We Got Robbed Lamond!

There is a story that I remember about a frog, water, and a pan. The frog hopped into a pan filled with water that was sitting on a cook stove. The stove had just been turned on and the frog thought everything was just fine and dandy. As the story goes, the frog sit in the water as the temperature began to go higher and higher. Finally, the water began to boil and the frog was cooked alive.

Lately I have been feeling like "We The American People" are in essence , that frog! Some refer to this as "Pain At The Pump". I prefer to call it "Greed". Not by those who purchase the gas from the large oil companies and sell it to us the consumer, but what is known as The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries or for short commonly called OPEC. As well as some very large American oil companies.

The information below will give a brief history of the countries and when they united together to control a major part of the market for petroleum products. This information was found at the following link: http://www.opec.org/aboutus/history/history.htm
Notice the five countries I have text colored red.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is a permanent, intergovernmental Organization, created at the Baghdad Conference on September 10–14, 1960, by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. The five Founding Members were later joined by nine other Members: Qatar (1961); Indonesia (1962) – suspended its membership from January 2009; Socialist Peoples Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (1962); United Arab Emirates (1967); Algeria (1969); Nigeria (1971); Ecuador (1973) – suspended its membership from December 1992-October 2007; Angola (2007) and Gabon (1975–1994). OPEC had its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, in the first five years of its existence. This was moved to Vienna, Austria, on September 1, 1965.

Are we now the frog? I feel it's a tragedy that so many of this country's service men and women have been called upon to give their precious blood for these other countries that seem to not appreciate it but very little. Is it not amazing how quick those countries have forgotten what the service members of the American Armed Forces have done for their freedoms and the protection given several of the founding member countries against ruthless dictators?

I'm very thankful that we have several local gas stations to provide this product to us. Remember the January ice storm? I had to drive from Paducah to Cadiz (@ exit 65 on I-24) just to get enough gas to get back to Marion! There were lines everywhere in Paducah and no gas to be found. It's certainly not the small business people causing this, yet I do blame many of those elected leaders in our nation's capital of Washington.

During our last presidential election, both sides of both parties were using slogans like; "Drill Here, Drill Now" and "We Can Burn Clean Coal". "It was stated that "If We Can Put A Man On The Moon, We Can Burn Clean Coal". Seems like those things have been put on the back burner on the other side of the dead frog.

Fred Sanford said it best when he walked into his house one day and noticed that everything of any value had been stolen. He yelled out to his son, " We Got Robbed Lamond"!

I kind of feel like we are getting robbed also.

GW