brandon.plank[dot]com

For starters, rock stars are rarely political commentators for a reason: because they
open their mouths to talk, rather than sign, and this foolish bull shit comes spewing out.
But even if Mr. Waters were knowledgeable about the issues in Israel, he’s clearly
not Jewish, because he’d understand the REASON for the barrier. And since
I’m such a nice person, I’ll do the homework for him and explain it:

If you poll the average Israeli and ask them what they think of the Arabs or Palestinians,
you’ll find that most don’t have the hatred and dislike that many news broadcasts allude to.
Rather, what we see are people, JEWISH people, that want to live in a land and be free
from persecution of faith. I mean, the idea that Jews are persecuted by Christians
is an ironic situation, but a topic for another time.
Time and time again, the Israeli leaders have asked, no, pleaded with Palestinian leaders
to put an end to such lions like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah, but the problem is,
they can’t control the beasts they created.. so now the groups control the people by
continuing to carry out attacks and use fear to keep the war waging.
And even though there are courageous leaders like Abbas in leadership in Palestine,
the factions are still attacking Israel and even attacking themselves!

Clearly, this is NOT just an Israel/Palestinian issue, but it’s shifted to be a civil
war in Palestine, where Israelis are now in the cross fire.

Unlike most of the people that like to bitch and moan about Israel, I’ve actually been
there and seen the country for myself. I was there when there was an attack and
I’ve also seen the kindness that Arabs can and do show Israelis and other Jews.
But problem still remains that there is a non-Muslim country in a sea of Arab nations,
many of which have a deep rooted hatred for Jews and especially Israel, for it’s very
‘western’ society. History has proven that these countries do not want to be nice,
friendly neighbors and history has shown that the hatred and propaganda in the Arab
nations is not likely to go away.

So what would YOU do in this position?

Well, one way to keep the bombers and radicals out of your country is to build a wall
and restrict the flow of people in and out of the country. So let’s look at that for
a moment.
All countries have borders and all countries enforce them. America is looking to
post a huge fence/wall along the border with Mexico, yet there isn’t the outcry by
the world that this action is a crime against the people; so why is this stance’
considered acceptable when dealing/discussing the Israeli situation?
Some nations choose to militarize their borders, like North Korea does with South
Korea and even though the DMZ is a buffer between the two countries, the walls and
lines are still drawn in the sand, so to speak. Again, why is the same not acceptable
for a nation of people that are constantly under attack?

To be blunt, the wall is a way to keep those not wanted in Israel out. Done for
centuries, the walls of that nation are no different than the Great Wall in China or
the various walls built in Europe in the midevil times around castles. They were
built to protect those within the walls from enemies outside the walls. And the
issue here isn’t even the walls, it’s the lack of governmental support and
infrastructure provided by the Palestinian parliament for it’s people. I find it very
hard to believe that the quickness to join radical groups and the enormous
unemployment rate would continue if the Palestinian nation had something to offer the
world and could bring in enough finance to support it’s people. But that’s the underlying
issue: Palestine is a blob of dirt and sand with limited access to the Mediterranean
and bordering the Dead Sea & Jordan. The entire region can be used for farming,
as we have seen from the kibbutzim on the Galilee, but I personally feel that
no Arab will ever have the success with farming that the Zionist Jews of the
past did; remember, the Galilee was a desert dust bowl before the kibbutz. Before
the Jews came to this land, the Arabs living there had done little in the way
of cultivating the land, so I don’t feel the drive to cultivate the land of the West Bank
is likely to be something we ever see from the Palestinian people. Quite frankly,
they are a welfare state and will always rely on the handouts of others, until they
build and implement the infrastructure of a manufacturing/production capability on
such a scale that will employ the citizens and allow a product to be sold to markets
that is in demand from the world.

But until that time and until the world has more recourse for the radicals that
perpetrate the crimes against innocent Israelis, there is no way anyone should
support the dismantling of a wall that defines it’s borders and secures it’s citizens.

Because it is no different than any other autonomous nation that has a physical border.

So that means the rantings of senators and congressmen over ‘gouging’ were unwarranted, because there were only 15 cases of excessive price adjustment, but it was not specific to one refiner or company.(2) And now we see that more states are jumping on the bandwagon of passing legislation for anti-gouging, which is comical at the very least.

For starters, when asked to define gouging, no one can come up with a halfway cogent answer; it’s always something about how oil companies are making more profit than they should. Since when in our capitalist society has that been a BAD thing?! When has Wal-Mart been brought before congress to explain its profits? That’s right… never. But the comedy continues, because as these states pass laws, the public has just been told that there is and was no ‘gouging’, so the laws are worthless. I guess a “thanks” is in order for passing legislation to prohibit something that’s shown to not be taking place; couldn’t we find more pressing issues to pass legislation on in this country?

