Last week, Susan Orr, the administration-appointed Assistant Deputy Secretary of Population Affairs, resigned from her post. Orr's job was to oversee family planning services and programs for low-income citizens, and, ironically (but not surprisingly), Orr's professional history indicates that she has long been an opponent of contraceptive access.

In other words, Bush's family planning official was against family planning. Bush's strategy for eliminating programs that go against conservative ideology seems to be to appoint people who don't believe in those programs so that, essentially, nothing gets done. These appointments appease the conservative bigwigs who continue to defend Bush despite his incessant failures.

But the people who lose out? Low-income citizens who rely on these programs to gain access to contraceptives, reproductive education and health services. Teenage girls who, in the absence of comprehensive sex ed, now experience a one in four prevalence of sexual disease. In other words, the people who have been losing out in the past are continuing to lose out, and the folks who have historically been appeased for their power continue to be appeased.

It is essentially undermining the security of these folks to strip them of the resources necessary to protect their bodies and control their futures. In a land where success hinges on the ability to shape your own fate, it is irresponsible to deny our citizens the right to choose their own paths, and to leave peoples' lives up to chance.

Why did Orr resign? It is unknown, but maybe she finally saw her position for what it was: a placeholder to stall progress and pander to the conservative ideology. Or maybe she just wanted to take time off to write a sequel to her article, "Real Women Stay Married."

For the holiday weekend, I grappled with the decision of whether to go to Grand Junction, CO, known as the 'heart of Colorado wine country,' or to let the gloom and doom of the rising gas prices win, which would mean staying home and watching TV. Since wine tasting is, fortunately, a free activity, I decided to let the opportunity to get my drink on for free justify spending the ninety bucks to fill up my tank both ways to get there.

There are times, though, when the math just doesn't add up this conveniently. Like how, despite the waning economy and Americans paying an arm and a leg at the pumps, the big oil companies continue to profit at record highs. Or how a conservative 'band-aid' solution to America's gas woes is to suspend the gas tax for the summer- saving Americans a whopping $30.

To me, that translates to approximately two bottles of wine. Let me tell you, I would be much more willing to hand those bottles over for a plan that proposed a sustainable solution to the many impending problems our country can no longer afford to overlook: our suffering economy, the rising costs of food and gas, our addiction to oil and our environmentally irresponsible practices. Lifting the gas tax for a summer will only encourage Americans to consume more oil and lead us down a path that we can no longer afford to forge – while allowing the big oil companies to rake in more dough.

I guess our conservative leadership would rather let me keep my two bottles of wine to dull the sting of today's harsh reality: cheap gas is never coming back. But during Progressive Future's campaign to take on big oil this summer, we will be going out in communities and talking to real people with real problems, and using these stories to promote comprehensive solutions. Solutions like investing in public transit systems, developing alternative energy resources and providing tax breaks for energy efficient practices.

I know that I would rather sacrifice my two bottles for a better future. For those of you who feel the same, you can donate to Progressive Future's Big Oil campaign, or you can take one of our many actions calling for responsible energy solutions.