Mark Twain's observation is just as valid today as it was when he first penned it. The problem is applying it. I am quite sure Dubya and his minions would like to fling it in my direction on occasion. Their problem is that I am armed with the facts, thus am more properly in a position to fling it at them than they are to fling it at me.
This morning, Dubya lifted the executive order prohibiting offshore oil drilling in American waters. He also urged Congress to overturn the Congressional prohibition on same. What's wrong with this picture, you ask? Let me tell you:
IT WON'T MAKE A BIT OF DIFFERENCE TO THE PRICE OF GAS, either now or in the long run.
Why not? Because all our oil refineries are already operating at maximum capacity. You can't refine it faster than the laws of physics dictate. No one can, no matter how much Dubya wishes it were otherwise. Not that he does wish it otherwise. He doesn't. He's an oil man, though he wasn't any good at that, either. His interests dovetail with the oil companies, not with John and Jane Average Citizen.
So why don't the oil companies build more refineries? Because the oil companies (1) aren't interested in lowering the price of gas--they are interested in raising the price of oil, thus increasing their profits (they don't need more refineries to sell their oil all over the world); (2) don't want to spend what otherwise goes into their pockets as windfall profits on the costs of building said new refineries, which would in the short term reduce their windfall profits; (3) find it easier to milk the cash cow they already have in the barn than to spend resources [you know, silly things like time, money, and human endeavor--Ed.] developing alternate energy sources.
Evidently no oil moguls have ever been in on the ground floor of developing a new technology. For sure none of them ever studied history in a serious way. And it doesn't even have to be ancient history. If they'd just take a look at the history of the oil industry's stepchild, the auto industry, they could not help but realize that GM (for one) first got into trouble in the early 70s because the executives were trying to tell consumers what kind of cars to buy instead of building the kinds of cars consumers said they wanted--as the increasing level of sales of Japanese imports illustrated.
I suppose I shouldn't blame them. Too much. They are reacting with typically short-term thinking. They care only about the current quarter's bottom line, not about what fortunes they could make 10 years down the road. They merely reflect one of the hallmarks of collective American thinking: we have an embarrassingly short attention span. Most of us don't know our own country's history, even when we think we do. If we did, we wouldn't have put up with Dubya and his minions and their crap for the last 7+ years. We'd not have elected him in the first place. [And maybe we didn't--remember Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004? Ed.]
American history has innumerable examples of creative and inventive individuals (often at the government's behest--witness the Manhattan Project, for example) rising to meet a challenge and keeping America ahead of the technological curve. Morse, Bell, Edison, Singer--just to name a few. Heck, even Abraham Lincoln has a patent! But all Dubya can offer us is the same old, tired suggestions that will not work because they are irrelevant to the real problem. However, if we fall for his shtick, we have no one to blame but ourselves. If we, too, decide that lining the pockets of American oil men is more important to us than our own country's future, we deserve what happens to us.
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