America The Reactive
Categories: Politics, Outsourcing, Populism, Business, Economics, war on the middle class, political, Mike Huckabee, Terrorist threat, Excessive CEO Compensation, Big Business, Off shoring, Attack on the middle class, Out Sourcing
"Three in four likely voters – 74% – support off-shore drilling for oil in U.S. coastal waters and more than half (59%) also favor drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, a new Zogby International telephone poll shows.
A majority of likely voters across the political spectrum support off-shore oil drilling, with vast majorities of Republicans (90%) and independents (75%) in favor of drilling for oil off U.S. coastal waters more than half of Democrats (58%) also said they favor off-shore drilling. Republicans (80%) and political independents (57%) are much more likely to favor drilling for oil in ANWR than Democrats (40%). The telephone survey of 1,113 likely voters nationwide was conducted June 12-14, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/- 3.0 percentage points."
While this is great news and we might finally get some movement on this from the House with Bush repeatedly beating on this point as he has for 8 years and public sentiment finally catching up. My question is, What took so long? Are American's just lemmings now? Or are we just powerless to change anything because our two party system has left us with no true choice?
Case in point; the housing crisis. Think about it, stagnant wages for 20 years, housing prices going through the roof (pardon the pun). So the solution is all kinds of risky financing schemes like no money down, interest only loans and no money down ARMS. This creates a housing boom with McMansions being built everywhere and people buy houses they cannot afford. No one saw it coming? How poor is our education system that pushes out people that can't figure out that if interest rates are at historic lows, they will go up and you won't be able to afford the house that you are in.
Right now, we get more than 80% of our oil from other countries. Who are most of these countries? Arab, Islamic controlled countries and communist or dictatorship controlled countries. What are these countries views of America? The Great Satan, Enemy of Communism... That's right people that hate us. Yet we don't see this coming?
Here's something that might be coming and we are heading for catastrophe.
We can't do anything for ourselves. What happens when a global conflict breaks out and cuts off the flow cheap goods from China?
Think about our, imports. Right now we don't have the capacity to clothe ourselves. We import 95% of our clothes from China and other countries. We don't have the capacity to build our own TV sets or Radios. We don't have the capacity to build our own Nuclear power plants. We don't have the capacity to fully feed ourselves. We definitely can't power our own cars. We're looking at sending military building overseas (Airbus) so we won't be able to build our own war machines... the list goes on and on. This trade deficit is not just sucking our economy dry by sending all the jobs and money overseas. It's sending all the American know how there as well.
Our factories are 30 years out of date. We haven't built a nuke power plant in 30 years. We haven't built a refinery in 20 years. Where does the knowledge go when no one here does it anymore? That's right, we are so vulnerable right now it's scary. We're even outsourcing our road building to other countries. Soon we won't even be able to build a bridge.
If and when a global conflict breaks out, will we be able to ramp everything up fast enough? I don't think so. We need to for once stop reacting when things happen and plan ahead. We need new investment in America from American sources. We need to rebuild our infrastructure and assure ourselves that we can take care of ourselves and we need to do it now.
The Oil crisis is a wake up call America. We need to reevaluate everything and stop sending all our knowledge, skills and know how overseas and start using it here for the good of all Americans, not just the elites.
Some of the points are valid; I would like to buy American-made goods (both cheap and high-end), and have close to all food produced here. I would like for all our energy to come domestically.
But mixing populist (in the bad way), jingoistic rhetoric with the economics makes for messy, generalizing logic: yes, we get our oil mostly from Arab and Muslim countries. Yes, many extremist groups and terrorist groups are anti-American, and often murderously so. However, what your narrow-minded opinion failed to address is the CAUSES of why groups that hate the American government (or society) rise to power. Who trained bin Laden and supported the Taliban? Who gave chemical weapons to Saddam? When we allow our government to deem common sense and peaceful diplomacy less important than hysterical anti-communism, anti-Iranian control of the region (in the case of Saddam) or anti-terrorism, then these are the results: our government, along with American weapons manufactures, have armed everyone and anyone they saw fit. The results, unfortunately are evident, particularly in the 'Third World' where valuable resources (oil, diamonds, e.g.) are controlled by a wealthy few because they can arm militias with cheap weapons.
Anyway, in regard to drilling off-shore and in ANWR, I don't know if the polls are as the author states:
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/technologyandresearch/a/anwrsurvey.htm
As well, anyone who's for off-shore drilling should consider the decades of damage done to the ocean's ecosystem by oil spills and other pollution.
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Thank you for the reply.
The link you provided to point out the polls has a date of Feb, 2005. Back before the high oil prices hit. The current polls show the mass majority in favor of offshore drilling and opening ANWR. This makes my point perfectly, American's don't think about things until it becomes a problem and then they react.
As far as oil spills and damage caused by offshore drilling. Modern technology has made it safer than ever, case in point, Hurricane Katrina, not one drop of oil spilled. If that doesn't prove safety, I don't know what will.
As far as the general Islamic rule in the middle east. If we didn't buy their oil, we wouldn't be funding the war machines for the Jihadists and anti American sentiment that prevails over there.
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