DallasDave's Blog

Why doesn't Fox4 report on this? 

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Who Speaks for the American Military on Iraq?

by William Marina
by William Marina

The bias in the way in which the Media has covered the emerging presidential campaign has been evident for some months now.

The implication has been that a hawk like Rudy Giuliani speaks for the American soldiers and other military members, when he, John McCain, Fred Thompson and others, continue to parrot the Bush Administration’s line that the US must "stay the course in Iraq," as withdrawal would be a betrayal of our heroic fighting men and women.

The Media has given short shrift to Ron Paul, the only candidate among the Republicans who argues for withdrawal.

If that logic was correct, then Ron Paul must be the most hated of the candidates among those people associated with the US Military. But, is that true?

Given the means of electronic voting today, if the Bush Administration had the intestinal fortitude to do so, that hypothesis could readily be tested. The GOP was certainly keen to count the Military’s votes in the disputed election in Florida during the 2000 election.

Is there some alternative means of ascertaining the feelings of our Military with respect to the candidates and their views? As it happens, perhaps there is!

Few would argue that in politics, people and interest groups tend to put their money where their mouth is. That is, they give money to those candidates whose views reflect their own interests.

That being the case, the latest information we have about party donations is quite interesting!

Analyzing the latest finance reports, military-support for the Republican candidates, The Spin Factor broke down the donations from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and among Veterans (their figures do not include the Marines, which only slightly alters the results). The results can be easily verified by checking the reports by employer for Ron Paul and the other candidates.

Name          Total $      Army      Navy        AF        Vets

Paul            23,465         6,975      6,765     4,650     5,075
McCain     15,825          6,925      6,305     1,795         800
Romney      3,551          2,051              0     1,500              0
Giuliani        2,320         1,450          370        250          250
Hunter          1,000                 0       1,000            0          --
Huckabee       750            250                0      500             --
Tancredo         350            350                0            0             --
Brownback        71             71                 0            0             --
Thompson            0               0                 0            0             --

*Note: The numbers for the last five candidates have not been thoroughly verified.

52.53%: Ron Paul
35.4%: McCain
7.9%: Romney
5.2%: Giuliani
2.2%: Hunter
2.6%: Others

Thus, more than half of the Military and Veterans donating funds to the Republican Party candidates gave their monies to one candidate, Dr. Ron Paul.

I would suggest this is about a clear an indication of the views of our Military on the positions of the Republican candidates as we are apt to get. Why doesn’t the Media offer this data to the American people?

July 19, 2007

William Marina [send him mail] is Professor Emeritus in History at Florida Atlantic University, a Research Fellow of the Independent Institute, Oakland, CA, and Executive Director of the Marina-Huerta Educational Foundation. He lives in Asheville, NC.

Thankfully, the TX legislature did the right thing (at least this once)....

Amid controversy over state legislatures in the U.S. requiring young girls to take Gardasil, Merck's new vaccine for human papillomavirus (HPV), severe side effects are being reported.

1,637 adverse reactions have been reported by Judicial Watch, a public interest watchdog, including three girls who died shortly after receiving the immunization. Judicial Watch obtained the reports from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration using the Freedom of Information Act.

In Australia, 25 girls who had just received their first injection of the vaccine experienced headache, nausea, and dizziness. In some cases, the problems were so severe that they were hospitalized. Shares of the vaccine's Australian developer, CSL, fell after the incident was reported in the news.

British Medical Journal June 9, 2007;334:1182-1183

Another message:

Subject: Repealing the REAL ID Act

Oh, those poor Senators. They're really traumatized. They heard from far too many of their constituents over the immigration bill. The news is full of quotes about it. Senators feel assaulted, intimidated.

Don't you feel sorry for them?

Maybe we should give them a break? Go easy on them? Let them catch their breath?

Naugh.

Let's pound them again.

Just when they think the beating is over, and they've let down their guard, here comes another blow . . .

Congress needs to repeal the REAL ID Act. Americans don't want it. It was passed in a dishonest way, by combining it with a completely un-related bill. The states are rejecting it. New Hampshire is the latest to vote not to comply. But . . .

The longer we let this law stay on the books the more likely it is to ensnare us. We dodged a bullet with the immigration bill, which could have made the REAL ID national identification system more entrenched.

