Thread: CNN Breaking News

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is a National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska. It consists of 19,049,236 acres (79,318 km²) in the Alaska North Slope region.

The move to protect this corner of Alaska began in the early 1950s. National Park Service planner George Collins and biologist Lowell Sumner recruited Wilderness Society President Olaus Murie and his wife Margaret Murie into an effort to permanently protect the area. They were joined by thousands of the era's prominent conservationists.

The region first became a federal protected area in 1960 by order of Fred Andrew Seaton, Secretary of the Interior under U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1980, Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.
Eight million acres (32,375 km²) of the refuge are designated as Wilderness Area. The 1980 expansion of the refuge designated 1.5 million acres (6,070 km²) of the coastal plain as the 1002 area and mandated studies of the natural resources of this area, especially petroleum. Congressional authorization is required before oil drilling may proceed in this area.

[color=darkred]Because the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is believed to contain a large supply of crude oil, the issue of drilling for oil in the area has been a debated topic since World War II. The controversy has been a political football for every U.S. President since Jimmy Carter.[/color]

The question of whether to allow drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has been a political football for every sitting American president since Jimmy Carter. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is just east of Prudhoe Bay in Alaska's "North Slope," which is North America's largest oil field. Currently, the Prudhoe bay area accounts for 17% of U.S. domestic oil production.[1] In 1987 and again in 1998 studies released by the U.S. Geological Survey have estimated significant deposits of crude oil exist within the land designated as the "1002 area" of ANWR, as well.[2][3][3]

Oil interest in the region goes back to the late 1960s. Since the 1979 energy crisis, the question of whether to drill for oil has become a hot-button issue for various groups. Most Alaskan residents, trade unions, and several business interests have supported drilling in the refuge, while environmental groups and many within the Democratic Party have traditionally opposed it. Among native Alaskan tribes, support is mixed.

In the 1990s and 2000s, votes about the status of the refuge occurred repeatedly in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, but as of 2007 efforts to allow drilling have always been ultimately thwarted by filibusters, amendments, or vetoes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Nat ... ife_Refuge

ANWR is larger than the combined areas of five states (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware) and drilling along its coastal plain would be confined to a space one-sixth the size of Washington's Dulles Airport. ----George Will

The politicians and Special Interest don't and haven't listened to the American People for a long time. Do you think they will when we're all flat broke and flat on our backs?

No, they don't care about us.

As the governmnet lies time and time again about the state of our nation, we are no longer fooled.

We are no longer fooled when the congress has hearings on oil prices in which the expert witnesses say one after another that speculators have driven up oil prices anywhere from 20 to 30% or more.
Then the treasurer Ben Bernanke and the treasury seceratary Hank Paulson get on CNN Tonight and claims the prices are due to supply and demand, when the expert witnesses have clearly testified that is the reason for a small increase but supply and demand is not that great a part. Whith all major countries facing economic downturns the supply isn't as great as it was a year ago, so how can it be supply and demand?
The experts also took into account "PEAK" oil supplies. Is it here? Is the amount of crude hitting the down side? The experts say no, so it isn't peak oil that the GOVERNMENT mind washers want to mention as well.
The problem is just as the experts said, as I posted a few days ago and will post it again. The problem with the huge increases teh experts said, is the rule that got changed in the stock market.

Here is my article I posted after watching the congressional hearings on oil price manipulation last week:
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-117935.html

Mr Greenburger stated ... " The speculators market has become a giant casino." Where nowdays anyone can get in, just to gamble on making a buck, this is not real investment or a strategy for long term growth.
This is the same speculator trading rule that took effect in 2000 (basicly no rules now - regulation was dismantled) that is causing skyrocketing food prices, the housing market to collapse and the high gas prices as well as other markets in trouble. If the rules aren't reversed the back to the way it was before 2000, we are in for more big trouble. All these things causing the economy to collapse can be reversed with one rule change that would cause a reversal of rising prices overnight Mr. Greenburger said. He said a 25% price drop could happen overnight in gas prices were the rules set back to 2000. The rules basically gave oversight to the market which right now there is none and chaos is going on with no or very little oversight, usually to Americas own, not the foreign traders. Here again we have American Business undercutting Americans, business as usual. Mr, Greenburger stated the foreigners are running over the American system like a steam roller and American speculators are held hostage to regulations.

Also another problem we have...
as the expert witnesses testified in Washinton said...
70% of oil futures are held by hedge funds, trust, foundations, banks and companies like Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers which are people that aren't in the oil business. they buy them and sit on them and the real companies needing the "REAL" oil to re-sell can't buy them, this drives up the price. The banks and hedge funds don't sell oil and will never touch them physically. It is the old mantra, I'll buy it so the oil companies that depend on the oil to make a profit can't buy them unless they pay my jacked up price. The "REAL" oil companies have "REAL" assets like fuel trucks, workers, offices and property connected to doing this line of work, they are the ones that need the product to make a modest profit while the corporations like Morgan Stanley do not have any "REAL" assets tied up in the oil business. This gives the Morgan Stanleys the ability to lock up markets without any real investment while they jack up the prices and many times make more profit than the businesses actually risking capitol and assets to provide the resources.

