Solutions to the Gas Crisis

For several weeks now due to the escalating gasoline prices in this country, members of both the press and Congress have been weighing in with their suggestions for solutions to the problem. One of those solutions proposed by a member of Congress was to reinstitute the 55 mph speed limit on the federal highways as was undertaken in the 70's during the OPEC boycott.

I have several problems with this proposed solution, the main reason being that the reason that the price of gas is so incredibly high in this country is not due to a true shortage at all, nor embargo as was undertaken in the 70's. This is just purely greed at work here, and our federal government's continued intervention and price fixing in the form of both excess regulation and bans on domestic production that were instituted back in the 80's. The 80's were a great decade, bans on drilling and production, and instituting "hands off" regulation of the banking industry after the savings and loan crash, which led to what we are experiencing today with the housing, mortgage foreclosures and sub-prime market bust.

Some other observations in how this manufactured 'energy crisis' is different than the last, and how this suggestion that worked in the 70's for that short term problem would be ridiculous today given both the circumstances and other complications and added costs it would engender.

1. Back in the 70's, cars were still manufactured with V-8 engines, and did consume quite a lot of fuel unnecessarily. While today we still have large gas hogs in the form of SUVs, the increases in engine performances and mileage are 300 times better than they were in the 70's, and even those SUVs use less fuel than the average sub-compact car did then.

2. In this uncertain and unstable economy where even food prices are also rising astronomically, and wages are stagnant and more and more Americans are losing their jobs due to both to outsourcing and in-sourcing, where is the tax revenue going to come from to provide the needed officers to enforce such a ridiculous measure. It would appear that with the increases in violent crimes and property thefts, the manpower in most states needs to be prioritized where it is needed - in protection of the citizens, not in fleecing them of what little many of them now have in the form of outrageous civil fines (such as those that are now levied in most areas of the country for speeding now less than ten miles over the speed limit), so that they can't pay those enormous gas prices, or get to work since few even major metropolitan areas have reliable mass transportation.

3. The federal government getting involved in what really are local and state issues seems overstepping their authority. What might be needed in California, would not necessarily hold true for Iowa or Kansas. Yes, we have a gas crisis. The federal government is somewhat responsible for what those prices are now, and whatever the supply, due to it's governmental interference. And now we are going to punish the general citizenry for it's lack of foresight? It has been paying farm subsidies for years to farmers to regulate the price of corn, wheat and other grains which also has prohibited the development of alternative and cleaner fuels. There is still much farm land in this country, and enough land to develop and produce both food and energy according to supply and demand. We just might have to back off of attempting not just to feed our own country and it's citizens, but the rest of the world also but teaching them how to best use their land to feed themselves also.

4. It was indicated also that the commercial truckers were behind this, yet nothing was cited or no individual affiliated with the Teamsters Union was there to back this up. Since time is money for these truckers, I would doubt that it was U.S. truckers supporting this measure. Probably those Mexican truckers who are now on our roadways, and since the feds screwed up in allowing these Mexican truckers in without inspections or even a sufficient understanding of English in order to read the signs on the highways, perhaps this 55 mph limit is more for safety and to protect the federal government the first time one of these Mexican truckers kills some family of four in Kansas.

After all the panel discussion on these proposed "solution," one panelist who favored such a measure and was associated with a governmental agency quipped in with his assessment: "If the state's don't go along, we can just threaten to withhold federal highway funding."

Threats and bribery appear are the new way of governing in Washington (well, maybe not new). I hate to break it to this panelist, but providing for the federal highways and "post roads" is a federal duty and function under our Constitution. If the state's won't cow tow to unlawful interference and federal mandates, and the federal government withholds those funds - the state's have the final word and recourse in order to get those federal highway funds.....

It's called "breach of contract," and I'd like to see what 'creative' interpretation the Supreme Court could make in order to justify such blackmail, and not the states or the people on that one, as they have done now with the "Click it or Ticket" program, and those illegal sobriety checkpoints and criminal DUI investigations, without even the basic right to a trial by jury in such matters since the "penalty" far outweighs the crime in most of those low level cases, with some individuals not even able to perform the "mandatory" breath testing due to health reasons (upper respiratory diseases), yet facing statutory jails terms now anyway whether guilty or innocent, with the modus operandi in these matters now "guilty until proven innocent."

There are plenty of solutions for both the long and short term to help solve this crisis, and seems our Congress could conserve "energy" and direct their attentions elsewhere, since the entire situation is due, again, to their own ineptitude and lack of foresight.

Maybe we could simply get out of Iraq altogether, and use that 300 million per day that this war is costing us now to take care of our broken borders, bridges and energy needs.