Why should we lift the US oil export ban?

Why should we lift the US oil export ban?  The short answer is that we have a mismatch between refineries in Louisiana and the crude from fracking shale.  The refineries are built to handle heavy crude from Latin America.  The crude from shale is very light crude, which means it has a very different chemical composition than heavy crude.  Heavy crude refineries can't refine light crude.  So why not modify our existing refineries to handle light crude?  It would be cheaper to build a new refinery. However, the environmental reviews required make building a new refinery prohibitively expensive. There's also the Jones Act, which requires all shipping from one US port to another be on US flag ships with US crews. This makes moving the light crude from Louisiana, where all the pipelines go, to New Jersey, where there are some light crude refineries, too expensive to be worth it. Global warming alarmists don't want more oil produced, so they will fight any change in any of these laws and regulations. Remember, the Keystone pipeline was fought because of its potential contribution to global warming. Speaking of Keystone, the Louisiana refineries would be able to refine the very heavy Canadian crude from the Keystone pipeline easily.

 

Article I was reacting to:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/robert-samuelson-lets-export-us-oil/2014/09/28/e1285890-45d2-11e4-b47c-f5889e061e5f_story.html

My Personal Brush With Police

A lot of naive reaction to Ferguson wondered why the cop shot to kill.  In the dark, with a huge guy coming at you with evil intent you don't have time to reflect. The victim has to act responsibly to minimize the danger to himself.  I lived a similar situation from the "perpetrator" side, but I reacted differently. In 1976, I bought a house in a Chicago suburb. After a first day of unpacking boxes and trimming shelves to fit in closets with my pocket knife, I went for my first walk around the neighborhood. I had on a straw hat, work shirt and jeans. I hadn't shaved since the Air Force gave me a medal the week before, so I looked pretty scruffy. It was getting dark when a car pulled up. When the spotlight hit me, I took my hands out of my pockets and raised them to where the cops could see them. The first words I heard were, "Up against the car!" I said nothing and did what they said. Before asking me any questions, they frisked me. They were going to take my pocket knife away from me, but decided finally to give it back. I waited until the next day to call the Chief of Police to complain, but at least I was alive so I could do it. 

The Second Coming of Prohibition

The War on Drugs is the second coming of Prohibition. it has all of the huge profits and all of the consequent violence. You can't outlaw substances many people will buy anyway, legal or not. We need to decide we can't win and quit. We need to start by legalizing marijuana at the federal level and make it a state issue. Then we can tax it heavily and fund a defense department. After marijuana, we probably need to legalize cocaine because of the size of its market. Again, we can tax it heavily. Protecting people from the ill effects of drugs is not worth the social costs of rampant violent crime that results. Just like Prohibition, the War on Drugs has to stop. 

Over the Counter Birth Control Ends War On Women

The "free" contraceptives of Obamacare are a "gift" from the government at the expense of the employer. Any Republican who has a problem with coercing employers to pay for something that's universally affordable anyway is characterized as wanting to outlaw birth control and at war with women. This is deception on its face, because the question was who pays for birth control, not whether it was legal to sell birth control or not. Now the Republicans have come up with a solution that deregulates birth control. Sell it over the counter. What is really happening is that Republicans never had a war on women. They had a problem with government coercion. Now Republicans have found a way to make their free market position on birth control clearer, Democrats object. Democrat candidates like government to regulate everything and have no issues besides their fictional "War on Women" to run on.  In the article linked below, the Democrat author is furious.

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_26515886/gops-underhanded-push-over-counter-birth-control