Congress thinks they're done with this issue, now that immigration legislation is tabled for a good long while, but we must disabuse them of this notion. They aren't done until we tell them they're done (they work for us remember), and we won't be satisfied until the REAL ID Act is repealed.

Please write Congress today and tell them that. You can do so here.

I just received this great message!

Subject: Victory!

The immigration bill is dead. It fell short by 14 votes. Better yet, the whole issue has become so controversial, in so many different ways, that no further action on immigration is expected any time soon.

Fox News has reported that the Senate phone system crashed yesterday, from so many calls coming in.

We call this overwhelming, inescapable, resistance numbing pressure!

But the media, as usual, is getting the story wrong. The professional reporting class seems unable to contain more than one idea or fact in their heads at any given time, so they're all reporting that the bill's defeat was due to its supposed amnesty provisions.

It is to laugh.

The truth is that nearly everyone, on all sides of the issue, opposed this bill, for every reason imaginable.

The truth is that hundreds of groups like DownsizeDC.org were organizing opposition to this legislation for many different reasons. And one of the biggest objections was the REAL ID provisions.

Congratulations to you for the role you played in killing this horrible bill. Now, we have a prediction to make . . .

THIS IS THE FUTURE.

Increasingly, this is how the United States is going to be governed. Congress will propose, but the people will dispose, by exerting overwhelming, inescapable, resistance numbing pressure.

The Internet has made this possible, just as printing made the Reformation and the Enlightenment possible, and TV enabled the civil rights movement.

This Big Change will mostly mean that Congress will do less, because there will usually be vast interlocking groups of opposition ready to fight, often for conflicting reasons, but usually with the same result -- to say and impose a giant NO on Congressional schemes.

The pressure of the people will become the ultimate check and balance on state expansionism.

This is the future.

And we have another prediction to make . . .

The era of partisan politics and over-sized political personalities is coming to an end. Parties and personalities will matter less and less, while public opinion on individual issues and bills will matter more and more.

Many people will continue to have partisan loyalties, and many more will root for one candidate or another, for the same reason people love sports. But this contest of labels and names will matter less and less. It will increasingly become a "sound and fury signifying nothing."

Groups like DownsizeDC,org are the future. Our strategy is the main chance.

Do you want to win? Then this is the way to do it. And frankly, we see zero evidence that there is any other way to do it.

But there's something else involved here. If you look deeply at the public opinion polls on various issues you will see that most people want smaller government on most issues most of the time. We call this the Great Downsize DC Consensus. But . . .

You wouldn't know about this Consensus from watching the news, because the journalistic obsession with the sports reporting of partisan politics ignores this point.

Likewise, the rigged partisan division into two Big Government parties, and two Big Government philosophical groupings, leaves the small government consensus disenfranchised, un-represented, and completely invisible.

Partisan politics isn't the solution. Partisan politics is the problem!

DownsizeDC.org isn't a political party. It's a way to recruit and organize the Downsize DC Consensus free from the barriers of primitive partisan tribalism. It can also be, as our recruiting and organizing gains critical mass, a way to make the smaller government consensus VISIBLE for the first time.

We don't think it is a matter of "if this will happen," we think it is a matter of "when?"

After all, DownsizeDC.org is the future. 

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We should have a party!

I thought I posted this last week, but I can't find it...

Subject: Grassroots regulations DEFEATED!

We just won another one in Congress.

Proposed regulations for grassroots groups like Downsize DC have been strangled in their crib.

First we won in the Senate. Now we've won in the House!

The House Judiciary Committee rejected the grassroots regulations yesterday by a voice vote. This means that grassroots regulations will NOT be a part of the lobbying reform bill that goes to the full House for a vote.

Committee Chairman John Conyers told the press that the grassroots provisions were rejected because they violate the First Amendment.

Please, don't faint. I know it comes as a shock to have politicians pay attention to Constitutional limits, but it CAN HAPPEN ON MANY MORE ISSUES if enough pressure is brought to bear.

We won this fight because we had a BIG ARMY exerting BIG PRESSURE.

We were a very small army when this fight began. The initial coalition was just a few small groups, but as time passed more and larger organizations joined the coalition. That's where our Big Army came from.

