It has to do with the notion that we can get a better deal out of our industrialists by making it more expensive for them to deal with the rest of us.
Me, quoting me, on the fourteenth of March:
…there’s a prevailing viewpoint that the labor market has become soft for those seeking work; there’s a prevailing viewpoint that this is due to the “outsourcing of jobs” by “big companies”; and there’s a prevailing viewpoint that, to fix this, we need to elect someone who will raise taxes on those companies.
On Tuesday, I directed this concern toward the oil and gas companies. And I allowed myself some optimism that perhaps, just perhaps, our sanity might be recovered sometime this summer.
I mean, how much longer can this go on, where the man in the street is NOT yet saying “waitaminnit…duh…these ‘conservative’ guys, er, that’s a good point. You charge them evil awful oil guys more tax money and this somehow results in me paying a lower price at the pump, how does that work again??”
At some point, that question has to get answered. When enough people are asking about it.
I do not know if cartoonist Michael Ramirez of the Investor’s Business Daily reads my blog. I have always been inclined to presume that nobody, or hardly anybody, does. But then how else do you explain this gem which appeared on Wednesday (of which we learn by way of fellow Webloggin contributor Absurd Report)?
I’ve been robbed, but I’m not calling the police. I’m quite flattered.
Former President Carter, of all the deeply disturbed individuals of whom I’ve come to be aware, stands alone as the one that most deeply disturbs me. Consider the following:
We fired him.
His personality was just fine by us. After four years of his policies, we figured out the resulting wreckage was too high a price to pay for a toothy grin and appealing personality.
Upon being fired, Carter did not say (nor did any of his few remaining fans, to the best I can recall) you’ll be sorry you dirty rotten so-and-sos. Or…I respect your right to vote for the wrong guy and look forward to the day you finally see the error of your ways.
He hasn’t said anything like that since.
When he talks about how wonderful his policies are, he doesn’t; he simply drones on about how miserable other peoples’ policies are. He says we “need” to talk to our enemies but he doesn’t discuss what the benefits are of doing this. He just rambles on about how we should be doing it.
In other words — neither he, nor those who see things from his point of view, will belly up to the bar and proffer an argument that his policies are good. That they will serve our interests. And they certainly won’t proceed from there to explaining, in step by step fashion, exactly how and why these policies would result in the things we say we want.
He talks us into our destruction and he seems to intend to. He doesn’t admit this is what he’s all about — but he doesn’t put forth even some token, ritualistic steps toward pretending anything else.
And to the best I can see, everyone in our country who likes him, was born after he got fired.
But forget about Carter. From what I’ve observed, whenever he earns the title of “dignified elder statesman” by re-defining it to mean some old buzzard who can’t shut up — his topic is foreign policy. There may be some news somewhere of his signing on to this nonsense about “bring the gas prices down by taxing the snot out of the people who make it.” I wouldn’t be surprised. My knowledge base says, his visible support for this took place mostly when he was in charge. He serves here, not as just another loudmouthed pundit, but as something far more valuable — a historical anecdote.
This is an interesting discussion my girlfriend is having with her mother fairly often lately. Throughout most of recent history, America has had a Republican President and a democrat Congress. During that time, our economic performance has been disappointing much more often than it has been pleasing. How do we evaluate what’s going on when the economy disappoints, with a Republican President and a democrat Congress?
Our democrats like to point to this bill being passed and that bill being vetoed, and war, war, war. But there’s this budget being passed every single year. Through the line-item veto, the White House has sought to have some say in that thing, and been denied. This is not part of the executive power, the Supreme Court said. This would transgress on “separation of powers.”
Okay, so the government’s budget is not what the President does. So when the government’s budget pisses in it’s own boot…we look to Congress when it’s time to point fingers, right?
Congress also decides things that relate directly to gas prices. Like the above-mentioned taxes. And, of course, the drilling. No, no, no, no, no, says Congress! You can’t drill there! There’s some crapglobbler penguin that might be endangered, and then the knobchogging mango shrimp is gonna get an upset tummy from the derrick booms, and the this or that other silly thing is “pristine.” Can’t do it. Gotta keep buying barrels from Osama bin Laden. Alrighty then. Bush the frat boy President had six years to mess up our gas prices, and all of the tightening and ratcheting he was able to pull off, was up to somewhere around $2.50 a gallon. That’s a pretty lackluster job of trying to screw us over, George Bush the fratboy President.
No, to really unleash his potential and mess things up, he needed a Jimmy Carter Congress. Hello, four-dollar-a-gallon gas! Five-dollars, we’re coming! Shouldn’t be long! And it’s easy to explain why. Drilling and not drilling…supply and demand…taxes.
The Jimmy Carter Congress, as it is explained in Ramirez’ cartoon, wants to fix things again by doing things the way they’ve been doing them to bollux them all up. We’ll show you, you greedy sunzabitches, we’ll lay down a windfall profits tax.
Now that Ramirez has put my idea into pictorial form, I’m less inclined than ever before to back down from it. At some point the gas consumer has to ask the question I said he’d be asking. I save money…when you guys make it more expensive for people to sell the product to me…how?
And it’s going to be frustrating trying to get an answer. Because nobody, least of all the people backing that plan, is alleging that a lower per-gallon gas price is what is supposed to happen.
And among we who lived through Carter’s four-year winter, it’s understood that this is an assertion upon which we should insist, before the discussion proceeds any further.
While you’re waiting — have you signed Newt’s petition yet?
In other words, they’re imposing an expectation of civilized behavior, upon someone who has no history of showing it. In so doing, they are, in fact, excusing her and if they don’t realize this, it really doesn’t matter. Once the boyfriend shows a proclivity for thuggish behavior, he ceases to be civilized. Once he ceases to be civilized, he becomes essentially a force of nature. A wild bear, or a puddle of gasoline. To lapse into addle-minded automaton condemnations of his predictable behavior, is to pronounce she should have an ability to hold a match to that puddle of gasoline without consequence.
He claims that the “myth” of the ancient Highland dress was perpetuated by historians to provide a symbol by which Scots could be universally identified, as well as to support the country’s textile industry.