Mullings by Rich Galen | Issue for March 20, 2000

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Classical Gas

Monday, March 20, 2000

The Mullmobile is a Land Rover Discovery, which used to be a British vehicle, then was a German truck, and now is a Ford. The Mullmobile's fuel tank holds 25 gallons. At $1.75 per gallon of gasoline it will cost $43.75 to fill the tank if I drive up to the pump bone-dry-empty. It is enough to make me stop and think before I fire it up and run to the grocery store for a quart of milk which, by the way, costs $3.58 per gallon ($89.50 to fill up if it ran on skim).

Thank goodness the Mullmobile doesn't drink Grande Mochas from the Starbucks in the People's Republic of Alexandria. They cost $28.48 per gallon ($712.00 to fill 'er up, not counting double shots).

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Energy Secretary Bill Richardson's career has been on a rocket ride since the Clinton/Gore Administration began. He was a relatively unknown Congressman from New Mexico, then was appointed UN Ambassador, before being named Secretary of Energy.

Richardson wants to be Vice President of the United States very, very, VERY badly. He isn't going to get there. Since taking office he sort of forgot he might have been told about reports of spying at the Los Alamos National Laboratory; unsuccessfully tried to convince us that EVERY Ambassador to the United Nations has personally interviewed White House interns for low-level public affairs jobs; and now, apparently, has been so busy pouring iced tea for Vice President Al Gore that he missed the signals that the OPEC nations and their pals were deciding to jack up the price of oil.

Here are the potential problems for Vice President Gore:

(1) The U.S. economy: You can click on it to choose it; you can enter your credit card number to buy it; but it takes petroleum to deliver it to your door. If fuel prices become inflationary, the Guru-Of-All-Things-Economic, Alan Greenspan, will raise interest rates so high and hard it will make a Nolan Ryan fastball look like a changeup to slow consumer demand for all those goodies being delivered to the store shelves or your front door.

(2) Japan: The planet's second-largest economy has been in a long recession which contributed what was known as the Economic Asian Flu - the collapse of the currencies in Thailand, Indonesia, and other Pacific Rim powers. The latest figures for Japan show its Gross Domestic Product dropped precipitously for the most recent reporting period. With almost no energy supplies of its own High fuel prices will have a further depressing economic effect on Japan, the rest of the Pac Rim, and Western global corporations for whom Asia-Pacific is a big piece of their growth pie. The phrase "in the tank" will not have as much to do with where gasoline goes as it does the direction the stock market will be heading - old economies AND new.

(3) George W. Bush: If this were a crisis in soybean prices, Bush might have to rely on outside experts. He knows about the oil and gas business. If ever there were an issue custom made to help Bush overcome doubts about his grasp of complex issues, this is it.

Speaking of grasp of complex issues, the Washington Post reported yesterday that Al Gore apparently was not the inspiration for "Love Story" so much as "Beatle Bailey." According to the piece by David Maraniss and Ellen Nakashima, "In his sophomore year at Harvard, Gore's grades were lower than any semester recorded on Bush's transcript from Yale." According to the article the champion of the environment got C's and D's in science courses and "The self-proclaimed inventor of the Internet avoided all courses in mathematics and logic throughout college�"

College grades are not predictive of future success - thank God. However, it is one more example of cruel reality being in stark contrast to the gooey image Gore and his people continually try to project. His high school grades were not much better than his college marks. Gore got into Harvard because he was the privileged son of a United States Senator, not because he was a good student.

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