Reply #33: I'm ignorant?

[AP]

Raising taxes on gasoline gives the gov't a cut of the cost of energy and taxes a little profit away from the retailer and the oil companies. Raising the price of a barrel of crude gives more profit to oil companies. The gov't may get a cut of that in the form of tax revenue, but it's only a small % of the increased wealth and political power that the oil companies get.

It's also giving oil companies a big % of the wealth created by economic development, and creates a lag on economic development.

War at the Top of the World by Eric Margolis goves over all of this. It argues that much of the politics from Turkey, through the ME and all the way out to China are all about controlling the source of oil so that China, Russia, India, the US and Europe can sabotage each other's economies and have competitive advantages.

It's amazing that people have blinders on and can't see that that's what's going on. The US wants to be the only superpower. They don't want Europe, Russia, India and China to have cheap fuel so they can effeciently grow their economies. Blair was between a rock and a hard place, but preventing the US from being in total control of the ME, and therefore over Europe's economy was the right thing to do. If he didn't, European economies would suffer and all pro-EU liberal leaders would get voted out of office, and fascits anti-EU nationalists only interested in economies which deliver wealth to the very top and who are true imperialists would easily win election.

Again, economic misery is how fascists get liberals out of office. It was the CIA strategy in Chile against Allende. It was what Wall St did for Arnold in the recall election (they lowered CA's bond rating). It's what Bush had planned for all the pro-EU governemnts in Europe.

I think it's SO obvious that Bush doesn't want the EU to be an effective, liberal economy and chaos is Iraq is part of the strategy to do that. Rumsfield was MAD when the UK said they were going to participate.