Using the planning and dedication this country employed in Iraq and Katrina, Bush promised today that he will try to minimize the price gouging committed by some of his biggest contributors.  Many people are expressing relief that the president has finally realized that Americans are being victimized by big corporations.

I have a different theory about Bush’s announcement:  Bush is asserting that he’ll rein in his oil industry contributors only because his OTHER major contributors (e.g., telecommunications, pharmaceuticals and banks) are now complaining that Big Oil is taking too big a share of consumers’ wallets and not leaving enough for them

In other words, this latest rhetoric is not aimed at protecting citizens, but only to encourage the monopolists to get along with each other a bit better.  They can still carve the American consumer down to the bone, but they need to do so with decorum.  After all, when monopolists steal from consumers, they need to remember that they are really stealing from each other.  And THAT is just plain wrong.

Let the national debate proceed, then.  Beware, though, that the following things remain off the table for all practical purposes: urban sprawl, high efficiency machinery appliances, mass transit, minimum requirements for heating/cooling efficiency and, of course, THESE things:

And here’s why this administration won’t really do anything about gas guzzlers.  When it comes to one’s freedom to burn gas, most Republicans see cars much as most Democrats see a woman’s body: 

• Keep your hands off my vehicle. It’s MY car. 
• My right to choose whether to drive and WHAT to drive. 
• It’s not the government’s business how I am pleasured in the privacy of my own vehicle.
• The decision of whether to drive is between a person and his Hummer Dealer.

All of these reasons are couched in terms of “freedom,” of course, as though the wrack and ruin of the national economy is not a contending interest to one’s right to drive a vehicle that gets only 9 miles per gallon when tested under ideal road conditions.