Biden on Gun Control

More video with commentary from Tim at Military Arms Channel.  Eight minutes long but worth it! 

Brother Joe's Gun-Buying Advice

And here I thought he was out to ban guns...

Best Headline of 2013

I really hope this headline was written unintentionally... at any rate, this is something that both parties would agree with.  

US Pays Tribute to King as Obama Begins New Term

Some Help for Brother Joe...

When you are serious about solving a problem, you give it to the man who can make it happen... Vice President Joe Biden.  

With that in mind, President Obama has volunteered VP Biden to head up a task force to ram through anti-gun legislation... I mean "provide immediate recommendations about how to reduce gun violence".  

Being that Vice President Biden is a busy and thoughtful guy, I would like to forward some recommendations as a place to start.  

1. Hope nobody remembers that "Fast and Furious" thing.  

2. Ensure that any proposed legislation fails to differentiate between legal gun owners and mass murders.  Demand further gun control while mentioning some blah blah about the complexity of the issue, mental health, etc.    

3. Do your best to ignore that the rumor of further gun restrictions has caused the biggest run on "assault weapons", high capacity magazines, and ammunition in recent memory.  

4. Develop a sub-task force to invent more scary terms like "high-powered assault weapon" and allow career anti-gunners in congress to define same.  

5. Seek to introduce "sensible legislation" that places limitations on any other constitutional amendments as may apply. Freedom of speech?  Unreasonable search and seizure?  Self incrimination?  Poll taxes?  Put them all on the table. It's for the children after all.  

6. Above all, pass some legislation to exploit the Sandy Hook mass murders while the polls favor what you have wanted to do all the time anyway.  

No Guns Here...

In the wake of the Sandy Hook mass murders, it is often difficult to separate truth from fiction between the warring factions.  Here to help you think is NY Senator Charles Schumer, who yesterday said, of NRA Executive VP Wayne LaPierre:

"LaPierre "blames everything but guns, movies, the media, President Obama, gun-free school zones, you name it, the video games, he blames them," Schumer said. "Now, trying to prevent shootings in schools without talking about guns is like trying to prevent lung cancer without talking about cigarettes."

With apologies to Candy Crowley, I'd like to correct the Senator on a couple of points.  LaPierre did indeed mention the president FOUR times in his official remarks.  Three of them were to point out that the president, as well as members of congress, are themselves protected by armed security, but that they think that denying the same protection to your children in schools makes them SAFER.  The fourth mention was this:

Ladies and gentlemen, there is no national, one-size-fits-all solution to protecting our children. But do know this President zeroed out school emergency planning grants in last year's budget, and scrapped "Secure Our Schools" policing grants in next year's budget.

At this point, at least half of you should probably stop reading, as hearing for the first time the actual message that LaPierre delivered may cause painful cognitive dissonance.  Return to your TV and what LaPierre REALLY MEANT to say will be repeated to you for the next few days, as part of the greater campaign against high capacity magazines, military style weapons, gun owners, and the second amendment.  

As to his point that LaPierre doesn't talk about guns, there are TWENTY mentions of guns in the official remarks.  Here are a few of them and I hope that you might agree with at least some of his points...

As brave, heroic and self-sacrificing as those teachers were in those classrooms, and as prompt, professional and well-trained as those police were when they responded, they were unable — through no fault of their own — to stop it.

As parents, we do everything we can to keep our children safe. It is now time for us to assume responsibility for their safety at school. The only way to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Would you rather have your 911 call bring a good guy with a gun from a mile away ... or a minute away?

Now, I can imagine the shocking headlines you'll print tomorrow morning: "More guns," you'll claim, "are the NRA's answer to everything!" Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools. But since when did the word "gun" automatically become a bad word?

A gun in the hands of a Secret Service agent protecting the President isn't a bad word. A gun in the hands of a soldier protecting the United States isn't a bad word. And when you hear the glass breaking in your living room at 3 a.m. and call 911, you won't be able to pray hard enough for a gun in the hands of a good guy to get there fast enough to protect you.

So why is the idea of a gun good when it's used to protect our President or our country or our police, but bad when it's used to protect our children in their schools? They're our kids. They're our responsibility. And it's not just our duty to protect them — it's our right to protect them.

Let me be clear...

An unemployment numbers allegory...

Let's say when I'm 19, I say to my Dad: "If you pay my room and board and tuition for the next four years, I promise I'll never fail a class".  

Then I proceed to flunk every class for the next three and a half years.  All along the way I blame the school, my professors, society, my enemies, everything but my own performance.  

Finally, in the second semester of what is my fourth freshman year... I pull out a D minus in ONE class.  

So then I say to my Dad: "My grades are at a 44 month high!  See, I just needed a little time to see the results of my study habits.  How about paying my way for another four years?"

Would my Dad be a racist if he didn't believe me?  

