News item of the day

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With gas prices spiraling out of control here in California, we suppose it was time for a little government intervention, right?

Gov. Jerry Brown Sunday ordered California smog regulators to allow winter-blend gasoline to be sold in California this month, a move intended to reverse a sudden scare in the wholesale gasoline market that saw prices shoot up nearly 50 cents a gallon in six days.

The average price of a gallon of self-serve regular gasoline in San Diego County climbed 3.8 cents overnight to settle at $4.712, a record high for a second day, according to figures from the AAA and Oil Price Information Service.

The previous local record of $4.63 was set June 19, 2008.

The governor ordered the California Air Resources Board to allow refiners and gas stations to roll out the winter blend before its previously- scheduled Oct. 31 sales date, an action the governor said will increase gas supplies up to 8-10 percent, ``with only negligible air quality impacts.''


In a letter released at noon, as California gas prices fluctuated widely for the seventh straight day, the governor said the market variations were imposing ``unacceptable cost impacts on consumers and small businesses.''

(ed. note: if by "fluctuate widely", they meant "shot up like a bottle rocket" then yes, prices did indeed "fluctuate widely")

This, he said, was threatening ``significant economic disruption, and serious harm to public safety and welfare.''

The average price in San Diego County has gone up 55.8 cents over the past week, which included a jump of 19.5 cents on Friday, according to the AAA and Oil Price Information Service.

It is now 55.4 cents higher than a month ago and 91.3 cents more than a year ago.

An analyst said California's wholesale gasoline market has gone ``into a panic about the adequacy of California fuel supplies,'' Jeffrey Spring of the Automobile Club of Southern California said the market disruption followed a power failure at the ExxonMobil Torrance Refinery and closure of a Chevron pipeline that moves crude oil to Northern California last Monday.

Other pressure on the state's gas market includes local refineries dropping production levels, energy companies exporting fuel to Mexico and other countries, and allowing inventory to dwindle in anticipation of switching over to production of winter blend gasoline, Spring said.

``I am directing the Air Resources Board immediately to take whatever steps are necessary to allow for an early transition to winter-blend gasoline'' to be sold in California, the governor said in a letter to Mary Nichols, his appointed head of the CARB.

So, it's not Big Oil that's driving up the price of gas? This certainly seems to be an admission as such.


But anyone else troubled by the fact that the governor can figureatively wave his hand over a board of politically-appointed bureaucrats to lower the price of oil. And let's not forget it was this board, the California Air Resources Board, that authored the job-killing AB 32 with its emissions restrictions. This same board self-vetted this law with one of their own scientists who lied about his Ph.D., claiming he received it from UC Davis, when instead he picked it up from a diploma mill in New York.


But back to Big Oil and the profits they make off of their product. You'd be pleased to know that California is right behind New York and tied with Connecticut for having the highest tax rate in the country at $0.67/gallon.


Excessive taxation on the commodity combined with excessive bureaucratic and regulatory burdens placed upon it by a sham of a regulatory board, and Senator Diane Feinstein wants the Federal Trade Comission to have Big Oil investigated for collusion.

Yep. We're in the best of hands.



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Quickies

(A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.)






Count us among those puzzled (outraged?) at the controversial rapper Common's appearance at a White House poetry gala this past week.

Have you heard? He might possibly be pro-life. This administration... this administration invites a pro-life wing nut to one of their hootenannys?

Oh, you can check out his, um, performance at the event, here.

The Liberator Today takes a look at the Kabuki theater that is Big Oil-bashing and the tax debate regarding the same, here.






So, let's get this straight: we don't release the "hit" photos of bin Laden because we don't want to appear to be "spiking the ball in the end zone" or otherwise enflaming delicate jihadist sensibilities but we let everyone know about the porn stash found at the OBL compound.

Again, we commend the President in making the decision to take out OBL but the administration's post-hit messaging has been kind of a disaster.


Totally related victory lap quote of the day:

Speaking at a town hall with Marines at Camp Lejeune on Thursday morning, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Special Forces who participated in the successful mission to kill Osama bin Laden were worried about their safety, and that he was concerned that so many details of the operation had become known to the public.

