Posted on 07/03/2008 6:14:31 PM PDT by neverdem
What's the cause of $4 for a gallon of gasoline? To listen to Democrats in Congress and on the campaign trail -- and also some Republicans -- the answer is "price gouging," "speculation," "oil companies" or "the failed policies of George Bush and Dick Cheney."
Everything is getting blamed except the well-documented obvious: the law of supply and demand.
The history of U.S. energy policy is that Democrats have refused to increase supply and Republicans have refused to curtail demand. They are both to blame for $4 gasoline -- and they'd better get together to keep Americans from paying $200 a barrel to foreign oil producers.
Here's what the federal Energy Information Administration says: "A variety of factors have caused oil prices to increase, including strong demand growth in non-OECD Asia and the Middle East, no growth in production since 2005 from the members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, rising costs for oil exploration and development, across-the-board increases in commodity prices, and a weaker U.S. dollar."
Simple translation: China and India are buying lots more oil, increasing overall demand, and OPEC is not producing more supply. Under such circumstances -- duh! -- prices rise.
Additionally, the U.S., with its interest rates too low and chronically consuming more than it produces, has seen its currency lose value, so that every barrel of oil (and bushel of wheat) costs more.
The EIA analysis says not a word about oil company "gouging," futures market speculation or refusal by U.S. oil producers to exploit the exploration leases they pay billions for -- all the reasons being bandied about by Congressional Democrats (and a few Republicans) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)
The Democrats have an obvious motive for their denial of Econ 101 reality: They are so beholden to the environmental lobby that...
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
While one could say there is plenty of blame to go around but that line of thought ignores degree of blame. The dems share of the blame is so great as to overwhelm the Republican’s share for being gutless and ineffective. The dems have intentionally by design got us to where we are.
Mort Kondrake - master of the “on this hand, on the other hand” moral equivalency school of political analysis.
Blame is for God and small children
Who cares? Will determining and assigning blame drop the price at the pump? We need to start drilling now.
Newt Gingrich for the VP nomination.
propaganda.
few pubies want to destroy our free market economy.
There you have it. Mort is an idiot. Democrats tried like hell to take our own oil away from us, make us stop using oil with no viable alternative. Republican liberals tried to have it both ways, let the Democrats keep taking our oil while devaluing the dollar to keep the economy going and ultimately driving up the price of oil. Republican Conservatives lacked even one leader among them with half the cojones of Rush Limbaugh, and certainly lacked the skills of leadership to educate the public at large as to the nearly superhuman idiocy of our government in virtually every endeavor it makes. And in the end we have two nitwits, Obama and McCain competing for power over what little is left of the country.
I could go for that, but I don't know if having two believers in anthropogenic global warming on the top of the ticket is such a good thing.
Okay, I can understand (and it can even be documented) how DemoRats have consistently refused to increase supply, but please, Mortimer, pray tell, how is it possible to affix blame on Republicans for the responsibility in not curtailing demand among the populace.
Sheesh, what a moronic nutjob!!
Without reading I’ll say it is both repubs and dems who are at fault. When the repubs had both houses all they had to do was vote for drilling. The other repub, W, could simply pull a Jackson and tell Congress to go to hell and sign an EO to start drilling. And he could have done that on day one of his presidency. But, he didn’t want to go against his daddy.
I hear you. I really don't care so much what people think or say as much as I care what they do...and I think Newt will drill here now. I actually prefer Mitt to Newt but I need someone to get on board who is articulate, has an organization in place and can harness the gas price and ride it to a victory in November. Not to mention what it would do for our economy in the long run if we become energy independent.
“McCain’s fellow Republicans also are to blame for $4 gas. It took ex-oilman Bush six years to discover that America is “addicted to oil” and begin promoting conservation and alternative energy sources.”
They are both to blame, but the Dems. are significantly more to blame. But, Mort is so intent on blabbing about his take on the Republican failure to promote conservation and alternatives that he doesn’t mention their biggest contribution to $4.00 per gallon gasoline:
The Republicans also supported drilling bans everywhere the Dems. did except for ANWR. It’s been said many times on FR that GHWB was president and concurred when all our offshore areas except four Gulf states were put off limits. And W never mentioned lifting those bans in seven and one-half years, and he sided with Jeb to keep Florida off limits.
Except for ANWR, Republican presidents and many other Republicans are very recent converts converts to the drill here, drill now mantra.
Looks like the globalist vision of the death of the combustion engine will come to pass.
IMO, one pretty good test of how soon Americans are ready to talk sense about energy policy is how soon a majority of voters will come to understand that irrespective of how often and how deep we drill potential US production of liquid petroleum is such a small fraction of world demand that it can only move the price of oil a few percent in either direction - that though there are good reasons to support or oppose drilling, they have almost nothing to do with the price of a tank of gas either today or a decade from now.
Why should Saudi Arabia go out of its way to drive the price of oil down? It’s perfectly rational for a producer to try to maximize the returns for his product.
Microsoft, for instance, persists in charging hundreds of dollars for its software — even though they could sell downloads for next to nothing. They do this because they are rational economic agents.
Here, in Canada, we’re ramping up production in the oil sands as quickly as possible — to more than double exports to the U.S. by 2012. That follows a special request from the Bush administration & we’re happy to do our bit (and take your money too). However, the world would be a lot better place if less money were flowing into the middle east, and if the U.S. economy were on a stronger footing.
The U.S. is already the world’s third largest producer of oil & it has plenty of oil reserves (an enormous quantity, if you count oil shales — and you should). The U.S. has the capacity to drive down the world price of oil, to whatever level you chose — simply by drilling, and digging up your own supplies.
You can’t “curtail” demand!!!! How about demand for food? Want to “curtail” that?
“that though there are good reasons to support or oppose drilling, they have almost nothing to do with the price of a tank of gas either today or a decade from now.”
The decisions to not drill in new areas of the US going back years has a huge amount to do with the price of gasoline today. ANWR alone could have been supplying an addition one million barrels per day, and our offshore areas as much as more, and shale significant amounts.
A few million addition barrels per day would have been very significant, and would have definitely affected the cost of gasoline. And the same goes for the future.
This no drilling lunacy started with the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969. Meanwhile, most all nations drill for oil when they have good possibilities, even England and Norway and any other Euro nation. The US has been particularly stupid in this regard.
Comparing oil to Microsoft products is apples and oranges. The average American does not have to buy products from Microsoft in order to live. The same cannot be said of oil. Oil is what drives our economy, period.
I completely agree that were the U.S. to start drilling it's own reserves the price would drop (and I suspect much sooner than some are suggesting). However, there are those who do not want to see our reserves tapped as they are against use of fossil fuels, period. These people make the claim that drilling our own reserves would have zero impact on the price, and that it would take way too much time to obtain any benefit. But, it's a smoke screen used to manipulate those who don't know better.
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