Bring on healthcare! We'll show you how to screw-up a nation!

Fantasy Budgeting Will Override Bush's Vetoes

"It s not very popular to pass energy policies that would really lower gas prices. That would mean giving up our SUV s, funding mass transit, and building more smelly refineries. It s not popular to tell some farmers that if they can t survive without taxpayer subsidies when commodity prices are this high, maybe they shouldn t be farming.

The fantasy is that suspending additions of light sweet crude oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would lower gas prices. We re currently purchasing 68,000 barrels per day out of 86 million barrels purchased daily on the world market. Furthermore, refiners operate flat out over the summer. There is no additional gas to be had at any price. Adding a trickle more crude oil will not yield any more gas.

The fantasy is that rewarding farmers with subsidies will ease food prices. No, the subsidies will just reward favored farmers. Growing more food will ease prices, and that usually happens as the result of investments in technologies that increase crop yields."