You're right, it is a bandaid...

Your re-statement of my case was spot-on... you summed it up very nicely. When so much of our economy depends on oil, and so much of our supply comes from unsecured, foreign sources, our national security suffers and our way-of-life is constantly at risk. If free market principles can be pushed aside for security reasons in the production of weapons technology with no twinge to your conscience, then I fail to see where this level of regulation in trade would cause you to pause given the impact even slight spikes in the price or availability of oil can have on our daily lives. Furthermore, as I have said in the past, if the day comes when we AREN'T looking for one-third of our oil from foreign, unsecured sources and we wish to revisits the case for de-regulation of the pricing of crude... I'm all for it.

We won't be free of this "monkey on our back" until we can safely and securely provide ourselves with all the crude we need on a daily basis. This is a tough goal, don't get me wrong. Our consumption demands are growing every year, while our ability to produce is dwindling each year. There is zero chance (in my opinion) that an alternative means to crude oil consumption can be found and implemented before this situation reaches crisis level, but I am also confident that we can and will work through that crisis successfully.

As we have said before, the easiest means to this end will begin with hydrogen-powered vehicles. We have the means of producing enough hydrogen to get the process started right now, but the conversion costs associated with taking our entire economy OFF the crude oil "tit" and getting it to run on hydrogen are going to be spectacularly huge... astronomical, even. Still, it is the easiest and most cost-effective means to this end, even if it is a far-distant goal for the nation to look towards. In the mean time, however, the ONLY viable answer to our oil addiction is to feed that "monkey" with domestically produced oil, of which we KNOW we have at least 50 years worth either under our feet or right off our shores.

One more thing... I did jokingly ask why you weren't blindly accepting Reagan's lead on this question, based on the fact that Reagan implemented it and nothing more. I applaud your ability to question Reagan's actions before accepting them... but my actual point in "harping" about the Reagan regulations was more to the fact that they worked. In an era where 100% of our economic and domestic functioning depends on a daily crude oil fix, we must look to policies that have made that addiction as smooth and functional as possible, given the nature of our dependence on foreign sources... and Reagan's regulations are the biggest and most obvious example. For 20 years, they kept the price of oil on a far smoother curve than we have seen without them, and if that curve was less disruptive or painful to live through before Reagan's time in office, then we KNOW what they feel like since the regulations have been lifted.

Another example of this sort of policy "proofing" would be to look at our national currency (US Dollar, of course) since it was taken off of the gold-standard.

In 1933, FDR and the Federal Reserve removed the "Pay the Bearer upon demand..." tag on the bills of all dollars in circulation, making the actual paper bills the de facto currency of our nation. This move took the shackles of the gold market off of our currency and allowed the US dollar to become the global currency in every market you care to point a finger at. So much so that many foreign nations actually BASE their national currency on reserves of US dollars! Both China and the USSR did this for years, and many Middle Eastern states still do. In THAT sense, Ryan was right in calling the dollar a "commodity"... it is so solid and dependable that other nations will fund their currencies off of stockpiles of our money.

When Nixon removed the requirement of keeping a determined amount of gold in reserve to "back" the value of the dollar (and thus, limiting the price of gold in the US as a result), the value of gold as a free-market commodity soared, and the purchasing power of the dollar increased by a factor of ten. That is the wonder and benefit of our Federal Reserve system... but it does have it's drawbacks, too. The dollar is now based on an imaginary estimate of the purchasing potential of $1.00 in any given market, and that potential is effected by the nation's national debt. The more in debt we are, the more money we print and the more we devalue our own currency. However, calls from conservative pundits like Mike Church and Glenn Beck to revert back to the gold standard do not take into account the fact that this are more US dollars in circulation than there is gold on the market today. Our total gold reserves in the nation wouldn't pay for even half of the US dollars that we have in circulation, in fact... so such calls for a gold standard are simply wasted effort, I think.

We are now in even more debt than we were at the end of WWII, with a full 10% or more of our GDP now showing red on our balance sheets. The short version of this is that in less than two years, we have seen the purchase power of the US dollar reduced by 7%, and if that trend continues then by the end of 2012, the purchase power of the dollar will be reduced by as much as 16% from its 2004 level.

Anyway, sorry for the tangent...