The Glenn Beck Show Partial Transcript, Wednesday, April 23, 2008:
Subject's Transcript: We Have the Technology to Make Synthetic Oil at $45 a Barrel;
Rising Food Costs
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BECK: I hate to say this, but I believe it`s true. If we don`t wake up pretty soon, then history is going to one day judge America as the most suicidal superpower of all time. And here`s how I got there.
Even a big, dumb rodeo clown like me understands food and fuel, the price of them, go hand in hand. Look at the numbers. Since 2005 food prices are up about 83 percent. Gas price, up 81 percent. Wow, what a coincidence. Not so much.
I -- honestly, I`ve been thinking about this all day. I don`t know if it`s our stupidity or our arrogance. I think -- I think it`s our arrogance. Maybe it`s a little bit of both. We`ve taken food and fuel and loaded them into a gun and aimed it right at our own heads.
Think about this. On food, we have spent decades giving government subsidies to incentivize the wrong things. We`ve mandated that huge areas of this fertile land of ours, farmland, stay open for conservation. Then, we`re using grains that could feed tens of millions of people to make a crappy biofuel that barely works. And you can`t buy it anywhere, anyplace. Is that arrogance or stupidity?
Our fuel policy, even been more crazy. We`re now almost 100 percent at the mercy of foreign countries. Many of them hate our guts. That`s arrogance and suicidal stupidity.
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So tonight, here`s what you need to know, America. Believe it or not, I actually think $120 oil actually has an upside, as crazy as that sounds. It means that a lot of alternatives will finally make economic sense.
For instance, back in 1980 -- I don`t know if you know this -- Congress created the Synthetic Fuels Corporation, gave them the equivalent of $223 billion in today`s dollars to create two million barrels a day of synthetic oil. Six years later, we shut it down. Why? Because, OPEC knew we weren`t serious. They dropped the price of oil to under $14 a barrel and put Synthetic Fuels Corporation right out of business.
Well, you know what? The math doesn`t work that way anymore. We can make synthetic oil for about $45 a barrel. A 60 percent discount from what it costs us to buy the real stuff from people who hate us and want to kill us. So let me be the big, dumb rodeo clown here who asks the obvious question. Why won`t -- why aren`t we doing that?
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Additional reporting by CNN's Glenn Beck
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