Israel v Palestine: 60 Years of a Bad Decision

          One of the dumbest decisions a collection of nations ever made occurred in the years immediately after World War II. The consequences of that decision, based as much on emotion as anything else, is playing out today as it has done for 60 years.
          The conflict between the muslim Arabs of the Middle East and Jewish Israel has no end as long as those who might have an impact on a resolution continue to try to make a dumb decision work. If ever there was an up-to-date illustration of trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, it is the Bush administration incursion into Iraq. The Barack Obama administration needs some new thinking on the issue and the rest of the involved world needs to take heed. We do not know what the solution is, we only know there needs to be a new way of thinking about the situation.
          We do know that this back and forth revenge, retaliation, tit for tat, whatever you want to call it, has been going on since 1948 without a solution, so why continue looking for one in the same old worn-out policies.
          The time to think outside the box is becoming urgent as Russia works to restore the cold war, meaning aid and support on the side of opponents of anything the United States favors, in this case, Israel.
          The region between Syria, Iraq, Arabia and Egypt to what is now the Suez Canal was handed over to the British Empire to admin- ister after World War I. That empire has a poor history of preparing any of its minions for independence.
          Also, as we have learned most recently with the fall of the Soviet Union and other empire col- lapses of recent decades, artificial mergings of conflicting ethnic, cultural religious, historical or any other pairings of groups that have their own ways of life simply do not work.
          In Iraq today, it is the Shiites vis a vis the Sunnis, kept unified, as usual, through dictatorial means. That is no different than the British attempt to keep India unified as one country, even though present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh were totally unrelated to India, even hostile to it. Pakistan still is, Bangladesh is just trying to survive.
          What could world leaders have been thinking when they created a Jewish state in the aftermath of discovering the holocaust? To give Jews land, they had to take it from someone else. The someone else lived in the British Mandate of Palestine.
          There probably is no greater conflict in the recorded history than the religious schisms of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which came about within a few hundred years of each other in the same area before and during the Dark Ages, a period when nothing good or rational was accomplished.
          Since religion is not a product of rational thinking, there is no rational solution to a religious problem. We need to recognize that and chart a new course in the Middle East, and not just in the area once known as Palestine.
          The United States was only 85 years old when it fought a Civil War over a fundamental split of the populace. Why would we expect countries in steady conflict for more than 85 decades to come to terms with differences even broader, particularly ones largely based on religious differences.
          The three religions have been at war with each other for nearly two millenia, so why would a collection of countries created after World War II as the United Nations believe that Resolution 181 dividing what was then Palestine between Jews and Arabs would work, particularly when nearly all of the Jews were foreigners at the time. That only added xeno- phobia to the mix.
          Not only were lands of the Palestinians taken from them to create a state at odds with their religious beliefs, the land happened to contain Jerusalem, seen by all three of the area’s religions as their home base. Of course the Palestinians would resent the action and not go quietly into a goodnight.
          Six decades later, what is left of Palestine and the created state of Israel naturally remain at loggerheads, both employing the eye-for-an- eye, tooth-for-a-tooth attitude. The dispute is not going to be resolved by giving the scrap of land now considered Palestine its own statehood, even though that would be a fair concession. There remains this sur- rounding wedge of land now known as Israel from which ancestors of Palestinians were driven and which continues to be a thorn in their sides.
          The U.S. position of defending Israel at all costs is a holdover from the Cold War when the Soviet Union sided with the Arabs and the United States with Israel—our disastrously failed enemy-of-our-enemy- is-our-friend policy.
           This isn’t to say we should abandon Israel; it is to say we need a new way of thinking about the situation and to move away from the same policy that has failed for the past 60 years.
           Who knows what foreign affairs geniuses might come up with once challenged. Perhaps the answer is a well-patrolled demilitarized zone similar to the one that has been successful for about the same length of time in keeping the two Koreas apart. Perhaps it is a corridor to Jerusalem cut across Israel from Gaza similar to the one from West Germany through East Germany to Berlin that lasted almost as long.
          New thinking is the challenge facing the Obama administration, which in turn must convince the rest of the United Nations to think outside the box.
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Bailout by Trickle-Up Gift Card
          The effort to correct the financial crisis in the United States has been largely ineffective, and for good reason. The people in charge, mostly at the top of the economic arm of the Bush administration, but aided and abetted by similarly minded people in Congress, continue to focus on the top of the pyramid instead of the bottom.
          We continue to beat the drum here in favor of some “trickle-up” economic thinking instead of “trickle-down.” So here is a proposal for consideration that is outside the box of what everyone has been hearing from those in charge.
          This proposed solution, as with much of outside-the-box thinking, probably has some holes in it others will be quick to point out, but at least consider it as a possible point of departure for figuring out a solution.
          This proposal was inspired by one of a series of off-the-wall sug- gestions from largely uninformed and somewhat naïve people (and this proposal may give us membership in that group) in response to propos- als from the top.
          Most are based on faulty math and false statistics, so let us be- gin with some true figures. The $700 billion bailout package the federal government currently is sitting on is equivalent to nearly $7,000 for each of the 111.2 million U.S. households. There are 138 million taxpayers, but millions who don’t earn enough to pay taxes.

