Friday, January 25, 2008

Oil and stuff

When the Demos won control of Congress in '06 I figured that, if nothing else, the price of gasoline would go down. I mean we had been told time and again about Bush's buddies in the business of crude... oil that is, Texas Tea... and well, what would make a Demo more happy than to rain on a Bush Bud???

Evidently attacking Bush appointees about such alleged crimes as firing ADA's and becoming confused about what they said on "Meet The Press" was more important than the citzen's pocketbook. But I digress.

I have long believed that the price of gasoline is set by a group of guys who secretly meet in a local Denny's, after driving around town and wrting down what is on public display at all the quickie marts and filling stations and doing such intensive research as:

"Morning Joe, how's business?"

"Wonderful Mike, we didn't slow down a bit when the price cracked $12.99."

In the meantime the world holds its breath to see if the Fed's interest rate cut will sand bag the river and the government's giveback will stem the tide. And while I hope, I sure don't know. As Brother Dave Gardner said, "Dear hearts, the problem is" oil.

More specifically the almost 100% run up in price over the past two years.

Now I don't believe in price controls. The last time we tried that, under Nixon it was, we wound up with inflation and shortages. But we could do something like pouring a few billion dollars into basic research on stuff like fusion, batteries, etc. It would be wasteful as hell but all government is wasteful. And it might work.

Building some nuclear reactors would reduce our dependence on imported natural gass and heatung oil.. Might have to kick a few environmental wackos in the butt, but that's a good thing.

Paying people to grow corn to make alcohol increases the price of corn meal and other food products. Doing it for sugar beets would be better because you can import all the sugar you want from a variety of places, and the world price wouldn't change that much..

But that won't buy you many votes...

So I wonder. Does our Congress want us to be free of the Shieks of Arabia? Or have they developed a secondary addiction.... to ME oil money?? Ask Bill Clinton. I think he gets about $10 million a year..... and just who is his wife???