Friedman pretty much lays it out how I feel about how hypocritical and cowardly this administration is with his
Op-Ed in the NYTimes (select subscription required, but I get it from our library) today.
Yeah I know I am preaching to the choir here. :)
Sorry, no poll here. Move along, go below the fold.
Friedman starts it off with a good first paragraph:
I've always thought Dick Cheney took national security seriously. I don't anymore. It seems that Mr. Cheney is so convinced that we have no choice but to be dependent on crude oil, so convinced that conservation is just some silly liberal hobby, that he will never seriously summon the country to kick its oil habit, never summon it to do anything great.
Ok, it is somewhat snarky too, which I like a lot. It brings out what I think is an important point: Cheney thinks that he is the elite and knows better than the common man what this country needs. He refuses to challenge Americans to come up with a better way, a way that reduces our oil energy dependence.
Next, we have this set of points:
Listen to Mr. Cheney's answer when the conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham asked him how he reacted to my urgings for a gasoline tax to push all Americans to drive energy-saving vehicles and make us energy-independent -- now.
''Well, I don't agree with that,'' Mr. Cheney said. ''I think -- the president and I believe very deeply that, obviously, the government has got a role to play here in terms of supporting research into new technologies and encouraging the development of new methods of generating energy. But we also are big believers in the market, and that we need to be careful about having government come in, for example, and tell people how to live their lives. This notion that we have to 'impose pain,' some kind of government mandate, I think we would resist. The marketplace does work out there.''
Good, good. [Free] [M]arket driven pricing. Good. Well, Friedman goes on to inform dear leader via his op-ed that OPEC controls most of the pricing in the oil market. Our only control over the so-called "market" is our demand. More demand, price goes up and pretty much stays up. We end up sending dollars that we should be keeping here to the net oil exporters in the world.
And still more "free market" policies from this administration are noted further in the piece (my emphasis added):
Also, why does Mr. Cheney have no problem influencing the market by lowering taxes to get consumers to spend, but he rejects raising gasoline taxes to get consumers to save energy -- a fundamental national interest.
<snip>
Finally, if Mr. Cheney believes so much in markets, why did the 2005 energy act contain about $2 billion in tax breaks for oil companies? Why does his administration permit a 54-cents-a-gallon tax on imported ethanol -- fuel made from sugar or corn -- so Brazilian sugar exports won't compete with American sugar? Yes, we tax imported ethanol from Brazil, but we don't tax imported oil from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela or Russia.
And the coup de grace:
Mr. Cheney, we are told, is a ''tough guy.'' Really? Well, how tough is this: We have a small gasoline tax, but Europe and Japan tax their gasoline by $2 and $3 a gallon, or more. They use those taxes to build schools, highways and national health care for their citizens. But they spend very little on defense compared with us.
So who protects their oil supplies from the Middle East? U.S. taxpayers. We spend nearly $600 billion a year on defense, a large chunk in the Persian Gulf. But how do we pay for that without a gas tax? Income taxes and Social Security. Yes, we tax our incomes and raid our children's Social Security fund so Europeans and Japanese can comfortably import their oil from the gulf, impose big gas taxes on it at their pumps and then use that income for their own domestic needs. And because they have high gas taxes, they also beat Detroit at making more fuel-efficient cars. Now how tough is that?
So, we not only send exorbitant dollars in oil profits to OPEC (and to oil companies who do not invest nearly enough in alternate energy), but we utterly waste dollars protecting it for everybody else as well.
If we simply used less oil, we would save double or maybe even triple--less oil itself, lower oil price volatility, and less leverage available to affect net importers (like us) of oil on supplies by the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. Then, we pay less for defense because the supply lines are simply not as important to our economy as they are now.
How brave is it to do the common sense thing, Dick? I'll tell you: It's not brave at all. It is simply the right thing. Dick, it is cowardly, not to mention stupid, to do the wrong thing time after time. Supply side economics do not work when the businesses you rely on to "trickle down" profits simply move it overseas or squander it and do not invest in this country. In other words, when you and your oil buddies are unethical, they bleed us dry just like they bleed the ground dry of oil.
Dick, it's time for you to go. My only solace is that I am reasonably certain that you will not be coming back this time like you did from the Nixon, Ford, and GHWB administrations to haunt us. Oh, and take your marionette with you--it's not working so well either. I think some of its strings are broken.