   Throwing that much money at every U.S. family without strings attached would only encourage more of the same reckless spend- ing without solving the financial or any other problems. But the idea does suggest a trickle-up solution that inspires us to give some ser- ious thought to the basic idea.
          We see a possibility of solving not only the financial crisis, but many other social crises in America with that $700 billion. Unfortunately the people in charge of those funds don’t see the little people way down there at the bottom of the pile have looked only at the top of the financial pyramid because of trickle-down groupthink. Even our suggestion begins with the classic Republican economic model of tax credits to be filtered back into the economy through private enterprise.
          The stimulus checks so far have been ineffective in overcoming the financial collapse, in part because they are too little at a maximum of $600 per taxpayer and totally unstructured. Even if those checks had stimulated anything, they would have had only a narrow impact.
          The incoming Obama administration faces many more problems than the financial crisis, although it currently takes first place in concern. The major issues include the climate crisis, the associated issue of U.S. dependency on both foreign and domestic oil, the individual-based credit crisis, the savings crisis, foreclosure crisis and on and on.
     So what if the government, instead of worrying about big business and those at the top of the fi- nancial pyramid, it focuses instead on a “trickle- up” plan, beginning at the bottom of that pyramid.
     That brings us to the proposal. Shoot holes in it as you will, but at least consider it as a takeoff point for considering a solution to the crises at hand. We can already see some problems with foreign trade agreements, political problems and other likely attacks on the proposal, but let us consider it as a new way of looking at the situation.
          Instead of bailing out anyone, give not a three-figure stimulus check to each American taxpayer, give each of the 111 million house- holds (rather than each of the 138 million taxpayers, since the very bot- tom does not make enough to pay taxes) a gift card similar to those of- fered by stores and good only in that store, valued at $5,000 to $20,000.
     The rest of the proposal relies on some social engineering at- tached to the funds. Since the ails of the domestic auto industry are front and center now, we will begin with that. But any card would be good only for items the government designates as eligible.
 

See gift card suggestions in left column

     Under the plan, the taxpayer would receive a huge amount of the equivalent of cash (huge having much more meaning at the bottom of the scale than at the top) they could not spend frivolously (except in the many instances of buying an unnecessary car), and that in turn would stimulate the neediest segments of the economy as well as benefit the societal problems of the environment, alternative fuels, credit, savings and many others.

     As we said above, there may be many problems with the proposal, but the think- ing in Washington has been nowhere near considering a new way of dealing with the financial crisis while at the same time steering the American public in the direc- tion they as well as the U.S. automakers should have been moving before the econ- omic bubble burst.
 
