Way to stick it to the man, Mr. President. Making life easier for Big Oil by easing regulations will really hit them where it hurts. We all know how much oil executives hate it when you take away their regulations. Especially the environmental ones. They must be really mad now!
It's no surprise that President Bush expects us to believe that by suspending environmental regulations on Big Oil -- this is funny -- gas prices will go down... sometime. Not this Summer, but sometime. Meanwhile, Big Oil gets a windfall on top of their windfall on the heals of their Katrina windfall without any real proof that demand is up or that supplies are in jeopardy.
And then there's this funny thing from the AP:
"Bush, in his speech, urged Congress to revoke about $2 billion in tax breaks over 10 years that Congress approved and he signed into law to encourage exploration."
Look out! He's going to suspend the tax breaks he and Congress gave them, which in conservative dogma means a tax increase. President George W. Bush is raising taxes! I hate stating the obvious, but in the Bush Era it helps: why the frigging hell did he give tax breaks to price gouging mega-corporations in the first place? Easing restrictions on gas companies clearly hasn't encouraged them to pass the savings on to American drivers. Why does he think suspending environmental rules will encourage lower prices as well? Isn't the definition of an insane person someone who does the same thing over and over expecting a different result? Nevertheless, don't hold your breath for the GOP Congress to reneg on the tax breaks.
Like every event in the president's term, his timing is awful and more than a little suspect. His reactions are always too little too late with a wink and nudge to his cronies. Sure, he's talking tough about gas prices now, but only after gas companies have opted to piss on America. He's too late. He was too late on Katrina. Too late on 9/11 ("Bin Laden Determined To Strike Inside the U.S."). He bailed prematurely on Afghanistan and Bin Laden. The only thing he actually pre-empted was something he shouldn't have.
Back to the suspended environmental restrictions on Big Oil. This isn't a shocker. In and amongst his radical efforts to prevent terrorist attacks, the president endorsed allowing our ports to be sold to a nation that once supported Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. As SusanG at DailyKos reminded us today, he suspended the prevailing wage rules after Katrina. After 9/11, he suspended the Fourth Amendment; allowed torture which has been proven to reap flawed intelligence; and don't forget that he attempted to save Social Security by destroying it. Oh yeah, he thinks he's going to balance the budget by lowering taxes on the wealthiest one percent while pumping our debt to record levels.
And now he's suspending environmental restrictions on refineries in the face of overwhelming evidence of impending environmental catastrophe - and it's a move which everyone admits won't reduce gas prices this Summer. The blue collar crackers with the gun-racks in their 10-miles-per-gallon pickup trucks who voted for the president in 2004 in order to keep gay people from marrying are the ones who will be hit hardest by gas prices - far more than liberal New Yorkers who walk or take a cab to work. But at least gay people can't get married, eh?
Americans have finally started to come around on the Bush-Is-Incompetent tip. Well... 70 percent of America, that is. But only after one tragic misstep after the next, and the re-election of the man. Bad timing has evidently become a major mental health issue lately. I wonder how long it'll take before America realizes that President Bush's incompetence is all at once dangerous, destructive, and dangerous. I wrote "dangerous" twice because his incompetence is really damn dangerous.