More generalizations...

When have you ever heard me bitch about the "profits" reaped by tobacco companies? Or by Miller Brewing Company? Or by Chrysler Motors? The Wii platform is going to put Nintendo into triple-percentage profits... have I bitched about that?

WHEN I have bitched, it is about a segment of our industrial complex (constituting less than 2% of our stockmarket volume) that controls the prices and availability of an absolutely vital element of our society... OIL.

No facet of our vaunted economy could last more than 10 days without a continuous (and, indeed, GROWING) supply of oil and oil-based products. Yet only this week I heard a report that, due to the increased cost of oil and gasoline and people's need to save money in a troubled economy, we have a SURPLUS of 30% in our national reserves of BOTH gasoline and crude oil... yet the price for gas here in NEPA went up AGAIN from $3.039 to $3.069 just today.

Who is correct? Do we have the surplus? Or is this simply "Big Oil" gouging the nation in anticipation of the promised "$1200" rebate that everyone is convinced will save the economy?

"Big Tobacco" has posted profits EVERY SINGLE YEAR since 1951... that is 57 years of shareholder dividens in an industry that has seen Government regulation of the growth, production, sale and marketing of key products for that entire time. Why is THAT industry able to post profits with five decades of regulation and "Big Oil" can't? Since when has the American economy... hell, the very foundations of our society... rested on the "de-regulation" of tobacco products and the unrestricted ability of the parent companies to post profits?

I'll pay $4.50 a deck for smokes... because I know it is a luxury, nothing more. I do not NEED tobacco to function in society. I do not NEED tobacco to get to and from work. Our society hasn't developed around the availability of cheap, easy-to-get tobacco. Our society HAS developed around the availability of cheap, easy-to-get GASOLINE though... and when companies post profits measured in BILLIONS at a time when even a 5% reduction in fuel costs have been estimated to return a hundred-fold in the general economy... how can one NOT see that as price-gouging?

I'm not denying that Obama is spouting crap by the gallon to get votes and headlines... it's undoubtedly true. Call him a Marxist all you want. But don't call ME that until you can name another commodity on the market that is as vital to our economy and our national security the way crude oil is. In a day when that dependence has gotten SO out-of-control, to suggest that a degree of Federal regulation would ring the "death-toll" of our economy and our society is absolutely as crap-ridden as anything Obama is vomiting up.