The Hammond Report

The Missoulian ran an editorial by Eric Mink of the St. Louis Dispatch today, 8/8/08, section B5, titled «McCain, Obama avoid honest energy solutions».  It is unavailable on their web site so I found it and linked to it at the St. Louis Dispatch site.

In the commentary, Mr. Mink discusses how both Obama and McCain's energy plans are similar.  How he got that, I don't fully understand.  He did emphasize that their biggest differences are philosophical and defined those differences quite well.  McCain believes in the market while Obama believes in government control.

But the more substantive difference between them is philosophical:

McCain has confidence in «the power and innovation of free markets» to solve these problems, as he put it in an energy-related speech last year.

Obama, looking at the historical record, believes we can't depend on the profit motive alone, so the government's job is to define the problems, set the priorities and use its collective power to ensure success.

Then, Mr. Mink goes on to discuss his conversation with Lisa Margonelli who is supposedly an expert in oil economics and the author of the book «Oil on the Brain».  While I agree with her that Obama's plan to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is bad, I don't agree with her criticism of McCain's enthusiasm for offshore drilling.  Here is what she said.

McCain's enthusiasm for offshore drilling, she says, is likewise out of whack. It amounts to to a giveaway to the oil companies, Margonelli said, because operating in U.S. waters is safe, legal contracts are dependable and the royalties exacted by the U.S. government are much lower than those of other countries. On top of that, as she notes in her book, advances in technology have long since taken most of the uncertainty out of drilling, although «the myth of the lucky wildcatter lives on.»

«We want the oil companies to make money,» she told me, «but we want them to work for it.» Offshore drilling, she said, is essentially «free money.»

Free money??!! What do they do? Simply skim millions of barrels of oil off the surface of the ocean?  Nevermind the millions and millions of dollars it takes to build and operate the rigs. Nevermind the millions and millions it takes to transport and then refine the oil and operate the refineries.  Nevermind the free market and profit motive has created all the comforts we live in and enjoy today.  Nevermind that Oil is the most important commodity on the planet and fuels our entire economy and without it we would sink into the dark ages.

Maybe easy access to plentiful oil reserves will bring the price of oil down and lower the price of gas at the pump.  I know liberals don't like to admit it but the free market and capitalism work every single time.  Socialism does not (see Cuba, Soviet Union, Canadian health care).

This comment shows what an idiot this liberal oil economy expert is and why nobody's heard of her or bought her book.