Take Me To Post Comment Form Hi Y'all,

I haven't posted a blog in a while because I took a brief trip to Washington to visit an old friend who hangs out at the Food and Drug Administration.He's the original fly in the ointment--- at least that's what I call him.You're probably thinking a little ol' fly flew to Washington? Trust me it's not so bad.In fact, I feel sorry for you humans.When you fly, you have to stand in long lines while somebody frisks grandma.You have to take off your belt.You have to take off your shoes.The service is lousy. The food is lousy--- if they feed you at all.The chances are pretty good that you'll miss your flight.The airlines will do unspeakable things to your luggage.All in all,being a fly is not so bad.We don't need belts or shoes and wings come as standard equipment.But I digress.

The trip to Washington was a blast.Some of those bureaucrats eat a lot of doughnuts--- guess who got the leftovers.Anyway I did some bonding with my friend ,but I also got to do some exploring on my own.One discussion I overheard at the Department of Energy was very interesting ,and I like to share it with you.It's from memory ---have you ever seen a fly with a notebook? Anywho, I think my version is pretty accurate. A number of high level officials were discussing what to do about the price of gas.To the best of my recollection this is what they said:

Bigshot 1: I really ,really think we need to revise the gasohol program. It just doesn't seem to be working that well. Gas prices are going up and up ,and we're churning out shine like noboby's business.

Bigshot 2: Shine?

Bigshot 1: Just a little DOE humor.

Dimbulb Expert: Well, you know grain prices are going up and the price of food is going up with it.

Fatcat Expert: Yeah.You know all those middle class whiners live on corndogs,grits and pizza.You'll see them driving their camper trucks to Walmart. They just load 'em up and most of the stuff that doesn't come from China is made out of corn.

Fatcat Expert 2: Imagine that. You can't even get a latte there ,and forget about pate.

Economic Whizbang: The corn thing is just no good. We're using more energy to make gasohol than we could ever expect to get from gasohol. We're subsidizing the gasohol producers rather heavily because the whole thing doesn't make economic sense.

Faceless Bureaucrat: So?

Economic Whizbang: So instead of burning up all of that cash to burn up the corn, why don't we just burn the cash?

Faceless Bureaucrat: That be a little expensive, wouldn't it?

Economic Whizbang: What we're doing is already expensive and makes no economic sense.A direct approach makes more sense. My experts tell me that a pound of money will generate more btu's than an equivalent measure of gasohol.You know that high rag content paper we've been using is pretty good.

Fatcat 1: let me get this right--- you're saying that it makes more sense to burn a pound of money than to burn some gas.Do you have any idea how much a pound of dollar bills would be worth?

Economic Whizbang: Not much.And money is only worth what we say it's worth. All we have to do is to print some money with negative numbers.It's economically sound. By burning money printed with negative numbers printed on it, we're actually erasing the national debt.At some point we may actually have to stop the program or cut taxes some more.Heck, we could even be giving the voters some money.

Fatcat 2: The money would have to look different wouldn't it?

Economic Whizbang: Yeah, I'm thinking we put a picture of George driving a tractor on each energy bill. He could be holding up an ear of corn in one hand--- good way to earn some political capital.Here I've got some charts.You know that Ross Perot? He was really on to something with the charts.

At this point an exceptionally fine cruller was calling me ,so I had to leave. But you get the idea.

The Muscanator