If you ever wanted concrete evidence that we in the United States are currently being led by the moron brigade, here’s the moment you’ve been waiting for:
As American motorists forked over a record average $3.21 a gallon — according to the most recent AAA survey — the House voted 345-72 Tuesday to approve a bill that would authorize the attorney general to sue the OPEC countries in U.S. courts.
Dubbed the “No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act of 2007″ or “NOPEC” bill, the measure would amend the Sherman Act to make it illegal for foreign governments to try to limit oil and gas production to try to control energy prices.
Championed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., the bill would essentially make it illegal for foreign nations like those in OPEC to operate a cartel.
Quick: you’re a politician. If you want to keep your job, you have to get reelected. Your constituents are pissed off that gas prices are going up again during (*gasp*) the highest season of gasoline demand! How dare those oil companies! What do you do?
Maybe you actually know something about economics. About how higher demand means lower supply, which naturally means higher prices.
Or even better, let’s say that you’re really on the ball and know all about what’s been happening in the oil world over the last few years: the refinery crisis, essentially flat global oil production, Saudi production flat or declining for over two years now, other major oil fields worldwide going into declining production. Increased oil nationalization worldwide. And don’t forget China - a billion of those folks, all demanding the American way of life, and so those guys are running around the world buying up whatever oil they can lay their hands on.
Let’s say, for sake of argument, that you know all about that.
Now let’s go one step further and say that you actually know something about energy systems and technology. You know that all the recent talk about ethanol and hydrogen is smoke and mirrors, and that - proven by the math - no combination of alternative energy sources has a hope of a prayer of even coming close to replacing oil as the energy source that drives our economy. You know that we have no fallback option. It’s oil or nothing.
And you know there’s no solution to permanently rising gas prices - most likely exponentially rising in the next few years - except one: GET OFF THE STUFF. Phase out cars. Start dumping money into rebuilding railroads and developing real public transportation systems. But for the love of God, kill demand. As long as everyone feels entitled to cruise around the city in their four-ton 10-mpg SUV, during a period of oil production decline, prices are only going to go higher until we finally reach disaster.
The most efficient way to kill demand? $.50/gallon federal gas tax, and then another one in a year or two, and so on and so forth as we continue down the slope of oil decline. Create an artificial domestic shortage while we stockpile crude here at home, and stay ahead of the wave. (Certainly beats what’s happening in third world countries right now.)
Or.. you could just wave chicken bones at the sky and declare high prices illegal.
You’re a politician who has to answer to a dangerously uninformed constituency who wants, at the end of the day, only two things: their SUV and American Idol. They believe that every problem is just like the movies - there’s a villian and a hero, and so if they’re in pain, that means that the forces of evil are at work. Your voters all imagine that Stavro Blofeld is sitting somewhere in his mountain lair with his white cat, holding the world hostage by diabolically manipulating oil prices.
Do you level with people, knowing full well that you’ll be booted out of office for doing it?
Or do you vote for feel-good legislation that any first-year student of economics could tell you will only drive prices up faster - and probably create shortages along the way? All while fanning nationalist flames at home, encouraging your population to continue believing that James Bond will - nay, must! - always save them?
Like I said, moron brigade. Either that or rank cowardice. Or both. And people wonder why I’ve lost faith in politics.
I’ve got an idea. While we’re at it, why don’t we pass a law banning China from buying oil? Or forcing Saudi Arabia to pull more oil out of the ground? Or even better - how about Texas? Those guys have been in steady decline since the early seventies. Slackers! Pass a law and put more oil in them there fields. We could even call it the Jethro Clampett Law.
Because after all, that cypherin’ is sure some hard work, no matter how many naughts you have to carry.