We finally ended up with the ACLU and the National Right to Life Committee fighting on the same side with each other, and with us. Eventually the ACLU even took over the day-to-day leadership of the coalition.

DC Downsizers also played a key role, bombarding Congress with 33,921 messages on this issue, and countless phone calls.

Are we really out of the woods on this one? Only one danger remains. Congressman Meehan, the architect of these grassroots regulations and of so much else that is wrong with the electoral process, may still try to slip his poison into the bill in Conference Committee. But . . .

We don't expect that to work, and Congressman Meehan is leaving office on July 1. We will remain vigilant until this last small danger has completely passed. Meanwhile . . .

Let's bask in this latest victory, and recognize that it is another proof of the Downsize DC Concept. A Big Army exerting Big Pressure on Congress is THE WAY to get what we want.

Sometimes we will be able to gather the forces we need by joining with other groups, but wouldn't it be ideal if Downsize DC had enough troops all by itself to win these kinds of victories on really important issues like "Read the Bills" and "One Subject at a Time?"

The key to achieving this is to have the funding to do the outreach to recruit our Big Army. This funding can come from only one place. YOU. Please reward the success of our strategy, and make an investment in future victories.


Thank you for being a DC Downsizer.

Perry Willis
Communications Director
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.
 

By Ron Paul

America's foreign policy has led to a bizarre contradiction. President Bush claims to be pursuing freedom in the world, so that Americans will be safer. Yet this campaign's results--a more zealous proponent of terrorism in the Palestinian Authority, and the prospect of theocracy in Iraq--are posing even greater threats to us.

The cause of this failure is Mr. Bush's hopeless view that tyranny is reversed by the holding of elections--a view stemming from the widespread confusion between freedom and democracy.

Ask a typical American if there should be limits on what government may do, and he would answer: yes. He understands that each of us has rights which no law--regardless of how much public support it happens to attract--is entitled to breach. An advocate of democracy, however, would answer: no.

The essence of democracy is unlimited majority rule. It is the notion that the government should not be constrained, as long as its behavior is sanctioned by majority vote. It is the notion that the function of government is to implement the "will of the people." It is the notion we are espousing when we tell the Iraqis, the Palestinians and the Afghanis that the legitimacy of their new governments rests essentially on their being democratically approved.

And it is the notion that was repudiated by the founding of the United States.

America's defining characteristic is freedom. Freedom exists when there are limitations on government, limitations imposed by the principle of individual rights. America was established as a republic, under which government is restricted to protecting our inalienable rights; this should not be called "democracy." Thus, you are free to criticize your neighbors, your society, your government--no matter how many people wish to pass a law censoring you. But if "popular will" is the standard, then the individual has no rights--only temporary privileges, granted or withdrawn according to the mass sentiment of the moment. The Founders understood that the tyranny of the majority could be just as evil as the tyranny of an absolute monarch.

Yes, we have the ability to vote, but that is not the yardstick by which freedom is measured. After all, even dictatorships hold official elections. It is only the context of liberty--in which individual rights may not be voted out of existence--that justifies, and gives meaning to, the ballot box. In a genuinely free country, voting pertains only to the particular means of safeguarding individual rights. There is no moral "right" to vote to destroy rights.

Unfortunately, like Mr. Bush, most Americans use the antithetical concepts of "freedom" and "democracy" interchangeably. Sometimes our government upholds the primacy of individual rights and regards one's life, liberty and property as inviolable. Many other times it negates rights by upholding the primacy of the majority's wishes--from confiscating an individual's property because the majority wants it for "public use," to preventing a terminally ill individual from gaining assistance in ending his life because a majority finds suicide unpalatable.

Today, our foreign policy upholds this latter position. We declare that our overriding goal in the Mideast is that people vote--regardless of whether they care about freedom. But then, if a Shiite, pro-Iranian majority imposes its theology on Iraq--or if Palestinian suicide-bombers execute their popular mandate by blowing up schoolchildren--on what basis can we object, since democracy is being faithfully served? As a spokesman for Hamas, following its electoral victory, correctly noted: "I thank the United States that they have given us this weapon of democracy. . . . It's not possible for the U.S. . . . to turn its back on an elected democracy." The Palestinians abhor freedom--but have adopted democratic voting.

