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Gas Price Hypocrisy (Three Minutes to Read)

6/11/2012

When it comes to politics I get upset about many things but this particular issue is one that makes me go through the roof.

When Obama was running against McCain one of the major issues the Democratic Party and the media kept cramming down everyone’s throats is that gas prices were high because
Republicans were in bed with oil companies. They said Republican economic and foreign policies were complete failures because our economy was crippled because of the price of gas. While on the campaign trail Senator Obama often gave stories about struggling Americans. One guy couldn’t afford to even drive to a job interview. One teacher couldn’t teach anymore because she couldn’t afford the gas it took to get to work. The issue of oil prices wasn’t just a side note to their campaign it was a major issue. You can go to YouTube and find all kinds of videos from heavy hitter democrats tearing up the Republican Party for how they were destroying America because of letting oil prices get out of control.

Now what is the state of our union? Gas prices under George Bush averaged $1.87 a gallon. The democrats touted that this amount was twice what it was ten years prior so they blamed Bush for allowing it to increase so much. I don’t know about you but I’d take $1.87 in a heartbeat. Under President Obama gas prices have more than doubled and in some states have gone over $4.00 a gallon. Oops, based on what the democrats said to get Obama elected they’ve got some explaining to do.

Enter the embarrassing spin machine by the Democrats and the media. Apparently high gas prices are now a good thing for America. I know you’re thinking to yourself: “No they didn’t!” Oh, yes they did! Here’s why they say that high gas prices are actually good for us:

1) Because people have been driving less there have been less accidents and deaths.
2) High oil prices provide jobs. CBS said that it pushes more companies to pursue alternative fuel/power for automobiles.
3) ABC News said that some experts consider the high gas prices “A blessing in disguise.”Their reporter said that around 1,100 people a month will be saved from carbon monoxide poisoning because of less cars on the road. How in the world could they possibly know that 1,100 people a month will be saved? It’s disgusting that researches spew out garbage like this in order to support a political party.

This blog is called Gas Price Hypocrisy. I’ve seen a lot of things during my political experiences but this whole issue is right up there at the top. Democrats were livid in the speeches they gave about how Republicans were destroying America because they couldn’t put a lid on gas prices. They said Republican policies were all wrong and that they were
in bed with oil companies; all of these accusations backed up by the high price of fuel at $1.87 a gallon!

So now all of a sudden we should“count our blessings” and be “optimistic” about high gas prices because it’s actually a good thing for America. This reminds me of John Stossel’s show:“Give me a break!” What they’re doing is so blatant. They must think the average American is an idiot. I hate what the Democrats are doing but I hate the media even more
for not caring about integrity in their news coverage. There are certainly thousands of economics professors who’d disagree with high gas prices being a good thing but they certainly didn’t interview them.

Someone once said tongue in cheek:“I’m a politician; of course you can’t trust me. When I’m not kissing a baby I’m trying to steal her lollypop.” Sadly enough, our expectations are very low as to the credibility of politicians on both sides of the aisle. But when we can no longer trust news organizations to give us unbiased facts not their biased opinions, they are no longer of any use to us.

I can’t begin to tell you how upset this issue makes me. My family was democrats so I was one until I got in my 20’s and started figuring out how the world works. I don’t know who democrats are any more. The stuff they’re pulling like this gas price situation makes me so glad I left their party. I hope more of them figure out they should be ashamed at their tactics of hate, lies, and misinformation. I know Republicans aren’t perfect but I definitely consider them by far the lesser of two evils!

The U.S. Prison System (Seven Minutes to Read)

6/11/2012

Most of the information I’m getting ready to share is directly from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). I tried to verify the statistics through other sources but when I peeled back the layers they pretty much got their information from the DOJ as well.

Note:
The information in this paragraph came from Forbes and Money Magazine. The
prison industry is worth $37 billion dollars. In August of last year Charlotte, NC hosted the American Correctional System Association. Over 400 vendors attended selling things like: beds, modular jail cells, suicide resistant toilets, toothbrushes, uniforms, etc. In case you’re wondering, the modular jail cells come into play when they’re building or remodeling prisons. Builder’s use tese cell kits instead of having to build individual cells; this way there’s
uniformity in their construction. This jail cell modular’s also come with beds, built-in lighting, and toilets.

