The Hurricane has hit close to home. Gas prices have gone up here 30-40 cents in the last 24 hours. Currently, there is no telling how far they will go up, or if they will be permanent.
I suggest that the oil companies are exploiting a situation in which thousands of lives may have been lost to gouge customers and pad their already record profits. And both Bush and Cheney are oilmen and recieve much of their donations from big oil companies.
Bush has released our oil reserves, which may help a little. But the one thing he has failed to do is put oil companies on notice that the AG would prosecute any instances of price gouging and profiting off of human lives.
When the 9/11 tragedy struck, many gas stations across the state raised their gas prices to the unheard-of $2 a gallon. That quickly stopped after our state AG put gas companies on notice that would be prosecuted. Why hasn’t Bush done so here?
Furthermore, Bush is playing on the fears of rising gas prices to drum up continued support for the War in Iraq. In yesterday’s San Diego address, he said that if we left Iraq, Bin Laden would control the oil fields of Iraq, driving up prices even further.
First of all, that is simply not true. The Iraqi nationalists outnumber the foreigners under Zaraqwi’s control by 9 to 1. They would have no more use for the foreigners after we left. In fact, they could start fighting among themselves, given the xenophobia the nationalists frequently show. The foreigners would lose popular support and be made irrelevant.
It was a myth that oil prices would go down as a result of the war. In fact, the demand created by the warring factions, including the Americans has far outstripped any new supply that was created. And the insurgents have disrupted the oil supply line so badly that they have badly affected the oil output there
Bush will undoubtedly use this tragedy, as he has with so many others, to play on people’s fears and cling to power. But we must present a clear alternative.
A couple of days ago, I wrote that we needed to break out of our tunnel vision and look for issues not covered as much here. That led to a lot of brainstorming. I have some ideas in mind, some of which I will share over the next few days. But my main idea is that we must convince people to vote their hopes and not their fears.
Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, LBJ, and Clinton all won because they were able to defeat the right-wing smear machine by convincing people to vote their hopes and not their fears. That is what made the Democratic Party so successful over a 40 year period. That is what we must do again.
