Bush Has Gas

President Bush mentioned gas prices the other day, but did nothing about them. This of course isn't very surprising considering his long term ties to the oil industry. Here are Bush's comments.
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I know the folks here are suffering at the gas pump," the president said while promoting his competitiveness initiative at the Silicon Valley headquarters of Internet networking company Cisco Systems Inc. "Rising gasoline prices is like taking a — is like a tax, particularly on the working people and the small-business people."

But to address the immediate problem, Bush offered only a pledge that "if we find any price gouging it will be dealt with firmly."

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I can offer the dumbass some instances of price gouging. Let's start with the retirement package given to Exxon/Mobile executive Lee Raymond of $400 million this past week. Meanwhile all the oil companies have been reporting record profits in consecutive quarters. This of course followed the oil industry subsidies in the billions handed out in the energy bill last year. Now I don't know Bush's definition of price gouging, but these examples are my definition.

Actually I might define this stuff as pure runaway greed, essentially stolen from the consumer. Basically those subsidies were nothing more than a handout to Raymond's retirement plan. Gee I hope Raymond thanks the American taxpayer for his largess, we're helping to pay for it.

If Bush had any balls, he would be yanking these oil executives into the Oval Office and laying down the law (the law of greed), and explaining to them that he could always put forth an idea to Congress that maybe such an important and vital industry to this country could just as well be nationalized. He should be essentially threatening them with taking away their money tree (rather, forest of trees) if they can't change their greedy ways.

Of course Bush would never do anything close to this, because these guys are buddies of his or his friends or buddies of Dick Cheney. At the minimum Bush could ask for those subsidies to be returned to the taxpayer since it's quite apparent they didn't need them. If they haven't used those huge profits for the things that those subsidies were to help, then they can't run a profitable business. But I'm dead wrong, they've figured out that they can have the subsidies and eat the profits too. The American people are stupid, so stupid, for not protesting in the streets about the oil companies.

Everytime you pump that $3.00 gasoline into your cars remember how the oil companies are swimming in cash. And don't forget that the Bush Republicans also handed them billions in free money, our taxes, so you are actually paying even more than the price at the pump. Be sure to send a postcard to the White House and thank the president for helping rip us off.