Bicycle Fixation Weblog
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02/18/2012: "Right and Wrong"
There they go again.... The New York Times reported today that the Best and Brightest of the GOP are planning a new round of attacks on President Obama, focussed on high fuel prices. (In fact Santorum led the first skirmish last week.)This leads me to think that the GOP is populated by either hypocrites or fools--or a ghastly hybrid of the two.
They may not want to believe it, but the easy oil supply is inexorably diminishing, and will not return in our planet's lifetime. We've used it almost all up, and that's all there is. The alternative oil sources currently beloved of our sandbox bullies on the right are so expensive to extract and refine that they remain viable only while prices are high, and will not lower gasoline prices.
Unless, of course, the government nationalizes those operations and runs them at a loss. Not a likely scenario under any probable GOP regime, that one!
Meanwhile, obsessive automobile dependency mandates stressful, sedentary commuting and requires the never-ending provision of expensive and ineffective roads and parking facilities that crush neighborhoods, obliterate small businesses, and drain civic coffers. We have yet to learn that seventy years of desperately laying down asphalt has increased, rather than reduced, congestion--though anyone who ever goes outside can see the results of that program.
(We'll leave out its effect on the biosphere, though that will likely be the most devastating of all, since after all, it won't take place within the next quarter, which is as far as the GOP can see.)
And so the GOP vigorously tries to slash funding for transit, walking, bicycling, alternative energies, and anything else that could ACTUALLY reduce travel cost burdens--whether by lowering oil prices through reduced demand, or by making oil irrelevant--then tries to blame Obama for high gas prices?
The attempts to gut programs that support transportational bicycling are particularly stupid, especially coming from the right.
What mode of transport most purely embodies the traditional conservative values of self-reliance, fiscal and material prudence, and old-fashioned neighborliness?
Why, the bicycle, of course!
This new right-wing effort is not a sign of either intelligence or honesty, and even less so of political maturity.
Or any other kind.