The Iraqis may reject freedom, in which case military force alone--as dismally inadequate as our efforts in that realm have been so far--will have to ensure our safety against any threats from them. But if we are going to try to replace tyranny with freedom there, we must at least demonstrate what freedom is. We should have been spreading the ideas and institutions of a free society, before allowing elections even to be considered. For example, we should have written the new constitution, as we did in post-WWII Japan. Instead, we deferred to the "will of the people"--people who do not understand individual rights--and endorsed a despotic constitution, which rejects intellectual freedom in favor of enforced obedience to the Koran, and which rejects economic freedom and private property in favor of "collective ownership." The consequence: looming neo-tyranny in Iraq.

We need to stop confusing democracy with freedom. Morally supporting freedom is always in our interests. But supporting unlimited majority rule is always destructive--to us, and to all who value the rights of the individual

The NAFTA Superhighway

October 30,  2006   
by Ron Paul

By now many Texans have heard about the proposed “NAFTA Superhighway,” which is also referred to as the trans-Texas corridor.  What you may not know is the extent to which plans for such a superhighway are moving forward without congressional oversight or media attention. 

This superhighway would connect Mexico, the United States, and Canada, cutting a wide swath through the middle of Texas and up through Kansas City.  Offshoots would connect the main artery to the west coast, Florida, and northeast.  Proponents envision a ten-lane colossus the width of several football fields, with freight and rail lines, fiber-optic cable lines, and oil and natural gas pipelines running alongside.  

This will require coordinated federal and state eminent domain actions on an unprecedented scale, as literally millions of people and businesses could be displaced.  The loss of whole communities is almost certain, as planners cannot wind the highway around every quaint town, historic building, or senior citizen apartment for thousands of miles.

Governor Perry is a supporter of the superhighway project, and Congress has provided small amounts of money to study the proposal.  Since this money was just one item in an enormous transportation appropriations bill, however, most members of Congress were not aware of it.

The proposed highway is part of a broader plan advanced by a quasi-government organization called the “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America,” or SPP.

The SPP was first launched in 2005 by the heads of state of Canada, Mexico, and the United States at a summit in Waco. 

The SPP was not created by a treaty between the nations involved, nor was Congress involved in any way.  Instead, the SPP is an unholy alliance of foreign consortiums and officials from several governments.  One principal player is a Spanish construction company, which plans to build the highway and operate it as a toll road.  But don’t be fooled: the superhighway proposal is not the result of free market demand, but rather an extension of government-managed trade schemes like NAFTA that benefit politically-connected interests.

The real issue is national sovereignty.  Once again, decisions that affect millions of Americans are not being made by those Americans themselves, or even by their elected representatives in Congress.  Instead, a handful of elites use their government connections to bypass national legislatures and ignore our Constitution-- which expressly grants Congress the sole authority to regulate international trade.

The ultimate goal is not simply a superhighway, but an integrated North American Union--complete with a currency, a cross-national bureaucracy, and virtually borderless travel within the Union.  Like the European Union, a North American Union would represent another step toward the abolition of national sovereignty altogether.

A new resolution, introduced by Representative Virgil Goode of Virginia, expresses the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the construction of a NAFTA superhighway, or enter into any agreement that advances the concept of a North American Union.  I wholeheartedly support this legislation, and predict that the superhighway will become a sleeper issue in the 2008 election.

Government and Racism

April 16,  2007 
By Ron Paul

The controversy surrounding remarks by talk show host Don Imus shows that the nation remains incredibly sensitive about matters of race, despite the outward progress of the last 40 years. A nation that once prided itself on a sense of rugged individualism has become uncomfortably obsessed with racial group identities.

The young women on the basketball team Mr. Imus insulted are over 18 and can speak for themselves.  It’s disconcerting to see third parties become involved and presume to speak collectively for minority groups.  It is precisely this collectivist mindset that is at the heart of racism. 

It’s also disconcerting to hear the subtle or not-so-subtle threats against free speech.  Since the FCC regulates airwaves and grants broadcast licenses, we’re told it’s proper for government to forbid certain kinds of insulting or offensive speech in the name of racial and social tolerance.  Never mind the 1st Amendment, which states unequivocally that, “Congress shall make NO law.” 

