Oh Joy. $8/Gal Gasoline is Here

Just in time for the election, Drudge has this up at his place.


UPDATE: Ooops. Make that $9 per gallon.

Obama Causes Our Energy Prices to Skyrocket

The next time you pull up at a gas pump and see the price has risen again (awarding you with this weeks prize: a cut in your paycheck!), you can thank President Obama. His cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline will be part of the cause.

In an interview with former U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) in D.C. yesterday, Harper explained that Canada will now seek to expand its export market to Asia and will also cease to supply oil to the United States at a discounted rate.

 (Emphasis mine)

And here I was, thinking that he'd never get elected after this little soundbite made the rounds to the general populace:

Silly me.

Even though he was talking about electricity rates, he was basing his plan on the now-disproven Hoax of Man-Made Global Warming.

It's still his goal, the truth be damned. Is it November yet?

MSM Media Hypocrisy 101 - High Gas Prices Then and Now

I've been waiting for this montage of MSM coverage of high gas prices under W versus O...

Can you notice just the slightest bit of difference in the coverage from the Progressive Pravda?

I knew that you could.

(Shamelessly stolen from Ace of Spades HQ, thanks.)

Gasoline hits $4 per Gallon Again, How High Will It Go?

Gasoline prices just reached $4 per gallon in California. (h/t Drudge Report)
If you think that our president is at all concerned about the negative effect that high energy prices have on the country and the economy, you'd be wrong. (h/t IBD)

It's funny, I don't recall telling anyone in Washington that I wanted expensive gas...

Obama Administration Seeks to Tax and Track Drivers with GPS Box

While the White House continues to change its story on the successful operation that took out OBL, this administration’s efforts to raise taxes and infringe upon your privacy proceed apace.
You’re gonna love this.

Under this plan, a study group would be established that would evaluate the feasibility of taxing drivers using the number of miles driven. And you’ll never guess how they plan to do it. Go on, guess. I’ll wait.

If you guessed they want to put a GPS device on your vehicle to track where you’ve been and when, then, Don Pardo, tell them what they’ve won!

Never mind that we’re already taxed for each mile we drive. That’s done through the taxes that the federal government and state and local municipalities impose on every gallon of gas we buy. Now, they want to install a GPS device in order to track the number of miles you drive. And if you think that’s all the information that will be gleaned from that little black box in your car, then, by all means, let them install one on your vehicle.

I’d rather not.

It’s crystal clear to me why the feds want to do this, as it should be to you. This is yet another of the ways the hoax of man-made global warming is being used as a political tool for the government to remove your Constitutional freedom of movement and your God-given right to privacy.

Pardon me, but I don’t remember telling any of my elected representatives that I wanted this done. And I can’t find anything horribly deficient with the current method of taxation. They seem to be able to collect a fair amount of money from us every day. What’s really funny is how this administration points to the eight cents of profit that the big, eeevilll oil companies make on every gallon as if that number is somehow outrageously high, but neglect to tell you how much money they make from that sale: an average of forty-one cents per gallon. And that’s without any of the overhead that the big, eeevilll oil companies incur in bringing that product to you.

So, pardon me once again. I fail to grasp why this is even being considered.

I can do some educated guessing, though. I can recall a time when we had enough money for what’s now called “infrastructure maintenance.” Of course, that was before the era of big public sector unions and their leech-like effect upon taxpayers. Where once we didn’t have the financial burden of paying outrageous union benefits with our tax monies, increasingly we’re seeing the decidedly negative impact of these union contracts as our roads and bridges fall into disrepair because of the sky-high benefits that the unions have extracted from the pockets of taxpayers. We used to pay taxes for road repair, but now all that money is going to fund lavish lifestyles for union members.

And I seem to recall all of the Stimulus money that was promised to trickle down to the local level in the form of infrastructure spending to do what used to be done with transportation tax money. Funny, I haven’t seen one new road or bridge being built, or even a road being repaved with any of that $800B dollars I was told about, have you?

I can also guess that someone in a cubicle somewhere in the bowels of the Transportation Department crunched the numbers on the reduced amount of tax revenue the government would realize as a result of encouraging us to purchase more fuel-efficient vehicles and use public transportation and other modes of getting around.

So, why not just raise the gas tax? Why go through the trouble and expense of outfitting every vehicle in the US with a GPS device to track our driving habits? I wonder who would benefit from the contract for such an expensive undertaking. GE maybe? Or another of Obama’s corporate cronies with strong union ties? The public-sector unions who would doubtless people the new departments(s) required for this massive new program and their Democrat supporters?

Regardless of who benefits, this is an idea that should be squashed right now. There is no compelling need for this at all. Our travels are our private business and no one else’s. And we're taxed enough already.

This administration just might find a bit of resistance to this program.

Just a bit.

Your EPA is Causing High Gas Prices

It’s a sad fact of life that many politicians can’t understand the very simple concept of cause and effect. It’s playing out before their eyes, and yet they can’t see it.

But for the rest of us who populate the World Outside the Beltway, the concept is as plain as day. Well, almost. I’ll explain that one later*.

If there is any place to observe cause and effect in action, it’s in the area of economics. Shirley, you’re familiar with the phrase “supply and demand” and how it relates to prices: if demand is great and supply isn’t, then prices are high. Conversely, if demand is low and supply is great, then prices are low.

It should be a standard that’s taught first in any basic economics class. The relationship between supply and demand is well established and is a simple fact of economic life.

Except, of course, to that subspecies of humanity called Homo Regularis, commonly known as the modern politician.

