- Bush realizes he won't be able to push his energy industry welfare package without a crisis - without a full measure of the pain and sacrifice he's so accustomed to extracting from the American people

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Out of Iraq now! Out of Iraq now! Soldiers are not renewables! -- Bush protester at energy conference, 10/12/06

Bush is finally worried about gas prices, but its not the crippling tripling of the price of gas and oil that concerns him. "You know, I -- gasoline prices are down, and that's good news, Bush told the audience at a renewable energy conference Wednesday. "My worry is, however, that a low price of gasoline will make it complacent - make us complacent."

"I'm a little concerned at the price -- the drop in gasoline prices." Bush repeated at a republican fundraiser held the same day.

Bush has billions of dollars worth of projects on his industry benefactors' wish lists masquerading as 'energy' legislation, precariously tied up and held back with a slim thread by our Democratic faithful in the Senate and the House. He's worried that Americans' anxiety over high gasoline prices, which he hopes to exploit, is waning as the price falls.

Bush has a bulky legislative package of what he calls energy alternatives which includes items and interests as disparate as funding for windmills, to foot-in-the-door R&D for his new generation nukes. In the middle of all that is a bundle of dangerous environmental meddling; industry enabling proposals with eco-friendly labels, like, 'clean coal' and 'friendly forests'. Bush and his industry cabal want to mask a new generation of nuclear madness by hawking hydrogen; selling it to a naive generation who is blissfully unaware of the millions of dollars they're still paying to clean up the last round of waste from the nuclear meddling of the '50's.

Bush realizes he won't be able to push his energy industry welfare package without a crisis - without a full measure of the pain and sacrifice he's so accustomed to extracting from the American people as he falls all over himself to protect rich people like him from paying their fair share, from making a contribution equal to the sacrifice of life and livelihood they expected from the 40 Americans who died in Iraq over the last 11 days.

What's the price of a tank of gas to Bush? He boasts that he's 'giving' us a $3400 tax break for a $30,000 hybrid vehicle. I don't have the money to replace my "inefficient clunker" Bush complained about. "The more inefficient our cars are," Bush said, "the more we drive old clunkers, the more gasoline we use, which means we're more dependent on oil." What the hell does he know about holding our lives together out here, keeping our 'clunkers' going despite the extra hundreds a month we're suffering in fuel costs?

Whatever compensation or assistance he'll manage to throw our way will not be part of any comprehensive effort to replace the oil industry. Bush's hawking of investment in alternatives is just an extention of the industry goal to buy out all of the smaller enterprises, sit on them and keep the upstarts from posing any serious challenge to their bread and butter. They know they're in control of any production, availability, or afford-ability. Besides, it's a pipe dream to imagine that any sacrifice Bush expects from us will translate into anything that actually benefits us in the end. When has anything he's done benefited us?

The gas prices are dropping, perhaps as a result of some sweetheart deal Bush has with the Mideast producers. We've had a North Korean nuclear test scare without any jarring of the recent downward trend in the pump price. We've driven through the refinery scares without any of the price spikes that we saw just months ago. All of the same supposedly perniciously disruptive elements are still swirling around without any resolution, but, now the price isn't being interrupted in its decline. It's hard not to suspect some sort of manipulation surrounding the elections. It's just as hard not to expect a sharp jump in that price after the elections are over.

I may be crazy cynical, but me and my 'clunker' just aren't going to see any benefit at all from Bush's legislative package of 'energy alternatives' and incentives. We won't benefit one bit from higher gas and oil prices . . . but, Bush and his 'energy' industry benefactors will. "There is a lot of smart money in America going into energy diversification," Bush said.

That's why he's concerned with the drop in gas and oil prices. We won't be impoverished enough for his imperial government to ram their corporate stalking-horses through our appropriations process and rape our treasury under the pretext of saving us . . . from high oil and gas prices.

Everything the Bush regime does is couched in a protection scheme where he stirs up trouble, and then rides in on his high-horse offering to clean it up and ensure our safety for a price. But, he and his republican enablers in Congress never fail to skim the bulk of the benefit off of the top first, leaving the rest of us fighting over miserly scraps. These oil executives that republican voters have repeatedly allowed into office will never let Americans to get the upper hand on their monopoly as long as they maintain their arrogant grip on the levers of our democracy.

They'll continue to tell us that the sacrifices they force on us are for our own good; the sacrifices their privileged positions ensure they'll never have to suffer. What's a few extra hundred dollars a month out of American's pockets for higher gas and oil to Bush? He's never once in his life had to bother with personal bills and budgets. Now, in his ascended office, all of his needs and wants are paid for by the American people, including the fuel that he's using to fly around the country, hawking a gas price increase at republican fundraisers.

Bush won't ask Americans whether we're prepared or willing to make the sacrifices he expects, he'll just demand what he wants from the compliant Congress that's packed with his republican enablers. He'll just step up to the nation's bar and order up a load of patronage for his industry buddies; and a different type of load for the rest of us to bear. It's out of 'concern' for us that Bush is wishing to cut short the first price break we've managed in months against the impossible oil market. He's concerned about the effect of higher gas prices on our "psyches." Bush is worried that we'll get "complacent" as we put the savings from lower gasoline back into our struggling budgets. He needs to examine his own 'psyche'.

Authors Bio:
Ron Fullwood, is an activist from Columbia, Md. and the author of the book 'Power of Mischief' : Military Industry Executives are Making Bush Policy and the Country is Paying the Price