“Northwest New Mexico has been sacrificed on the altar of corporate greed and political buy-offs, and what has happened to us is happening across the West,” said Blancett, a sixth-generation rancher who ran the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign in her part of New Mexico. — Congress Takes Another Run at Passing Bush Energy Bill (April 18, 2005) Environment News Service.

Wonder if the rest of America will hear it before it’s too late. Or will we just continue to hit the snooze button?

Gasoline in Clovis has gone from about $2.19 per gallon to about $2.45 per gallon. At least, this is what my little book shows me. (I track my gasoline usage for tax purposes and I include the cost per gallon in my log.)

The thing that worries me is that, although I think this might be a positive sign overall for the country, there’s a risk to it.

Robert Brusca of FAO Economics noted that just about all past recessions were preceded by an oil price shock. He said Monday that current prices, coupled with sluggish job growth, falling consumer confidence and the Fed raising interest rates, pose a serious threat to economic growth. Chris Isidore, “Oil-shocked into recession?” (October 18, 2004) ¶ 14, CNNmoney.

My wife and I are by no means poor — we might actually be among the last of the middle class to be squeezed out into one of the other classes as the “middle” disappears. And by that time, we might actually have a shot at staying with the “haves” — albeit as part of the minority of that group that still fights for the “have-nots.” We will never, however, be what George Bush calls “my base.” (Incidentally, some conservatives are fond of pointing out that Bush made this comment at a fundraiser, as a joke. They fail to note that the “joke” would not work if there weren’t some truth to it. Furthermore, a look at the funding of the Bush campaign reveals just how true it is.)

At any rate, one of the ways we’re ensuring that future is that we’ve cut back on spending money for “fun” things as gas prices have continued to rise. We’ll probably stick with our tiny 11,000 square-foot lot for longer than we’d planned. No new cars. Fewer vacations. And I guess we won’t go out to dinner as much.

We have done pretty well financially and have no kids. We often wonder how people with kids must be adjusting. Therein lies the explanation for why rising gasoline prices are so destructive to our economy as a whole. Money spent on gasoline is money not spent on other things. So what was it the company you work for does again? Unless you’re drilling for oil or selling gasoline, your job is one of those impacted by the fact that fewer people can afford what your company sells (or does).

The big worry comes this winter. Even Clovis, California, gets cold.

Now more and more people are worried about what happens to the economy when it comes time to fill home heating oil tanks. Will we have a shortage — like flu vaccine? Probably not, but high prices will pinch. Kathleen Hays, “Greenspan’s oil prayer” (October 18, 2004) ¶ 4, CNNmoney.

Oh yeah, the good sign? I’m telling myself — because it feels good to think so, even if it turns out I’m wrong — that it’s an indicator Bush is going to lose in the upcoming election . . . and he knows it. Since a new President would start fixing the things that have allowed oil companies to prosper under an oil-owned-and-operated Administration, prices have to be hiked dramatically between now and January 20. After that, G-d-willing, prices will return to more humane levels.

If that happens, my wife and I plan to celebrate by going out to dinner again.

Let’s wait to see what happens in the run-up to the election.

If he’s smart, and there was such a deal, the President will make a new one: Make sure the oil prices remain as outrageously high as they are now.

On the other hand, one can hardly fault the Wag the Dog approach. It works.

If I were the President, I’d call in my chips as November got nearer. The Saudis would increase production, flooding the market with oil until just after the election. Osama bin Laden would be brought out of whatever cell I was already holding him in (and as I’d be sure I was already holding him long before the election, I’ve no doubt Karl Rove has thought of this as well) just in time for the vote — personally, I’d do it within about one week of the vote and I’d be very public about it. All my friends would carry it on their television and radio stations hourly.

If I were the President, I’d be working on this from now oil, er, uh, I mean “all” the way through to November.

The direct impact of this upon Americans is rising gasoline prices.

By some estimates the shortage of refineries and diminished competition are adding as much as 30 cents to the price of every gallon. — Unattributed Story, “The Lowdown on the Gas Spike,” CBS News Online, April 2, 2004.

Of course, this sort of thing is nothing new. And it won’t change. Why should it? Not only did large corporations owned by Republicans manage to obtain large sums of money by controlling electricity in California, but they were able to actually spin the blame for their greed so that then-Governor Gray Davis was removed from office for incompetency when he tried to deal with the issue. The replacement — former part-time actor and full-time cyborg Arnold Schwarzenegger — was able to “terminate” all the state’s problems by convincing Californians to vote the government a credit card with a larger limit.

This is like you or me deciding that we’re running out of money on our Mastercard, then someone makes us an offer for a higher-limit card — they sweeten the pot with an “introductory” interest rate that’s lower than we’re currently paying — and all our problems are solved. Right?

Wrong. You still have the debt. You still have to pay the bill. You still have the same problems — usually even more so — but now you can pretend the problem went away and keep on spending.

The oil men running our government, meanwhile, are pleased to have you do this. After all, they’re the ones who — by buying the bonds you authorized the government to sell — are lending that $15 billion to California. They’re the only ones who can afford to do so. They will get back their $15 billion — as all government creditors eventually do — with interest.

