You yap too much, peewee. Save your black helicopter fantasies for the "rightwing killed the Kennedys" and other such delusions.
Here's a bit of history about oil and energy back in the 70's. Open your tiny mind and learn something..
powermag.com
Carter and crude: setting the record straight
When it comes to energy, we have an incoherent president. But not the first. Richard Nixon’s views on energy were preposterous. Gerald Ford’s were cowardly. Jimmy Carter’s were misguided.
Ronald Reagan’s were the first presidential views on energy policy that made sense, and they worked, Democratic protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.
I recently read a op ed opinion piece in the Washington Times by conservative columnist Bruce Bartlett looking at today’s energy situation – 70% dependence on foreign oil, with gasoline prices in many regions topping $3/gallon (I’m paying $2.95). Bartlett was critical of the move by coal-state legislators and coal interests to push for subsidies for coal-to-liquids technology.
I completely agree with Bartlett that CTL technology has got to make its place in the market, without government subsidies. The subsidy path is unsustainable, and threatens uneconomic and environmentally-damaging projects.
Bartlett correctly harkened back to the so-called energy crises of the 1970s, starting with the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74 and culminating with the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979. The results were soaring supply shortages, long gasoline lines, and climbing gasoline prices.
Bartlett correctly noted that crude oil price controls, not the availability of supply, were the culprit in gasoline prices. The market was not allowed to work to find a clearing price for gasoline.
Bartlett, in a memory lapse shared by many conservatives, blamed Jimmy Carter for imposing energy price controls. That’s an entirely bum rap. Whatever one has to say about Jimmy Carter and energy policy – and there is plenty to come in this article – he didn’t impose oil price controls.
Who did? Richard Nixon, as part of his 1970s Soviet-style plan to control consumer prices through wage and price controls, following out-of-control inflation in 1971. Those restrictions on a wide spread of prices remained in place until Nixon resigned and Gerald Ford became president.
While the Ford administration phased out most of the other Nixon price controls, he was unable to the face the political fallout of ending crude oil price controls during the aftermath the Arab oil embargo. The result was lines of cars at U.S. service stations. Those lines were politically devastating to the government in Washington, which was exposed, correctly, as unable to do anything about gasoline prices. Ford could have ended price controls on crude, and ended the gasoline lines, but he chickened out for political reasons (he was running for election in 1976.)
Interestingly, the same thing is now happening in Argentina, according to a splendid article in the June 22 edition of the Washington Post, with natural gas prices (most taxicabs in Buenos Aires are fueled with compressed natural gas), and other consumer products, such as milk, which have price controls imposed by the leftist government of Nestor Kirchner.
Carter, to his credit, began removing price controls on crude oil at the end of his administration, while pushing his economically and technically dubious synfuels program. Ronald Reagan, who deserves much credit for this, removed all crude price controls in 1981, and crude oil and gasoline prices began a precipitous decline.
Carter pushed an ineffectual energy policy legislative agenda. It consisted of his $88 billion synfuels subsidy program, enacted and failed; an “energy mobilization board” to streamline permitting of energy infrastructure project (without any concrete evidence that government agencies were delaying permits for new energy projects), rejected by Congress; and a loopy “oil backout” program to reduce use of oil in electricity generating plants (which weren’t significant users of oil) that never even made it out of the administration’s internal vetting.
When it came to energy, Carter largely was a fool. But, to set the record straight, he wasn’t the father of crude oil price controls. That was a guy named Nixon, an even bigger fool when it came to energy. |
