, they dumb down the question to a matter of Republican vs. Democrat philosophy. I know they are measuring ideology but ideology and the energy sector are mismatched bedfellows.

There is already way too much ideology to these discussions.

I was talking with someone recently about how our education system has bred a generation if extremely stupid people who lack the ability to comprehend what nationalization even means. That so many could support such a demonstrably stupid idea seems to prove my point.

Although maybe I underestimate. Perhaps by bringing the subject up people will be shaken from their comedy coma and realize just whats happening in this country…before the shooting starts and it’s too late.

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