Today in west central Missouri:

Previously:

And, Joe did this, too (December 8, 2023)

Joe did this, too (December 8, 2023)

Joe (D) is on a roll (December 12, 2023)

Joe Biden (D) [2014 file photo].

Heh.

This morning in west central Missouri:

Going down.

Previously:

And, Joe did this, too (December 8, 2023)

Joe did this, too (December 8, 2023)

This afternoon in west central Missouri:

Going down, eh?

Joe Biden (D) [2020 file photo].

Previously:

Joe did this, too (December 8, 2023)

You know how GOP Senator Roy Blunt’s been going on and on about how high gas prices are going to bring on the end of Western Civilization and it’s all Barack Obama’s personal fault? For a few months recently, it seemed that he couldn’t talk about anything else. He even tried to justify his don’t-let’s-tax-the-rich Buffet rule vote by evoking the bane of high gas prices. When he delivered the GOP weekly remarks in late April, all he could do was gas about the cost of gas, which was so high, he claimed, because Obama “focused on the wrong things” – like the dreaded “economic fairness.”

Well, guess what? Gas prices are falling. They’re falling, just as they rose in the first place, for reasons that have little or nothing to do with direct political intervention. Gas is a commodity. Its cost responds to global market forces and international events such as the relative stability of the Middle East and, in common with other commodities, can be exacerbated by rampant speculation.

Funny fact: the voice of today’s GOP, Fox News, after leading the chorus of Chicken Littles who claimed that the sky was falling because of high fuel prices, now proclaims the lower prices to be equally bad news. Go figure.

Do you think that Media Matters might be on to something when they speculate that Fox is just trying to help out the folks who are really worried about low gas prices – Republican strategists (and, I would add, politicians like Blunt) who “were hoping to reap the political benefits of high gas prices at the polls this year”? Media Matters’ Shauna Theel analyzes Fox’s new line:

Stuart Varney, the Fox Business host pictured at the top, tried to explain the claim that the recent gas price drop might be “BAD,” saying it may be “just a sign of a weakening economy.” The Wall Street Journal reported that one of the reasons for the drop in gas prices was the “softening economies in the U.S. and Europe,” along with easing tensions in Iran and changes in the oil market.

Note that Fox is now raising how worldwide economic factors are affecting gas prices, after spending weeks blaming Obama for the price increase since the president’s inauguration. Fox won’t explain that the extremely low price in January 2009 was a short-lived drop caused by the massive economic recession. In fact, last week on Fox News, Varney explicitly said with a straight face that the price increase since the bottom of the recession had “everything to do with” Obama, but the recent drop in gas prices “has nothing to do with” him.

So does the new Fox position mean that Fox fanboy* Blunt will follow suit? How will he pivot now that he can’t beat the same dead horse over and over any more – at least not in quite the same way. Will he take the way out offered by his Fox News cohort? Will he find some other way to stay the course? Or will he just pretend the topic never came up in the first place?

*Fox fanboy = Republican politician

Today GOP Senator Roy Blunt’s latest, typically sclerotic, effort at political jujitsu, a missive with the subject line “skyrocketing gas prices,” popped into my email box (it’s also available online here). Blunt, who has always reciprocated the affection that the fossil fuel industry has demonstrated for him via big chunks of campaign change, claims that the President has some how appropriated his own “”all-of-the-above” energy strategy – although Blunt’s actual proposals have been pretty short on “all” and long on “drill.” Alas, Roy laments, the president just doesn’t know how to go about achieving that goal. The proof of that contention, Roy claims, is demonstrated by the aforementioned “skyrocketing” prices:

During the three years since the president took office, gas prices have doubled from $1.85 to $3.59 per gallon — meeting his prediction that fuel prices would “necessarily skyrocket” under his administration’s policies.

With no end in sight, families and job creators in Missouri and nationwide are bracing for the prospect of paying $4 a gallon for gas by this summer.

What’s wrong with this? It is, to hear Blunt’s fellow conservative, George Will tell it, “preposterous”:

Blunt’s right that gas prices are higher than when George Bush left office in 2009, but the reason isn’t because Bush’s policies were better. It’s just a simple economic fact that energy prices  plummet when the economy tanks and ol’ George did a real number on the economy. Speaking of a recent downturn in gas prices, economics professor Jerry McElroy observed:

So goes the economy, so goes the price of oil, […] When the economy is booming, then the price of oil is rising – and vice versa, as we see today.

The bad news is that greater economic activity spurs demand which fuels speculation which, in turn, raises prices at the pump. Want to know how speculation works? Read this Think Progress report on how such GOP über-supporters as the Koch brothers play the energy markets. Then tell me that the surge in gas prices are the fault of the Obama administration.

The good news is that it’s possible to see the rising cost of gas as one more of several recent indications that the economy is, indeed, improving. And, as far as energy goes, thanks to President Obama’s successful application of the “all-of-the-above” strategy that Senator Blunt wants to take credit for, the United States, as USA Today reports, is:

…. enjoying a mini oil boom. It’s producing more crude oil and, for the first time in decades, has become a net exporter of petroleum products such as jet fuel, heating oil and gasoline.

None of this, of course, would be of interest to Senator Blunt, who, like the current crop of GOP presidential contenders, seems to have little interest in the way things actually work in the real world. All of which obviously leaves conservatives who, like George Will, still retain some small shred of integrity, grinding their teeth in frustration.

