Saturday, September 03, 2005

Short Buses and Calculators

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(I’m reposting this from a comment on Patton’s post)

Please.

oil : 70 / 60 = 1.16
local gas price: $3.75 / $2.19 = 1.7

Did the wholesale price of gasoline just rise?  We don’t have figures there.  If the wholesale price rose by 70%, then the oil companies ARE gouging, because their piplines are full of $60 oil.  If the wholesale price has stayed the same, then the stations are gouging the public, by 50% or more.  Oh wait—almost all stations are owned by the oil companies.  So that’s them again.

Don’t pull out your “short bus” metaphor unless you pull out a calculator at the same time.

Yes, big oil is looting the nation.  Per barrel shifts in oil prices have lengthy, delayed effects, not instantaneous market reactions down to the _pump_ level.  Psychologically, the oil companies saw the opportunity and took it.  They know they’ll have no reaction from this administration, and an innumerate citizenry will...do nothing.

I’ll agree with you on one point—price controls are not the answer here.  Nationalizing some of this certainly is.  I don’t have a problem with states (or the federal governmen) owning refining capacity and stations.  Leave the private sector pirates in place; if they’re truly as “efficient” as claimed, then they’ll be just fine, and no government-run entity could possibly compete with them.  They’ll earn their business the old-fashioned way, with lower prices and better service.

Yeah, right.

Hey, fuck it.  Doesn’t affect me—it’s just those poor people who are going to have trouble paying the gas bills, getting to their increasingly shitty jobs, as the GOP chops the budget for public transportation into non-existence.  50% of the national guard’s equipment is over in Iraq, and unavailable for disaster relief.

Think about this: This is a much bigger disaster than 9/11.  We have potentially (and quite probably at this point) thousands of people dead.  We have a major city _destroyed_, mostly by inaction and incompetence at every level.  The hurricane left the city generally intact!

And if you think this country has done a great job preparing for “terrorist attack”, exactly what would have happened differently if Al Qaeda had detonated explosives at the levees, instead of the hurricane?

Michael Brown, “director” of FEMA, said two days ago (on Thursday) that he was “unaware” that there were people in the Superdome.  The fucking director of FEMA didn’t know that there were thousands of people there.

Michael Brown was Joe Allbaugh’s college roommate.  GOP-activist Michael Brown’s prior experience was running the “Arabian Horse Alliance” or some silly bullshit like that.  Some reports indicate Brown was “invited to resign” from that job amidst accusations of incompetence.

Brown’s FEMA placed Pat Robertson’s (yes, the same crazy-ass Robertson we know and love) “Operation Blessing” at the number two position on the cash giving list, before the Salvation Army, before just about everything else you’d recognize.  Brown’s speeches have him complaining about the fact that he can’t be “spiritual” in public.

I know exactly what kind of “Republican” Michael Brown is, and there’s exactly _nothing_ conservative about this man.  He is either a smart man who is a nasty fucker, or he is sufficiently stupid and egocentric so as not to have an understanding of his own deeply _lethal_ incompetence.

Patton, he is not like you.  At the heart of it, I _respect_ the conservatism you represent.  It’s a conservatism derived from realism, that wants restraint, that wants a government to do less, and give its citizens more freedom.  That is a genuine and respectable goal, and when the country votes for it that’s fine with me.

This cabal of entitlement frat-buddies has hijacked the GOP, and this country desperately needs its real conservatives back.  Please, please, find some...beg them to come back.  There’s little elsewhere to turn. 


Posted by Ross on 09/03/05 at 03:49 PM
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