Oil prices approach $70 a barrel, with analysts saying an even $100 a barrel is not unrealistic.

Politicians say there’s little we can do about it, and point out that the national average is still not as high as the inflation-adjusted prices of 1981 of $3.11.

“I wish I could say there is a quick fix, but there is not,” said Rep. Bob Beauprez, a Colorado Republican who is expected to face a tough reelection campaign next year. “Everybody is feeling the pinch.” (Washington Post)

Everybody is feeling the pinch, but I’m sure Bush’s oil company cronies are feeling it less than we mortals. Such is the reality of a market economy, some might say, shrugging their shoulders and walking away.

Quick fixes? We had thirty years to solve this problem. What did we learn from the late—70s, when long queues at the pump helped force Carter out of the White House? Apparently nothing. Hybrid car sales are most certainly rising — we’re thinking the next car we buy will have to be hybrid — but it all seems too little too late. No one is in a position to thumb his nose at the oil cartels and say, “Screw you! We just won’t buy your oil.”

China would surely be grateful.

We’ve built our entire civilization on fossil fuels, and it seems that the people sitting on said fuels will soon be realizing the power they wield. OPEC has us by the gonads, and has for decades. We saw in the late—70s what could happen, and yet our dependence only grew.

Not only that, but in America we’ve built our culture on a sense of independence that somehow dictates that we all have cars, that we fill our highways with cars transporting only the driver and a cell phone.

Lawmakers also cannot easily suspend or reduce the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal tax on gasoline. That money goes straight into a trust fund for covering highway and mass-transit upgrades. When gas prices climbed in the 1990s, some Republicans were quick to call for lowering the tax. This time, however, Congress has boxed itself in by passing the largest-ever transportation bill just before leaving for the August recess.

And how much of that transportation bill was aimed at improving public transportation? If you live in a larger city, a car might not even be necessary. Living in Poland showed me that even if you live in the boondocks, a car is not completely necessary. A nice convenience, but not a necessity.

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and others say Bush should take a harder line with Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing nations, and demand that they release more oil and help push down the price of oil, which hit a record $66 per barrel this week. But skeptics say that approach has not worked in the past. “We have to realize they have the oil, and it’s a seller’s market,” Beauprez said.

Don’t worry — Bush will find a reason to attack them soon enough and then we’ll have all the oil we need.

Wasn’t this Iraq thing supposed to be about oil? Isn’t that what we bleeding hearts have been saying all along, that the WMD charges were just a smoke screen to justify a long-planned war? For whom could that oil be intended?

Even if that obstacle could be surmounted, “if you roll back that tax, people have to keep in mind that may not transfer into savings for consumers,” said American Automobile Association spokesman Mantill Williams. “It’s not automatic [that gasoline firms] will give that discount to the consumer.”

Oh — right. Right. Bush’s and Condie’s and, well, the whole administration’s buddies in the oil industry are getting their campaign contributions back many times over. It was a sound investment.

America, goes the cliché, where we have the best politicians money can buy.

Oil companies have us over a pork barrel and that’s that. We drive buy a service station and, noticing that the prices has jumped up two cents overnight, cut in quickly to fill up before it goes up again — even if there’s three-quarters’ of a tank still in the car. We buy their product even when we don’t need it at the moment…