An "Expert" on CNN today said that gas prices....

[CharlesGroce]

were rising because of all of the people who steal gas, implying that the prices are high because of some reason other than OPEC cutting production over the last several months.

So DUers should be ready to counter this corporate nonsense when in conversation with our less-informed colleagues. In fact, judging from the story on the main Yahoo! page this evening, and these stories from today:

http://news.search.yahoo.com/search/news/?c=&p=gas+prices ,

we should expect that this campaign of misinformation continues, as it also serves to paint a picture of the 'despicable' poor (working class) in this country as being uncivilized.

Me, I wonder how middle class America can ignore the fact that they are getting screwed by the oil companies while it takes $40 to fill up the tank, and they do it every two days. I guess it's only a matter of time before they realize that having property but being in debt actually makes you a member of the poor working class.

[democraticinsurgent]

1. that's pretty thin

in fact it's so implausible that i can't believe anyone would be able to advance that argument with a straight face.

[EndElectoral]

2. Spencer Abraham

I thought Spencer Abraham went over there, and the production was supposed to be vastly increasing in July.

what the hell's going on?

[midwayer]

4. Does this look familiar?

Oil Manipulation
21 June 2000

http://www.tzemach.org/fyi/docs/winston/june21-00.htm

Shows you a little bit about how they play the game

[Feanorcurufinwe]

22. Abraham may have been doing something else....

Addressing shocked fellow cabinet members, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham said Tuesday that he had assumed everyone knew about his roles in numerous 1980s pornographic films.

<snip>
Abraham said he didn't expect such reactions when he mentioned his former career during an Oct. 27 cabinet meeting. The energy secretary said he told the assembled White House staffers that the vulnerability of the nation's power grid reminded him of the first time he experienced a power outage.

"Spencer mentioned how he was living in a duplex in Encino in 1984," National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said. "He said it was terrible timing, because they were shooting that day, and he was on the verge of coming, and there was no backup generator for the camera and lights, and no air conditioning besides."

The comment puzzled cabinet members, but Abraham continued with his report. It was several days later, Rice said, when she thought to ask Abraham what he had meant by "camera and lights" and "on the verge of coming."

<snip>

Abraham continued to downplay the importance of the films.

"Look, I was young, and I was broke," Abraham said. "As soon as my political career took off, I quit. The bottom line is: All of that's in the past. I think it's strange that I'm condemned for those films, but not for serving as Deputy Chief Of Staff to Dan Quayle."



Abraham talks about his best feature
(I think he's exagerating )

[Media_Lies_Daily]

3. "Gas prices are rising because of all the people that steal gas"???...

I prefer to think of it as follows...the people that own the oil companies are stealing from the gas consumer.

Think about that for a moment.

While the rich one-percenters are getting richer, the lower economic class is not only getting poorer, but they are also getting larger as more and more of the middle class are forced to cut costs.

Meanwhile, good-paying jobs are being outsourced to foreign countries as well as the money they're being paid to do those jobs. How is that supposed to help our economy?

And who wants to discuss the deteriorating state of healthcare in this country? Anyone?

And then we have these wars going on in the Middle East that are sucking money and lives faster than a runaway black hole. Do we get any sense that we will pull out of there anytime soon? No. And now we appear to be threatening Iran, North Korea, Syria, and China.

The sooner everyone comes to these realizations, the sooner we have the fast approaching, and inevitable, confrontation between the haves and nave-nots.

[WLKjr]

5. You know what will fix that problem?

HYDROGEN FUEL CELL TECHNOLOGIES=MORE JOBS
GAS/ELECTRIC TECHNOLOGIES=MORE JOBS
BIO DIESEL TECHNOLOGIES=MORE JOBS
WIND/SOLAR/WATER POWER TECHNOLOGIES=MORE JOBS

add them all together for new industries, ECONOMIC BOOM INEVITABLE!

