Asking the wrong questions

Why is the wrong question being asked? [Link]

Over at National Review's "The Corner," there's an interesting observation by professor Victor Davis Hanson: the United Nations is looking into the rising prices of food around the world. (Hat tip: He Who Needs No Linkage.)

Dr. Hanson wonders why the United Nations is so interested in food prices, but won't even consider looking at one of the underlying causes: the rising price of oil.

The easy answer is this: by focusing on the price of food, the UN can manage to blame those nations that produce the most food. That would be the West (the United States, mainly) for being greedy, stingy, and mean.

That's certainly true, but there's more to it than that.

The United Nations is increasingly dominated by a bloc of oil-producing nations and Muslim nations. Toss in the overlap between those two groups, and you have quite a powerful coalition.

Well, right now that bloc is sitting pretty, economically. They've gotten the price of oil up to stratospheric levels, and that means more and more money rolling in to their coffers.

Meantime, in the United States, we're not looking at the price of food. We're the ones looking into the price of oil.

Congress, in its infinite wisdom, didn't ask those setting the price of oil. Instead of finding out why oil costs so damned much, they called in the big oil companies and asked them "why are you paying so much for oil, and passing along those costs to your customers?"

I wondered why Congress didn't ask about costs of food, but then I remembered: part of the reason is that Congress has worked hard towards biofuels. In other words, while food prices have been shooting up, they've been foursquare behind competing with those who want to eat food encouraging people to burn food.

So, why doesn't Congress hold hearings on the price of food? Probably because they're afraid someone would find the testicular fortitude to stand up and say "because you people are idiots!"