For the past decade or two, American consumers have enjoyed low prices at Walmart, which imports many of its products from China. Simultaneously, American companies have enjoyed low prices by out-sourcing service jobs to India and manufacturing to China. Americans, both consumers and business leaders, believe they have saved money by doing this. …
The U.S. consumes 400 million gallons of gasoline every day. That amounts to almost 5,000 gallons every second. More than half of that oil is imported. Everything we do is affected by oil. In addition to keeping us warm and transporting us, we eat oil. Not literally, but the average American meal travels an about 1500 miles to get from farm to plate. If there were an interruption in the oil supply, we would look to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That much-cited U.S. reserve, however, holds only a 60-day supply of oil. It is official U.S. policy, then, that We the People shall always remain only small one incident from a major oil crisis.
Based on several conversations I’ve recently had with some religious/social conservatives, God is no longer a Trinity. Whether I raise pressing issues about oil, housing or education I hear the same answer: “The free market will take care of it.” They seem to repeat this free market mantra as their…
Here are two disturbing items from the April 2006 "Harper's Index": 1. Amount by which Americans' total spending last year exceeded their earnings: $41,600,000,000. 2. Last year in which spending outstripped earnings: 1933. Then again, the citizens aren't doing anything different than their ruling political party. For some startling graphics…
We usually hear about "lies, damn lies, and statistics," but, in the case of the US national debt, it's more like "lies, damn lies, and more damn lies." Bush and Congressional Republicans campaigned on promises of fiscal restraint, but their promises have turned out to be even bigger lies than the ones they…