“Frankly, a week ago Sunday, in the Situation Room, we all agreed that we would not release any operational details from the effort to take out bin Laden,” Gates said. “That all fell apart on Monday -- the next day.”

Gates’ response was prompted by a question from a Marine in a Medical Logistics Company, who asked “what measures are being taken to protect the identities and the lives of the SEAL team members, as well as the lives of military forces deployed that might have to face extreme retaliation from terrorist organizations that want to have those identities known?”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Libyan rebels will meet senior White House officials in Washington Friday, seeking both cash and diplomatic legitimacy in their war to topple Muammar Gaddafi.

The head of the rebel National Transitional Council's executive bureau, Mahmoud Jebril, will meet President Barack Obama's national security adviser, Tom Donilon, and other senior officials, the White House said in a statement.

Jebril, a U.S.-educated technocrat who has become the public face of the rebel council, made a plea for Washington to free up some $180 million in frozen Gaddafi funds to fund the rebels fighting to end his 41-year rule.

If and when our post-OBL snuff buzz wears off perhaps the press could kindly ask of the administration just what the hell it is we are doing in Libya. Are we preventing a civilian massacre, aiding the rebels, attempting to snuff out Gaddafi... all the above?
And would it be above Congress to start asking the same questions?

It's times like this when we wish President Bush were back in office. People would be asking questions. But you knew that.





Ummm... just so no one forgets, there are a couple of young U.S. citizens currently languishing in prison in Iran.

Trial has been delayed again for two Americans detained in Iran for more than 21 months after being detained during a hiking trek along the Iran-Iraq border.

According to their lawyer, neither Shane Bauer, a freelance journalist who has contributed to the Los Angeles Times, nor his pal Joshua Fattal, were even brought to the courtroom on Wednesday, which was the next scheduled hearing in their ongoing trial on security charges.

"The hikers were not fetched from the jail to court," said Masoud Shafii, their Tehran attorney, who said he submitted a complaint to the court.

Authorities offered no explanation for the delay. Neither did they announce a new trial date. They're being held inside Tehran's infamous Evin Prison as they face charges of espionage and trespassing.

Somewhat surprised by the nature of the comments at linked article from the L.A. Times.





More fun in Arizona: Proceeds from tea party license plates going to AZ tea party groups? No thanks.

Sounds like either a false flag operation or establishment Republicans attempting to pit tea party groups against one another. Any tea party group there in Arizona that thought this was a good idea are kind of missing the point here in all this.

Leslie of Temple of Mut has the details here.

And speaking of Arizona, tax-payers in Tucson got a chance to hear just what is in one of the text books of the controversial ethnic studies cirriculum program that is offered there to grade schoolers.



Let's see: "rape", "castration", "destroy capitalism", "shit", "bloodsuckers", "bullshit"... not too shabby. We hadn't stepped up our vocabulary to that level until at least jr. high.

And, of course, nothing better illustrates the idiocy of all this than the white-haired school board member warning the lady at the podium on her language.

We understand there are some folks there in the south of Arizona that wish to break away from the rest of the state forming a supposed Baja Arizona. Hell, given what it is that they teach in their schools, why stop at merely seceding from the state?

More energy "policy" lunacy

The talking points have come out for changing the conversation on why it is we have such high gas prices. Joining evil speculators and the waste, fraud and abuse hotline being set up by the Justice Department is ending subsidies for Big Oil.

B-Daddy has some thoughts, here on the subject.

Here are the two paragraphs that caught our eye as it summarizes the double-standard and hypocrisy inherent to whatever coherency their is to this administration's energy policy.

* In addition to eliminating wasteful subsidies for the oil and gas industry, we have to work toward a longer-term goal of reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil and making ourselves less vulnerable to an always-changing oil market.

* We should all be able to agree that rather than continuing to subsidize 20th century energy sources, we need to invest in 21st century energy sources. Instead of cutting funding for clean energy by 70 percent, as some in Congress have suggested, we need to make smart investments in a 21st century clean energy economy that will keep us competitive, support job creation, and help us to win the future.

Of course, you see what's going on here, right? "Subsidies" are for the oil industry, yet we "invest" in green energy. Subsidies, bad. Investments, good. Wash, rinse and repeat.

