It's Great to be Vindicated!
July 9th 2008 12:45
My father-in-law and I were talking last weekend. It's been several years since we've seen each other, so we were chit-chatting about all sorts of things. He asked me about what I thought about the gas prices. I told him I didn't like it, naturally.
It was really strange to watch his IQ drop suddenly as he started a liberal sounding tirade against Pres. Bush and VP Cheney and how all the oil money was going into their pockets... personally! So I patiently explained "supply and demand", "speculation" and "futures markets." I'm not entirely sure that he understood or believed me. It seems he's gotten quite liberal over the last few years and not paid attention to reality. I'll keep working on him, of course, and he should start thinking again before too long.
My vindication came this morning when I read what Walter E. Williams had to say in his Town Hall column. I've been an unofficial student of his for quite some time, and apparently I learned the economics lessons pretty well. Now, if Dad just had a computer...
Really Long Link
It was really strange to watch his IQ drop suddenly as he started a liberal sounding tirade against Pres. Bush and VP Cheney and how all the oil money was going into their pockets... personally! So I patiently explained "supply and demand", "speculation" and "futures markets." I'm not entirely sure that he understood or believed me. It seems he's gotten quite liberal over the last few years and not paid attention to reality. I'll keep working on him, of course, and he should start thinking again before too long.
My vindication came this morning when I read what Walter E. Williams had to say in his Town Hall column. I've been an unofficial student of his for quite some time, and apparently I learned the economics lessons pretty well. Now, if Dad just had a computer...
Really Long Link
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Comment by PopulistConservative
Angry Electorate
Take a look at the chart. Gasbuddy.com put it together.
Correlation, by itself, does not equal causation -- but the Dems haven't done anything to help with gas prices. They are choking off supply, so they are helping to cause this problem.
Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
Comment by Summer Minor
Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
Comment by Howard
Real Crash
The USA and other nations could force S. Arabia and other major producers to sign long term government contracts for oil at no higher than $80-a barrel. That would mean planning to go to nuclear-processed hydrogen and synthetic fuels over the next 30 years. That means starting to act like the USA again, not a British or Greenie colony.
The truth is, SL, you are really a secret greenie, like Al Gore, without knowing it.
Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
Regardless where the idea comes from, we really are dependent on oil right now, Howard. If you doubt me, try to figure out how to get food to stores without trucks. At this point in time, they run on diesel, not wind, solar, nuclear or anything else. Diesel. Petroleum product. There's no way to refit every truck engine to use anything else quickly enough to keep our food supply going.
Putting pressure on Saudi Arabia might work, up to a point, but we import from other countries as well. The best way to get them to bring the price down is to start drilling our own immediately and bring down the futures market. Most of the other viable technologies can't be perfected overnight, either.
Comment by Anonymous
I could be wrong, but the hearing Williams referred to may be the same one I saw on C-Span where indeed, the big boys of BIG OIL dripped more black liquid arrogance much to their own lack circumspection. But I'm surprised that they didn't all get up as one and walk out when Sen Jack Reed (D-RI) took a few min's time from the chairman to literally pull a drive-by attack and bi tch slap on the oilmen for supposedly putting out "puff pieces" or junk science to prove their points.
No sooner than Reed slapped these guys, he left the hearing room, leaving them thoroughly and needlessly embarrassed to take that from a guy who shamelessly cited his academic wife's grudge while he represented a branch that routinely outsources its pet research pr ojects to favored special interest groups -- and God alone knows how many trees were felled to make Congress's junk science reports available. Talk about wasted energy!
Comment by Howard
Real Crash
Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
You're right about the "dusted off" garbage from the 70's, Anonymous. The junk science from back then and the Global Cooling scare is just like the Global Warming trash of today. Created by the same people who have to invent an emergency to make themselves appear to have a degree of credibility and importance that evades them otherwise. The Big Oil comapnies are not blameless for the high prices, but they alone didn't cause it. Politicians are equally to blame. Sorry I missed the C-SPAN show.
Comment by Anonymous
THis kind of research goes on all the time and to be honest, I think it's petty even to call them "puff pieces" and I have some regret in doing so. But I used the term in the context of framing the story about this debate in the quickest way possible. I'm less bothered by the so-called existence of politicized research -- so long as the writers cleary state who they're writing for and why -- than I do about anybody performing this research and publicizing its results. It's how we learn; that simple.
Perhaps one of Reed's staffers didn't have what he was looking for in a report -- some smoking gun -- or couldn't finish the report on time because he probably had her working going like hell all over the Hill -- and when he discovered to his utter dismay that she was a human being, decided to take it out on the Exxon CEO.
Perhaps he learned this skill from his wife, a college professor--and they're experts in the art of working their semi-slaves ("teaching assistants" TAs half-to-death.) It happens every day; and does the compost ever hit the windmills when the TAs decide to practice what the professors love to preach about.
Reed made the mistake of lecturing the wrong "captive audience student." Or maybe not. Compared to a senator in a much larger industrial state like Texas or Louisiana -- more than coincidently BIG OIL INDUSTRY STATES -- he had little to lose by provoking that Tiger.