My damn sunfire took 24.75 today to fill up a 12 gallon tank. This is bullshit because I have to drive like some 450miles 3 days a week.

One thing you would learn by working retail is that most people steal because they can't afford it by other means, so they take it.

[Syncronaut Seven]

7. Drive slower,

Keep your foot out of it at lights, anticipate stops and coast, inflate your tires to within 10% of tire rated maximum (hot).

I was able to increase my mileage by better than 22% with tire inflation and modified driving habits alone.

Agressive driving will piss your fuel away fast. Pretend your still driving a big block with a gallon left and 3 days to payday.

[WLKjr]

8. I try things like that

it's all interstate driving to school and work, roughly 65/70mph the whole way, I even tried driving around 55 one day and didn't help much, it was a little better but I still drive quite a bit and that little car is drinking gas like a fish drinks water. It's also got hi miles on it too, oil is changed regularly and I got new tires too.

[Syncronaut Seven]

13. bad mileage

could also be caused by clogged or worn fuel injectors or a worn float valve in the carburetor.

Do you smell unburned fuel in the exhaust? It'll make your eyes water and your nose pucker. Black smoke out the tailpipe during acceleration is a dead giveaway.

[WLKjr]

15. Nothing like that

no blue smoke, no gas smell (ocasionally sometimes I will smell it when I accelerate on the freeway, but then it's gone just as quick.)

[Marvelous_Smarty]

9. I own a gas station,

even one drive away will put a big dent in my overhead. One 20 gallon drive away would require at least twenty more 20 gallon fill-ups to make up for it.

When my storage tanks are filled up, I have 10 days to sell enough to pay for the load before the distributor will send me some more. When the prices were sky rocketing the last couple of months, I took a real bath. All my fuel prices were going up more than the profit I was making. I make ten cents a gallon. I would order another load and the price would be 14 cents higher. So even though I sold the fuel, when I ordered more, I was 4 cents short on every gallon.

[Nexus7]

32. Fallacies about fuel independence

One thing that strikes me about the debate on fuels is how similar it is to the political spectrum of dems, repubs, and greens. Most greens/third-party'ers only consider the final desired state of no/no undue corporate influence, people power, freedom from want, etc. without realizing that the path to there lies not in casting what are effectively protest ballots (at best) for the Green party, or Nader, et al., but through a progressive middle ground party like the Democratic. At the same time, repubs are trying their best to muddle the issues and implanting simplistic and subliminal messages like "you're either on our side or with the terrorists," etc.

Well, this is the exact same situation with fuels. Everyone who thinks we should not have what is effectively an oil economy is always talking about pie-in-the-sky solutions like hydrogen and solar, which may be where we would like to end up, but there isn't any way they are practical or feasible solutions today; and unless we begin weaning away from the oil economy today, we're not going to get there any time soon.

Notice how the Bush admin and oil companies are 100% behind hydrogen fuel cells. This is because not only is this a nice vehicle for corporate give-aways in the name of research grants, and publicity stunts, but oil is an essential component of the hydrogen fuel chain. The most practical way to have an immediate effect on oil dependence is diesel. That's right, not hybrid, however much progressives like to embrace them (and thereby provide ammunition for repubs who bring up the image of tree-huggers puttering along in slow and small cars). Turbo-diesel sedans, not to mention trucks (real trucks, not pickups or even pickups on steroids.. sorry pickup owners, but real trucks don't burn gasoline, no offense). Every european and japanese company either has developed or has tie-ups with companies that have developed powerful and highly fuel efficient common rail passenger diesels, with more torque and horsepower than gasoline, and quicker off the line to boot. If american companies were truly concerned about oil dependence or the environment, they wouldn't be insulting our intelligence with electric cars (remember the GM Impact and how everybody drooled over it?), but would sell a cross-engineered or their own european market diesel sedan here. Instant 50% or better improvement in fuel consumption, and longer lived engines to boot. And they would lobby to get clean diesel now, not in the next decade so these next generation diesel engines can be sold everywhere in the US now. If you've seen the Mercedes (Dodge) Sprinter, you know what I'm talking about. A better work truck, a quieter engine than most passenger gasoline engines, 22-27 mpg with full cargo, and just from 2.7 litres. That is the way to go.

