I knew that this would be a daunting task when I first set my mind to it. I knew it would involve many hours of scrutinizing federal legislature and articles written by trustworthy publications. When I began this project I realized that I would run into roadblocks and that I would possibly be beating my head against a brick wall because if the government doesn’t want something know, they will restrict information.
I don’t want to come off all magic bullet on you. I am not a conspiracy theorist and I don’t spend my evenings locked in a dank basement with Doritos and ‘Battle Star Galactica” DVDs. But what the frak? After scanning through just a couple of articles of legislative proceedings through USA.gov I was already feeling this creeping tingling sense of urgency. No, I don’t need Detrol.
Although I think I may pee myself through sheer frustration by the time my class in through. It is obvious and clear that the legislative process seems to be a venue for corporate and bias interests being overlaid with a guise of American patriotism and pride. What I am trying to find is some solid information concerning our country’s foreign diplomacy regulations with hostile countries when purchasing oil. I want to know how much we are getting, where are we getting it from, are we occupying this nation, are they considered hostile with us or even other countries and are these other countries our allies?
In this new information age, I think, many of us have this misconception that all of the information is out there somewhere. All you have to do is create the right combination of keystrokes and you’ve got it! However the second site I visited seemed like a breath of relief- until I began to read the details.
I wasn’t as surprised to see such biases in the government proceedings, as I am to find how hard it is to find the information I want. And when I think I find something great, it turns out to be twisted and garbled, what kind of strange planet did these people go to so that they could learn how to be so misleading as to sound hopelessly stupid. I have a new out look on former president Bush.
The U.S Energy and Information Administration (eia) is the second site I visited which I was linked to via the USA.gov site. I heaved a sigh of relief when it seemed I had found exactly what I was looking for, only to be sorely disappointed.
What I thought I had found was a chart of our nations daily imports of crude oil. These charts were prefaced by two paragraphs explaining the charts. Naturally I skimmed right over the paragraphs to look at the charts. Who needs to read something that explains what you can plainly see? Anyone who want to comprehend crazy government admin logic, that’s who.
When looking at the chart titled “Crude Oil Imports (Top 15 Countries) -
(Thousand Barrels per Day)” I saw a list of different countries followed by numbers. Canada headed that list for January 2011. The chart’s construction caused me to believe that the number following it’s corresponding country was the amount of crude oil that country had imported. So I was very annoyed, thinking I had found a list that detailed other countries imports of crude oil from us. However, once I read the paragraphs above I discovered what I was looking at was, in fact, our country’s top oil imports- just in a ‘from where-this much’ format.
(Thousand Barrels per Day)” I saw a list of different countries followed by numbers. Canada headed that list for January 2011. The chart’s construction caused me to believe that the number following it’s corresponding country was the amount of crude oil that country had imported. So I was very annoyed, thinking I had found a list that detailed other countries imports of crude oil from us. However, once I read the paragraphs above I discovered what I was looking at was, in fact, our country’s top oil imports- just in a ‘from where-this much’ format.
The information is also split into two charts without explanation. The only difference is that the subsequent chart says “Petroleum” where “Crude Oil” was in the first. This confused me as well because petroleum is crude oil and crude oil is petroleum (as evidenced from EIA’s own Energy Kid’s site). Basically the last chart, the most likely to be left unobserved, was the chart that had the complete totals. And the chart was present in thousand barrel’s a day format. This is misleading as well because the top imports were from countries who’s numbers were already in the thousands in this format. It would have been much more favorable to place the statistics in a millions of barrels format to have numbers such as 2.14 for Canada.
This makes me seriously wonder about EIA’s affiliates and true ultimate agenda. They say “Independent Statistics and Analysis” on their site header. I know I shouldn’t make assumptions based off of one piece of evidence. That kind of behavior is actually horrible for a reporter. Which is why I am delving deeper into EIA and it’s affiliates and the Administrator Richard Newell before I will use EIA as a trusted reference. So I will fully and openly site my sources and tell you whether I believe them to be credible/iffy/or nut cases.
This could imply some inherent biases on my part, but I hope to have the mental faculties to cipher out the crazies and partisan and stick to the facts. And in course of finding said facts I will remain honest and open about where I find my information.
I was hoping to have a topic that I could delve right into and bite into the meaty bits for a second and move on to the secondary, complimentary dishes. It doesn’t look to be very probable. I think I’ll be spending most of my time fact/source checking.
Sources – exact websites
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