Uncle!

All righty. The price of gasoline is now, officially, crazy-high. I have so decreed.

Perhaps you recall from May that I wrote about gasoline prices then, and said that they weren't at record levels (in the inflation-adjusted sense) and that we weren't in any kind of crisis. At the time I wrote, the price was $2.236 / gal. What a windfall such a price would seem today! With the price spiking up from the refinery shutdowns (a la Katrina), I am seeing non-reformulated area stations demanding $2.99 / gal. In Milwaukee, still mandated to use an extra-special reformulation, it's even worse with prices at least another 30 cents higher.

So I'm willing to declare some sort of crisis state now, albeit a low-grade one (excepting Louisiana and Mississippi, who have a real crisis going on). I think that the smartest mitigation measure that could be taken now is for the president to sign off on a waiver so that the EPA "non-attainment areas" can use whatever fuel formulations are at hand. This would get rid of the entirely artificial local price spikes that are due to sudden glitches in the supply and delivery of specialty gasolines. It would also simplify logistics, which is a good thing to do in a time of disruption.

I would also get behind a limited suspension of the Wisconsin state taxes, say for a three week period. This would further mitigate local economic disruption caused by the national price spike. Note that this only works if other states don't try the same thing en masse. The benefits here only accrue to the bold.

Of course the chance of these things happening don't seem great. For one thing, I don't expect George Dubya to recognize that there's actually a beneficial "small government" thing he can do (EPA waiver) when there's so many higher-profile, "big government" things (FEMA, federal troops, etc.) in play at the same time. He may surprise me though. There was a representative for the American Petroleum Institute on the news with Jim Lehrer Wednesday who seemed to imply that Bush had already won a waiver through September 15, but I can't confirm this. As for any form of state tax reduction, Wisconsin's governor has made it abundantly clear that whether things are affordable to the government takes top priority. If things become markedly less affordable for the taxpayer, they just have to muddle through somehow. This is true of most government, most of the time. If you doubt it, please listen carefully when elected officials talk about (a) tax cuts and (b) government programs. Only (b) actually "costs" the government money, but in spite of this (a) is routinely labeled as a cost as well.

Again, I don't mean to imply in any way that my tribulations with my wallet compare in magnitude to the destruction and displacement on the Gulf coast. They don't. It's just that you can read your fill about that elsewhere. I'm just writin' here.

But on the topic of destruction, let me bring up a couple observations. The Wall Street Journal noted Wednesday that the New Orleans levee system was supposedly designed to withstand a direct hit from a category three hurricane. What New Orleans got Monday was a flyby to the east from a category four, and the levee system broke down anyway.

Besides noting that the system didn't live up to its advertised strength, I have to ask: When the very existence of the entire city is at stake, does prudence demand setting the bar a little higher than category three? I ask this sincerely from a risk-reward standpoint, understanding that I might be off-base here. Maybe a category four or five hasn't passed that close to New Orleans in 200 years, and will not again for another 200. If that's the case, I'd concede the folly of spending five billion dollars beefing up a hundred miles of levees. Otherwise, I'm left wondering how it is the people down there have been content with their annual game of russian roulette. Bang, you lose fifty billion dollars.