A Prius in Every Pot - New York Times
The New York Times

April 26, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

A Prius in Every Pot
By
MAUREEN DOWD

It's taken over five years, but George W. Bush finally made a concession
speech to Al Gore.

He conceded that America needs to conserve, by buying hybrid vehicles and
developing new energy sources.

Trying to calm the yips in his party and the country over exploding gasoline
prices, the president sounded a bit like a wild-eyed Ozone Man himself
yesterday,
extolling the virtues of alternative fuel derived from cooking grease,
sugar, grass, wood chips, soybean oil and corn.

But then he got ahold of himself. "You just got to recognize there are
limits to how much corn can be used for ethanol," he said, standing in front
of a
bucolic mural. "After all, we got to eat some."

You could run a fleet of S.U.V.'s on the gas that W. was spewing about fuel.
Bill Clinton would have been more likely to crack down on fast food than W.
and Dick Cheney would be to crack down on Big Oil.

Even the usually supportive Wall Street Journal editorial page chastised
Republicans for putting on "Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi fright wigs" to
shout
about corporate greed and market manipulation.

W.'s big move was to ever so slightly beef up a federal investigation into
oil company price manipulation that's been under way since Katrina. "It's a
great
idea," said the Democratic leader, Senator Harry Reid. "So good that we
passed a law last year calling for that."

Price manipulation could explain the marginal - why gas went from, say,
$2.70 to $2.90 - but not why gas went from $1.40 to $2.70. That's more about
fundamental
forces: Chinese and Indian demand, markets spooked by Iran's threats,
Nigeria's unrest, Venezuela's talk of nationalizing its oil industry, and
the Pentagon's
bungling of the restoration of Iraq's infrastructure.

Gasoline prices may be hurting average folks, but the oilers who helped put
the Boy King and the Duke of Halliburton in office with lavish donations are

enjoying record profits and breathtaking bonuses.

The Oilmen in the Oval, incompetent in so many ways, have brilliantly
achieved one of their main objectives: boosting the fortunes of the oil
industry and
the people who run it.

All those secret meetings the vice president had back in 2001, letting the
energy and oil big shots help write our energy policy - one that urged more
oil
and gas drilling - worked like a charm. In all their years in government,
Mr. Cheney and the Bushes have never done anything to hold the oil
companies'
feet to the fire, or get Americans' feet off the gas pedal.

As Representative James Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, noted, "The
Republicans are the party with the keys to the executive washrooms of
Halliburton,
Exxon and the big oil corporations."

Consider Lee Raymond, the recently retired chairman and chief executive of
Exxon. Recently, we learned about his stunning secret compensation: he got
more
than $686 million from 1993 to 2005, according to a Times story, which
calculated: "That is $144,573 for each day he spent leading Exxon's 'God
pod,' as
the executive suite at the company's headquarters in Irving, Tex., is
known."

The only oil baron who isn't cashing in these days is Saddam. We pulled up
to the pump in Baghdad and plunked down $10 billion a month, and we're still
not getting any gas out of it. Instead of easing our oil dependence and
paying for Iraq's reconstruction, the bungled invasion and subsequent
nuclear sparring
with Iran have left even Republicans looking for Priuses.

The last time W. began wringing his hands about our addiction to oil - in
the State of the Union address - the vice president was dismissive about the
notion
of sacrifice afterward. And the energy secretary clarified the president's
words, saying they shouldn't be taken literally and that the idea of
replacing
Middle East oil imports with alternative fuels was "purely an example."

Even if W. shows up on TV in a gray cardigan, it's patently preposterous for
the Republicans to make this argument, after selling us on the idea that
it's
our manifest destiny to get into giant cars and go to giant Wal-Marts and
giant Targets and buy more giant bags of stuff. Now they're telling us to
squeeze
into tiny electric cars and compete for precious drips of oil with the
Chinese and Indians who are swimming in enough of our dollars to afford
cars.

The U.S. could have begun developing alternative fuels 30 years ago if Dick
Cheney hadn't helped scuttle an ambitious plan in the Ford administration.

By the time these guys get gas from cooking grease, global warming will have
us cooked.

Posted by MIriam V.