Tag: oil

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

CREDIT: by Roy Cajero

Living Day-to-Day

I was outraged at the sympathy given to illegal aliens by Bianca Phillips (“Living Day-to-Day,” August 7th issue). Illegal aliens and their employers should face the repercussions of the laws they are breaking. What part of “illegal” do people not understand? Yes, life is a constant struggle for those breaking the law and who are on the run from authorities. Hopefully, the difficulties that these illegal aliens are experiencing will discourage them from breaking the law by entering the United States or overstaying their visas.

My good friend and ex-boyfriend is Hispanic. His parents immigrated to the U.S. legally, worked hard, raised three children, and now have grandchildren going to college. The immigrants who come here illegally are a slap in his family’s face, taking their jobs, getting free health care, and not paying taxes on income earned.

I have to laugh at Pablo Davis’ (director of Latino Memphis) statement that “many of these people are leading lawful lives and their only crime is the way they entered the country. Some even entered legally and simply overstayed.” Would that be similar to entering Davis’ residence without his consent and deciding to stay? Would entering a bank during normal operating hours and simply refusing to leave after banking hours be legal? The person would quickly be deported to 201 Poplar.

One of the “victims” Phillips interviews is 20-year-old Gabby Castillo, who moved here with her parents (illegally) when she was 6 years old. She complains that she has to register at college as an international student and pay three times as much and that she does not get any federal money. How many people born here or here legally would like to go to school, get federal money, and further their education? She has the audacity to complain about crushed dreams when people like her parents are taking jobs away from legal immigrants and people born in the U.S.

Yes, the United States is a nation of immigrants — legal immigrants. The United States is also a nation of laws. If we do not abide by those laws, there is anarchy. If you are here illegally, you should be deported.

Harris Coleman

Memphis

Isaac Hayes

Isaac Hayes’ death is a great loss to the Memphis community, as well as to the music world. I live in North Memphis, and I can remember as a child when Hayes lived on Birch Street and would walk to Mrs. Aikers’ store on Jackson Avenue. He was not as famous then as he ended up being, but he was a good neighbor who looked out for the kids on the street.

What a great talent — and a voice that will never be duplicated. Bless the Hayes family and rest in peace, Isaac. You will be missed, and your music will never fade away.

Cathy R. Porter

Memphis

Big Oil

In the year 2000, oil was $22.10 a barrel. President Bush’s conservative friends and Vice President Cheney had a secret meeting with Big Oil executives. Five years later, oil was $55 a barrel and the president was forced to pump from our strategic reserves to try and save his GOP friends in the “do nothing” Congress from election-year defeat.

Now it’s 2008, the last year of the Bush/Cheney rip-off for Big Oil. Exxon just made an $11.6 billion profit — in a single quarter. The GOP and their presidential candidate, John McCain, are repeating the mantra that we need more offshore drilling leases for the oil companies. They fail to mention that by the end of this month, there will be oil company bids on more than 40 million acres of offshore sites in the Gulf of Mexico going unused.

The companies can’t explore what they have now, much less if all our coastlines were leased suddenly for drilling.

The Republicans had the presidency and controlled both branches of Congress for six years without demanding more refineries and drilling from oil companies. Now they say drilling is the only answer. Why didn’t the president start buying oil for the reserve before it hit $110 a barrel? Why did the Republicans want to allow solar tax credits to lapse? Why are they opposed to giving renewable-energy companies tax breaks like the ones they insist on for the oil companies?

Think again about how we got from $22-a-barrel oil to $120-a-barrel oil in eight years. It wasn’t an accident.

Jack Bishop

Cordova

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News

Where’s the Cheapest Gas in Memphis?

The cheapest gas in town? Well, according to GasPriceWatch.com, today it’s a Mapco on Danny Thomas, which has regular priced at $2.79 a gallon.

The website is a handy and helpful tool, worth checking before you head out to fill up your tank. Differences in prices can vary up to 20 cents a gallon between stations only a few blocks apart.

You simply type in the name of the city or area where you want to check prices and the stations (and their prices) pop up on a Google map. For the record, if you’re willing to drive to West Memphis, you can save a bunch.

