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| POLITICAL GAS |
| Wednesday, August 31, 2005 |
| Thomas Sowell: An oil 'crisis'?: "Candidates for Congress next year, and politicians hoping to run for President in 2008, are virtually guaranteed to come up with all sorts of 'solutions.'
These 'solutions' will be packaged as brilliant new ideas, courageous and far-seeing. But most will be retreads of old ideas that remain untested or which have been tested in the past and found wanting.
Price controls, arbitrary new higher gas mileage standards for cars, 'alternative energy sources,' and other nostrums are sure to surface once again.
The last time we had price controls on gasoline, we had long lines of cars at filling stations, these lines sometimes stretching around the block, with motorists sitting in those lines for hours.
That nonsense ended almost overnight when President Ronald Reagan, ignoring the cries of liberal politicians and the liberal media, got rid of price controls with a stroke of the pen.
What happened is what usually happens when government restrictions are ended: There was more production of oil. In fact the 1980s became known as the era of an 'oil glut' and gasoline prices declined.
Today production is being held back, not by price controls, but by political hysteria whenever anyone suggests actually producing more oil ourselves. Organized nature cults go ballistic at the thought that we might drill for oil in some remote part of Alaska that 99 percent of Americans will never see, including 99 percent of the nature cultists.
People used to ask whether there is any sound if a tree falls in an empty forest. Today, there are deafening political sounds over oil-drilling in an empty wilderness.
Nor can we drill for oil offshore, or in many places on land, again for political reasons. Nor can we build enough refineries or even build hydroelectric dams as alternative
Many of the same people who cry "No blood for oil!" also want higher gas mileage standards for cars. But higher mileage standards have meant lighter and more flimsy cars, leading to more injuries and deaths in accidents -- in other words, trading blood for oil.
Apparently the only things we can do are the things in vogue among nature cultists and the politicians that cater to them, such as windmills and electric cars. That is why we would be better off if the government did nothing and let people adjust their own energy consumption individually in their own ways as the prices of gasoline and fuel oil rise. But that is also politically unlikely. |
posted by Jack Mercer @ 8/31/2005 07:03:00 PM   |
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Name: Jack Mercer
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Miriam Webster defines Snipe as: to aim a carping or snide attack, or: to shoot at exposed individuals (as of an enemy's forces) from a usually concealed point of vantage.
Miriam Webster defines Snippet as: : a small part, piece, or thing; especially : a brief quotable passage.
In short, "Snipets" are brief, snide shots at exposed situations from a concealed vantage point.
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