 
 
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Jobs and Infrastructure
           We may be accused of belaboring the subject, but our two main mantras on this site bear constant repeating—“those who don’t remem- ber the past are condemned to repeat it,” and the theory of “trickle-up” economics should be applied to government as a whole. 
     President-Elect Barack Obama has given the first solid indication he may attempt to take this country down the path we believe to be the key to remaking America. He is beginning with a “killing two birds with one stone” solution to two of the country’s major domestic problems.
          A trickle-up view of economics sees the people at the bottom of the income scale as the starting point, lifting them up to enable them to contribute more to society and become the buyers who keep small and then ever-larger businesses in business.
          For too long, our economy has relied on the trickle-down theory of helping businesses expand in the belief they will then hire more workers and help the entire economy: the trickle-down theory. The main differ- ence between the two major parties is the Republicans believe to serve that theory, all federal funds should be channeled through businesses, e.g., that health care should not be direct from the government to the citizen, but should be provided with tax credits to be spent buying health care from a provider, a business.
          The trickle-up theory says that if the money is given directly to a universal health-care system, more funds would be available because they would not be siphoned off by a corporate, for-profit bureaucracy.
          HMO stands for “health maintenance organization,” an entity that was supposed to lower health costs, by working to keep their members healthy before they can contract a more-costly disease or other ailment. The meaning of HMO has been lost almost since they day they were created.
          The current economic crisis resulted from the collapse of a house of cards built on the failed “trickle-down” theory taken to its lunatic zen- ith, creating a situation where the gap between the rich and poor in this country is now the largest it has ever been. Keeping the middle- and low-income in their status has meant fewer buyers for the goods in American commerce. The crisis adds to that by taking away discretionary income from the middle-class and keeping the low-income in their place, both income classes increasing without a job.
          The lame-duck Republican administration, as with most admini- strations, relied on lagging statistics to decide whether to respond to inflation and recession that was felt first at the low-income level and left to trickle up to engulf the middle-class while the statisticians waiting for months on the numbers that would prove what the lower-income classes already saw. It should not have been a surprise that any increase in the cost of fuel and food is going to affect first those without discretionary income.
          So it was not surprising that when the outgoing administration saw a credit crisis building towards collapse, it attempted to solve the problem at the top, believing the solution would trickle down to the bottom.

           Ever since the 1970s, even before the first oil crisis led to an economic crisis almost as big as the current one, experts have been warning about our collapsing infra- structure, e.g., roads, pipes, wires, dams, bridges, tunnels, much of which needed to replaced decades ago. The infrastructure is a looming crisis almost as big as the financial one.
    So now, with an administration set to take charge with intelligence behind it instead of ideology, Obama has chosen to help out bottom half of American society by pumping money into finally dealing with the infrastructure, a huge task not seen since the Great Depression and one that would provide jobs for all the unemployed and the soon-to-be Under the trickle-up theory, the top half of the economy will benefit from having more people with money they have to spend, and in some cases some they do not have to spend.
          There are many other things that need to be done to get the na- tion back on track, but providing jobs while halting the deterioration of the infrastructure is an excellent start for the incoming Obama adminis- tration.  
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Chance to Remake America
          Believe it or not, there are several good signs emerging from the financial meltdown, enabling the U.S. government to think “outside the box,” just as we did earlier on this page in our suggestion to Warren Buffett.
          First, the methods used to resolve the problem should help take some of the onus off the words “socialism,” “nationalization” and even “regulation,” terms that engender negative Pavlovian responses by the uninformed. That will allow for some creative solutions to many of the problems that have plagued the country for decades.
          Second, it should demonstrate anew the government needs to consider solving problems from the bottom up instead of the past and current trend, demonstrated at the beginning of the financial meltdown, solving problems from the top down. We labeled our way “trickle-up economics.”
          Third, we have a chance for a major makeover of U.S. policies across the board as the nation attempts to climb back to the top of the community of nations and tries to avoid losing its economic leadership status to the European Union, as now seems likely.

