The Thirty-Two Percent Solution

Bush claims he pays no attention to polls. I suppose that explains why, after hitting 32 percent approval and risking mass defections from his own party, he coincidentally decided it was time to do something about something important to the ordinary American, gas prices. Today I discussed contingency plans for $3.50 per gallon with my supervisor and he agreed, we need to let people telecommute to save money (a tank of gas each month costs our average pay raise for 2006 and they wonder why we don't think the economy is good).

His answer wasn't to increase fleet economy for all vehicles, to eliminate the tariff on Brazilian ethanol or to ground Air Force One from participating in campaign stops, The Shrubian answer to high gas prices? Gut the environmental requirements of the Clean Air Act. So when your asthma kicks in later this year, thank the Shrub. Oh, he did waive deposits to the national strategic petroleum reserves. And he did call for the repeal of $2 billion in tax breaks for the oil companies, although how increasing their taxes is supposed to lower gas prices escapes me.

His addiction to oil analogy is wrong. A better analogy is chronic overeating. We have to eat to live just as our economy and industry requires energy. The problem is when we eat too much. We become fat and unhealthy, devoting more and more resources to obtaining food while becoming more and more unhealthy, literally wasting our lives in pursuit of food. An addict can generally do completely without their addiction as I now do completely without tobacco. An addiction is not necessary to life. Food is. Oil-fat America is a better analogy for our dependence on oil and as a metaphor would lead to the one short-term fix for our problems. Eat less.

Thank God they didn't bring out Rumsfeld's cracked, cloudy crystal ball and declare in Rumsfeldian bombast, this will bring oil prices down! Instead they said they didn't know how much. So the end result of Bush's attempt to wage war on gas prices was yet another erosion of environmental law.

I won't even mention the Cheney energy policy that granted the oil companies the tax breaks nor will I mention a certain type of footwear made popular by Republicans in reference to our last Presidential candidate. Yes, I mean flip-flops.

According to the EPA, the waivers to the Clean Air Act could be enacted for twenty days and could be requested by cities with fuel shortages. Problem there is that the fuel conversion is mostly complete, in other words, oil companies have completed.... Stop that! In other words THERE IS NO NEED FOR WAIVERS! This entire bit of bombast on Bush's part is smoke and mirrors, it effectually guts a portion of the Clean Air Act for nothing and will not decrease your gas bill this summer.

Better, buy a Prius if you can find one. The wait in Denver is four to five months. Looks like our collective wisdom is far greater than our madman President's. Still, in mentioning repealing the oil tax breaks, for a brief moment, Bush sounded as if he may be representing our interests and not those of his buddies in Houston's oil patches.