The Pickens Effect

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On a quick roundtrip errand run this morning—carefully calibrated to make a circuit with no backtracking, no delays at train crossings watching the gazillion-car trains hauling North Dakota coal out East, and turns left far more than right, I noted a sign of the times: gas at the Holiday station store on the far southside: $3.58.9 a gallon.

Call it the Pickens Effect. Oh, I know the VVM [vapid vapors media] will spew the Big Oil friendly spin that it's people driving less that have brought oil prices down...or no damage from the latest tropical storm/hurricane to roll across the Gulf Coast... and that's part of it. But to say that's it as though that's all it is, is kinda like sayin' "the surge has worked...." while ignoring the gorillas in the room.

Because I'm convinced the real driver of high energy costs is the Chee-knee Energy Plan...cooked up in early days of the BushCo Administration with his Texas-based cronies. A plan to drive up demand...how's that tax break for gas guzzlers workin' out?

A plan to artificially diminish supply...crank up the deposits in the oil reserves, folks, oh, and while you're at it...cry whine and sheesh over the fewer refineries...and don't mention that the fewer refineries are bigger and...well, I almost said better...but that's subjective. But at least the fewer refineries can be taken off-line any ol' time a Texas heart feels like pumpin' a little more crude goudging and a little less crude oil.

And then there's the futures boys, from Wall Street to West Texas, speculatin' in tomorrow's cost of oil.

And if you've got one of their own sayin' he's been an oil man for all those years and "this is one crisis we can't drill our way out of" then you're going to have a whole lotta folks quiverin' in their high-priced Texas boots and Wall Street loarers.

And tomorrow's oil starts looking not so good. Because if you start aggressively developing—not just talkin' about—alternatives to oil, the futures are going to dry up and the costs are going to drive down.

There's plenty to look at. Wind energy, solar, natural gas, switchgrass, biodiesel, nuclear, magnetic...heck, there's probably energies we haven't even thought about yet.

But while we're lookin', might be a good idea, too, to look at history. And who's got an incentive to destroy some energies—electric cars, anyone?—to save their own hides. And who do you trust.

So do I trust ol' T. Boone? Not as far as I can throw a Swiftboat.

He's going to be one of the first hogs at the trough for more tax breaks and loopholes and the whole business of socializing capitalists while starvin' consumers.

But we gotta get there somehow, and if we keep our eyes on the ball, and elect the people who will look out for the people's interests, call the media when they're shillin' for their advertisers instead of reporting facts, use common sense regulations so the outlaws can't take over and monopolize the whole effort...then we just might have a chance to reinvent not only energy policy but the whole energy of the planet.
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