And let’s talk about ‘windfall profits’ for a second.

Senator Byron Dorgan has to be one of the dumbest schmucks out there, with the “Windfall Profits Tax”. In fact, he’s such a dumbass, he has a clock on his website that claims to show how much profit the oil companies have overly reaped (3) . Here’s the funniest part: “Specifically, this legislation imposes a 50-percent excise tax on the windfall profits earned by major integrated U.S. oil companies on the sale of all barrels of crude oil derived from existing wells. For this purpose, windfall profits means the amount that a barrel of oil sold exceeds $40 per barrel.“(3) Even his proposed legislation has that same foolish figure: “Defines “windfall profit” as the excess of the removal (sales) price of a barrel of taxable crude oil over the adjusted base price ($40 per barrel adjusted for inflation) of such barrel.”(4)

Now who wants to explain to Mr. Dorgan the workings of the oil industry? Here, I’ll give you all a quick lesson:

OIL PRICES (PER BARREL) ARE DICTATED BY THE COMMODITIES MARKET, not the oil companies. I just want to put that out there right from the start, so you can see how foolish the idea of attacking oil companies is.
The per-barrel price you hear about in the news is a spot price for West Texas Light, Sweet Crude (the most expensive type of oil, by the way), which means the price for immediate delivery (2 days) in Cushing, Oklahoma. What’s important to note is that the oil refiners set contracts out for months in advance, to ensure they get the best cost and very few actually buy on the spot market; setting dates out that far in the future is called a ‘futures contract’. But even futures contracts are still subject to the trading floor of the NYMEX, which means that the oil companies have no way of settling for a price that is not inline with the trades of the day.
Now, the question has to be asked: Why are you targeting the oil companies when you know the NYMEX market is dictating the price of crude?

If any of these senators and congressmen ever bothered to read a 10K report, they might know of a lovely term call the ‘crack spread’ which is the difference between the price that crude is purchased for on futures contract and what gasoline is sold for on futures contract. The difference is the spread between the two and this is where the refiners make and lose money. But again, all of these contracts are run through the NYMEX and are subject to trading speculation that the refiners have ZERO control over. If a buyer prices too low in relation to the market, the trader won’t close the contract and the seller will usually have a limit to what they are willing to allow the trader to close the contract for.

Again, this is the ebb and flow of the markets, which are the bread and butter of our capitalist society.

Here’s another little tidbit of information to put under your bonnet: retail locations typically make cents per gallon on fuel sales. Yes, I said CENTS. After the rack price of fuel has the federal, state and local taxes added on, most retail stations in metropolitan locales have a very slim cent per gallon profit margin, which is why most locations rely on the in-store sales to turn a profit.

So who is really to blame here?

Well, for starters, the NYMEX trading of such items, rather than a direct buyer/seller relationship isn’t helping things. See, if there was such a system in place, the oil companies could leverage and dictate prices, but because we’re on the trading system now, it’s rather difficult to pull off such a feat.

• Maybe we should blame every H3, Hummer, Escalade, Navigator and other SUV owner in America that actually think that such vehicles are ‘cool’ and increase their machismo.
• Maybe we should blame George Bush for taking America along for a ride on his Christian crusade in Iraq, which has ‘scared’ the markets with geo-political mayhem.
• Maybe we should blame Muslim terrorists for 9/11.
• Maybe we should blame the US Government for making it painfully difficult to build new refineries.
• Maybe we should blame the Rockefellers for not enough foresight in Standard Oil; they should have known about the invention of the SUV, way back in 1908, right?
• Maybe we should blame the dinosaurs for not enough of them dying on American soil, which forces the major deposits of oil to lie in OPEC nations.

Or maybe, just maybe, we should stop placing blame with asinine legislation like S1631 and focus on solving the problem through lower consumption. Let’s do something to curb consumption, like put a luxury tax on SUVs like the Hummer and Escalade, along with trucks like the Ford F350, which are seen all the time in cities, with zero designed use. Then, why not exempt people from said tax, if they show that the vehicle is used for work/business purposes that it was made for, i.e.: a Ford F350 being used to carry tools and supplies for a building contractor. SUVs are not a right, they are a privilege and should thusly be taxed as such, since they are a larger drain on society.

With intelligent legislation like that which I proposed, we’d hit the people who are causing the problem, rather than trying to penalize businesses for operating effectively in our free-market society.

Sources:

• 1. http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/05/katrinagasprices.htm
• 2. http://www.ftc.gov/reports/060518…ReportFinal.pdf
• 3. http://dorgan.senate.gov/issues/economy/windfall/
• 4. http://www.govtrack.us/data/us/bills.text/109/s1631.pdf
• 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crude_oil#Pricing