Oil Slick Dick

When vice-president Dick Cheney met in secret to determine "Energy Policy" with what are believed to have been a group of energy (read: Oil and Gas) company excutives, and flatly refused to let the American people know who was present there and what was discussed and decided, I smelt a very big rat, bigger than any denizen of the subways under New York City. Efforts by the press to obtain that information were horn-swaggled by Cheney's claim that it was not anybody's business what advise he got from whoever it was he had met with. The rat I smelled actually was an oil soaked critter. VP Cheney, and his boss, the president, are both from the Oil industry. That in itself is not a disqualification for holding a high office: but we did run the risk that most of their "energy" policies would be directed toward looking after their base of support in that industry. It is tempting, so many years later, to believe that a decision was made at that meeting to arrive approximately at where we are now in regard to oil prices by principally manipulating the production of crude (with OPEC co-operation) and letting speculators do the rest. Yes, there are complex and diverse factors that determine the price of a commodity as vastly produced and distributed globally as oil is. Yet, there have always been these same factors present over many, many years; yet it took an oil-based administration in Washington for that complexity and lack of transparency to propel oil prices into an upward spiral that has been not only unprecedented, but entirely opaque in regard to an acceptable rationale. The pundits who serve the industry and innumerable Administration appointies keep pointing to India and China and their fast-growing economies as the major reason for the run up in oilmprices. "It's Supply and Demand," they keep reminding us. Frankly, even if every one of the one billion Indians and a number exceeding that of Cinese had Oil for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day of the year, it would still represent a fraction of what it ewould take to so completely disrupt the oil market. A minuscule percentage of Indians own and drive cars, and even with the economic boomthey have experienced, their economy is a fraction as large as ours. yes, there is increased demand: then why is there no increased supply? Are the Saudis and the Kuwaities running dry? Far from it. The Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia is on record as having said that there is enough oil being pumped to meet present demand without any strain on the system: in other words, look elsewhere for reasons why we have this spike in oil prices.

As time runs out for the Bush Administration, the president is now in the act of delivering the punch-line, the coup de grace: START DRILLING!

An executive order signed by the first president George (H.W.) Bush, as well as a law passed by Congress shut down the process of issuing any more leases for off-shore drilling and exploration, mostly in response to serious environmental concerns that created opposition to off-shore exploration in coastal States on both the West and East Coasts. Now, with the price of oil at destructively high levels, the president is demanding that new leases be immediately made available to the Oil companies, who will then drill like crazy to rescue the American consumer.

This, Mr.President, amounts to a con-job. For all your patriotic bluster, furrowed brow and hand-wringing, you knew that a day would come, as a consequence of the very reason you chose to run for office and selected this particular man to be your vice-president , when the nation would fall on bended knee and plead for more drilling to save the economy. In effect, the nation could be held hostage to the Corporate bottom lines of your Petro-buddies. Sorry, Sir, but the Gig is Up. Your latest fiat lifting the restriction on off-shore drilling by executive order is a well-timed act of deception. You wish to appear in the role of Knight in Shining Armor: you look and act more like Don Quixote than any of King Arthur's valiant men. The timing is perfect, but you failed to fool anybody.
If you are so driven to rescue this nation from the Oil Price Dragon, how about a very simple kick-in-the corporate pants of Big Oil to get drilling on the leases they already hold! Or, may I venture to think, that that would not achieve your main purpose: and that is once and for all to destroy the power of the environmental movement that you have already hurt every other way you can. Until the off-shore sanctum can be breached and the pristine ANWAR fields are leased out, you will ot be able to report to your real constituents, the Oil Companies, that, for the second time in your presidency, you can claim: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
I personally don't think you will get away with it, even at twice your present Approval rating.