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Thursday, June 19, 2008
To drill or not to drill?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sen. John McCain now favors lifting the ban on offshore oil drilling as does President Bush “The stakes are high for our citizens and for our economy,” McCain, the presumed Republican nominee said Tuesday in Houston.
But Sen. Barack Obama criticized the McCain position.
“Sen. John McCain’s support of the moratorium on offshore drilling during his first presidential campaign was certainly laudable, but his decision to completely change his position and tell a group of Houston oil executives exactly what they wanted to hear today was the same Washington politics that has prevented us from achieving energy independence for decades,” said Obama.
“It’s another example of short-term political posturing from Washington, not the long-term leadership we need to solve our dependence on oil,” he said.
McCain said of Obama’s energy policy: “So what does Sen. Obama support in energy policy? Well, for starters, he supported the energy bill of 2005 — a grab bag of corporate favors that I opposed. And now he supports new taxes on energy producers. He wants a windfall profits tax on oil, to go along with the new taxes he also plans for coal and natural gas. If the plan sounds familiar, it’s because that was President Jimmy Carter’s big idea too — and a lot of good it did us.”
Who is right?
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Want a stamp? Stand in line
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If you want to buy a stamp in a post office, be prepared to stand in line. The Postal Service is taking out stamp vending machines - saying they are old, have maintenance issues and that customers aren’t using them as much. But that leaves no option to buy a stamp other than stand in line. When the post offices are closed, at nights and on weekends, you simply can’t buy a stamp. Read story here.
Does this make economic sense? How much time is wasted- the customer’s and the postal clerks - to sell a 42-cent stamp?
And while we’re at it, should we discontinue Saturday mail delivery to reduce fuel costs? Proponents of the idea say much of the mail delivery is junk mail anyway. Your thoughts?
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Are we fat, lazy, stupid?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lee Raudonis writes that a trip to the grocery store is all it takes to discover what it wrong with our economy: too many of us are fat, lazy and uneducated.
“My discovery began when I started to pull into a parking spot only to discover that it was occupied by a shopping cart that someone had decided to leave there, presumably because it was too difficult to push the cart 15 feet to the return area. Or perhaps the individual who left it actually believed that he/she was the only person of any importance left on the planet. Too many Americans are incredibly lazy (and unbelievably self-centered),” he writes.
“After entering the store, I quickly discovered another reason for our economic woes. As I was attempting to find some meat or fish that was not too heavily laden with fat and calories, I became aware of a large — make that huge — man seated in an electric shopping cart, which he began to load with various high-fat meat products to complement the packaged and prepared high-calorie items that were already in his basket.
“Seeing such people in the grocery store, as well as whole families of obese men, women and children in restaurants, drives home another cause of our present and future economic woes. As a whole, we are not a very healthy nation.” Finally, he recounts a customer wanting to write a check for $50 over the amount of the groceries who could not figure out the correct total. The cashier helped by counting on her fingers.
“I was greatly relieved that the customer did not want to write the check for $110 more than the total, since this might have required the cashier to use her toes as well as fingers, he writes. “Too many Americans are poorly educated.”
Your comments?
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