by Joey Goze

Created on: May 21, 2008

Remember the good old days when gas only cost $3.20? Ahh, those were the days! I wish I could say that the memory of those prices is in the long distant past. Unfortunately, it was only about 8 months ago that gas was at that price. Now that gas is ticking past $4.00 per gallon and the price of a barrel of oil just flipped north of $130, thank god we have a democratic congress to explain the source of the problem; OPEC and the oil companies.

In the classic mode of liberal democrats, the second a problem rears its ugly head, they go on the hunt for a scapegoat. OPEC of course was number 1. It is that evil oil cartel that is gouging us. In a move that will make us look like a weak spineless country, the U.S. congress moved to sue OPEC under the auspices of U.S. anti-trust law. Newsflash to congress; OPEC could give a rats ass about our anti-trust laws. They live and die by the law of supply and demand and as long as our demand for middle-eastern oil is through the roof, they have no incentive to lower the price.

The second scapegoat was of course, the oil companies. They have committed the eternal sin of creating a highly profitable business. Bad, bad, bad oil companies! How dare you make a profit? Our leading democratic presidential hopefuls are all over these companies, berating them for profiting and threatening to tax them for having too successful a business. They want to institute a windfall tax, essentially stealing profits from these companies. It is shameful, these so called liberals that claim to care for the common man. I wonder if when they collect these windfall taxes, are they planning to return the money to the people? Where would that money go, to more government programs, to pay overblown government salaries, to cover all the earmarks for the 2008 budget? In my humble opinion, we should institute a windfall tax on the $3 trillion dollars that our government is going to collect in taxes this year and give that money back to the people. 'We the people' can manage our money better than the federal government.

The nasty secret out there is that high oil prices today are the result of democratic and liberal policies being implemented over the last 20 years. No expansion of oil drilling in north America, no new refineries being built, no nuclear power plants being built, global warming guilt blocking us developing any more sources of fossil fuel. Because we have failed to exploit robust oil sources which would compete against middle eastern oil, the price has gone up and up in line with our demand. We insist that our economy expand at amazing rates yet we lack the political will to go get the energy that we require for that expansion. It is liberal energy policies of the last 20 years that has gotten us to $4.00/gallon gasoline.

So while our democratic controlled congress is crying to OPEC with its useless lawsuits and our republican president has seemingly fallen off a true path of conservatism, the price of oil is going to continue to rise. The pain at the pump is going to continue to hurt. We have to begin to compete in the truly American way that I know that we can in order to get control of the energy market. It is not time to seek out who is to blame, it is time to get of our asses and find the solutions, compete, and win under the framework of a free market.

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