Let’s be perfectly clear: the federal government has no business regulating speech in any way.  Furthermore, government as an institution is particularly ill suited to combating bigotry in our society.  Bigotry at its essence is a sin of the heart, and we can’t change people’s hearts by passing more laws and regulations.

In fact it is the federal government more than anything else that divides us along race, class, religion, and gender lines.  Government, through its taxes, restrictive regulations, corporate subsidies, racial set-asides, and welfare programs, plays far too large a role in determining who succeeds and who fails in our society. This government "benevolence" crowds out genuine goodwill between men by institutionalizing group thinking, thus making each group suspicious that others are receiving more of the government loot.  This leads to resentment and hostility between us.

The political left argues that stringent federal laws are needed to combat racism, even as they advocate incredibly divisive collectivist policies.

Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called "diversity" actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist.

The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence, not skin color, gender, or ethnicity. 

Yep, this is old, but it illustrates the system pretty well (it may or may not have come from a UG Professor...I don't really care as that is not the point):

Economics 101 as explained by a University of Georgia professor
Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20." Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free but what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each
end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he
proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:
The first four men (the poorest) would still pay nothing.
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% reduction).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% reduction).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28% reduction).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% reduction).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% reduction).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% reduction).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
Only got a dollar out of the $20,"declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man," but he got $10!"
"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!"
"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system work . The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit
from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking
overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

From today's Email: 

Subject: Repealing the Patriot Act

Our call to repeal the Patriot Act generated hate mail. In between the many curse words employed by some of the angry mailers, their basic arguments reduced to this . . .

The burden of proof lies with us, not the government. If the government says it needs new powers in order to protect us, then we must grant those powers.

Take this argument to its logical conclusion and there is no basis for retaining a democratic republic of constitutionally limited powers. The government merely needs to make claims and we must accept them.

We do not like this argument or its logical consequences, so we take the opposite approach.

Government has a monopoly of the use of force. This is a supreme power, and a dangerous one. Therefore, this monopoly must be controlled and limited. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights is one way to do this. DISTRUST of government in the minds of citizens is another.

The politicians running the government routinely ignore constitutional limits. Therefore, an inherent and consistent distrust of government, on the part of the people, is indispensable.

The burden of proof must ALWAYS rest on the government's shoulders.

Critical thinking, even distrust, should be the automatic response of every citizen to every government request to remove or reduce legal limits on its powers.

There are few more compelling proofs of the need for this distrust than the response of our government to the 9-11 attack. It is a record of lies, incompetence, and opportunism.

The Patriot Act stands at the heart of this history of monopoly power run amok.

The Patriot Act was not even available for members of Congress to read at the time they passed it into law. If you did not know this, and it comes as a shock to you, NOW might be the time to send Congress a message calling for them to pass Downsize DC's "Read the Bills Act." You can do so here.

Contained within the renewal of the very large Patriot Act was a provision removing checks-and-balances in the appointment of U.S. Attorneys. Senator Dianne Feinstein recently expressed shock that Congress had passed such a thing, all but admitting that she and her colleagues hadn't read the bill. This is one more argument you can make to Congress about the need for the "Read the Bills Act," and one more reason why you should consistently distrust your government.

Prior to the 9-11 attacks, as every American should now know, based on nationally televised testimony before Congress, the FBI knew that suspected terrorists were in the United States, planning an attack.

They also knew that some of these suspects were learning how to fly planes, but NOT how to land them.

All of this knowledge was gained without the Patriot Act. We did not need the Patriot Act then, and we do not need it now. What we need is a smaller, more streamlined government that can actually FOCUS ON PROTECTING US.

Since 9-11 our government has done everything BUT FOCUS. It has run off in a thousand different directions, assuming new powers, and creating new thickets of bureaucracy. It has devoted more resources to starting an unnecessary war in Iraq than it has to catching the people who attacked us. And . . .

There's no publicly available testimony that evidence obtained through the Patriot Act has been used to convict a single person. Given that the Patriot Act has been such a lightening rod issue, we should expect that exhibits of Patriot Act successes would be very well known, shouldn't we? But they're not. Instead, we have evidence that the government has abused its Patriot Act powers (which we shared with you Monday).

