$5,000-an-Hour Hookers, $110-a-Barrel Oil

Lost in the noise surrounding Eliot Spitzer's fall yesterday was the news that oil topped $110 a barrel.

Yessir. $110 a barrel.

Now that Mr. Spitzer has joined the ranks of the newly-and-foolishly-irrelevant (Mr. Spitzer, have you met Senator Craig?) let's hope the mainstream and cable media types will be able to wrap their brains around the concept of $110 a barrel oil.

Let's hope they realize just how completely and royally screwed everyday Americans are at that price.

$110 a barrel oil smothers everything. From a trip to Target to a fast food meal to renting a video. The entire shooting match. Every stop on your shopping trip. From one end of Main Street to the other. Shot in the butt. And with the death of all that retail will come more job losses.

Out in rural America, what do you suppose $110 a barrel oil does for farmers -- farmers who'll be firing up their tractors and hitting the fields in a matter of weeks? And what do you suppose rising fuel prices on the farm are going to mean when you go to the grocery store?

$110 a barrel oil is big business trouble, too. The CEO of just-out-of-bankruptcy Northwest Airlines says every $1 increase in the price of fuel equals $42 million in increased fuel costs per year. Northwest had been talking about merging with Delta. At $110 a barrel, it would be like a drowning man merging with an anvil.

George W. Bush doesn't go to Target. He doesn't pump his own gas. He doesn't balance the family checkbook. Neither do the people to whom he turns for advice on energy. And neither do most of the talking heads on TV.

To all of them, $110 a barrel oil is an abstraction. It's a theoretical problem like one of those supply-and-demand questions at the back of the first chapter in their freshman econ textbook.

They will not see the price go up at the pump except via TV news b-roll footage. They will not struggle to decide whether to make the car payment or buy groceries. They will not hear the cough that a kid brought home from school and immediately think of the cost of a copay at Urgent Care.

In their exquisitely isolated and myopic affluence, Bush and his cronies and other Republicans may even suggest that the antidote to $110 a barrel oil is to provide further tax breaks and incentives to oil companies. If such is the case, many equally-isolated and myopic mainstream media types will no doubt choose not to call them on it.

Divide $110 into $5,000 and you'll find the former governor of New York paid the equivalent of 45.4545 barrels of oil for an hour of the young woman's time. The transportation, meals, hotel room, minibar almonds and lawyers will not doubt cost extra.

Spitzer is so screwed. But Spitzer is nowhere near as screwed as the American people are under George W. Bush.

Comments

[americandiaspora]

you forgot to factor in the petroleum products needed for the act

[speakyourmind]

And does anyone believe that it was a mere coincidence that the Spitzer scandal broke in the media the same day the price of oil reached its current level?

[SamThornton]

Spitzer, hookers, oil, Bush. My head be spinning. But I take your points; all Very Bad Things.

Just think, in the Best Of All Possible Worlds, the Clinton impeachment would have been successful, Gore would have finished out his term and been elected in 2000, reelected in 2004, and all the rest of this baloney would have been a science fiction novel. There, but for the successful BJ Defense, go we.

[FreedomCorpse]

spitzer, hookers ...who cares but wall street who hates regulation. the rest of it....very bad things

[mbafromharvard]

We must make the Bush tax cuts permanent. If people have more of their own money in their pockets, the recent increases in oil prices would not be so devastating. Let's put the partisan bickering aside, and make the tax cuts permanent.

[robinhood1]

By the time the Dems in Washington finish with their revenue enhancements in 2009, there will be a lot of disappointed trust fund babies in Manhattan, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Their taxes will be going up big time. They are the rich. If the Dems control both Congress and the White House in 2009, watch for the early repeal of the low taxes on dividends and capital gains. They won't wait for the sunset date at the end of 2010. Maybe even Mr. Spitzer will have to cut back on his escapades in Washington. Unfortunately, early retirees of more modest means who have been forced out of the labor market because their jobs were eliminated or moved and are now depending on their dividends for a significant part of their income will also be hurt. But if you are a "housing consultant" in the ghettos of America, it will be "Happy Days are here again."

[SamThornton]

Thanks for the chuckle, MBA from Harvard. How many businesses have you screwed up today?

[ceu]

"They will not hear the cough that a kid brought home from school and immediately think of the cost of a copay at Urgent Care." Or wish they had health insurance so they HAD a co-pay at Urgent Care.
They have no concept of what it's like out here in the real world.
Any chance of getting a windfall profits tax on the oil companies thru Congress - the People's House? No? Didn't think so...

[robinhood1]

How about a windfall tax on overpaid movie stars or a 10% tax on movie tickets to subsidize health care for the poor?

[TXfemmom]

So well put and so true. Eliot Spitzer is a flawed man but we should be pulling together to undo the harm that this Presidency and the Republicans have done and continue to do and STOP FIXATING ON SEX.

The one thing that I would like to throw out there, however, is that Spitzer resigned, whereas Vittner, who went on TV and admitted that he had illegally used a hooker, IS STILL IN THE SENATE, AS IS LARRY CRAIG, WHO PLEAD GUILTY TO A MORALS CHARGE AS SERIOUS AS SPITZER'S.

Why isn't the news pointing out that disparity?