“Mexico Will Make You Laugh…Sorta”
Mining Affairs Forum   By Ken Thornberg

            I just couldn’t pass it up.  It won’t fill this entire column, but you have to read what Mexican leaders in Sonora state recently complained about to Arizona state leadership.  Yeah, you won’t believe it.  Listen to this.  (We discuss oil and gas prices in Part 2 of this column)

Mexicans Flee to Mexico

            Nine state legislators from the Mexican state of Sonora traveled to Tucson, AZ to complain about Arizona’s new employer crackdown on illegals from Mexico.  It seems that many Mexican illegals are returning to their hometowns and the officials in Sonora are upset.  They are mad at the influx of Mexicans into Mexico!  Is this funny or what?  But it gets better.

            These legislators are claiming that this law will have a devastating effect on their state because they can’t handle the demand for housing, jobs and schools that it will face as Mexican workers return without jobs or money.  It is placing a burden on their state government.  I guess they should have considered that a few decades ago.  The Arizona law, possibly on hold soon but originally taking effect Jan. 1, 2011, punishes employers who knowingly hire individuals without valid legal documents to work in the United States.  Penalties  include suspension of, or loss of, their business license, so it is for real.

How Can You Pass a Law Like This?

            You guessed it…this is what Mexican legislator Amparano-Gamez of Nogales asked.    She added, “There is not one person living in Sonora who does not have a friend or relative working in Arizona.  Mexico is not prepared for this, for the tremendous problems it will face as more and more Mexicans working in Arizona and who were sending money to their families, return to their hometowns in Sonora without jobs.   We are one family, socially and economically,” she said of the people of Sonora and Arizona!  What???   Has this gone so far that Mexico considers Arizona just another Mexican state???   We are not a subsidiary of Mexico, folks!  We are a sovereign nation.  Our taxpayers are not responsible for the welfare of Mexico’s citizens who deliberately come here illegally.  It is time for them to stop being parasites off of us and to start taking care of their own people’s needs.  I think this is a sign that other states in America need to pass a similar law.

The New Immigration Law

            Please read the contents of this law and make sure you go straight to the bottom of this list so that you will get the full impact of this message.  You won’t believe it!

1. There will be no special bilingual programs in the schools.
2. All ballots will be in this nation’s language.
3. All government business will be conducted in our language.
4. Non-residents will NOT have the right to vote no matter how long they are here.
5. Non-citizens will NEVER be able to hold political office.
6. Foreigners will not be a burden to the taxpayers.  No welfare, no food stamps, no health care, or other government assistance programs.  Any burden will be deported.
7. Foreigners can invest in this country, but it must be an amount at least equal to 40,000 times the daily minimum wage.
8. If foreigners come here and buy land…options will be restricted.  Certain parcels including waterfront property are reserved for citizens naturally born into this country.
9. Foreigners may have NO protests, NO demonstrations, NO waving of a foreign flag, NO political organizing, NO badmouthing our president or his policies.  These will lead to deportation.
10. If you do come to this country, illegal, you will be actively hunted and, when caught, sent to jail until your deportation can be arranged.  All assets will be taken from you.

Too strict???  The above laws are current immigration laws of MEXICO!   What a hoot.  What gigantic hypocrisy.  I don’t know what Tucson told these legislators, but I hope it was the truth!

The White House and Oil and Gas

      Yeah, I know, you could take that title two ways, but I guess this time it’s on purpose.  President Obama told the world that he feels our pain by rising gas prices, but that is somewhat difficult considering he never drives himself anywhere or has to visit a gas pump any longer.  He wants to cut our oil imports by one-third in the year 2025, a little late to bring gas prices down, don’t you think?  The problem is that both he and his predecessors could have done this decades ago but chose not to.

      In an interview with Dr. John Felmay by New American correspondent William Jasper, we learn some interesting points.  Dr. Felmay is the chief economist for the American Petroleum Institute.  Right now, he says, we are importing 51% net of oil, down from 60% or higher a few years ago.  The government has allowed the industry to expand oil production in places like North Dakota.   “We’ve been able to expand offshore until this year and those were promising areas.”   President Obama put a moratorium on drilling offshore and the production is down more than 10% and falling.  Seems the White House staff said a peer review found solid approval of a six-month ban, but later apologized to the peer review panel when someone found out that that was a lie!   The U.S. Inspector General found that the report was actually altered by the White House in order to justify the drilling ban and  imply it was peer reviewed.   But now the applications are tougher since the BP oil spill, even considering that that was the only one out of 42,000 rigs in 60 years that had a problem! One.  The government is taking more than its sweet time in approving drilling getting back on track, moving at worse than a snail’s pace. 

