If I Were Running for President, Part 1 of 5

If I were 36 years of age, or older, and able to run in the 2008 Presidential Election, the following paragraphs would be my platform. I believe in America and believe our best days are ahead of us...depending on the outcome of the next Presidential Election and then Mid-Term Elections, our worst days could also be ahead of us.

There are many issues facing this nation today. The first and foremost for every American today would have to be the price of gas. A close second, of course, is the two-pronged war on terror. Then, the major issues behind those would be the economy (which is directly related to gas prices), immigration, education, and jobs, also related to gas prices and the economy.

Over the next few blogs, I am going to explore and explain what would be my platform for running for President. While most of this may not be new to those that frequent my blogs, I do hope to convince a few voters to see the light and cast the correct votes this November, as well as in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, and so on and so forth.

Today, let's talk about gas prices. No, gas is not approaching $4 per gallon because Bush is in the back pocket of the oil companies. The oil companies could possibly do more to lower the cost of gas, but we can't expect Exxon and Cheveron to voluntarily give up their profits when we don't expect Snickers to voluntarily drop the price of candy bars. What we need to look for is answers as to what is really driving costs up.

The cost of oil is going up for the simple fact that there are billions more people using it today than they were 25 years ago. The shift from the stone age to the modern age over the last 20 years in China has drastically increased the need and demand for oil and gasoline. More demand, more cost. Simple economic fundamentals. If no one wants what you are selling, you can't give it away. But if your product is demanded and essential to survival of billions of people, prices skyrocket.

Countries like our good friend Saudi Arabia and Iran and Venezuela are holding the world economy hostage through OPEC, who controls most of the world's oil. They refuse to up oil production and sit back and watch the money roll in to their already overflowing pockets.

Our problem in America is our dependence on foreign oil. Our problem is that we have our own oil but refuse to use it. The United States is one of thousands of hands out in the oil market, like the masses crowding at the door of a soup kitchen during the Great Depression. We are like a farmer who won't sow his own oats and wheat, instead waiting in line for a crust from someone else, and paying steeply for it.

We have enough oil in Alaska to last a minimum...A MINIMUM!...of 30 years. Alaska can fuel our country's entire need for fossil fuel for over a generation! Yet, the environmental wack-os freak out and buy the best liberals available everytime we talk about drilling. ANWR (pronounced in the news an-whar), the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve, is a place of pristine beauty where rare and endangered wild life roam freely. ANWR is roughly the size of the state of South Carolina. The area that would need to be impacted would be roughly equivalent to the size of a large international airport. A large area, but hardly enough to show up on an atlas.

Plus, in the 30 years since drilling in ANWR was first killed by liberals, drilling and conservation technologies have progressed by lightyears. We have the technology to drill with minimal impact on the environment. Today's technology would provide more efficient and successful oil extraction while the spotted butt caribou can live on without a care in the world.

We need to drill our own oil in Alaska and other places. We have territory off of our Pacific and Atlantic coasts that would also provide oil for our country. Yet again, we are being held up by liberals who fight for environmentalist wackos and their slanted agendas.

Our nation has not built one new oil refinery in over 30 years. Why? You guessed it...liberals.
We have new, improved, environmentally safe technology to drill oil with virtually no impact on the areas inwhich we would drill. We have abundant oil to get us through an entire generation.

The second we pass legislation to start to drill and produce our own oil, I guarentee you that we will see OPEC change their tune and start lowering oil prices. They need the US as a customer too much to force us to pull out of OPEC completely once our own oil is on line.

Next, we need to invest in more nuclear power plants. We have the technology to make it the safest, most abundant and renewable source of energy. It would replace coal and oil power, thus alleviating the demand for those fossil fuels. Nuclear power would also help fuel cars that run on electricity, thus eliminating even more Carbon waste.

We have our own power sources...just need to get the people in power to allow us to tap into those resources. Once we lower our energy costs, inflation and the cost of every other product we use and need will likewise go down.

In my next blog, we will further explore what is slowing down our economy, both including skyrocketing fuel costs and other factors.