Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell wants to build a bridge back to the 1970s by giving George Bush more control over the economy:
Sen. Maria Cantwell says she will introduce legislation later this week that would grant President Bush broad new powers to investigate whether oil companies are gouging consumers and to impose price controls if necessary.“No one now has clear oversight to protect consumers,” the Washington state Democrat said during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on the sharp run-up in gasoline prices that began even before Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast, where many of the nation’s oil production and refineries are located.
Cantwell said her bill would reinstate many of the same powers granted President Nixon to deal with the oil and gas shortages of the 1970s.
. . .
Cantwell said she was not sure at what point price controls might be needed.
“I don’t know what the level should be,” Cantwell said. “But I know consumers should not be paying $5 a gallon for gas.”
The great thing about politics is that an idea can fail miserably yet still be attempted over and over again.
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“I don’t know what the level should be,” Cantwell said. “But I know consumers should not be paying $5 a gallon for gas.”
If that’s not a contradictory statement, I don’t know what is.
What exactly is it about gasoline prices that Cantwell *does* know? Consumers are perfectly capable of deciding whether gasoline is worth $5 a gallon. If it is, they’ll pay it. If it isn’t, they won’t.
“The bill is similar to one introduced in 1973 by the late Sen. Henry Jackson, D-Wash.”
Oh, great. Yet another consequence of “Scoop” Jackson’s public disservice that we have to deal with. (Many NeoConservatives, after all, used to work for him…)
Here in northern Europe you pay about 7,5 bucks a gallon… so the French government threatened oil companies to invent special taxes just for them if they wouldn’t “restrain” themselves (French statists are not necessarily slower to react, but 75% of all energy used in France is the “cheap” nuclear monopolistic stuff).
I wonder though, if you force companies to sell their oil cheap in America… why would they not rather sell it elsewhere, like in China or Europe for instance, since it’s very much needed and not (yet) regulated over there?
Cantwell is our more intelligent senator.
All things considered, Washington State and the country could use a return of Scoop Jackson and Warren G. Magnusson.
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