I would like to mention something regarding the $37 billion dollars listed above because I think this number is way low. The reason I say this is that I don’t think they analyzed it correctly. It would have been more accurate if they took the annual budgets of each prison system and divided it by the total number of inmates. Plus there’s the cost of building the prison in the first place so this should be a prorated expense applied to each inmate as well. By doing it this way the entire costs of keeping them incarcerated would be applied (i.e. guard salaries, maintenance costs, office supplies, etc.). This is just a rough draft on my part but I believe the costs are closer to $46 billion which is 25% more than their projections.

The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world. Less than 1% of our population is incarcerated although I’m sure there’re a lot more people who should be behind bars. I saw a lot of conflicting data in reference to the increase or decrease in crime over the last decade (many researchers state it’s only up a few
percentage points). But in pulling the raw data from the DOJ’s database (I didn’t have to hack in) I found that in the last ten years crime has risen 18.4%. Why the spread is so far off I couldn’t tell you but in one case I did find an incorrect formula. The increase in crime is more than likely due to law enforcement’s “War on Drugs.”The crimes were already being committed it’s just the police departments were given added resources to where they could finally start picking these criminals up.

We’re in terrible company in reference to our extremely high incarceration rate because we’re followed by Russian then Rwanda. The safest countries to live in are England, Norway, and the Netherlands (although the Netherlands are pretty open to drug use). Here in the U.S. Maine, Minnesota, and New Hampshire are the safest states to live in while Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma are the most dangerous.

There’re over 2,000,000 prisoners in our County, Federal, and State correctional facilities and around 5,000,000 who are either on parole or probation. If we add these two together around 3% of our population are criminals.

Around 70% of prisoners are non-whites. The percentage of blacks who commit crimes is more than four times higher than whites and over two times higher than Latinos. The numbers above are calculated correctly as researchers take into consideration the number of blacks in our country and the number of them who commit crimes.

There’s no doubt in my mind that blacks on average have worse attorneys than whites so their likelihood of incarceration is higher. This still doesn’t mean their innocent of a crime it’s just that good attorneys can get clients off on technicalities. But their claim of being
unjustly targeted isn’t legitimate.

First of all, both blue collar and white collar blacks are rarely arrested just like in the white community. In the communities where a majority of crimes take place, which are where there’s public housing and a lot of welfare participants, black police officers are the
primary law enforcers. This is done to create better relationships between the police department and the black community. Blacks are committing crimes against other blacks and black police officers are arresting them not white officers who are racially profiling. In order to reduce the amount of black prisoners who are in jail they need to stop committing crimes especially since they are only hurting people in their own communities. From a factual data perspective researchers could easily come to the conclusion that blacks hate blacks more than whites hate blacks.

Men comprise 93% of our prison population and 41% of them are repeat offenders. It may sound hard to believe but we only have around 110,000 women in federal and state prisons. Non U.S. citizens make up 27% of our federal prison population while overall they comprise 6% of our total prison population.

Over half of the prisoners in state prisons are violent offenders (i.e. armed robbery, murder, rape, etc.). As a percentage it’s up quite dramatically but we need to keep in mind that due to a shortage of prison cells, minor offenders are getting to walk more than they used to in
order to make room for the violent criminals.

Tax payers in California spend $47,102 on each inmate per year while the best deal belongs to Louisiana taxpayers who only spend $13,000. Federal prisons do a fairly good job as they average $22,632 per inmate ($62.01 per day). Keep in mind that I believe these numbers are low because my projections (as seen above) are $46 billion not $37 billion. As a side note, the annual amount of money spent on phone service for inmates is $9 billion dollars which is roughly $500 a year per prisoner. This is another major contract some vendor is getting. There’s no doubt in mind that corruption exist when assigning which vendor will get the contract.

There‘re over 500,000 people in jail awaiting trial because they can’t afford to bond out. This backlog of in-house prisoners is due directly to not having enough resources to process them through our judicial system. The right to a speedy trial has been thrown out the window. With this in mind U.S. taxpayers have to spend over nine billion dollars a year
to house them. I wonder if there would be a better return on our taxpayer investment if we put the $9 billion towards increasing the number of attorneys, clerks, and judges.

