I just finished watching the excellent Thank You For Smoking, a fine political satire. This film, based on Chris Buckley's novel, tells the story of Nick Naylor, lobbyist for the tobacco industry, who has the almost impossible job of explaining how smoking isn't really that bad for you (after all, the leading cause of death in America is heart disease, so why aren't we putting warning labels on cheese).
One sometimes feels a bit like Nick Naylor when one defends the oil companies. But let's go in with both feet. Today the House of Representatives voted to outlaw, again, price gouging on gasoline. Rep. Herseth Sandlin not only voted for the bill, she is a co-sponsor. This bill forbids selling gas at prices that are "unconscionably excessive" or taking "unfair advantage" of unusual market decisions. As I have previously argued, it is impossible to know what the "right" price of gas is other than the market, and these vague terms (what is the difference between "excessive" and "unconscionably excessive"?) are no help. Virtually all the news items on gas prices in the past month have blamed refining capacity, not rapaciousness, as the culprit. So why this futile exercise? Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) gives us some indication:
But Stupak told his colleagues that they had a simple choice: "Vote to stand up for consumers, your constituents, who are paying record prices, or vote to protect big oil companies' enormous profits."
This is pure demagoguery. Stupak either does know or should know that "big oil" has little to nothing to do with the recent rise in price. He is simply playing class warfare to pass a meaningless bill that will do nothing to help consumers. At the same time he fosters resentment against a major American industry that employees thousands of hard working Americans. This is small minded politics. I outlined here policies that might actually make a difference regarding how much Americans spend on gas. One of those is cutting the gas tax. How much you wanna bet that Representatives Stupak, Herseth Sandlin, et. al. balk at that idea? It's easy to attack the profits of big oil, but when your government spends almost $3 trillion a year (that's $24,000 for every household), it's just fine if they gouge you at the pump.
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