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04/23/2005: "House Republicans Celebrate Earth Day"

One thing you can say about GOP Congressmen is that they’re consistent. It’s almost endearing. They love acting in prepositional phrases, like over the top, in your face, and (my favorite) out to lunch. Indeed, entire words describing GOP Congressmen started as prepositional phrases. Consider “overreach,” the word that generally describes the GOP and reaches its quintessence in the right wing of the House Chambers. This word likely started as the phrase “over the reach.” As a certified sailor, it’s reasonable to believe that “reach” is used in the nautical sense. A reach is a tack, and overreaching is going so far off on a tack (say, a right or starboard tack) that you end up somewhere completely different from where your passengers wanted to go. Anyway, in their typical over the top, in your face, and out to lunch fashion, the House GOP passed an overreach energy bill. Its main purpose is to address their terror that folks at home will wonder why gas prices have gone exponential since their party (headed by oilmen) took over. They figure that taking action, ANY action, is their only hope for another term. The two most significant GOP actions leading up to the bill were to 1) defeat the Democratic attempt to take out the drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR), and 2) defeat Democratic attempts to raise automobile fuel efficiency standards. Of course, nothing they’re doing in this bill will have any impact whatsoever on gas prices anytime soon, despite Congressman Joe Barton’s explanation for why he voted for the bill: “I want to pay less for gasoline in Texas.” He’s from Texas, by the way (why isn’t that a surprise?!) Joe has apparently missed the irony of his role in defeating the Democratic initiatives. First, we can essentially guarantee that, as oil is depleted in the upcoming decades, the price of gasoline won’t be going down. The irony part comes from Joe being a Texan who is looking to oil from above the Arctic Circle to lower his pump prices. It’s ironic because Texas was once the cheapest place to buy gas in the country. Why isn’t it anymore? Because they sucked it all out of the ground, and in a remarkably short period of time! So let’s say that we explore for oil in ANWR and actually find some. Because Joe’s priority is keeping gas cheap (for “Jobs” and “Energy Independence”) it will presumably get sucked up just as handily. And since we’re not doing anything about fuel efficiency standards, consumption rates won’t be going down from their current rate: FAST. Then consider that China and India’s billions are just coming online for bigtime consumption. The bottom line is that by working themselves up into a sucking frenzy for the last remaining American oil, Joe and his cronies are ensuring that someday Americans will be 1) totally dependent on foreign countries for this essential substance, and 2) unable to buy gas at any price, let alone “cheaper.” You can be sure that cars will be getting MUCH better gas mileage – if they’re moving at all.