Despite surplus gasoline, fuel prices increase

Fuel prices continue to rise, even though America has more gasoline and diesel fuel than it can use. CBS News' Bill Whitaker explains why.

L.A. small businessman Peter Adeli had a good idea: keep shipping costs down by loading many small shipments under one big truck. But now he's being hit not by the recession, but high fuel costs. His trucks run on diesel.

"It costs about $160 to fill up the tanks in 2009," he said. "Now in 2011, it's costing over $350 to fill up the tanks on one truckload."

He can't afford to hire more workers and expand his business. This year the average American household will spend a record $4,155 on gasoline. Adeli says he'll spend about $98,000 on fuel.

"I can't understand why the prices increased so much," he said, "even though the national economy and business overall have not picked up."

Yet for the first time in 62 years, the U.S. will export more refined petroleum products -- gasoline and diesel -- than it imports.

"It's preposterous," said Adeli. "It's ridiculous."

In the first nine months of this year, the U.S. exported a net 64 million barrels of gas and diesel -- enough to run America's engines for a week. With the U.S. economy in the doldrums, we're using less fuel. Gasoline, and especially diesel from American refineries, is following demand -- flowing to growing economies in Central and South America.

Tom Kloza is chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service.

"Right now across the globe, it's the product that refiners can make the most money on, and it's the product that's in the most demand in emerging economies," he said.

"Those exports should be staying here in America, keeping our prices low," Adeli argued.

It's unlikely to get better for Adeli in 2012. Gasoline and diesel are expected to stay above $3 a gallon.

More at Link below:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57346678/despite-surplus-gasoline-fuel-prices-increase/

Fraud remains a way of life for liberals.

There are a lot of good names for the Democrats and the liberals.  Calling them the Party of Treason is a good start.  Calling them the Party of Surrender is also accurate.   Perhaps the best is calling them the Party of Fraud and Corruption.

Why is this name for them so accurate?

Because fraud is a way of life for the Democrats and the liberals.

In Indiana, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton may well have gotten on the ballot fraudulently.   Of course, Barack Obama’s Department of Justice has no interest in investigating voter fraud.  They have much more important things to do, like suing states that want to protect themselves against illegal aliens.

Hundreds of signatures for the petitions filed for both Obama and Clinton in the Democratic Primary may have been forged.  The result is Obama may not have been legally on the ballot for the primary in Indiana. 

If Obama was not legally on the ballot in Indiana, what other states was he not legally on the ballot?  How many other states had fraudulent petitions filed for Obama and Clinton?

For the left, election fraud is not something of the long forgotten past or even four years ago. 

Politico, the left leaning newspaper and website, reported that in Wisconsin, petitions are being signed by liberals with such names as Mickey Mouse and Adolf Hitler.   The Hitler signature was struck because the signer also listed his residence as Berlin, Germany.  However, the Mickey Mouse signature will stand unless it is challenged.

Wisconsin is a huge battle for the left and they know it.   Scott Walker has done an amazing job of dismantling the money machine the left uses to fund itself.   Unions use an insurance monopoly that is negotiated by the State to reap huge profits, which are in turn funneled back into campaigns to put more liberals into office. 

 http://www.teapartynation.com/forum/topics/fraud-remains-a-way-of-life-for-liberals

Democrats find their bogeyman

Democrats' flagship campaign theme for Nov. 2012 has emerged in full force in recent weeks.

It's this: Behind all our nation's economic problems -- from abysmal unemployment numbers to sky-high deficits -- lurks a greedy businessman.

This guy is ruining things for the rest of us. He refuses to play by the rules, and lives in luxury while "the 99 percent" suffer.

Who's facilitating his misdeeds? Unprincipled Republicans, who fawningly enable the machinations of their "tax-cut-at-any-price" masters in the private sector.

This message -- now rising from many "progressive" quarters -- is a far cry from "the politics of hope" that dominated the last presidential campaign.