Distrust of government as a default position is justified by the monopoly nature of government power. But that was not what we asked of anyone in our Monday message. Distrust of government is also justified by the massive evidence that government consistently abuses its power. And that's what we presented. 

It is time for citizens to do their job. It is time for us to fulfill our role as a bulwark against the monopoly power of government. It is time for us to demand that Congress repeal the Patriot Act. You can do so here.

But we must also do more. We must stop playing defense and start playing offense. The "Read the Bills Act" is one powerful weapon in our offensive arsenal. But we need more. We also need the "One Subject at a Time Act" to prevent politicians from combining unrelated provisions into one bill -- like they did with the Patriot Act.

A message from Ron Paul (republican candidate for Pres 2008):

Many Americans understandably are upset with the sharp spike in gas prices since Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast in August, and are concerned by reports of oil company profits. But we must understand that high oil prices are not the result of an unregulated free market. On the contrary, the oil industry is among the most regulated and most subsidized of U.S. industries. Perhaps we need to ask ourselves whether too much government involvement in the oil markets, rather than too little regulation, has kept the supply of refined gasoline artificially low.
Consider Marathon Oil, which operates a refinery in Texas City. Marathon recently announced the construction of new refinery that will bring several hundred thousand barrels of oil online every day – which is exactly what the nation needs. But building a new refinery is a daunting task that requires billions of dollars in capital investment. The process of obtaining federal permits alone can take several years. As a result, we won’t see a drop of refined gasoline from the new Marathon facility until 2009.

Federal subsidies and regulations are largely responsible for limiting the supply of refined gasoline in this country. The demand for gasoline has risen dramatically in America due to population growth in recent decades, but virtually no new refining capacity has been added. Basic economics tells us that rising demand and a fixed supply will lead to higher prices. No amount of congressional grandstanding about price gouging will change this economic reality. We must increase domestic exploration, drilling, and refining if we hope to maintain reasonable gas prices. We need more competition, which means we need less government.

Most Americans agree that the American economy should not be dependent upon Middle East oil. Economist George Reisman, however, explains that our own domestic regulations make us slaves to OPEC: “Today, it is possible once again to bring about a dramatic fall in the price of oil – indeed, one even larger than occurred in the 1980s. And it could begin right away. All that is necessary is to abolish the U.S. government’s restrictions on domestic energy production inspired by the environmentalist movement.”

Reisman also explains how abolishing restrictions on coal production, natural gas production, and nuclear power would further reduce the OPEC stranglehold. By increasing the supply of these other energy sources, demand for oil would decrease and prices would drop.

Note that much of the support for unrealistic environmental regulations comes from northeastern politicians and media, who weren’t nearly as interested in oil fortunes when the business hit rock bottom in the 1980s. Texas and the gulf coast have always been willing to supply the nation’s energy, and it’s a bit disingenuous to hear criticism from those who are happy to use oil but don’t want refineries in their backyards.

Oil is critical, but it is not a magic commodity that somehow is immune from the laws of economics. In fact, it is precisely because oil is so critical to our economy that we must allow the free market to deliver it. Absent government interference in the oil markets, gas prices would rise or fall according to concrete realities affecting supply and demand. High prices would encourage conservation better than any environmental regulations. Entrepreneurs would race to develop viable alternate fuels if gas prices rose too much.

Centralized government planning, on the other hand, cannot solve our energy dilemmas. The Nixon-era price controls on gasoline in the 1970s produced nothing but disastrous shortages. By contrast, the Reagan administration’s immediate deregulation of the oil industry resulted in an unprecedented boom in oil production and a dramatic reduction in prices. This is the lesson we must remember.

What can Congress do to provide Americans with some relief at the pump? First it can suspend federal gas taxes, which would save consumers nearly 20 cents per gallon. In the long term, Congress must pass legislation like HR 4004, which I introduced earlier this month. HR 4004 takes a comprehensive approach by allowing offshore drilling, eliminating regulations that restrict refining, and suspending harmful tax rules that discourage domestic oil production. If we hope to have a stable, affordable supply of gas, we must allow the free market to operate.