OMGosh Alert! Clinton To Break UP OPEC
Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 05:15:05 PM PDT
Hillary Clinton always seems to have a nebulously defined sense of the times.
Unfortunately, her political intuition sort of resembles those possibly rabid miniature dogs that shut-in woman down the street keeps. You know, the little dogs with the hand-crocheted sweaters and the ribbons on their ears that bite your pant leg and nip at your hand while their affable human gently reminds you that "they won't harm you!" Clinton has about the emotional responsiveness of a... living being... as far as people noticing that their government is bought up and their tax dollars are going to a bunch of machismo dandies out of the liquor-soaked, cigar-perfumed parlors of the 1870s. In the age when everyone deserves an award for doing anything decent, Team Clinton would have her heralded for visionary leadership when in fact she's pretty typical Washington stew.
Rather than ever confront these sources of frustration--bitterness?--and yes, malaise. Hillary Clinton has learned to take emotional investment and divert it into a parallel political universe. But can it work when you half-bribe people, half scare them on a vital subject: their energy expenses?
More yap below the flap...
Her style is very simple. Here's something people are angry about, here's the scapegoat. Like George W. Bush. Sure, she kicks him around the yard, but what is Bush? He's a crony first and foremost as the MBA president who rode into office on name recognition (nepotism). The culture of corporate entitlement that the Clintons courted vociferously for themselves in 1999 is inseparable from Bush. It's not enough that Bush is an idiot, though his picture is halfway into the dictionary entry, or that he's petulant. Princess Diana could be petulant, and Gerald Ford was quite a bit on the slowww side. It's that everything Bush has done goes back to either his ego, or his friend's pocket books. If you can't grasp this, you can't see how a man who was not originally a neocon, like George W. Bush, became the puppet for Cheney and Lieberman's pipe-dream.
If voters hate Bush, (and they do) it's pretty easy to kick his name around in 2008. People may take it out on McCain. But we're also piecing McCain and Bush to PACs and lobbyists.
So why doesn't Clinton have a praxis from which she taps into public sentiment effictively? We find that Clinton served on the boards of Tyson--one of several Big Agri giants, easily among the most vile businesses on the planet and among the most thoroughly anti-American for their relentless quest to destroy Jefferson's family farmer. We find that Clinton worked for Walmart, which not only is now linking to Big Agri but also has helped destroy Mom and Pop stores everywhere, regional culture and wage growth. Forget Whitewater or tinfoil concerning the conspicuously morose Vince Foster, Clinton is part in parcel of a giant culture of millions of Americans that has built that country so different from what we associate with our patriotism and all that is great about this country.
Instead of tackling corruption, Clinton kicks old George Bush around. Her campaign logic sort of goes like this: it's a dirty game, and you have to take money from the dirty guys if you want to get to a place where you can clean things up. It sorta makes sense--oh, wait--no it doesn't. If this was government by faith and the standard was to simply trust a politician without evidence than sure, Clinton's idea sounds great. But in reality this is a set pattern reflecting who she was during the 90s and who she'll be 4 years from now. For all the sillyness about Obama and Hope and Believing being silly, you don't have to rely on faith to understand his position on corruption.
Which brings me to the segway. The venal energy industry is part of that toxic culture. Oil prices are a problem for citizens taxpayer or no, old and young, and Americans sense that that oil companies are not only corrupt but the real puppeteers in Washington.
So--voila! More typical Hillary.
She vowed to break the monopoly of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), cartel which produces 40 percent of the world's oil.
"I am tired of OPEC setting the price and determining how much supply there is, by any definition that is a monopoly," Clinton said.
"We are going to use every tool at our disposal as a nation to try to break that up."
Let's make rhetorical assaults on OPEC, and threaten to break up their cartel.
Rather than face reality--an oil crisis, the declining slope of the history of oil production and usage, where price would inevitably skyrocket--let's bury our heads in the sand and rather than make expensive gasoline more efficient, we'll artificially jack down the price. Let's not face the fact that maybe oil should be expensive, when the world climate which we pretend to care about is turning malignant because of said oil, and when political institutions from the Gulf to the Niger Delta are in danger because of peak oil.
Rather than admit to ourselves that we are agents in this world, that we not only got her of our own accord or inaction, and that we can make the future, all we are left with is the misleading (yes, "distraction") that this is simply Americans paying too much for gas. Well, if your gas got you 10 miles farther per gallon, that would increase the value of gas and also lower its expense at least a bit in the wake of the oil price bonanza. And if Clinton has so much "experience" in the Clinton White House when she invented health care, she certainly could have been pushing Bill on energy. It's her line of reasoning.
Clinton and her buddy McCain don't seem to have been leaving too many invoices at Ford or GM to work on European or Japanese level-efficiency. Short term, if we not only gave working Americans tax relief, but in the long term built communities where we didn't force people to drive an hour to work and then abandon them the moment their home equity begins to reflect the unsustainable path of such runaway sprawl. Communities where people could have comfort, community and proximity. It's a lot better than a phony gas tax moratorium which will save you about 30 bucks.
But hey, destroying gas taxes (a reliable source of government income) would have no serious consequences on a nation's foundering finances or the world economy, when we already have cheaper gasoline than many peoples around the world.
See the dilemnas here? They're a boatload.
Rather than rehash plenty of true or technically true points about Clinton, let's just leave it at what's politically relevant, if not morally or psychologically. Clinton just doesn't get how to treat the root of a problem. She didn't in 1994 when she alienated potential allies or people who could tell her useful advice on health care--she did it her own way, and you were with her or against her. Rather than advocate single payer, she wants drug and insurance companies to be "part of the solution". Gee. Of course, Barack Obama is no ideological wunderkind either, some of Clinton's shortcomings are mutual. But the point is that every once in a while Obama more than justifies his campaign by showing that he's at least trying to not pander or bribe us with short-term bandaids that demean us as thinking individuals and as a citizens of a nation. Significantly compared to Clinton.
OPEC sucks. Ultimately, breaking up OPEC doesn't do me a damn bit of good. OPEC may go, but millions of us will still be poor, and more poorly represented than the drug, oil, insurance and other lobbies in Washington. Not to mention living unsustainably for the planet. Sustainability--and I'm talking about survival--doesn't leave room for corruption. Think of waking up tomorrow as your reward for being just sustainable enough to come back for a little more, if not a generation or two form now. Maybe one day we can make a future where people won't pass on tomorrow morning because of our short-sight and permissiveness in the face of corruption.
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