[CharlesGroce]

6. There is a theory abound: peak oil

Some oil industry insiders have publicly stated that many of the oil companies believe that the world is very seriously running out of oil. Several of the little countries like Oman and Yemen have handsomely cut production of oil because their wells are drying. It's going to be an interesting 20 years I think. Check out some of the stories on:

http://www.zmag.org

for an inside look behind the scenes of the looming oil crisis.

[Marvelous_Smarty]

10. Peak Oil is a Flawed theory.

n/t

[NecessaryOnslaught]

12. Gotta hear this...

Please elaborate on why peak oil is a "flawed" theory??

[Marvelous_Smarty]

14. The Peak Oil Theory is based on

the theory that oil came from prehistoric plants and animals. If this was so, it would take 94 tons of dead plants and animals to make one gallon of gasoline. That many plants and animals never existed.
A lot of wells have been drilled offshore in areas that have been underwater since the earth was formed, how did those "fossil" fuels get there.

Traces of oil have been found in meteors, where did that come from?

[AZCat]

16. I would be careful of unfounded claims

If you are going to make statements like "That many plants and animals never existed" you should reference a source for that claim.

A lot of B.S. flows through here and it isn't taken lightly.

[Marvelous_Smarty]

18. Reference? How about logic?

A brontosaurus weighed at most 80 tons. Still 14 tons short to make a gallon of gas. 25-30 brontonsaurs is what it would take to fill up just one car on average. Got any idea what our consuption is? Billions of gallons. 25-30 Brontosaurs per gallon, adds up to a shitload. It would take billions and billions of dinosaurs make up the oil we are using. It would have had to be wall to wall dinosaurs.

[htuttle]

20. Are you aware of the fact that most oil dates from the Carboniferous Era..

...which was long before any dinosaurs were around.

No. I'd guess you aren't.

[Marvelous_Smarty]

29. It goes back to what I said.

Oil does not come from Dinosaurs. The reason I was putting forth the Brontosaurus example was because it shows how impractical that theory is.

I guess it could be PLAUSIBLE that oil comes from prehistoric plants and animals if oil was produced from exclusively sedementary formations, but in Vietnam (the White Tiger oil field, I believe)is producing oil from basement rock. Hundreds of holes in Russias's Tartarstan oil field have been drilled into basement rock and have produced. Sweden has a basement rock depth oil field producing also.

There in no way possible for any prehistoric plants or animals to have
ever been buried that deep.

Most reserve calculations for oil and gas fields are calculated under the false assumption that these resources are fixed pockets of fossil fuels not waystation of oil and gas welling up from below.

[AZCat]

21. Uhh...

You're forgetting the rather large time span here. Or that the planet isn't dominated by animals, but by plants. Yeah, they don't look like much when you look out your window, but there are a LOT of them, and they have been here for a very long time.

It is weird to think of 12 brontosauruses in my gas tank... Does that make my exhaust a sort of bronto bar-b-que?

[buycitgo]

28. again, why don't you show us where you "learned" this

no problem believing it if it's from some noncreation science based site, book, etc

knock yourself out

[Marvelous_Smarty]

39. Thomas Gold,

He has presented quite a few theories.

[AZCat]

40. This guy?

Thomas Gold from Wikipedia

Thanks for posting a reference. Again, I (and others) would appreciate it if you did it earlier in the post tree. It allows the discussion to move past the drive-by poster allegations.

[Marvelous_Smarty]

43. I guess because I just started posting.

I have lurked on here for a while. Have seen how the newbies are treated with suspicion (one of the reasons it took me a month to finally register) but I also saw the many attempts at infiltration by the Freeps.