Check it out.

GasPriceWatch.com
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News The Fly-By

Give It Some Gas

Alternative fuels are widely available at pumping stations across East Tennessee and in part of Arkansas, but not in Memphis.

The Riverside, a gas station on Riverside Drive, has been selling biodiesel, a fuel made from oils and fats, for almost a year. But no local gas stations offer ethanol, an alternative fuel made from corn. City Council member Dedrick Brittenum’s constituents aren’t happy about it.

“They want to know why they have to drive [so far] to get biofuel,” Brittenum said.

On December 18th, the City Council is expected to vote on an ordinance encouraging local retailers to offer ethanol and biodiesel by 2009 and 2010, respectively. It also requires city vehicles to begin using biofuels, when available, by 2009.

But the original ordinance considered by the council would have done more than just encourage retailers to sell alternative fuels.

Brittenum proposed an ordinance that would have required fuel retailers to sell standard diesel with a minimum mixture of 5 percent biodiesel by January 1, 2010, and a minimum mixture of 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline by January 1, 2009.

The ordinance passed in its initial two readings before the City Council, but when officials from the Tennessee Petroleum Council, the Tennessee Oil Marketers Association, and the Valero Energy Corporation found out about the ordinance, they wanted a few changes.

“We are not opposed to biofuels, and we have no problem with Memphis making strides in alternative fuels, but we do have a problem with a mandate,” said Mike Williams, executive director of the Tennessee Petroleum Council. “It looks like this ordinance [was] telling our members what to sell and telling customers what to buy.”

At a meeting last week with Brittenum, oil industry representatives echoed those concerns.

“Our concern is availability and cost of product,” said Emily LeRoy, associate director of the Tennessee Oil Marketers Association, a trade organization for petroleum marketers. “The commodities market determines the price of alternative fuels.”

LeRoy said many distributors already sell biofuel blends. But she said mandating biofuel use would cripple businesses when the commodities market drives up the price of corn.

“We don’t want a situation where our hands are tied and we’re unable to be competitive in the marketplace,” Williams added.

Currently, Williams said ethanol must be shipped to the area from factories in East Tennessee. Several ethanol plants are planned for West Tennessee and North Mississippi, and ethanol will be available in Memphis once those plants begin producing fuel. Memphis is already home to two biodiesel producers: Memphis Biofuels and Milagro Biofuels.

After input from the industry, Brittenum edited the ordinance so that the sale of biofuel would be voluntary. The council will establish a committee of citizens, biofuel industry representatives, and petroleum industry officials to oversee its implementation.

Though the final ordinance was diluted, biofuels advocate Andrew Couch of the West Tennessee Clean Cities Coalition said he wasn’t upset with the changes.

“I don’t really want a mandate either. I don’t want to force anything on anybody even if it is a good idea,” Couch said. “While this ordinance won’t necessarily do a whole lot by itself, it sets up a framework that we can work out of.”