Oil Production and Obama

Under fire for surging gas prices in an election year, President Obama this week predictably trotted out his three year old energy speech and mocked republicans for their belief that increased domestic oil production would lead to decreased dependence on foreign oil.  


Pause for effect.  


There are so many ways we could go with this, but let's focus on one way.  In his remarks, the president stated:


Now, we absolutely need safe, responsible oil production here in America. That’s why under my Administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years.

It was painful to hear his stand-in press secretary try to explain later that President Obama wasn't really trying to take credit for the increased domestic production.  


Which is understandable in light of recent developments, such as:


1. Blocking the Keystone Pipeline.  Desperate to keep this loser issue off the table, congressional democrats have thrown all manner of disruptions and distractions into the effort to get Keystone up again, including, strangely, an effort to make sure that none of the Keystone oil goes outside the country.  Its not really clear why petroleum exports would be a bad thing... other than it involves US oil companies making money... never mind.  


2. My personal favorite... the Gulf of Mexico moratorium and slowdown following the Deepwater Horizon blowout, imposed on the industry across the board regardless of the facts.  I have blogged about this ad nauseum so I'll stop now.  


3. The real reason production is up... Obama and the EPA have been slow to throw up barriers to fracking, which is where all the increases in production are coming from. 


Now let me be clear.  All of this tripe sounds great rolling off the teleprompter, but the same plan rehashed over the course of three years is not a plan, it is a speech.  And time has borne that out.  


If only he were serious.    

Your Obamacare minute, part one

From page 312 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act... under the headings of:

PART 3—ENCOURAGING DEVELOPMENT OF NEW PATIENT CARE MODELS

SEC. 3021. ESTABLISHMENT OF CENTER FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID

INNOVATION WITHIN CMS.

(a) IN GENERAL.— Title XI of the Social Security Act is amended

by inserting after section 1115 the following new section:

‘CENTER FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID INNOVATION'

Read way, way, way down many pages and you get to a subheading titled:

  (f) FUNDING.—
  (1) IN GENERAL.—There are appropriated, from amounts
in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated—
  (A) $5,000,000 for the design, implementation, and
evaluation of models under subsection (b) for fiscal year
2010;
  (B) $10,000,000,000 for the activities initiated under
this section for the period of fiscal years 2011 through
2019; and
  (C) the amount described in subparagraph (B) for the
activities initiated under this section for each subsequent
10-year fiscal period (beginning with the 10-year fiscal period
beginning with fiscal year 2020).

Amounts appropriated under the preceding sentence shall remain

available until expended.

Better get back to work, you have a program to fund.  

Hope, change, deja vu, fertilizer.

In a move certain to distress those who believe that oil spills are caused by presidential proposals to drill offshore, last week the Obama administration announced a new offshore oil and gas lease sale.

Tied to this most generous offer of new leases is a plan to increase the minimum bid from $37.50 to $100 per acre, to "ensure that taxpayers receive fair market value for offshore resources".  This will certainly stick it to the big oil companies who, according to the narrative, curiously spend millions to acquire leases on which they have no intention of drilling.  The fact that oil and mineral leases represent one of the largest sources of nontax revenue to the treasury is apparently beyond the scope of the article.  

The more jaded of you may recall that the president blocked construction of the Keystone XL pipeline the week before, citing the need for further environmental studies, in addition to the three years of existing environmental studies.  In addition, the threat of US sanctions has Iran threatening to block the Strait of Hormuz, and with it much of the middle east's oil production. Other than that, there is really no reason to ramp up domestic production, after all, if we did that, it would be years before we produced any new oil from new drilling, right?

But don't you go thinking that the Obama administration is not in support of offshore drilling, far from it!  In fact, if we go back to April of 2010, mere weeks before the BP spill, Obama proposed opening the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the north slope of Alaska, and areas along the Atlantic coast to drilling for the first time, which was a bold plan.  It was, however, a stupid idea when GW Bush proposed additional drilling in 2008, and at the time a particular Illinois senator called it a capitulation to the oil industry, but no matter.  

For those who work in the industry and live and die by drilling contracts, empty promises to develop offshore resources mean nothing when they are accompanied by a consistent full-court press of government interference in offshore oil and gas production. It’s going to be a long election year.  

Change you can believe in

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this picture will not need much introduction.  This is an aerial shot of one section of Fourchon, Louisiana, drilling central for the Gulf of Mexico, taken on the 27th of October, 2011, over a year after the gulf was long since cleaned up.  


Boats.  Parked.  Everywhere.  In better days, these boats would be out supporting drilling operations and only in port to load and unload.  Unfortunately, this has been the scene since shortly after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.  Followed by an initial uptick in business for Deepwater Horizon response, and followed by a very long and ongoing period of governmental interference with drilling operations in the gulf.  