Part of the price of freedom I guess.

[AZCat]

45. That might have something to do with it

There also seems to be healthy skepticism between 1000+ posters though, so I think it just might be part of the community. I think it forces us to be less casual with our claims, and while it might be a pain when you don't always remember where you heard or read something, I think it helps us deal with the explosion of information available. When you know the source, it helps you determine whether or not that information is reliable.

[buycitgo]

17. "A lot of wells have been drilled offshore in areas that have

been underwater since the earth was formed"

that's FUNNY!

where'd you read that: Genesis?

too much

how's that Hummer doin', mileagewise?

[Marvelous_Smarty]

19. Okay, how's this?

Wells have been drilled thousands of feet deeper that the deepest fossil ever found and they have produced oil.

[buycitgo]

26. wait! what about the underwater bit? you know that's not true,

don't you?

ever heard of Alfred Wegener? no cheating, now. don't google

you need to start citing your sources, cause what you've been saying is pretty off the wall

[buycitgo]

30. fine. when you prove that, and tell us how the carbonaceous

matter was formed, I'll be happy to cede your point

[Marvelous_Smarty]

35. thermophilic bacteria

it is pushed up from beneath the earth's crust by the oil.

[Syncronaut Seven]

23. Actually...

Rapeseed yields about 35% oil by weight, Oil that can be burned in a diesel engine. That works out to about 30 Lbs of plant matter per gallon of diesel. Looks like you missed the mark by at least 3 orders of magnitude.

Oil in meteors? That's a new one on me! Sure it wasn't contaminated by contact with earth?

[mhr]

36. There Is No Solid Evidence For The abiotic Oil Theory

This is one of those urban myths that is making its rounds on the INTERNET.

For a good short right-up on Peak oil, see this link.

www.dallasforkerry.com/mediascope/brainzone/

[shawcomm]

11. That's the craziest excuse yet...

That guy actually said that with a straight face? And the CNN person didn't publicly humiliate them?

If that were the case, it would be a retailer problem, not a supplier, so why would the prices rise nationally? They just try so hard to not blame the oil market and monopolized oil companies that they've gone completely off the deep end - trying to blame the consumer as a bunch of thieves.

[Trillo]

25. Look at who's pointing the finger.

Where are these "thefts" occurring?

I ask because when I go to the gas station to fill up, I have to pay before the pump is turned on. Cash, or credit, no difference, pay first, then receive.

Are there still gas stations in areas where these new fancy satellite-based computer-networked pumps are not yet in place?

Hmm, maybe the regulators need to look more carefully at "declared" thefts. Perhaps that column is just another bookkeeping gimmick.

[buycitgo]

27. to be fair, there a lots of stations where you pay inside, after

pumping

[Trillo]

33. Where?

I haven't seen any of those in about 20 years.

[Marvelous_Smarty]

31. I still have the old style pumps at my gas station.

Also, I do not have a pay first policy.

[Marvelous_Smarty]

37. This is my place

[Trillo]

38. Are your pumps like these?

[Marvelous_Smarty]

41. Here is a better pic of one of my pumps.

One of the many bikers that go through my place.

[Trillo]

42. So how much gas is stolen from your station? nt

[Marvelous_Smarty]

44. Not hardly any,

but most of my customer base is the many oil and gas companies that are working around here.

There are convenience stores on either side of me, so they get most of the tourist traffic (my price is about .05 higher, no way I can match their volume).

[jdj]

24. They should read Palast.

right in the front of the book he talks about the uber rich oil family (name escapes me) that filch oil from Indian reservation.

Working class people, and middle class too, are so quick to believe the problem is our next door neighbor. In reality it's the billionaire on the wealthy side of town.

[Lone_Wolf]

34. That would be Koch Industries... n/t

n/t

[lovuian]

46. Oh there is stealing going on thats for sure!!!

Try Exxon Shell and BP stealing!!!...and Bush too