Democrats' businessman-as-bogeyman theme takes a variety of forms. We can see them on display in recent remarks by three of its champions: President Obama; Elizabeth Warren, who's challenging Scott Brown for a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts, and Minnesota's own Gov. Mark Dayton.

Obama's need to finger businesspeople for America's economic plight is clear. In his first year as president, though he blamed George W. Bush for the nation's economic downturn, Obama assured us his own progressive policies would soon put things right and guarantee a shining future.

Now the cat is out of the bag. Obama's policies -- the gargantuan, failed stimulus; out-of-control spending; Obamacare and other huge expansions of government, and an out-of-control regulatory state -- not only failed to extricate us from economic stagnation, but made our problems far worse.

So Obama has turned to Plan B. To divert attention from his own failed policies, he's conjured up a hobgoblin.

In his recent speech at Osawatomie, Kan., the president fired a salvo in his new class-warfare campaign: The top 1 percent must stop cheating the rest of us and pay their "fair share." The "breathtaking greed of a few" is destroying the middle class.

While Obama's goal is to divert attention from his own failures, Warren offers a different flavor of "us vs. them" politics. In her world, the wealthy are not so much greedy cheaters as ungrateful dependents on a government funded by the middle class. Read More at Link Below:

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/otherviews/135762258.html

Million-Dollar Nurses Show U.S. Payroll Struggle

California (BCAX) has paid Lina Manglicmot $1.5 million since 2005, an average of $253,530 a year, to work as a prison nurse in the agricultural town of Soledad.

Manglicmot is one of 42 state nurses who each made more than $1 million in those six years, mostly by tapping overtime, according to payroll data compiled by Bloomberg News. Together, those nurses collected $47.5 million. In 2008, Manglicmot was paid $331,346, including $211,257 in overtime.

The extra pay that allows some nurses to triple their regular compensation underscores a broader trend in California, where government workers are paid more than in other states for similar duties and civil-service job protections hamper efforts to close budget gaps. Governor Jerry Brown said this week that revenue will fall short of expectations, triggering $1 billion in cuts to school busing, libraries and care for children, the elderly and the disabled, among other programs. Read more at Link below:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-16/million-dollar-nurses-show-california-s-struggle-to-reduce-payroll-costs.html

Poll: Most want US payroll tax cut extended

WASHINGTON (AP) — Most Americans want Congress to vote to continue the payroll tax reduction, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll that comes as Democrats and Republicans wrestle over whether to extend the cut through 2012.

It's the latest instance in which lawmakers on Capitol Hill have allowed partisan sniping to hold up action that polls show most Americans support, like ending the Bush tax cuts or adding a surcharge on millionaires.

The dragged-out debate over whether to extend an expiring payroll tax reduction is one of many developments that have kept voters furious with their leaders all year. On the brink of the 2012 presidential and congressional elections, virtually all Americans are disappointed and frustrated with the political scene and nearly 6 in 10 say they are angry, the AP-GfK survey showed.

"It seems like there are parties that only want to get their agenda done," said liquor store owner James Jacobsen, 47, of East Hartford, Conn. "They're catering to special interests and not Americans. They are not representing the individual American."

Nearly 6 in 10 respondents say they want Congress to pass the extension, according to the poll. Letting the Social Security payroll tax break expire would cost a family making $50,000 about $1,000.

Yet, Republicans and Democrats are rejecting each other's proposals and trying to make law from what's left, a tactic they've used all year on debates over the budget and the nation's debt. The stalemates have caused a decline in confidence. About 15 percent of all adults and a third of political independents say they don't trust either party to manage the federal budget deficit.

Retired postal worker Larry Collier wishes Congress would get on with what help it can give — an assurance to 160 million American workers that their payroll tax cut will be extended through 2012.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hE_EDIjvNPP6yg5ccTd70qodCUsg?docId=0cda0a90cda1407f83d4de83a0e83e01