Congress Attacks Binding Oil Prices With Predictable Non-Binding Legislation

Oil speculators got your wallet in a twist? Got 30 years of untapped oil under your feet while allowing loony, schizophrenically-turned harem-keepers to play you like a fine Stradivarius? Don't worry, that fine repository of grit and guts in Washington is on the case for you:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure. The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.

What could possibly go wrong here? Oh . . . nothing, just the usual and predictable appeal to our sense of "fairness"--the same petard that makes us fall all over ourselves in a Guantanamo reflex fit and hand our Geneva-forged mallet over to our enemies so they can commence to beating us with it.

This has all the trappings of cowardice. Instead of recognizing that world will not rid itself of the need for oil--possibly ever--and acting accordingly by drilling in our own vast resources, the United States Congress mollifies its own need for artificial bravery by filing the economic equivalent of an Anita Hill harassment charge: "I won't stand up for myself when it counts, but I'll sure get you on the world stage when you don't see it coming." And we all know how well that worked for her.

War For Oil?

I for one, always wished Presidents could be more honest than they can be. But they can't. They have to make grovelling speeches about "religions of peace" and "democracy" in areas that simply don't have what it takes to operate it (especially when the only proximate democracy within missile range happens to be the one you want to annihilate anyway). Fact of the matter is, one of the reasons we are there is precisely for oil. A statement that surprised a dyed-in-the-wool leftist I was talking to the other day. He couldn't conceive that I agreed with him.

"So you agree that we're in Iraq for oil?" he asked.

"I do," I said. "Now I need you to tell me what's wrong with trying to make sure we don't lose access to the most important resource we have?" I of course stipulated that Saddam Hussein's regime needed to be taken down, and the WMD that weren't there when we got there were there before we got there and while UN Inspector Hans Blix was running interference for him.

He made the usual arguments about oil companies, disjointed Halliburton tirades and the self-deluding sense that his Honda Prius was the answer to the world's problems. I just laughed.

"You'll be ready for war over oil when it costs you 800 dollars to drive to Burning Man," I said. "We're in the same boat. I'm just paddling for you right now."

-R