Think about that the next time you drive — assuming you can still afford that — to your polling place to vote.

The defense officials said they had no reason to believe the problems were anything other than “stupid mistakes” by Halliburton. They said the company and the Pentagon were negotiating a possible settlement of the matter, which could include repayment by Halliburton. — “Bush Jumps Into Halliburton Fray“, CBS News Online, December 12, 2003.

Sixty-one million dollars in overcharges. No surprise there! Now I have a justification defense for not mentioning “False Pretenses – A false representation of a material past or present fact that causes the victim to pass title to a wrongdoer” on my Criminal Law final examination last night: That crime apparently no longer exists in the United States!

It’s nice to know that a “possible” settlement just could — not would, but could — include giving the money back!

Maybe if we say, “Pretty please?”

The direct military cost of the occupation is $4 billion a month, and there’s no end in sight. But that’s only part of the bill.

This week Paul Bremer suddenly admitted that Iraq would need “several tens of billions” in aid next year. – Paul Krugman, “Fistfuls of Dollars,” The New York Times, August 29, 2003. [Special thanks to my wife, who actually reads the NY Times, for bringing this to my attention.]

We cannot afford this sort of drain on our economy, no matter how pissed off we might be. We need to use a little common sense if we’re even to survive, let alone survive in a way that keeps our country free and strong. As Krugman further notes,

even the government of a superpower can’t simultaneously offer tax cuts equal to 15 percent of revenue, provide all its retirees with prescription drugs and single-handedly take on the world’s evildoers ? single-handedly because we’ve alienated our allies. In fact, given the size of our budget deficit, it’s not clear that we can afford to do even one of these things. – Ibid.

Our country’s troops are needed to defend our country. We can’t use them to overthrow every despot who irritates us. Now, seriously, I’m not trying to be partisan here—facts are facts—but we cannot keep going to war on flimsy or trumped up charges just because we don’t like somebody. It’s expensive.

And it very literally puts us at risk. I’m begging you to bear with me a minute here. (I have to keep saying this because it seems lately that anything that doesn’t sound like “bring ‘em on” makes one about as popular as a pinko at McCarthy’s birthday party.) Just because the United States is currently the most powerful country in the world doesn’t mean we always will be. When you were in school, wasn’t there at least one big guy who bullied everyone, but eventually got what he deserved? If not, haven’t you at least seen it in the movies? Eventually, one of two things happen: Either the big guy wears himself out and becomes vulnerable, or a bunch of the little guys gang up on him. And it doesn’t just happen to bad big guys.

Our current foreign policy is making us look like the big bully to a lot of people. It doesn’t matter if we really are bullies, or are just “doing what’s right.” As marketers and politicians sometimes say, “Appearances are everything.” So we’re ticking off a lot of people, some of whom are possibly bad guys who were already bent on our destruction, but others were just people who don’t like us. And now, thanks to our efforts, they’re also bent on our destruction.

Meanwhile, we’re stretching ourselves too thin. Not only are we putting a strain in our economy and pushing ourselves deeper into recession, we’re actually risking our military strength. And countries that have enemies need military strength even when they aren’t bullies.

The rule of thumb, according to military experts, is that except during crises, only one brigade in three should be deployed abroad. Yet today 21 of the Army’s 33 combat brigades are deployed overseas, 16 of them in Iraq. This puts enormous stress on the troops, who find that they have only brief periods of rest and retraining between the times spent in harm’s way. For example, most of a brigade of the 82nd Airborne that is about to go to Iraq returned from Afghanistan only six months ago. – Ibid.

So, according to military experts, we’ve got our ratio exactly reversed.

Write, call or otherwise communicate to your congressmen. We need to slow down.

I don’t know about you, but I’d like to be part of the free world for a bit longer.

In a press conference, Al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s top foreign policy advisor said

His government was disappointed that the only information it has received about possible Saudi terrorists inside Iraq was through media reports quoting American officials. – Associated Press story, August 28, 2003, printed in The Fresno Bee.

And “within hours of the AP interview”:

[T]he State Department responded with a statement that the Saudis would be best to air such grievances through diplomatic channels. – Associated Press story, August 28, 2003, printed in The Fresno Bee.

Why is it okay for the United States to air grievances about the Saudis’ supposed failure to secure a border only in the media (i.e., not through diplomatic channels), but the Saudis “would be best to air [their] grievances through diplomatic channels” and not through the media?

Isn’t it enough that the media in the United States seldom publishes what the Bush Administration doesn’t want to hear? Do they need to control it at the source as well?

And why do we castigate the Saudis for a supposed inability to control their borders when our own government 1) doesn’t or can’t control it from the side of the border that is in our newly-acquired colony, 2) doesn’t or can’t control the U.S.-Mexico border to keep out illegal immigrants, 3) doesn’t or can’t control the Canadian border so as to keep people from crossing into Seattle with explosives and, finally, 4) doesn’t or can’t control other entry points such that citizens of countries we’re busy appropriating cannot grab our airplanes from U.S. airports and blow up our buildings with them?