Oil

President Bush is calling for a probe into oil industry price-gouging, and looking to rescind some of the huge tax breaks he gave them in last year’s energy bill. According to the President, the tax breaks are no longer necessary, what with the oil industry’s record profits. Which begs the question, when were the tax breaks necessary? Oil companies experienced record $100 billion profits in 2004, and then Bush turned around and signed an energy bill giving them billions in tax breaks, subsidies and incentives, as well as exemptions from various environmental laws.

The energy bill also repealed the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, which had blocked mergers and acquisitions in the energy industry. This was all done in the name of increased competition, because nothing says “competition” like energy companies buying one another until we’re left with one huge, unregulated, taxpayer-subsidized, massively-profitable energy company. With energy prices soaring and the Bush Administration’s backwards, feed-the-rich solutions failing, it’s hard to find anything but discouragement in today’s Christian Science Monitor report that – surprise of surprises! – energy prices in deregulated states rise faster than in regulated states. But, of course, deregulation is a little trickier to backpedal than tax policy when your approval rating starts to dip.

So maybe it turns out that giving massive energy conglomerates huge subsidies and legal exemptions doesn’t compel them to spontaneously lower their prices. Who would have guessed? But at least President Bush has found a sensible solution to our nation’s problems: namely, to get a head start on our next president’s task of undoing everything that Bush has done.