Look, you want to eliminate tax breaks and depreciation write-offs for the oil and gas industry? Fine by us but don't double down on stupid and insult our intelligence at the same time by taking this estimated $4 billion that Big Oil gets and pour it into the not-yet-ready-for-primetime green energy sector that also happens to be a mosh pit of crony capitalism and picking winners and losers.

Whether it's oil and gas, wind turbines, solar panels, choo-choo trains or corn and milk, we're not really sure what the government is doing in the subsidies business in the first place.

Blame game

Because of the fact that most criticism of this nature tends to be cheap political grandstanding, we are no more apt to blame the Katrina aftermath on Bush than we are to blame Obama for the Gulf/BP oil spill response.

Karl Rove, writing for the Wall St. Journal believes otherwise. He raises some very good points with respect to state and local vs. federal jurisdiction. However, we still can't shake the overarching notion that what this all speaks to is the cumbersome and unwieldy nature of federal government, it's agencies and bureaucracies rather than who is in the Oval Office at the time.

So, in a sense, Rove is right: This oil spill is Obama's Katrina and he will have to face the music for some suspect PR and visuals rather than anything substantive his administration did or did not do.

Yet another Brazilian export we can't seem to resist

So, if drilling off-shore of the continental United States is a nettlesome political, judicial and environmental issue… no problem – hit the road and let someone else get crude under their finger nails.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.

We posted on the huge Brazilian oil fields here over a year ago and how Brazil's energy policy differed from ours but if you are wondering what we are doing in our cash-strapped state, lending $2 billion to a country that appears to be well-capitalized to take on off-shore drilling endeavors, then join the club.

And this action is borderline bizarre considering its not the supposed oil baron himself, George W. Bush that is slinking off to Rio to sow his wild petrol oats but rather Mr. Clean who has made it a habit of beating up on Big Oil and who has pushed for cap and trade legislation to curb our carbon-emitting ways.

So, is there more to this than meets the eye? There just may be and it is every bit as sordid as you can imagine.

We'll be standing by for the howls of indignation from the Left. Over here... Any minute now...

H/T: Hot Air

There ought to be a law

Check out the rise in the price of gasoline vs. the rise in the price of a stamp, which just went up again this week, over the same period of time

The good Professor, Mark Perry at Carpe Diem suggests legislation for Big Postal similar to “The Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act” that in the wake of $4+/gallon gas was introduced in Congress last year that would’ve made it a crime to “sell crude oil or gasoline at a price that is unconscionably excessive.”

We would’ve suggested “The Federal Inability to Grasp the Fundamentals of Global Economics Act” that would’ve made it a crime for Congressmen to introduce legislation as that above.

Criminal Negligence comes in many forms

How it is we blew-off the Interior Department’s booth at the Job Fair a few years back will never be fully explained.

WASHINGTON – Government officials in charge of collecting billions of dollars' worth of royalties from oil and gas companies accepted gifts, steered contracts to favored clients, and engaged in drug use and illicit sex with employees of the energy firms, federal investigators reported yesterday.

Investigators from the inspector general's office of the Interior Department said more than a dozen current and former employees, including the former director of the oil royalty program, took meals, ski trips, sports tickets and golf outings from industry representatives.

Story here.

We Prefer to call it, "Maturing in Office"

"Congressional Democrats ripped presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) Wednesday for “flip-flopping," after McCain reversed course and called for the lifting of a ban on offshore oil drilling, which he once opposed."

H/T: Politico.com

Bush has apparently matured, as well.

And from the Department of Wouldn't be able to consumate a transaction in a House of Ill Repute with large bills extending from one's pockets, we bring you the House Democrats who've officially crossed the threshold of self-parody. If suing OPEC or raising taxes on Big Oil didn't grab ya, how about nationalizing the country's oil refineries to increase the supply and lower prices?

And please don't miss our earnest rethinking and heartfelt apology regarding John Murtha and company, here.

This man is simply delighted you’re paying $4.40/gallon at the pump.

Eschewing any flowery window dressing to distract us, Thomas Friedman of the NYT can barely contain his glee over what we are currently paying at the pump, so much so that he believes that regardless of what happens to the price of oil in the future, the state should act in way of taxes to keep a permanent “price floor” of $4/gallon.