Idle Opportunities

At this time, more than two-thirds of offshore leases are sitting idle and they hold more than 11 billion barrels of oil and 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.    There are 27 billion barrels waiting to be accessed off the coast of Alaska, but the EPA won’t allow them to drill it.  That amount comes to 2.5 times the amount that has traveled through the Alaska pipeline in three decades!   Why?   The EPA ruled that it could potentially harm roughly one square mile and 245 Alaskan natives, so it had to stop.  Said Shell Oil Vice President Pete Slaiby, “The decree is largely erroneous since the potential harmful effects have not been substantiated.”   Is it politics?  Is it a government which now does not want America free from being held captive by overseas nations that want to help destroy us?  I believe so.  Our socialist government has been doing all it can to stop us from becoming energy independent.

The Issue is Big Government Interference

      Back to the interview.  The new Bakken oil development in North Dakota and Montana could actually exceed that of Saudi Arabia by EIGHT TIMES.  At stake with the moratorium are thousands of jobs and billions in tax revenues (They pay $300 billion in taxes annually, half of that going to the feds) for the same government that is working hard to slow down our economy and help us meld into a Third World nation.  It also impacts our energy security and trade deficit.   In addition, Felmay says that the entire West Coast and federal areas are off-limits, holding about 10 billion barrels of oil.   There is natural seepage of oil in an area like Santa Barbara where there is a lot of oil underground.  By drilling, one actually reduces the amount of oil on the beaches, according to Felmay.  “You are reducing the pressure and you are reducing the natural seeps…folks who have lived there a long time will tell you the beaches used to be much oilier (before we came).”   When asked about why we have  not had a new refinery built in 30 years, Felmay stated, “Well, there are a couple of new refinery sites, but the main thing is that we have been able to expand the existing refineries to the equivalent of a new refinery every year.  That’s cheaper to do.  Our limitation is really not refinery capacity; it’s can we produce more crude oil in this country to improve jobs, improve revenue, and improve the trade deficit.”  By the way, they support 9.2 million American jobs and 7.7% of our economy. 

      The problem we always get back to is government.  Big government.  Regulations.  Control.  More and more evidence of socialism to make us captives of our enemies overseas, particularly Venezuela and the Middle East.  So this entire joke about 2025 as a date to cut oil imports is for the press to enjoy quoting its hero.  It’s nonsense.   What’s Obama’s answer to this?   “We have to discover and produce cleaner, renewable sources of energy.”  What he is referring to is constructing four new bio-fuel plants that run on wood chips, switch grass and plant waste, all in their infancy and which cannot be made into amounts similar to corn ethanol.  They love ethanol, as it increases the cost of food at home and overseas.  It has also been built on tariffs, subsidies and federal protection, all helping keep the government in a position of control.  Only 1% of all energy production in the U.S. is from so-called clean energy.  Each alternative energy source, whether biomass/geothermal/onshore wind/offshore wind/ thermal solar/photovoltaic, will cost between 34% and 480% more than combined cycle or natural gas-fired electric plants.  Sorry, Mr. President, too little too late.  Hot air, hot gas. 

White House Answers:  Quadruple Cost of Gasoline and Tax Us More

      Finally the president has come up with a novel way to fight high gas prices:  tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive.  That should stop the problem for sure.  Of course, that will not reduce the state taxes you pay on a gallon of gas, which is usually much higher than the average citizen realizes, and the existing federal gasoline tax we all pay at the pump.   This also means we would have to install a federal electronic device on our cars in order to track our miles.   The president says we want to do this in order to get even with the oil companies who are making such extravagant profits, which of course the government taxes to get more than their share (70% higher rates than similar large companies—an effective tax rate of 48%!).  I wonder if the president has been smoking some high-grade stuff in his staff meetings.    The president’s Energy Secretary has gone on record stating, “We have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”   In case my readers don’t know it, Europe pays approximately four times more than we do for gasoline!   It’s true.  I’ve pumped the gas there myself.  The taxes on their gas alone amounts to more than a gallon of gas does to us. 

If Obama’s hypocrisy were taxed, there would be plenty of revenue, said journalist William Hoar.  “But we don’t need, and can’t afford, a government with that kind of power.”

Welcome to pure socialism.