Anymore, when addressing these people (as opposed to my readers, who are the most intelligent and well-informed people anywhere), I feel the need to use small words and type verrrrry slooowly, so they can understand the simple principles that the rest of us take for granted.

Take, for instance, this article from Fox News.com: EPA Rules force Shell to Abandon Oil Drilling Plans.

Now, when you and I read that headline, we think that gas prices will go up even more, mostly because they will. That headline may as well say, “Obama Administration Seeks Higher Gas Prices for Americans” because that’s pretty close to the truth, if not dead-on accurate.

We know that if we aren’t drilling, then the supply of oil will be less, resulting in high prices at the gas pump. It’s not rocket surgery.

So, if we know this simple fact of life, why don’t our politicians also know it? After all, weren’t they also raised and educated right here in the good ol’ US of A? Popular wisdom is popular because it needn’t be taught in a classroom; it comes out in casual conversation as just one of those things that everybody knows.

There’s only one other reason for their seeming ignorance of supply and demand: they are doing this knowing full well what the result will be.

I was willing to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt for a while. I, along with anyone else who had the slightest bit of curiosity about the man who would be our President, knew that he had never run a business nor even ventured much outside of the ivy-ed walls of academia except to organize some communities in that bastion of political verisimilitude, Chicago. So, I was willing to wait for a while he used his political training wheels to tool around the Oval Office.

But after two and a half years of having access to the awe and wonder that is the greatest information-gathering organization of all time in the Federal Government, it’s time to start questioning his intentions.

It appears, through his words and his actions, that he’s doing this on purpose.

Mr. Boy, you might ask, whatever would give you that idea?

Oh, nothing, gentle reader, except this clip that I never get tired of running.



*Explanation time – Here’s a Marist poll that shows that Americans really don’t understand the concept of supply and demand all that well, or at least the Americans whom Marist polls. 34% think that the evil oil companies are to blame for the price of a globally traded commodity. This ignores the simple fact that everyone in the world pays more when the price of oil goes up.

Either they’ve been misinformed or they haven’t been taught about supply and demand. That second one wouldn’t surprise me at all. Actually, the first one wouldn’t surprise me either. Maybe it’s a witch’s brew of both.

Did anyone else notice something about that Fox article, namely who they quoted?

...Eric Grafe, Earthjustice’s lead attorney on the case. Earthjustice was joined by Center for Biological Diversity and the Alaska Wilderness League in challenging the air permits.

Hmm, that’s funny. Three radical, left-wing environmental groups determining whether or not we can drill for our own oil? I coulda swore that’s why I voted, so my elected representative could make that kind of decision, doing what's best for the country, like they're suppose to…

Oh well. I guess that’s the way things work up there in Washington. I’m just a simple fellow with a computer. And a printer. And did I mention I need to get some gas today?

And did I also mention that I just might leave one of these taped to the pump? (h/t  Instapundit)

The Great Wall of Washington

There is a wall in Washington. It’s well constructed and apparently impenetrable. It’s nowhere and everywhere, invisible yet pervasive. This wall has no name, but is well defined. It isn’t meant to keep out invaders. This wall is designed to keep those in our current administration separated from reality and common sense.

The wall is evident in many ways. Take the current turmoil in the Middle East. In times past, America was somewhat insulated from the effects of political unrest half a world away. But this New World Order that’s being constructed, often by persons unknown and unelected by us, we’re being shepherded into a global economy that just plain isn’t working.

Nowhere is this more evident that at the gasoline pump. As you’ve no doubt noticed during the past week or two, gasoline prices are going through the roof. Now think back on all the times you’ve heard politicians say we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil supplies. Compare that to the reality of what you’re paying today.

That, gentle reader, is The Wall.

I can think of no other reason for high gas prices than the effect of this Wall. To each and every sentient citizen, the answer is extremely simple: we should be actively and aggressively harvesting our natural resources. Do you think that if we were doing what we once did, we’d be suffering at the pump?

By now, we should all know the answers as to why we aren’t pursuing a national energy policy of drilling and refining American oil. For generations, we’ve been prohibited from doing this by environmental groups and their handmaidens inside the Beltway. Lie after lie has been foisted upon the public claiming that we’re “destroying the planet” by using fossil fuels (even that description is debateable) despite a yearly tsunami of new and ever more restrictive environmental regulations. Even after the hoax of man-made global warming was revealed, politicians continued to pursue their misguided policies restricting our ability to generate energy as though nothing had happened.

I don’t need to tell you how rising fuel prices will kill our economy. You’ve already received a cut in pay over the last weeks, and this is just the beginning. Remember back to 2008 and how high gas prices rippled throughout the economy, raising the price of just about everything we make and consume.

Now, as a thought experiment, try imagining what it would be like if we had mature, responsible, and thoughtful leadership in Washington. We’d be drilling and refining our own oil today. Oil would be far less expensive, well under the $100/barrel we’re seeing today. Jobs would be created here, wealth would be created here. More Americans would have more buying power. World oil prices would fluctuate much less and political unrest in faraway lands would have less of an impact here at home. We'd have the money to effectively research viable alternative sources of energy that actually work.

Kind of like how it used to be.

OK, back to the real world, where logic, nor common sense, nor the laws of physics, nor concern for the nation can penetrate The Wall. Expect more empty words from this administration, more counter-intuitive ideas, more belief in the fairy tale of mankinds destruction of the planet. Expect more of what got us into this mess instead of a concrete, proven plan to get us out of it.

Such is the power of The Wall.