Are you angry about the rising cost of gas? If you are, whatever you do, don't ask a Republican politician to tell you the truth about why prices are increasing. For the Party of right wing mullahs has psycho based issues with women's rights. The pre-historic neanderthal cave dwellers will just lie to you and blame the rising prices on Obama.
The Republican Party that has not lifted one finger to create the jobs they promised in 2010 are licking their chops while preparing to hammer President Obama for the rising cost of gas. As if the POTUS has much or any control over the price of gas in a global marketplace.
But don't tell that to the do nothing obstructionists for the 1%. See below to learn what the GOP has been up during its first 100 days.
As we can see from the looney tunes Republican debates, the GOP is outdoing itself by making an issue over just about everything under the sun.
Except for job creation plans and solutions.
I guess desperate times call for desperate measures for an increasingly desperate party. As is normal for the GOP during election seasons it will automatically default to its Southern strategy of waging the culture wars. Play the fear card. If that fails play the race card. If need be, play the hate card. Dissemble, confuse, manipulate and divide the masses.
We have seen that this strategy plays like a charm election after election. But this time the Party has gone too far. Not that a nervous Bush called Jeb would be any better than the current cast clowns on the GOP stage. After all, we know for certain that a Bush is always a Bush first and foremost. He will throw Hispanic voters under the bus in a NYC nanosecond as soon as his super pac sugar daddy tells him to do it.
Evident Republican misogyny.
The majority of women are furious over the GOP's pathological obsession with women's rights that includes anti-contraception laws, requirements for unnecessary and intrusive medical procedures and its desire to occupy women's ovaries and vaginas in states like Texas and Virgina. How is that for small government loving politicians who are on a crusade to push big government onto women's bodies and block women's health care efforts.
Newt Gingrich, one of the Republicans who the president says is "licking their chops" over the prospect of higher gasoline prices by election day, is promising $2-a-gallon gasoline when he enters the Oval Office. His plan is to do what has become one word: drillbabydrill. To step up domestic production more than the 8 percent it has already risen over the past few years. Run the price down by boosting supply that's supposedly hampered by "radical environmentalists" and their Democratic lackeys.
This just goes to show that the guy who thinks he's the smartest fellow in the GOP contest, if not the universe, doesn't understand the global economics of oil or the constraints on how much U.S. production can be had. Even if every square inch of public land from the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the warming tundra of northern Alaskan is pumped dry, the flow from U.S. wells will never again be enough to appreciably budge world prices much.
Newt Gingrich holds a doctorate degree in history and obviously not in economics, marketing or finance.
DOH.
The recent rise-the average nationwide price of a gallon of regular was $3.647 Friday morning-is blamed on a range of causes, chief among them being tension with Iran. But there are also theories such as the one proposing that the settlement over Greece's finances have encouraged a belief economic improvement is raising demand for gasoline, pinching supplies. But there is currently no shortage of supply. Indeed, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that the nation is at the high end of the average amount of supplies for a February.
So, with domestic production up, worldwide demand well below pre-recession levels, U.S. demand down as people drive more efficient vehicles or use public transportation more than previously, and supplies of oil brimming, the suspicion in many people's minds is that something else is at work. Kevin G. Hall at McClatchy makes a case for it-speculation:
"Speculation is now part of the DNA of oil prices. You cannot separate the two an
Honestly, had the Party of the 1% had not blocked any and all measures taken to wean us off of oil and revert instead to more green energy alternatives we would not be in the mess we constantly find ourselves with regard to the price of gas.
Ultimately, the answer is to get us off oil as a transportation fuel, something we have to do not only because of a long-term dwindling of supply, but also because burning fossil fuels is fouling an atmosphere already overburdened with carbon emissions. However, even the most aggressive initiatives on that score will take many years to achieve. And we do not have even a mildly aggressive effort under way at the moment.
So we'll be stuck for the next few months hearing a lot of right-wing pundit and candidate nonsense tailored to squeeze as many votes as possible from people who actually believe that politicians have a short-term solution in this matter.
The Republicans don't want us to know other reasons why gas prices are on the rise. It's called shutting down oil production facilities in the Northeastern U.S.
The average price of gas is up more than 10 percent since the start of the year, a point repeatedly made during Wednesday's Republican Presidential debate. Predictably, the four GOP candidates blamed President Barack Obama for the steep increase.
Actually, the President doesn't have that kind of pricing power. The more likely reason behind the price increase, though certainly less compelling as a political argument, is the recent spate of refinery closures in the U.S. Over the past year, refineries have faced a classic margin squeeze. Prices for Brent crude have gone up, but demand for gasoline in the U.S. is at a 15-year low. That means refineries haven't been able to pass on the higher prices to their customers.
And because they could not stick the higher prices on its customers the companies chose to shut down some of their facilities rather than lose money.
Also, the oil production business is undergoing a transformation in the U.S.
Then there are the plants able to refine the heavier, dirtier West Texas Intermediate (WTI)-the stuff that comes from Canadian tar sands, the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico, and the newer outposts in North Dakota, which just passed Ecuador in oil production. These refineries tend to be clustered in the Midwest-places such as Oklahoma, Kansas, and outside Chicago. While the price of Brent crude has closed at over $120 a barrel in recent days, WTI is trading at closer to $106. That simple differential is the reason older refineries that can handle only Brent are hemorrhaging cash and shutting down, while refineries that can handle WTI are flourishing.
"The U.S. refining industry is undergoing a huge, regional transformation," says Ben Brockwell, a director at Oil Price Information Services. "If you look at refinery utilization rates in the Midwest and Great Lakes areas, they're running at close to 95 percent capacity, and on the East Coast it's more like 60 percent," he says.
But the Cornell University study estimates nearly the exact opposite of Petrowski's claim, estimating that building the KXL pipeline could increase domestic gas and diesel fuel prices in some states by between "10 to 20 cents more per gallon" and, to rub salt on the wound, possibly "cancel out some or all of the jobs created by KXL" after only one year of increased fuel prices. From the study:
HIGHER FUEL PRICES IN 15 STATES
But shhhhh. Get the latest from Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate.