As I mentioned earlier prison overcrowding is a terrible problem for our judicial system. We aren’t building correctional facilities fast enough because legislators don’t want the added pressure on their budgets. They’ve been turning down repeated requests for more money at the country, federal, and state levels for a long time. The bottom line is that none of them want to give up other items in their budgets to allocate the necessary funds to keep criminals behind bars.

We all know prison overcrowding leads to various offenders (sometimes violent), getting out of prison before serving their full sentences. Most of them can get their sentences cut in half if they don’t get in trouble while serving their time. Could you imagine if you or a family member was hurt by one of these criminals and instead of serving ten years for the crime he gets out in five? I wonder if any of the lawmakers turning down requests to build more prisons has ever been a victim of a violent crime.

Here’s what you probably don’t know; instead of allocating the necessary funds towards building more prisons Congress pulled an end around on taxpayers and the U.S. Supreme Court back in 2004. Without our knowledge Congress ordered Federal Judges to reduce prison sentences even though sentencing guidelines had already been established. This is some verbiage their mandate included: “It is necessary to recognize that imprisonment
is not an appropriate means of promoting correction and rehabilitation.”

Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist slammed Congress over this issue. Why in the world did they not involve the Supreme Court in an issue that directly affects them? Once again, think budget.

If you want to know more about what Congress did just Google:“Downward Departures” and you’ll find a lot of material to peruse. This term describes what happened because there was a “downward departure” from normal sentencing guidelines.

It blows my mind that Congress would even put in writing that prison time isn’t effective. They’re completely wrong in what they’re saying. First of all, 59% of prisoners consider their first jail experience something they never want to experience again so they do not become
repeat offenders. Secondly, lives have been changed because of the education prisoners have been given.

Our prison system is filled with high school dropouts but many of them have been able to get their GED’s which can turn their lives around. We’ve even had prisoners get their college degree. Most Prison Wardens say they have great rehabilitation tools but that most prisoners don’t take advantage of them. This is scary but a lot of prisoners pick on people who take classes to better themselves. Prisoners who do this say the people attending these classes are “punking out.” Isn’t that just great? Why they do this is a story all in itself.

I hope you agree that I’ve shot down Congress’s theory about reducing sentences because they believe being incarcerated doesn’t correct behavior or rehabilitate. I’d be perfectly fine if they were right. I believe our prison system’s primary responsibilities are to deter crime (it works on me as I’m afraid I’d have a big cell mate) and punish people who break our laws. Congress left out these two issues in describing why they want sentences lowered.

We can make a difference by contacting our federal and state representatives and ask them about the issue. We then need to ask them what they’re going to do about it. Most people don’t get involved unless an issue negatively affects them. I want to remind you that 41% of
prisoners are repeat offenders. Life is a numbers game and you need to ask yourself: “Could you eventually be in the wrong place at the wrong time?” You could improve your odds by 41% if we keep these convicts behind bars like they’re supposed to be!

There is one other thing I'd like for you to think about. How many times have you heard of a politican being a victim of a crime? It certainly happens but as a percentage of their population do you think crime is a big issue for them? It begs the question that if it isn't an issue/concern for them are they really going to address these issues? I bet if they were more victim to crime the issues of prison space and sentencing guidlines would change quickly!

The Truth About MPG Standards (Five Minutes to Read)

6/11/2012

Most of the raw data and statistics below are from the U.S. Energy Information
Administration. I went directly to their database to gather the informatinon.

I can only take you back to when Jimmy Carter was running for office but every single presidential candidate has said our economy and dependence on foreign oil would be their top priorities. But once elected, the issue of our dependence upon foreign oil is rarely heard from again until the next election. Now I have to say the republican party has gotten much more aggressive about taking on the problem by pursuing U.S. oil sources but keep in mind even when they had the House and Senate they didn't get it done which begs the question why?

Our government knows the best way we can reduce our need for oil is to have vehicles that use less gas - period. In 2011, it was estimated we consumed 134 billion gallons of gas (21% of world consumption); even a 5% increase in average fuel economy can reduce gas consumption by over 6.7 billion gallons.

