Enlightenment Values - Where now for Democracy, does anyone care?  

I take it you are American. Which leader do you think will enable such changes, and why, or are you thinking a little further into the future than the forthcoming elections?

I don't really know if either one of them have it in them to do it, but if I have to pick on it would be Obama. McCain flip flops too much for me, first he wants this then he changes his mind. He reminds me of a woman and yes I am a woman. I think he is to old to create any change. I also believe that to many Americans are focused on our pee poor economy to care about anything else. I think they would vote my dog in if he said he would lower oil prices and strenghten the dollar.

I think you have similar problems to us in England. People will take a short term view based on petrol and food prices and the real issues will be ignored. But you can't blame them, if your earnings no longer cover your expenses, that's a real crisis. But it's not politics.

You don't believe that politics and economy go together?

Absolutely, but when the underlying causes of rising food and oil prices are global, and outside the influence of whatever party is in power, I think these issues obscure any real attempt at discerning any difference between our chosen elites. On these 2 issues at least, they would be equally incompetent. It will probably come down to the degree to which each is prepared to subsidize, tax, or modify tarifs. Not really a solution.

Well our government plays a big part in oil prices, if you were not aware the US currently have about 200 billion barrels of oil in reserve. In the 90's Clinton released some of the reserve to lower oil prices I don't honestly know if it did any good then, but this Bush refuses to release any at all to see if it will. Even a few years ago, my step dad was an over the road trucker and there were states that didn't have diesel fuel. The US government even felt fit to give oil companies some 18 billion dollars in tax cuts for "exploration".

Secondly with food prices the government here also helps with that, they subsidize farmers who make less than 2.6 million yearly income. This causes higher prices for us, and a lot of our farming products are shipped out to over seas.

So all in all the government does play a huge part in the US when it comes to oil and fuel prices. These are just a few examples of how they do.

That's the Strategic Reserve, I believe, which the government establishes in order to have a 2 or 3 month military stock in case of a sudden cut off in supply. If a government releases this, it is, like I said, a huge subsidy and would do untold economic damage. It would make more sense to directly subsidize consumer spending.
US agriculture,like you say, makes a small profit from massive subsidies,in other words it would make a big loss with no subsidies, so the US would essentially export the means of production and lose national auto-sufficiency. That said, the changing situation makes it likely that subsidies will at some point be terminated in the absence of the oversupply situation of the previous 20 years.
Neither of these policies would solve the problem, which is essentially increased world demand and unprecedented speculation.
Some form of relief will undoubtedly be needed for consumers, but my point was that none of this addresses the political issues that I mentioned in the heading to this discussion.
Our discussion is more of a "tactical" rather than "strategic" nature, don't you think?