The Oil Man Cometh

These are good times if you are an Oil Man. The automakers are churning out bigger and meaner engines every day – V8s, V10s, V12s, turbo-diesels, superchargers, all of which cause modern automobiles to go through more gasoline than they did even thirty years ago. But gas mileage is a personal virtue, as Vice Presiden’t Dick Cheney has declared, and has no bearing on the energy policies of today.

That shows up in the Bush Administration’s actions of late. As mentioned in this space not long ago, the Presiden’t has approved sweeping tax deductions on “small business” purchases of large pickup trucks and SUVs. This will bring the actual cost to your average fleet owner down to about 15 percent of the retail price per vehicle. And for every piston stroke after the day they take delivery on their new rigs, Bush’s friends and family will get richer and richer.

This is borne out already by the statistics. From January through October of 2002, there was an increased amount of gasoline pumped in this country, with 65 million more gallons sold than there were from January through October 2001. If you consider the average price per gallon onto that up-tick, and extrapolate the averages to equal a full year, you’ll find that Americans paid out over a hundred million dollars more at the pumps than they did the year before, without even considering price fluctuations – and that was before Bush started giving away gas guzzlers.

That equals quite a windfall, not only for the Oil Man, but for the state and federal government as well. With the federal tax on gasoline set at 18.4 cents per gallon, and the state average at a hair under twenty cents a gallon (diesel fuel is taxed at an even higher rate, but let’s keep it simple for you), tax revenues from gasoline sales increased by over 25 million dollars. So here we are, doing our part, supporting both the Oil Man and the government, in the midst of a horrible economy. That’s money out of your pocket, and into Uncle Sam’s, and also into Uncle Sam’s best friend’s pocket. And that’s just the stuff you don’t notice.

Perhaps you did notice that George W. Bush just approved $200,000,000 in spending to help those in the Northeast (what Don Rumsfeld would call “Old America”) purchase the heating oil they need for their homes, and to pay for weatherproofing and other virtuous forms of conservation. With prices off the normal charts, and with a cold snap gripping the country, this would be good policy if it involved the use of anything but good-ol’ boy fuel oil. But what has transpired is obvious. Bush has taken two hundred million dollars out of the taxpayers’ pockets and given it to his friends, period.

Then there’s the Haliburton deal, wherein Cheney’s former business partners stand to make some pretty hefty government money by managing the Iraqi oil fields in the coming months. That’s also a classic case of Bush taking your money and giving it to the Oil Man. Haliburton, by the way, was the company that sold tens of millions of dollars’ worth of equipment to Saddam Hussein to build his oil fields in the first place, back when we liked the guy because he was killing Iranians, back when tens of millions of dollars was still a lot of money.

Overall, the transparency of scrimshaw covering Bush’s motives should be enough to tell the whole story of the man. In a word: Greed. Pure, malicious, unadulterated greed, the kind that certainly deserves a place in American business, but has absolutely no business being in government. The purpose of government, you may have forgotten, is to serve and protect, not to line its own pockets at the people’s expense. That is what makes George W. Bush the worst president in the history of the United States, worse than Herbert Hoover, worse than Ulysses S. Grant, worse than Bill Clinton (and history will show that Clinton did pretty well). When the numbers are added up, even if he only gets one term in office, you will see that Bush did more damage to this country, and created more societal divides, than anyone ever thought possible.

Actually, I believe he had already achieved that status, even before September 11th, when he sat back and watched his good friends in the energy industry gouge California for billions of dollars, sinking that state into an economic black hole that conservatives wish could be laid at the feet of its governor. But it was Bush backers like Enron and Duke that cashed in at California’s expense, even to the point of rolling blackouts. The fact that such shortages haven’t occurred since 9/11 proves that it was a manufactured crisis to begin with. With our national security on the line, all the energy shenanigans stopped. And the damage was already done.

I’ve seen the call go out already, and now I’m officially chiming in. For the rack and ruin he has caused this wonderful country, George W. Bush must be impeached and removed from office, and his network of greed must be extricated from our government, root and branch, as far down the chain as it can be found. It is no less important to this country’s survival than is stopping terrorism. The Oil Man is no less dangerous than that.