(ridgeway / ng) articles

Oil and Gas Prices

WASHINGTON—George Bush is beginning to act like a parody of himself. On Tuesday he announced another one of his investigations into gasoline prices. Remember the last time we had one of his independent investigations to get to the bottom of things? Well, there was the Plame investigation which boomeranged into a White House coverup. Then there was the recent investigation of intelligence leaks about the use of foreign prisons. It turned up a CIA officer on her way to retirement whom the agency had to admit probably didn’t have anything to do with the prison story. But she had been talking to journalists which was all that mattered. And there was the investigation of Hurricane Katrina. But the most famous Bush investigation focused on how come the President got misled into war with the weapons of mass destruction story. Bush investigations never go anywhere.

Nor do his remedies. He invoked Katrina as an excuse to tap into the nation’s emergency oil supplies, a move he claimed, would help restore supply and reduce prices in one stroke. Prices kept going up.

Now there is another investigation into gas prices. This time it is a mask for Bush’s decision to reduce environmental standards aimed at curbing pollution. In Congress Republicans blocked efforts to pass a wind fall profits tax on the oil and gas industry. None of this will have any effect on gasoline prices. The oil and gas industry, like most of the other components of today’s energy industry, is not regulated. Both parties have worked hard to make sure there is no energy regulation.Jimmy Carter got the ball rolling by taking the first steps to dereguarte natural gas prices.John Dingall in the House, and Robert Byrd in the Senate fought pollution controls at the behest of the auto and coal industries. Reagan and both Bushes in conjunction with the Republican Congress have stoutly opposed all efforts to apply regulation.

All this leaves the oil and gas companies free to rip off at will.

--- James Ridgeway