Written by: Beck

According to a recent article on CNN.com, John Kerry has a plan to lower gas prices! Well bully for him and hooray for us. Let's have a look at this plan, shall we?

Kerry's plan is three-fold. First, he would have us stop filling the national oil reserve. Second, he would support tax breaks & other incentives to encourage exploration & production. Finally, he would take measures to "reducing price disparities across the country."

Now about that national oil reserve... you people are aware of where most of the world's oil comes from, right? Correct! It's the Middle-East. Now, boys and girls, what region of the world is the most hostile to the United States? I see you're catching on. So naturally, perhaps the single greatest vulnerability of the United States from a natural resources standpoint is availability of crude. Why, oh why, can't people see the importance of stocking the national oil reserve? At least the White House understands:

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said last week that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve must have enough resources to respond to an emergency disruption of oil supplies.

Oil purchases by the US government amount to 150,000 barrels a day. Global oil markets, by comparison, amount to 86 million barrels a day of sold production. That means the US government is responsible for driving up demand by less that 0.2%. The impact this will have on prices is going to be measured in cents/bbl, not dollars/bbl. Furthermore, try to keep in mind that there are 42 gallons to a barrel, so even a $1 increase in the price of crude only translates into a couple cents at the pump. OK, enough on that.

Here's the bit that surprises me the most:

Kerry's campaign aides said the Democratic candidate wants the United States to pressure the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to increase production and apply diplomatic pressure to the member nations to reduce prices.

Can I get a WTF!?! This man has spent the past year screeching about how the White House has been widening the divide between the Middle East and the United States. Kerry's plan for reducing the price of gasoline? Put pressure on the world's biggest oil producing region--which happens to hate us at present--all while "reducing tensions in the Mid-East." How in hell does the guy get away with this sort of thing? Kerry is not just a bad economist, he's a hypocritical one as well.

Finally, there's this scary tidbit:

If elected, Kerry also would seek to enact a national fuel strategy aimed at reducing price disparities across the country, the aides said.

Creeping socialism watchers beware! Disparities in fuel prices across the country originate from two sources: 1) differing state taxes, and 2) differing transport costs. How exactly does Kerry propose to alter these things? Quite simply, the only way that Kerry (or any politician for that matter) could ease disparity in gasoline prices across the United States is to raise prices on the places where it is least expensive. Kerry, then, would lower us all down to that lowest of the lowest common denominators: California.

One last point I'd like to make. In Kerry's speech in San Francisco late Monday, he observed that, "I noticed that gas is now close to three dollars a gallon here in California." Several things here folks. First of all, the national average for prices at the pump, according to CNN, is $1.80. Not quite $3. Furthermore, in San Diego, which has the nation's highest gas prices, the pump average is still only $2.12. Finally, gas prices in 1981, adjusted for inflation into 2003 dollars, averaged $2.90 at the pump. I just wanted to point that out.

Finally, a nice little money quote for you:

"If it keeps going up like that, folks, Dick Cheney and President Bush are going to have to car pool to work together," Kerry said at a fund-raiser Monday night in San Francisco, California.

It'd be nice if Bush would respond in kind. Maybe something like, "If Kerry's chin keeps getting bigger, I'll be able to land a fighter on the damn thing." Hey, is it the GOP's fault that John Kerry's head is shaped like an aircraft carrier?