1.      Look for a major push by the next Congress and the next presi- dent, particularly if it is Barack Obama, to make major efforts to pass new regulations and restore old ones in the financial area.
          But the government is not likely to stop there. There have been widespread complaints about the lack of regulation in many other sec- tors of society, so look for new regulations in most areas and a return to enforcing regulations already in place. Along with this push will come a strengthening of several government institutions, beginning with the Food and Drug Administration.
          We suggested in an earlier piece the government build its own oil refinery to give it more muscle in influencing the price and supply of oil and gas that is a vital piece of the nation’s economy. Similar invest- ments in other industries could give the government greater influence in them.
          By investing in banks and buying out major financial institutions, the government has overcome the previous onus labeled as “socialism” and taken a socialistic approach to resolving the financial crisis. There is nothing wrong with socialism as long as it never forgets its purpose is to serve the common weal. Past efforts lost that core purpose.
          Some of the government’s actions in the bailout were described as “nationalization.” If an industry operates against the interests of the common weal, such as the telephone industry has a history of doing and the oil industry often does, nationalization of that industry should not be off the table.
          Obviously, all these government interventions must be done with great care and never taking the eye off the prize: serving the common weal. But as the Bush administration economics leaders have demon-strated, the United States remains very reluctant to sign on to any of those three "evils."
          But the idea that any of the three evils would be used as a tool by a U.S. Republican administration, let alone even a Democrat-led one, to solve an economic mess would have been unthinkable just weeks ago, let alone years ago.

2.      As we also have noted in yet another item on this Web site, the American public from the middle-class on down was aware by the be- ginning of this past summer that inflation was rising at a time when the nation also was entering a recession.
         The government and Wall Street were saying in unison at the time there was no recession and the rate of inflation was reasonable. But oil prices already had been rising at an alarming rate for months and even the price of food was rising. No other commodities have as much of an impact on those with little or no disposable income as do gas and food.
          Why did the government and Wall Street not see this happening? First, the government has to rely on objective data, not anecdotal indica-tions, to show an economic slide qualifies as a “recession,” which relies on a downturn taking place over several months. Inflation is measures much faster, but it still takes weeks to reach the proper government lev- els. Meanwhile, as the government studies and Wall Street awaits the word on high, those without disposable income are getting pinched at the pump and checkout aisle while their employer cuts back on health care and pensions, and fewer jobs are listed in the help-wanted ads.
          The government needs to find some non-anecdotal way to capture what is happening at the level of the common weal at the time it is hap- pening, not months later.
          With that trickle-up process, it could take action that would pre- vent the twin evils of inflation and recession, which become stagflation if they occur together. Currently, the government can only step in to cor- rect the evils after they already have hurt the middle-class and below. That hurt eventually trickles up the line as their reduced buying affects business upon business stacked above them in the economic chain, eventually reaching Wall Street.

3.      Even before nations in the EU moved to pour government funds into its businesses and financial institutions, other nations around the world were looking to move their investments from America to Europe as the United States led the world into the crisis.
          When we speak of these national investments, we’re talking about many billions of dollars per country into a smaller economy, a situation likely to make the EU the international financial center as the United States struggles to get back on its feet. Or at least the status of equality with the United States.
          America already had lost its leadership and credibility in terms of international security with the lunatic involvement in Iraq. Losing its leadership as the center of capitalism and eventually democracy would likely become a permanent situation in the lifetime of anyone alive on Earth today.
          What better time to remake the United States into a true demo- cracy, back to a system that works with the interests of the common weal at its core. We have moved away from that over the decades that followed World War II into today’s division between the haves and have- nots that is as wide as what existed between the nobility and the serfs of the old British Empire.
          A new age is dawning in the United States. What are we going to do about it?
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Send in a Gunslinger

Note: The Bush administration finally has decided that throwing $700 billion at the top of the financial meltdown is not working, so they are turning to our solution suggest- ed below and offering money to banks and funding efforts to renegotiate loans of homeowners facing foreclosure.  A trickle-up economics solution.