An interesting article in yesterday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch – courtesy of McClatchey Newspapers’ Kevin G. Hall and Robert A. Rankin – had this to say about what did not cause gas prices to go up:

Usually analysts say today’s high prices stem simply from ‘supply and demand.” They mean demand for oil and gas is rising and supplies aren’t keeping up, so people bid up their price. But global and U.S. supplies are plentiful and demand is stable, so that’s not it.

So, if U.S. oil supplies are plentiful, what did cause gas prices to go up so precipitously?:

I’m convinced … that speculators are actively manipulating (prices),” said Michael Greenberger, a University of Maryland law professor who headed the CFTC’s trading division in the 1990s.

It’s harder and harder for any reasonable observer to dismiss the role of excessive speculation in this market,” said Michael Masters, a professional Wall Street investor who knows how this game works.

He’s testified before Congress repeatedly that speculators are pushing prices up well beyond what supply and demand would warrant.

They both point to a $15 weekly swing in oil prices in early May and $5 a barrel moves on oil prices in a single day – with no obvious change to supply or demand.

Which brings us to the way that our Missouri GOP congresspeople are responding to high gas prices. According to today’s Post-Dispatch,* Reps. Akin, Luetkemeyer, and Emerson all voted last week to reinforce the oil industry’s bogus argument that there is an oil supply problem (Hartzler and Long didn’t vote). The GOPers voted “yea” to:

— bring the level of drilling in the still-recovering Gulf of Mexico back to pre-BP spill levels;

— defeat proposals that would have guaranteed safety requirements proposed by the commission that investigated the BP spill be implemented before drilling in the Gulf returns to pre-spill levels;

— permit offshore drilling in ecologically fragile Outer Continental Shelf regions where drilling has previously been forbidden.

We assume, given past and current GOP rhetoric on these issues, that these votes will be justified as steps to increase domestic energy supply, which, our GOPers will contend, will, in turn, bring down gas prices. (Read, for instance,  Luetkemeyer’s statement on the topic.)    

However, this reason can’t be too compelling, even to these GOP oil stalwarts, because the trio also voted against a Democratic proposal (HR1231) which would have barred energy companies from exporting any of the oil that they obtain from Outer Continental Shelf areas under federal leases. So what happened to our GOPers’ concern about inadequate domestic oil supplies – which was presumably so strong that it pushed them to risk  environmental and safety concerns? Could they maybe be concerned about something else? Something like oil company largess, perhaps?

Remember these facts during the next election year when odds are our GOP oil company BFFs will be in our faces, taking credit for trying to bring down oil prices – while they beat on Democrats and the Obama administration for trying to control speculation, the real reason we are paying so much at the pump.

*“Votes in Congress, Week of May 9,” p. A6 (not yet posted online)

Today the National Resources Defense Council held a conference call to announce the release of a  white paper analysing the degrees of vulnerability of the 50 states to changes in oil prices. And guess what? If gas prices were to spike to 2008 levels, the amount of the average Missourian’s income spent on gasoline would increase from 4.02% to 7.10%. Imagine the effect on living standards and economic growth and the picture isn’t pretty.

The NRDC analysis, which pits factors such as gas consumption, number of of drivers, and per capita income per state, against the cost of gas, leads to the conclusion that, in the words of Deron Lovaas, a transportation expert at the NRDC, “Our ongoing oil addiction is draining our wallets and our economy … .”

The NRDC white paper makes two main recommendations to ameliorate to this situation:

*  Pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation that limits carbon dioxide emissions, helps us break our oil addiction, and helps create millions of clean energy jobs here in the United States; and

* Fundamentally reform federal transportation policy to support smart, transit-oriented development; assist states and regions in saving oil; and provide ample funding for energy-efficient transportation alternatives including rail and bus lines, bike paths, sidewalks, and other alternatives to driving.

Of course, enacting such policies requires a substantial amount of political will, the dearth of which was exactly the point several reporters made, directly or indirectly,  during the Q&A. A common theme was whether or not these initiatives, which require  some upfront spending, are feasible during a time of economic retrenchment. Lovass responded that cutting our dependency on foreign oil would, by hugely reducing our trade deficit, have an equally positive effect on our economic growth.

 

At least one reporter questioned the postive effect of public transit initiatives for the big rural expanses of the state. In response, Lovass emphasized the fact that the transportation recommendation is flexible and offers more than a single tool. For rural citizens, incentives to move to cleaner vehicles might be more important than mass transit, and would ultmately boost demand for clean cars, potentially reving up domestic manufacturing of such cars –  and, incidentally, providing yet another economic benefit.

The NRDC staff present on the call also emphasized the importance of having a consistent energy policy, rather than the reactive stance that has characterized our national response to energy spikes in the past. For example, they noted that the “boom-and-bust” in alternative fuel production that we have seen with respect to ethanol and other alternatives could only be mitigated by the effects of consistent policies, such as a more even-handed approach to gasoline pricing.

SoHear that Claire McCaskill, Kit Bond, Roy Blunt, and all the rest of you obstructionists who go around wringing theiryour hands about the costs of clean energy legislation? The cost of doing nothing, or responding to our energy and climate crisis with minor measures, will eventually get very expensive since nobody thinks that gas prices will continue to remain at their current level ad infinitum. And you lot could, if  you have the intelligence or the courage, be responsible for putting our country on the right track – which, since you all like to parade your patriotism, must surely be what you want to do?