Author: Frank

Get over cheap gasoline

I am watching the news and the collective hand-ringing over $4.00/gallon gasoline.  Candy Crowley of CNN asked  John Hofmeister, former president Shell Oil, how high with gasoline price go?  He answered with a combination of market forces and advocated that U.S. citizens should demand their politicians do more to increase domestic oil production.  Later on the same show, Donald Trump stated that we should tell OPEC what to charge us for gasoline.  Try that with your neighborhood gas station.

The truth is gasoline and the oil it comes from is a limited resource. All the oil that we will ever use was created hundreds of millions of years ago.  The conditions were very different for today’s climate.  Probably a much hotter climate.

As a limited resource gasoline will get more expensive as we use it up.  Any attempt to control the price will bring many unintended consequences.  The U.S. has enjoyed cheap gasoline because we are a large producer, but we have become an even larger consumer!

The price we pay for gasoline does not reflect the real cost of a gallon.  The U.S. consumes more that it produces, so we must import oil.  So our government has gone to foreign producers and made deals, invaded, and fought wars to keep oil cheap for us.  This added cost is not added to gasoline costs.

Letting the price rise will cause alternatives to be developed, conservation will be increased without large market boom and bust cycles.

Gasoline will get more expensive.  The price of gasoline will go up.  All the way to the top!  Get over it!

Guard Against Disease

Should we require everyone get vaccinations for diseases to prevent pandemics?  There has been opposition to vaccines since the practice was first used in western medicine in 1796.  In that year, Edward Jenner used cowpox germs to create protection from the more deadly smallpox disease.  As the cartoon below shows, people were concerned about the ingredients and effects of the new procedure.

The Cow-Pock—or—the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation!
The Cow-Pock—or—the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation!

This was shown in a publication against the practice of vaccines.  After vaccination campaigns throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the WHO certified the eradication of smallpox in 1979.  This has saved millions of people from disfigurement and possible death from this disease!

Even in recent years the famous people have started campaigns using bad science and anecdotal evidence of the dangers of vaccines.  I believe there needs to be thorough testing and disclosure of the effects of new vaccines, but without widespread vaccination programs, diseases, like smallpox, will not be eradicated.

For more information about vaccines see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine and http://www.dmoz.org/Health/Pharmacy/Drugs_and_Medications/Vaccines_and_Antisera/

IRS Privacy Changes

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is trying to slip a change in rules through that will allow companies that process your tax returns to sell that information to other people.The proposed rule, published on December 8, 2005 in the Federal Register, would allow companies that prepare your income tax return to ask your permission to give or sell your information to third parties. This change is being slip through as an administrative change. Privacy advocates (including me) feel this gives an open door to tax preparers to harvest detailed information about their customers. Consent must be given, but many people will not read every word that preparers put in front of them.

Quoting rule text:

The proposed regulations also allow a taxpayer to use a single document to consent to multiple uses of their tax return information….

The Treasury Department and the IRS propose these amendments to protect taxpayers’ tax return information, and to ensure that taxpayers are fully informed when providing consent to disclose or use tax return information.

This doesn’t seem to be the case. If the IRS was concerned about disclosure of tax return information they would make a rule the information can only be disclose to the IRS or the taxpayer.

The proposed regulations also allow a taxpayer to use a single document to consent to multiple uses of their tax return information, or use a single document to consent to multiple disclosures of their tax return information, provided certain requirements are met.

This would allow preparers to use one consent form for several uses, only one of which they actually discuss with the taxpayer.

To quote Lou Dobbs (CNN, Mar 22, 2006), “Well, it is under the heading of, you can’t make this stuff up. The Internal Revenue Service saying that we would be sharing our personal tax information to protect the privacy of our tax information. It’s Orwellian.”

Written or electronically generated comments must be received by March 8, 2006. Outlines of topics to be discussed at the public hearing scheduled for April 4, 2006, in the Auditorium of the Internal Revenue Building at 1111 Constitution Avenue, NW., Washington, DC 20224, must be received by March 14, 2006. These regulations are proposed to apply on the date that is 30 days after the final regulations are published in the Federal Register.