          The real government people doing the work of trying to resolve the financial meltdown have thrown up their hands, realizing there is no regu- latory or legal system in place to resolve it. Instead they are thinking outside the box.

          One proposal that has been raised coincides with one we had been tinkering with for this page—buying up the subprime mortgages on houses most in danger of foreclosure. Although we are believers in compassionate government, we have a take that is different from that of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
          He says it would take “hundreds of billions” of dollars for the gov- ernment to do buy the bad mortgages, and would leave an impression it was bailing out the greedy money-lenders who enticed naïve borrowers into taking out such mortgages.
          Although the United States already is deeply in debt—nearly half a trillion dollars—adding to the debt with a mortgage bailout could be defrayed in part by a quicker-than-planned exit from Iraq.

          Or call in Warren Buffett, and maybe his new- found partner in charitable largess, Bill Gates. This is the idea we had been working on.
          Even these two guys do not have cash to throw around that is anything like the federal govern- ment can come up with, but they could make a huge dent in at least this part of the crisis.
          Create a foundation with people—how about some of those “com- munity organizers” Republicans now appear to disdain—scattered all over the country with no-strings authority to buy up bad mortgages, beginning in depressed neighborhoods at homes in greatest danger of foreclosure. Offer the mortgage holders a bit above their foreclosure costs and have the foundation hold the paper.
          The foundation broker then would offer the person with the mort- gage a monthly payment equal to that charged before the amount crossed beyond the line of affordability.
          In most cases, those mortgages would be paid off within the life- time of the mortgage. Saving houses in a neighborhood from foreclosure also saves the neighborhood, as towns and cities all over America are discovering. Eventually, the value of the house in danger is likely to equal at least the amount being mortgaged.
          The foundation, as with the government, is not in the mortgage business to make money, but if it does make money, all the better. That gives the paper-holder more funds to put back into the program, raising the bar to a higher income level.
          Any such action by a foundation or the government has the added effect of creating competition with the money-lending community. Tighter regulations would still be necessary, but competition from an entity outside of the private sector could go a long way to make busines- ses a bit smarter, less reckless and less greedy.
          We will never hope for compassion above the level of the neigh- borhood grocer, if those exist any more.
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Make Bribery, Not War

          We need a new way to handle world conflicts.
          As the sole super power, until Vladimir Putin gets Russia built back up to the old Soviet strength, we have been rattling sabers and threatening to use our power to bomb smaller nations back to the Stone Age and otherwise proving ourselves to be the world's bully.
          We should have learned our lesson in Korea, much less in Vietnam. Instead, we bungled into Iraq, where instead of calling a guerrilla war what it is, we call it an “insurgency.” By either name, the world knows it is a war we are doomed to lose.
          Now that we have rediscovered Afghanistan and the unfinished legitimate war we began there, we face another front of guerrilla warfare as our military begs for 10,000 more boots on the ground there.
          Unless we find a new way of addressing these problems we are going to continue to waste American lives and billions of dollars attempt- ing to win a type of war we are destined to lose.
          We never engaged the Soviet Union in guerrilla warfare and were able to defeat that decades-long adversary with money. Money is where we are vastly superior to any other country on Earth. We had enough to buy victory over the Soviet Union, we have enough to buy our wishes around the world.

          Instead of spending a trillion dollars in Iraq/Afghanistan in a fruitless attempt for a conventional military victory, what if we spent a fraction of that bribing our way to victory?
          Let's start with bribing Afghanistan, i.e., afghanis for Afghanis.
          We cannot defeat the Taliban, Al-Queda or any other guerrilla force with U.S. boots on the ground. The problems in Afghanistan are easily identifiable. So why don’t we take what we know about them and bribe our way to victory.

