Archive → December 26th, 2010
OPEC wants $100 per barrel
Members of OPEC are trying to force the market to a target price of $100 per barrel, according to the latest media reports. With the current price of oil at $94.74, thanks primarily to a weak US dollar under President Barak Obama, they are already most of the way to their goal.
Only Saudi Arabia – the largest exporter of oil – is breaking from the pack. They would prefer to see prices retreat to $75 a barrel, a drop that would restore the price at the pump to around $2.50 per gallon, give or take a little. A rise to $100 per barrel would push US gas prices close to $3.25 per gallon for regular unleaded.
Tis the season to be greedy, if you’re OPEC, it seems. Maybe OPEC execs need to spend more time enjoying a massage therapy program online, rather than thinking up ways to artificially prop up prices and ruin the world economy. Again.
GOP to open House session with… gasp… Constitution reading
The new GOP-controlled House of Representatives is certainly planning to start off on the right foot. Word out of Washington is that when the new Congress is sworn in and takes power, the first order of business will be to read into the record the founding document of this country: the U.S. Constitution.
That is both a Ron Paul wet dream come true, and a much-needed change of attitude in Washington, which for far too many years has imposed its will without regard tot he Constitution at all. Among the other reforms the GOP is planning to bring as they establish the new rules of the road for this Congress is that each bill brought before the House must cite the Constitutional grounds for its proposal.
Now, if congressmen and congresswomen actually live up to these principles, it could make for a refreshingly freedom-based makeover of the Federal government… at least in the House of Representatives. Many people have argued the US government hasn’t lived by the Constitution for decades now. If this goes beyond symbolism into the substance of conducting House business day-by-day, it’s a much-needed reform. It’d be like handing a bunch of long stem roses to the American people.
However, there is a huge potential backfire risk. If they promise all this, but once House business gets rolling they return to government as usual, then their tenure in control of the US House could be short-tern indeed.