The speculators never take delivery of the actual product, they couldn't because they don't have storage facilities, although from what I gathered they are building reserve tanks and hording massive amounts of Petro to further drive up the cost of the petro by creating a false demand. Some speculators hold the petro and as the prices skyrocket they then sell and a fat profit. I think the Oil Industry watchdog panelist implied that hording is against the law, but it seemed iffy.

The speculators also have an advantage because they only have to put down 6 to 7% of the transaction. Which means $7 controls $100 worth of oil for a certian time period. Most other stocks and commodities have a much higher ratio and the witnesses said this needs to be addressed as well. This is a disadvantage to the companies actually taking inventory of the oil, when they recieve the oil they have to pay 100% of the price of the oil when they take delivery or in the alloted commercial invoice date and pay periods. So, we can clearly see the companies investing "REAL" money and assets are clearly getting the raw deal while the people investing no assets (speculators) put up just 7% of the price to control much more oil. To top it off, the very large size of the money corporations like Morgan Stanley, hedge funds and others are putting into the markets are literially controlling the pricing mechanisims of the markets. Sorta like buying 80% of something and then refusing to sell unless your price is paid. Since this is energy and petro that 350 million people depend on, they win everytime, people cannot say no to a drasticly higher price, as much as they want to, so we are held hostage to this price fixing strategy. As the witnesses said, we need to address how much one entity can own, so they cannot manipulate the markets. As the hedge funs, stock corporations, foundations and ect literially have trillions of dollars to buy oil futures, they can control the markets to a degree, which hurts people depending on the oil. They have become a self inserted middlman holding the products for high profits.

Senator Olympia Snow (Rep. Maine) said Morgan Stanley (not an oil company) owned 90% of the home heating oil in her state of maine. She also said the prices are getting higher and higher and it isn't even winter. So its obvious that when companies other than petro companies own most of the petro, something fishy is going on. Another detrimental side effect is a growing number of oil companies that actually take delivery of the product and sell to home owners are going out of business as they cannot afford to pay the higher prices to re-supply. This cuts out real jobs and economy boosting companies while a 1 person speculator can control the industry providing no jobs, no buying of real assets like trucks storage facilities and othe capitol expenditures, not good for America.

One other question I would ask is why did they have George Soros on the panel of expert witnesses, he himself said he didn't understand the oil market good enough to talk about the commidity and trading side of the issue. But of course he had to bring up several times the issue of global warming and the falling inventory of oil supplies around the world but offered no proff of such opinion.

One of the Senators asked Mr. Soros if he owned any oil futures and George replied no. But to my understanding Mr. Soros does own alot of stocks in J P Morgan and they own oil futures, so again we have an issue with letting corporations act as individuals. If any of your money is invested in another company and that company owns oil futures, then you obviously own oil futures.
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Forget it America is gone. We have neither the money, the people or the will to take America back. I've been working on this crap for 7 years and every year it gets worse and worse. We can blog, write congress, call whoever, protest all day long but its obvious it isn't working and it never will work because the American people don't have access to the main stream media and can't match the LITERIAL TRILLIONS of dollars the multi national corporations have and unless the way politics are run in this country changes where none of those billions can influence in any way, shape or form the politicians, it will never end. Put an end to the policies of Money equals your voice which puts a corporation on the same level aws a American citizen and higher due to the massive piles of money which the supreme court intended to be the focus so they could accept those piles of money as campaign contributions. As usual, the money has corrputed everything and locked the common American Citizen out of the process, out of the minds of congress, the senate and ect. It has also stripped the rule of law as we know it and made criminals into good guys. When the exact opposite is the truth. Whithout the corporate money and private-government partnerships the nation can return to the CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC that it was founded on, not all this democrocy BS.

The people in charge always say "America is a place where people can make change without violence". The problem is 80% of America has no voice and is not included in the debate at all. The reason they always say that is obviously they don't want things really challenged. Once more, they control the government which controls the military which in turn uses the very violence they claim to hate against us.

So, basically we are just like the chinese, kept in check by totalitarian govermnet and big business and the lackies that make the orders happen.

As we know there are protest happening all the time in America, when does the American media show the American people protesting anything, it has to be years. But yet anytime anyone protest anything that benefits big government and the big corporations its on every channel every 15 minutes.

Time to get rid of ALL THE CROOKS!

I'm voting for Chuck Baldwin, we need to get back to the constitution and get away from the criminal rule.