          Afghanis depend for a lot of their gross domestic product on the poppy plant. The Afghan guerrillas , as well as the various warlords de- pend on the poppy for their financial strength. The welfare of the Af- ghanis logically lies with the guerril- las and not with the United States.
          What if we offered each of the 7.5 million households in Af- ghanistan the equivalent of $250, or one year’s average income. That would amount to less than the $2.3 billion we spend in one month now in Afghanistan short 10,000 troops on a fruitless venture.
          Naturally, we would attach strings. To receive the money, Afghan farmers would have to quit growing poppies and grow crops for human or livestock consumption, alternative energy, anything but addictive pur- poses. Their earnings would be on top of the year’s worth of income we already gave them. Additional support in subsequent years would be provided as needed.
          Non-farming Afghans would have other requirements, but coupled with incentives to earn additional income beyond the year’s stipend we gave them.
          We would still need a military presence to maintain order and try to fend off the cheaters. But our military presence could include a new type of warrior, one who is more sociologist than fighter and could in- clude warriors trained at least in a semblance of other professions.
          With a new-found wealth, the populace would have a new-found strength to make new-found demands on its government. Eventually, having tasted capitalism, it is likely to embrace that system of govern- ment. It may not choose to be democratic, but as with other countries embracing capitalism, democracy likely will come with time. Until then, we would at least have a new trading partner.
          We could use the same bribery to get our way in much of the rest of the undeveloped world, if that is what we are going to continue insisting on, with less loss of life and less outlay of dollars.
          The evils of the world thrive on poverty. They are hard put to exist where there is little of it. 

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Problems?
          Sure. We could list hundreds; others would list 10 times more, from those fearing copiers of "The Mouse That Roared" to people citing real problems. That’s the way it is with thinking outside the box.
          For example, in Afghanistan, actually administering that bribery system (first, we would have to use a better-sounding euphemism) would cost far more than the $2 billion initial bribe. But we are now spending $2.3 billion a month there before we even begin to build up our troop strength.
          For example, can we guarantee making bribery, not war would work? Of course not. But we can guarantee that waging war against a guerrilla force the same old way will not work and will be far more costly in both the short and long runs.

          But first, we think.

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A Solution to Our Fuel Crisis
Build Refinery to Compete?
Nationalize Oil Industry?

          The economic mess in the United States, a mess reverberating throughout the world, should bring a renewed focus on the basic element of the mess--fuel prices on the verge of having quadrupled since 2000.
          The federal government may not yet have the figures to declare a recession or to measure a huge rise in inflation, but the public from the middle-class on down know both already are here. The housing crisis was only fuel to a fire made inevitable by a steady and unconscionable increase in fuel prices.
          It used to be the oil industry made convoluted, confusing excuses for price increases, throwing around various figures and arcane reasons few people could ever unravel. Notice you do not hear any of that today. They say almost nothing, and when they do say anything, they simply shift the blame to speculators in the stock market.
          This is the second time around for a modern-day U.S. oil crisis. Between the other one and now, the federal government failed its citi- zens. We are suggesting a correction of that failure and a new way of thinking this time around. It may not work, it may not be feasible, but it is worth a look. Just the fact it is an option on the table could have an impact on the current mess.
          The U.S. government should build its own oil refinery, preferably away from the current Gulf Coast area where most domestic oil work is concentrated.
          This mess is not new.
          Back in the early 1970s we had the previous fuel crisis. Before the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries decided to impose a year-long embargo on exports of oil to the United States, causing a shortage of gasoline and a concomittant jump in prices, a gallon of gas had cost not much more than a quarter in the United States for decades, a period when the word "inflation" was never uttered.
          The crisis began when OPEC, largely for political reasons, em- bargoed U.S.-bound oil. Cars were lined up at service stations (they ac- tually provided service up to that time), often for several blocks, to get access to fuel pumps that could run out of gas at any moment. The cars were gas guzzlers by today's standards, about equal in mileage to most of today's trucks and SUVs.
          Supply and demand being what it is, the price of gas quadrupled to well over $1 a gallon (an increase that would equal more than $15 a gallon at current prices), and inflation followed close in its wake, leading to interest rates that had been steady for decades at 2 percent or 3 per- cent, to jump to 20% and more later in the 70s.
          Over the ensuing years, the government responded with laws to encourage alternative energy explorations, coupled with all sorts of sub- sidies for the oil industry itself to encourage domestic drilling, including greater freedom to explore for oil in formerly off-limit areas. The govern- ment also made inflation a major area of concern and enacted stronger fuel-efficiency laws. The inflation rate fell back to more sensible levels, although never to its pre-OPEC level except in odd instances.
          After the change of administrations (Carter to Reagan), the incen- tives to the oil industry remained, the incentives to explore alternative fuels were dropped. The number of refineries on line had crept up to more than 300 until 1980, when the administration changed. Suddenly, the number of refineries on line began a long plunge to our 149 today.

