LAST FRIDAY HE WAS SOBER

One could publish a weekly magazine doing nothing but refuting Nader's fables. But Ralph is not going to run our newsletter, not even by reactive stimulation. On the other hand, some of his cretinisms simply cannot be ignored. In his nationwide syndicated column last month, he called for price controls because price incentives for increased supply allegedly don't work. In spite of the "astronomical" profits of the oil companies, said the guru, domestic oil production is declining.

The last statement, in a sense, is true. "New" oil sells for whatever the market will pay; "old" oil is controlled at$5.25/bbl. The supply of "new" oil has been linearly increasing with price by all the textbook rules. Equally precisely, the supply of pricecontrolled oil has been drying up. But because 'new' oil is the smaller part of the total production (stripper wells and oil pumped in excess), the total production is declining.

And that is how Ralph works. When the facts demolish his theory, he just suppresses them.

There is no lie more vicious than the truth, but not the whole truth.