Angry Internet Guy

Gas prices and the obvious solution

Gas prices have been going up for a while now, and it seems that anything that happens at any location in the world just makes it worse. Sure, they've dropped a few cents over the last couple of weeks, but they're nowhere near the price that they ought to be. Think about it... raising the price of something by $2.00 and then discounting it $0.50 is NOT saving you money. It's an old trick, and one that relies on the assumption that the average person is dumb enough to fall for it. Sure, the folks in charge of this sort of thing will try and tell you that they're working as hard as possible to keep the prices under control, but do you really think they are trying as hard as they can when they directly benefit from the higher prices?

The President of the United States doesn't seem as though he's in any particular hurry to institute any sort of regulations on gas prices. Ever wonder why?

Let's look at a few things to put this into perspective.

George W. Bush is a rich man. Striking oil tends to have that effect on one's bank account. However, George the younger is only rich because of the "inherited" wealth of the Bush family. His father, George H. W. Bush, made quite a fortune as a Texas businessman who successfully drilled for large amounts of oil. The Bush family is insanely wealthy, and most of that money comes from their oil investments.

Bear in mind that this is domestic oil, and the war we're fighting in Iraq is over Middle Eastern oil. At a glance, you might think that the two aren't connected, but they are. The higher the price of Middle Eastern oil (ie - the more we interefere with those nations' affairs and disrupt their production), the more valuable domestic oil becomes. Therefore, the higher the price of Middle Eastern oil, the richer the Bushes ultimately become.

But that isn't enough. Anybody can screw with commodity prices by hijacking the appropriate market. It isn't kosher, but people do it. But in this case, being a public figure and all, G-dubya, most likely on the advice of his father (a professional conspiricist by way of being the former head of the CIA, the ever so upstanding "public face" of America's secret police), decided that it would be much better to actually get a signifigant portion of the nation on his side before he set about with the price fixing, and what better way than to wage war on Iraq, and with 9-11 as the perfect excuse, he set about doing so.

In this endeavor, he had the assistance of warmonger Dick Cheney, the former CEO of Halliburton. It is to note that Halliburton has become a household name since Cheney has been in office, and that Halliburton has received extremely preferential treatment from the US government, despite the fact (not theory, but hard fact) that Halliburton has repeatedly cheated the US government. Guess where that money comes from? That's right... my pocket and yours. Well, I say "screw that" to this particular policy. If I were to cheat the IRS out of money, do you think they'd not only let it slide, but continue to let my tax forms slide through without extreme scrutiny so that I could intentionally and maliciously cheat them over and over and over? Not a chance.

Ok, so let's get up to speed. GW's in charge, and he has a direct financial benefit from the rising price at the pump. Cheney's former company (and Dick himself, no doubt) is also making gazillions from a war that should not still be going on. I mean, come on... We went to war over the September 11th bombings, a worthwhile reason, but after all of this, we still don't have Osama. We managed to capture Sadaam, but when it comes right down to it, he wasn't even related to 9-11 other than the fact that he probably cheered at our tragedy when he saw it on television.

The bottom line is that those in the highest offices of power in this country directly benefit from the rising gas prices, so we can't really expect them to do much about it other than make a big fuss about the whole thing when they're on TV.

I, however, have a solution to this whole mess. Instead of raising gas prices every time the wind blows, let's legalize marijuana, tax the hell out of it (after all, it is a bit of a luxury item), and move on. Everybody benefits. Pot smokers benefit because weed will finally be legal. Non-pot-smokers benefit because they no longer have to pay exorbitant gas prices when fueling their SUV's on the way to their respectable jobs. Drivers benefit because there will be fewer cars on the road since everybody will be at home watching cartoons. Hell, even Iraq benefits because once all the Americans are stoned, we'll be too busy eating potato chips to really care how they run their country, and we'll leave them alone, which is really all they wanted in the first place.

Angry Internet Guy says, "Legalize weed and gas prices will go down."

posted by thejake420 @ 5:15 PM