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Maybe she should just have them all waterboarded. In Monday’s edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, in an article titled “Feinstein blasts response to oil spill,” the illustrious Senator Dianne Feinstein takes the Coast Guard to task for not responding quickly enough after the Cosco Busan tanker hit the Bay Bridge and spilled a bunch of horrible fuel gunk into the water. She was even going to run and have a meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff about what she cited as a “disturbing lack of readiness for disasters.” Well, senator, you better look in the mirror, because you are part of a disaster that has been happening, is still happening, and likely won’t stop anytime soon — in part thanks to you. If you don’t think it’s a disaster for the United States government to torture other human beings, I wonder just what you think is. Feinstein broke with most Democrats and voted to confirm Michael Mukasey as United States attorney general, even though he wouldn’t come out and say that waterboarding is illegal. By doing so, Feinstein sent her message loud and clear, along with everyone else who voted for Mukasey. He could have said what he knows is true: that waterboarding is illegal. But he whined that he couldn’t comment on that because he hadn’t been “briefed.” What I want to know is, why the hell couldn’t someone have briefed him? Is it that big a deal? Why was everyone clamoring about it being “classified” information that he couldn’t be privy to until he was on the job? Why couldn’t he just talk with someone who had been instructed to carry out this form of torture and ask about it? The boys in Washington have already said that they are doing it and that it has prevented further attacks on Amurkan soil. Of course, they offer no proof of this, and they pretty much do much anything they want and people bow down and thank their God they’re still alive because some cab driver from Baghdad has been locked up in a stress position in Guantanamo for years and therefore couldn’t come destroy their lives. So, the question is not whether the boys have broken the laws of the Geneva Convention, but how Mukasey is going to help them get around getting in trouble for it. Not to mention how he is going to help them keep doing it. And Feinstein seems to think this is okay because it’s better to have Mukasey in there than not have any attorney general at all during this “time of war.” I heartily disagree. I think it would be great not to have an attorney general. Look at the past. Look back, if you can possibly stomach doing so, at John Ashcroft, the singing attorney general. Yep, it was GREAT having him in office — a man who, in a bizarre, mock religious ceremony, anointed himself with Crisco oil when he was sworn in as governor of Missouri. I would love to know where he rubbed it and I know I felt a lot safer with him looking out for me. Better than no attorney general at all? And look back, more recently, at the amazing Alberto Gonzales, who had his nose so far up Bush’s butt he couldn’t even make up a clear story about firing all those attorneys Bush wanted fired. He went to Ashcroft’s bedside while he was seriously ill and tried to get him to sign off on the practice of unrestricted wiretapping of American citizens. So no, I do not think having some weenie as attorney general who won’t say waterboarding is illegal torture is better than having none at all. And what’s worse is Feinstein and her other colleagues who voted likewise bought into George W. Bush’s bullshit about not sending up another candidate if they didn’t confirm Mukasey, leaving us all helpless and trembling in fear that a freaking mall might get blown up. The president and vice president of the United States are criminals and those politicians who are supposed to be representing the people of the United States better get some gonads and do something about it and stop supporting the appointments of their pawns, who’ll just bend over and take it to help them do whatever they want to do. Feinstein — who has much to lose from the Iraq war ending because her husband’s companies have made hundreds of millions of dollars on projects over there — has no right to be outraged with anyone other than herself. Maybe she should spend a little time washing the oil off of her hands.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Road Trip

Memphis is already home to two biodiesel manufacturers: Milagro Biofuels and Memphis Biofuels. But by next year, the University of Memphis will be making its own biodiesel — and this unit will be on wheels.

The school recently won a $99,000 state grant to make a mobile biodiesel mini-manufacturing unit. The small plant will be taken to area high schools and events to demonstrate how biodiesel is made.

“We’re hoping to advance the manufacture of biodiesel while informing the public,” says John Hochstein, engineering department chair. Biodiesel is a clean-burning fuel produced from renewable resources such as soybean oil, cottonseed oil, and even animal fat. It produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions than regular diesel.

The idea for the grant stemmed from one of professor Srikant Gir’s engineering classes, in which students worked together to build a very small biodiesel unit.

“The system the students put together is very nice, but it puts out fuel on a small scale. We’re talking maybe a quart at a time,” Gir says.

But the unit inspired Gir to find funding for a larger, mobile unit.

Once the mobile unit is complete, on-campus cafeterias will donate used vegetable oil to the engineering department. Part of the grant also funds testing equipment so the university can ensure the fuel it produces is suitable for use in vehicles. After the fuel has undergone testing, it will be used in university vehicles.

“We’re not making this to sell on the open market,” Hochstein says. “We’re just trying to make a closed loop on campus. It’s both economically and environmentally positive for the university.”

Andrew Couch, a biofuels advocate with the West Tennessee Clean Cities Coalition, says the mobile facility will create a first generation of college-educated workers with specialties in biodiesel.

“People are going to have a better understanding of what biofuels are before they get jobs working at biofuels plants,” Couch says. “Most people now working in biofuels have come from other process technologies, like chemical plants or food plants. In the future, we’ll have workers who have worked with biofuels in college.”