Er...he's right.
The contest for the votes of Michigan gas addicts is officially under way.
Start your engines, boys and girls! And may the most shameless champion of economic illiteracy win!
In the Democratic corner, incumbent Gov. Jennifer Granholm has asked voters to fight soaring fuel prices by urging the federal government to cap oil industry profits (at an obscenity threshold to be specified later).
In the Republican corner, challenger Dick DeVos proposes to stop collecting the sales tax on gas whenever its price tops $1.95 a gallon, a move that would reduce state revenues by $285 million a year as long as gas prices hover near the $3-a-gallon mark.
If Granholm gets her way, the federal government would get more of the money Michiganders pay for gasoline.
If DeVos prevails, the state government would get less.
But if you believe either of their proposals will reduce the price of oil, I've got a switchgrass-powered Hummer I'd like to sell you.
If the hokum Michigan's gubernatorial gladiators are peddling came with no serious side effects, we could toss a coin to decide which of their ineffectual placebos to swallow. Or we could choose sides on partisan grounds that have nothing to do with the price of gas, with Democrats who want to stick it to oil executives lining up behind a windfall profits tax and Republicans who want to stick it to welfare recipients opting for a sales tax exemption. (You know -- the way we settle every other public policy issue in Michigan.)
But neither candidate's prescription for lower oil prices would be merely ineffectual. In fact, both would exacerbate the supply-demand imbalance that even those with a smattering of economic understanding (or political candor) know is at the root of soaring gas prices.
President George W. Bush has correctly diagnosed what headline writers call the gas crisis as a substance abuse problem. DeVos proposes to treat that addiction by making Michigan's hydrocarbon fix less expensive; Granholm wants the federal government to take a bigger share of the suppliers' profits.
Neither strategy, needless to say, will do a thing to reduce our dependence on foreign oil -- a crisis with even bigger implications for our national security than for our pocketbooks.
Brian goes on to talk about public transit- I think this would be a perfect opportunity to tout ALTERNATIVE ENERGY. Now, now, now.
I know that we can't just drop our oil habit, but we can start making faster steps to get out of this trap. Dancing around with taxes and rebates and cutting oil company profits won't solve anything in the long run. We need to get off this juice and get on the other juice, whether it be sugar or corn I don't care. Just DO IT.