The gougers are the most beastly, the coarsest, the most savage exploiters… These bloodsuckers have waxed rich during the hurricane on the people’s want, they have amassed thousands and hundreds of thousands… These spiders have grown fat at the expense of disaster victims, impoverished by the hurricane… Merciless war against these gougers!

No, this isn’t from Bush’s “zero tolerance” on “gouging” speech. The words are too big.

It’s actually V.I. Lenin, with the following substitutions: “gouger” instead of “kulak,” “hurricane” instead of “war,” “disaster victims” instead of “peasants,” and “families” instead of “workers.”

Steve Landsburg once called George Bush I “the most economically illiterate of modern presidents.” I’m very tempted to quip “Like father, like son,” though in truth I suspect that anyone who could get elected would have given a similar speech.

Note to politicians of the world: For the last time, if you want supplies to flow to disaster areas, let prices rise !