And the tank wasn’t even completely empty. Fortunately for me, I don’t drive often, maybe once or twice or week, and rarely go more than 10 miles even then. (And, yes, I live in the Los Angeles sprawlplex.)
It’s tempting to think that high gas prices in 2007 were part of the Bush-Cheney-Halliburton agenda when they invaded Iraq in 2003. But like most conspiracy theories around these clowns, that idea gives them way too much credit.
I doubt they invaded hoping to lower gas prices, but the fact that we’re on the brink of $4 a gallon is just another result of their incompetence at both war-making and domestic governance — combined with the fact that George W. Bush doesn’t give a damn.
Rightly or wrongly, Americans used to blame their presidents for high gas prices, and normal presidents would take action, or at least appear to, as a signal of solidarity. But Bush is impervious to public opinion — not just because he’s not up for reelection but because he was born into the aristocracy, and fancies himself a business tycoon. As such, he sees suffering by the little people as simply collateral damage to the greater good of corporate profitability.
Profitability is the salt in the wound, of course. Big Oil’s profits are through the roof. What is really going on here is a massive shakedown of the American people by Bush’s cronies.
The ultimate irony is that Republicans who hate paying taxes don’t feel a similar sense of outrage over paying extra to Big Oil for no reason other to line the pockets of fat cats.
If I recall correctly, W said during the 2000 campaign, and possibly in one of the debates, that if gas prices continued to go up he would jawbone the guys in the Middle East. After all he knew them and could do that.
Just another example of Bush telling another fib.
The oil industry has been a solid backer of Republicans for many years, giving 80-90 percent of its campaign contributions to GOP candidates-particularly during the two Bush terms. What Hamilton discovered is that this support hasn’t just been limited to campaign contributions. In fact, the oil industry appears to have clearly tried to minimize voter anger at Republicans late during the election cycle by pushing prices at the pump down just ahead of the voting. In the period 2000-2006, Hamilton found that each non-federal election year-2001, 2003 and 2005, gasoline prices didn’t decline during the month of October, but each of the election years-2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006-they fell, with the most dramatic drop coming in October 2006-a period when crude oil prices were rising sharply. Each time, gasoline prices rose again quickly right after the election was over.
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff05082007.html