Just So's You Guys All Know...

...Barack Obama has come up with the solution to high gas prices.

He wants to raise taxes on all oil sold for more than $80 a barrel.

Thus demonstrating his total lack of understanding of basic economics.

See, companies don't have huge vaults of money in which the execs swim like Scrooge McDuck; they use any and all money they make IN THE BUSINESS. When you increase taxes on a raw material crucial to the company's operations, that cost results directly in an increased cost to the consumer.

Raising taxes never, ever, ever helped anyone, anywhere, anytime, throughout all of human history.

Lowering taxes has never failed to do so.

Try eliminating the federal gas tax, and requiring the states to eliminate the state gas taxes; and maybe, making stock trading of oil "options" illegal; then you might make a dent in the gas prices.

But no; we're too busy mandating ethanol from corn, so we can drive up food prices - hurting the consumer - while the ethanol lowers fuel efficiency - hurting the consumer - to actually do anything productive, like develop nuclear power into an energy source capable of providing municipal power without oil, nationwide; trust me, if the only major fuel usage of oil was in cars, gas would be a lot cheaper - that HAPPENS when supply exceeds demand.

As long as we keep burning millions of barrels a day in oil at power stations, oil will cost an assload of money. This is just reality; wind power, water power, and solar power are too environment-dependent and inherently unreliable. The sole technologically feasible replacement power source we currently have available is nuclear power.

The reactors available today, however, are NOT like the ones from the 50's and 60's. There's no more meltdowns - they never reach a critical mass in themselves, so they can't - no more overheated waste water in the rivers and streams and tidal pools to kill fish - modern reactors can be cooled with helium, thus eliminating the hot water entirely - and they produce far less "waste" material than the old, inefficient reactors used to. Plus, we've now developed sufficient technology to safely dispose of reactor waste in any number of ways.

The objections people have to nuclear power are based, frankly, in an abysmal lack of actual knowledge about the technologies available, and fanned by the hysterical shrieking of wackoes who started opposing nuclear power in the 60's, and have never stopped, despite the fact that the technology has grown and changed immensely.

There's nothing immoral about using nuclear power.

There's nothing environmentally dangerous about using nuclear power.

There's nothing smart about NOT using nuclear power.

And refusing to use it is keeping gas prices at ludicrous levels.

But Obama's right; let's raise taxes on the oil companies. Surely, despite the mockery of all of human history, it will work THIS time.