Stupid: Two states still have laws on the books prohibiting you from pumping your own gas...

Chris Christie's New Jersey is one, but that may be changing. The other is the liberal mecca of Oregon. 

Via The Oregonian:

If a New Jersey lawmaker has his way, Oregon could become the only state in the U.S. where it's illegal to pump your own gas.
On Friday, New Jersey Assemblyman Declan O'Scanlon (R-Monmouth) announced his plan for a phased-in approach to end the Garden State's decades-old ban on self-service gasoline.
According to NJ.com, the bill includes a provision to allow gasoline station employees to continue to fill customers' tanks if they so choose. Earlier this month, NJ.com reported that state officials hadn't enforced the self-service ban in at least two years.
"I'm amazed at how many folks raise this issue with me. It's the right thing to do, so we'll see," O'Scanlon told NJ.com.
Oregon's gas-pumping law has been on the books since 1951.

I can't remember the year I last had someone pump my gas. It was decades ago.

Administrator of the EPA claims they are "crucifying" oil and gas companies

President Obama most pleased....

Via Foundry:

A video surfaced on Wednesday showing a regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency comparing his agency’s philosophy with respect to regulation of oil and gas companies to brutal tactics employed by the ancient Roman army to intimidate its foes into submission.

EPA’s “philosophy of enforcement,” said EPA’s Region VI Administrator Al Armendariz, is “kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean: they’d go into little Turkish towns somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they’d run into, and they’d crucify them.”

“That town was really easy to manage for the next few years,” Armendariz added.

Keep on reading…

Obama criticizes gas station photo-ops. Forgets he did one in 2008. (video)

Is Obama a complete idiot or a complete hypocrite?


Obama Criticizes Gas Station Photo Ops After Doing Them Himself

China plays the greenhouse gas blackmail card

China has been making $18 a ton in carbon credits for destroying HFC-23 which reportedly only costs less than a cent per ton to destroy. Surprisingly, some people have a problem with that. China's response is to threaten to release the gases without destruction if their money tree is cut down. HFC-23 is believed to be a powerful greenhouse gas and ozone depleting substance. I say tell the Chinese to go for it. The effect on a global scale would be negligible.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- In the run-up to the international climate negotiations in Durban later this month, China has responded to efforts to ban the trading of widely discredited HFC-23 offsets by threatening to release huge amounts of the potent industrial chemical into the atmosphere unless other nations pay what amounts to a climate ransom. 

China's threat comes after the European Union and other nations moved to ban HFC-23 credits from internal carbon markets in recognition of the perverse incentives created by these credits under the UN Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The vast amounts paid for HFC-23 offsets have led factories in China and elsewhere to manufacture far more HCFC-22 and its HFC-23 by-product than necessary, just to maximize the amounts paid to destroy HFC-23 through the UN-backed carbon trading scheme. 

In a shocking attempt to blackmail the international community, Xie Fei, revenue management director at the China Clean Development Mechanism Fund, threatened: "If there's no trading of [HFC-23] credits, they'll stop incinerating the gases" and vent them directly into the atmosphere. Speaking at the Carbon Forum Asia in Singapore last week, Xie Fei claimed he spoke for "almost all the big Chinese producers of HFCs who "can't bear the cost" and maintain that "they'll lose competitiveness". 

China's claim belies the fact that HFC-23 can be destroyed for just 0.20 cents per CO2e tonne. The destruction of one CO2e tonne generates one Certified Emission Reduction (CER) under the CDM, which historically has been sold on carbon markets at an average price of $18 -- 70 times the actual cost of destroying HFC-23.

There are allegations countries are deliberately producing more HFC-23 in order to get paid for destroying it. What a scam...

RINO Lindsey Graham Wants to Raise The Gas Tax by 15 Cents

Americans real income declined by 3.2% in the last year , almost 10% of Americans are unemployed and the economy is struggling to try and recover from the worst recession since the "Great Depression." Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (R- SC) and his Democrat buddies have a great idea. Let's raise gas taxes by 15 cents per gallon. When will the people of South Carolina correct this error?

Leading voices in the Senate are considering a new tax on gasoline, as part of an effort to win Republican and oil industry support for the energy and climate bill now idling in Congress.

The tax, which according to early estimates would be in the range of 15 cents a gallon, was conceived with the input of several oil companies, including Shell, BP and Conoco Phillips, and is being championed by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.