You see, its all about tough love. When the price of oil is relatively cheap, we act in an amoral fashion and buy gas-guzzling SUVs but when the price of oil shoots up, we behave in a much more ethical and moral fashion and purchase Priuses (just like Friedman!). But since that wacky free market can’t be trusted to keep us in lock-step with Friedman’s world-vision goodness, we’ll simply employ the government to keep us in a perpetual state of automaton-like righteousness.

Its baffling to us that Friedman appears to be completely oblivious to the pervasive negative effect on the economy that high fuel prices have. Its as if Friedman thinks his Prius is going to transport vegetables to market and cattle to the slaughterhouse. Or that the law of gravity will be repealed to allow water we use to drink and clean to flow up and over mountain ranges absent pumping stations. Friedman also believes Santa’s elves will chop down trees by hand and that his sled which is underemployed 364 days of the year will transport the resulting lumber to construction sites for homes we require because we are still needlessly breeding and thus crushing the planet under the weight of our humanity.

The fact that Obama and many in Congress share this naked condescension towards their constituents only bolsters our contention that despite all the “activity” on the Hill regarding our current energy crisis there is a palpable air of unseriousness in all their scratching, clutching, caterwauling and rutting.

UPDATE #1: Big Oil is making such obscene profits from selling gas that Exxon is selling off the 2,200 retails gas stations it owns here in the states. All that jack was piling up in stacks at Exxon headquarters and was becoming a fire hazard... they simply couldn't spend it fast enough on their executives pensions so the only sensible thing to do was to kill that golden goose. Safety first!

Obscene...?

Big Oil – Big Government update:

… and introducing Shell Oil’s new CEO… Maxine Waters.

Firmly reasserting itself atop the dung heap of shameless pandering and completely insane ideas, the House jumped into the fray with some suggestions of their own. Head Madam Maxine Waters (D-CA) felt that if privately owned and operated Big Oil could not bring down the price of oil perhaps government could.

Link: sevenload.com

If video fails to launch go here. If that fails, here is the gist: Ol’ SMaxine wants to sociali………………………………… wants the government to take over oil production.

You know, it’s a sad, sad day in American politics when a Leftist like Waters is unable to even articulate the term “nationalize” in its proper context. It makes one wonder just what the hell is going on with our public education system where the language and terminology of socialist policy is not being properly taught.

Update #1: Mongo reminded us in the comments of something we saw but forgot to point out. At the end of Waters' finger-wagging, check out the expression on the gentleman and especially that of the lady to Waters' right. She has this sort of endeared expression that is reserved for batty old aunts... as in, "poor old aunt Maxine... she really has been dealing well with her dementia but sometimes, well sometimes she just kind of loses it and says the wackiest things, bless her little heart."

H/T: Hot Air

Big Oil in the Parliament of Whores

The Senate, unwilling to let the House continue their unprecedented run of unhinged, irrational and childish behavior unaccompanied, hauled before them the leaders of Big Oil and strapped them to the whipping post for a public flogging on Capitol Hill, yesterday.

In a regrettable affront to 3rd graders everywhere, we imagine the leaders of Big Oil trying to explain global market dynamics as it relates to oil, would be like talking to a roomful of schoolchildren who haven’t yet been put down for their nap.

Typical of the exchanges between the petrol evil-doers and Congress:

Big Oil…

Lee R. Raymond, Exxon's chairman and chief executive, said that the industry's profits, measured as a share of its revenue, were no greater than those in other industries. We are in line with the average of all U.S. industry," Mr. Raymond said. "Our numbers are huge because the scale of our industry is huge. How are these earnings used? We invest to run our global operations, to develop future supply, to advance energy-producing and -saving technologies, and to meet our obligations to millions of our shareholders."

And the Senate…

“None of us knows much about pricing…” Senator Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota.

Of course, this harangue-op will do absolutely nothing to lower the price of oil nor will it do anything to bring more of the world’s currently most economically feasible energy commodity to market. It won’t… we promise.

Full story here.


Some of the planet's perturbed, scaring children and crinkling noses at the hearings yesterday.