          Not so curiously, the price of gas never fell, almost defying the laws of supply and demand. In fact, prices continued on a steady rise, notwithstanding the waverings of politics, supply and demand and other factors. All the increases were accompanied by those aforementioned convoluted excuses.
          Part of the government response during the oil crisis included creating, in 1975, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserves for the sake of future security, comprised of a storage of oil now totalling about 727 mil- lion barrels of crude and all located in four salt domes below ground, in a single part of the United States, on the coast from Texas into Louisiana. Even when released, to be offered to the oil industry on the commercial market at a set price, it still must be refined by the oil industry.
          This area includes or is close to the greatest concentration of U.S. oil refineries where basic crude oil has to be processed to make it usable, refineries jammed into a highly vulnerable area of the country. There are now 149 refineries in the United States, more than a third of them in hurricane-vulnerable Texas and Louisiana, producing fewer than 18 millions of barrels of usable oil a day. That is the same level of oil re- fining that existed before the last one new one was completed in 1976, at a time when we had more than 300 refineries.
          Although shutting down those refineries has not changed produc- tion levels, overall refinery production level has not been increased in nearly three decades as our usage, and even needs, have skyrocketed. Of course, with half the number of refineries, more than a third in two hurricane states, we are twice as exposed to weather and transport dis- ruptions.
          The U.S. petroleum industry is one of the top profit-making indus- tries in the United States. Individual companies claim they are just pass- ing along their added costs, but never mention they also are including the U.S. norm of about a 100 percent markup. Before the 1970s crisis, the normal business markup was about 40 percent.
          If the U.S. government had its own refinery, it could refine its own strategic reserves, already-refined, with a built-in capability of diverting some of that refined oil immediately to the public market in competition with the private oil industry whenever such a move would serve the public iinterest.
          Such a move bypassing much of the oil industry with which it would then be in partial competition, also would give the government greater power to support alternative fuels and play that power off against the price of oil to make the industry somewhat honest. The government already has the ability to do some of that by releasing supplies from its oil reserve. A refinery would greatly increase that impact, by being able to tweak the price to a level that would discourage increased use, but low enough to help balance inflation and other economic concerns.
          The crude oil it refines could come from two sources, foreign and domestic. With a world crying for foreign oil--check out China and Japan --the U.S. government as a buyer would give it added political leverage, something it badly needs after its recent foreign policy gaffes.
           Domestically, it could force the oil companies to donate crude in lieu of greater taxes, including windfall profits taxes, something that al- ready should have been restored. The cost of all this could be paid for, in part, by ending the subsidies to big oil, in a huge part by ending the massive cost of the fool's errand in Iraq.
          There would be an ancillary benefit. Remember the oil industry ruse of switching refineries over twice a year between heating oil and gasoline? A government-run refinery could step in an ease the impact of that semi-annual chicanery.
          Or, the federal government could simply nationalize the oil indus- try and operate it in the public's interest on grounds no industry should be allowed to hold the nation in a stranglehold.
          Either solution is fraught with all sorts of problems, chief among them lack of a political will. But the federal government is filled with gen- iuses--yes, among those much-maligned civil servants--who could work on the issue (and probably already have) if asked.