Congress will save us...**GAK**
I’m sure this has been mentioned somewhere else on teh internets by someone better informed and more erudite than I, but our elected representatives suck it. Gas prices are increasing and oil company profits are way up, and the Senate responds with calls for a 60-day suspension of the gas tax, price fixing probes, and 100 dollar consumer rebates. Way to take the long view guys, this doesn’t reek of election year C.Y.A. at all. It’s not like we need major revision of our national energy policy or anything. No really, this isn’t the time to have that conversation.
This plan of suspending the gas tax while giving out free money has the dual selling points of increasing the deficit while doing absolutely nothing for prices at the pump. One minor drawback; I’m not so sure that the public is going to fall for it this time. Create a bazillion dollar Medicare boondoggle and we’ll look the other way, because we don’t really care that much about our sick and aged. Give the Executive Brach carte blanche to invade anyone that it wants and we’ll happily acquiesce, just as long as you provide us the most basic illusion of security. But if you let gas prices rise too much we’re going to have you drawn and quartered in the town square. We’re never going to make the connection between some of the previous policy decisions we ignored and the current state of affairs, but we’re going to be spitting mad regardless.
We’re addicted to our cheap fuel, or so the President tells me, and if we don’t get our fix we’re going to come after someone with the pitchforks and torches. We can’t get at the oil companies, what with the lack of real choice and the inability to vote with our pocketbooks, so I have a feeling that the angry villagers are going to head down a door and pay a visit to congress. It’s going to be a bad election cycle to for incumbents of every stripe, but I think that the GOP is going to wind up holding the short straw in the end. Right or not, people associate Republicans with Big Oil. And even though the Dems have been afraid to stand up to the GOP for the last 6 years, they’re probably going to benefit from all this. Americans can tolerate cowardice a lot easier than they can tolerate 4 bucks a gallon.