This is the "boot on the neck", the "boot on the throat", and the tough talking administration judging "whose ass to kick".  Unfortunately, the rest of the industry, and particularly the third party providers like these boat companies are still feeling the pain, and do not factor into the new jobs bill or the 99%.  


By the way, BP just got a new permit to drill in the gulf.  Better luck next time, guys.  

Deepwater Horizon and the moratorium - a year later

Over a year after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Department of the Interior is issuing drilling permits as never before!  Oil companies are back to work!  And oil production in the gulf is at a high not seen since... um, 2003!!!


Err... not so much.  


Nearly all of the "new" deepwater permits being issued are resumptions of existing permits that were suspended after the Horizon disaster.  It took nearly a year for the Department of Interior to issue the first of these, and unimpressed Louisiana Senators have since resorted to hardball tactics in order to speed up the pace of permitting.  More often than not, when Interior speaks of "offshore permits", they are likely referring to shallow water permits rather than the high yield deepwater permits that were disproportionately affected by the moratorium.  


With a high unemployment rate and one of the lowest per capita income figures in the lower 48, Louisiana cannot afford to let their relatively highly paid oil and gas work force remain idle.  Since the moratorium, estimates range from 8,000 to 18,000 jobs lost as a direct result of the moratorium.  A year ago, Lafayette hosted a "Rally for Economic Survival" in an attempt to shine the media spotlight on the economic devastation of the spill brought on not by the Horizon disaster, but by the arbitrary government imposed moratorium.  As the argument goes in the oil industry, the overreaction by the Interior Department largely ignores the lack of major spills in the gulf over decades of drilling and production, and shutting down all drilling in the gulf is much like grounding all domestic passenger flights after a single airline crash.  But for as much noise and congressional pressure that the region has put out, Interior still makes the rules, and that is where their leverage ends.  


As a part-time resident of Louisiana and employee of the gulf oil industry, I don't need any further proof beyond what I see with my own eyes on a daily basis... third party support contracts at their lowest point since the early 90s, idle infrastructure and equipment everywhere you look, contracts, equipment, and personnel going overseas, and rounds of layoffs that just keep on coming.  


So far as production being way up and oil companies not exercising existing lease blocks, it is difficult to separate the ignorance from the distortion of those making these statements.  


There is PRODUCTION, which involves existing wells pumping oil for years on end, and there is EXPLORATION, which involves high dollar and high risk new projects where the lease of the drilling rig alone can be over half a million dollars a day.  This is where most of the money is made, particularly for third party support contractors in the oilfield who have been hit hard by the moratorium.  Killing off exploration while pointing to increased production can be likened to choking somebody by the neck while stating that their increased heart rate shows that they are doing just fine.  


And why exactly would companies not exercise leases that they already own and are sitting on?  If they were not allowed to drill on the leases they hold, that would be one reason.  If they were not allowed to bid because future lease sales were suspended that would be another.  But the most likely reason is that companies won't drill if they think there is nothing down there.  With the cost of each new drilling project easily reaching into the millions and an oversupply of natural gas, drilling for anything short of large oil finds makes little economic sense.  Add to the mix that Interior keeps on moving the goal and changing the rules, and now you are living in the Gulf of Mexico.  


I am not knocking green energy or thinking that my oil and gas job will be around forever.  But I believe that we should, particularly in a down economy, be rethinking energy subsidies of all kinds, and let the markets determine what is a viable energy source and what is not.  Like it or not, right now it is oil and gas.  The infrastructure that brings you relatively cheap oil from across the world is not going away, but if you make it hard enough for energy to be produced here in the US, the exploration assets will go overseas and take the US jobs with them.  In fact, it is already happening.  Drilling rigs which lose hundreds of thousands of dollars a day when idle will not choose to remain idle indefinitely.  


"Big Oil" lives in an effective 40-50% tax bracket.  The more they make, the more revenue that pours into the government.  What do they do with much of their "record windfall profits"?  More exploration of course, so that they can make MORE money, which generates MORE federal taxes.  Furthermore, one of the largest non-tax sources of federal revenue remains oil and gas leases, the bulk of which comes from offshore sources.  


In conclusion, the Department of Interior's promise to keep their "boot on the neck" of BP manifested itself as a "boot on the throat" of the entire US offshore industry.  Arguing that boosting domestic production will not help our current economic situation is moronic.  If the president truly wakes up thinking about how to get people back to work, he can put ideology aside and put 13,000 people in Louisiana back to work tomorrow.  And then he can go back to sleep.  


Since being issued a resumption permit, Exxon Mobil a couple of weeks ago announced one of the biggest finds in the gulf in years.  The oil is here, folks... lets produce it with US labor for US consumption.  


For a slightly less editorial view of things we can do TODAY to fix the current US energy crisis, check out the below PM article.  


10 fixes for the New Energy Crisis

Please watch this space for a future rant on the effect of the oil industry and the BP spill on the Louisiana marshes and coast.