So it’s easy to see that we can make a tremendous difference on reducing our dependency through improving fuel economy in the U.S. Even though our government has established new guidelines for automakers, fuel economy on average has only improved around 2.5% in the last ten years. As it stands now most passenger vehicles are supposed to get 30 MPG. But let’s face it we all know that it’s a game between the government and the auto industry because when have you ever gotten the MPG promised on your new vehicle’s sticker?

We should ask ourselves why haven’t we aggressively increased fuel economy so we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil? As I’ve mentioned in other blogs when you’re trying to figure things out, follow the money. And when it comes to politicians you not only need to follow the money but also follow the votes.

Here’s the ugly truth: Congress realized years ago that any increase in fuel economy has a tremendous impact on tax revenues because of their 18.5 cents a gallon federal tax. The 2.5% increase in fuel economy over the last ten years will negatively affect tax revenues by $3.7 billion dollars a year. So the question is what incentive does Congress have to really push towards more efficient vehicles?

Every year the auto industry receives new government standards for fuel economy based on vehicle class. It might surprise you to know that it hasn’t changed much over the last ten years. Plus, just how exactly are they punishing automakers for not achieving standards? I think it’s fair to assume the MPG standards they come up with each year is for political purposes more than anything else.

To prove they don’t really have an agenda of improving oil consumption (refined into gas of course) all you need to do is contact Volkswagen’s U.S. division. The vehicles they are already selling us (and built in the U.S.) can receive a different engine that gets over 70 MPG. You could call Ford and ask them the same thing. These high efficiency vehicles aren’t allowed to be sold in the U.S. so Ford and VW send them overseas instead.

This leads to another question: why aren’t these car dealers allowed to sell these vehicles in the U.S.? One of the people from VW said they were originally told they couldn’t sell them because emissions were 10% worse in these fuel saving vehicles. Ford and VW responded with a great question and that is: if fuel economy improved by 50% then wouldn’t emissions drop by 40%?

Not being able to argue this point, Congress then told them they couldn’t sell these vehicles for economic reasons and wouldn’t specify exactly what they meant. They were told it doesn’t affect them because they get to sell cars regardless. Both companies got tired of the bureaucracy so they caved in. My guess is that both companies ended up benefiting in some way with Congress giving them a little something to keep quiet. Congress certainly had a lot to work with being they would lose around $15 billion dollars of tax revenue a year if fuel economy reached even 50 MPG.

There’s another issue that isn’t nearly as dramatic as the potential reduction of tax revenues and that is the oil trade can be a good and a bad thing. Americans are concerned about the leverage OPEC has on us and I agree completely. But our government looks at it another way and that is we kind of own them as well.

Nations like Saudi Arabia are scared to death we’ll find a significant amount of oil here at home. This makes sense because the U.S. is by far everyone’s best customer. These oil producing countries have built significant economies (infrastructure) primarily off of oil so if we pull back, their economies will get in very bad shape which leads to very mad citizens.

We use this consumer leverage to gain strategic military access in an area that has a lot of leaders who are loose cannons. I don’t agree with this strategy because it’s yet another example of us trying to save the world. Countries in the middle-east and countries that surround this region need to police themselves. I hate to be selfish but their missiles aren’t headed our direction. The only real thing we get by being in the middle-east is hatred towards us for interfering. They already hate us anyway because we are allies with a country they want to wipe off the face of the earth. If we think we’ll ever have good relations in the middle-east we are just naive we’re stupid.

I hope you’re as disgusted about this as I am. Every time I turn around politicians are doing things that we’d be fired for in the real world. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that Governor Romney and President Obama will tout that they will decrease our dependence on foreign oil. They’ll say it will be a priority for their administration. Then like what has happened over the last twenty years, nothing will be done. They just count on taxpayers falling for it again and again. The things they do in Washington are a very clear signal to me they think we’re stupid.

It’s time for us to show them they’re wrong. It’s time for us to ask our legislators why we aren’t using vehicles that have 70+ miles per gallon especially since the vehicles are made right here in the U.S. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to hear their answers!

Gas Price Hypocrisy (Three Minutes to Read)

The U.S. Prison System (Seven Minutes to Read)

The Truth About MPG Standards (Five Minutes to Read)

Author: John Mann

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