Oh pfff, here we go with the socialist healthcare thing again. The UK and Canada aren’t under a socialist government and they have universal healthcare. That pretty much refutes that claim. The whole “socialism” scare crap is perpetuated by the health insurance industry and the politicians they lobby–and by lobby, I mean “donate to their campaign.” And by donating to their campaign, I mean “bribe.”

How to pay for universal health care: ending the Iraq war, which we had no business being in in the first place.

But that’s just the fascist stance.

The point is that regardless of whether it’s Bush and his buddies, the oil execs, or investors, we know that *somebody* is making a killing at our expense, and we’re pissed off about it.

On one hand, I could see that being justified if a company bought gas at premium prices. They bought at the $105/barrel price, not the new $100/barrel price, so they’re going to lessen the impact by lowering the price slowly. On the other hand, according to what I know, they’re making ridiculous profits either way, so what gives? I don’t know about you two, but to me and Joe Q. American, this is a textbook example of price gouging, and there ought to be consequences which can’t be remedied by handing costs down to consumers.

I also find it funny how prices soar at the “risk” or “perceived risk” of a terrorist attack, regardless of the suspected target(s). The oil companies incur no loss of profit, production nor damage to their facilities, yet the rest of us are forced to pay 10-15 cents more per gallon over the mere POSSIBILITY of shit hitting the proverbial fan. That, to me and Joe Q., sounds like fruition of corrupt business practices, not merely the holy, all-knowing and wise Market.

We wonder,”who is assessing these risks?” What do they stand to gain from scaring the hell out of the American people so the intangible scapegoat,”the market,” has a weak justification for jacking up fuel prices? I refuse to buy into the notion that phantom phenomena like speculation is not the primary force at work here. I understand the concepts of it, but I do not agree with them.

To your question: “BTW, are you admitting quite clearly that even at $2.50 per gallon the oil companies would be making a similar per-gallon profit they were used to making BEFORE they started to gouge the public?” Mostly. Yes, I believe oil can make a profit at $2.50 right now. Because of speculation, some flucuation in gas prices should be expected. The questioin becomes how much flucuation is acceptable?

BTW, oil fell $5 per barrel today, any bets on gas prices falling? Everyone is missing the bigger point, yet some are touching on the surface. I’ll get to that in a second. Some in Congress are proposing a profit win-fall tax. This would be bad precident to set. Puninshing businesses for succeeding, no matter what the industry, is wrong. It will drive people out of business, businesses out of the country, and new loopholes will be found to avoid paying those taxes, so that in the end -we that taxpayers get screwed anyway. Now my point: Big oil, along with the insurance industry, ought to be investigated for practicing collusion. That, my friend, would be an illegal act, and punishable by fines and imprisonment. I believe that is what is happening. Bust a major oil company for collusion, you will again see the “mom and pop” gas stations, and therefore more competition. The gas wars that used to be so prevailent years ago. I will stop here for now, however I will be posting on this and other subjects at my sight as soon as the migration to the new hosting service is finished.

For the record, people have told me I’m too wordy, so my (apparent) “blanket statements” about Bush are in the interest of brevity. But I still back my points.

I’ll respond (as briefly as possible) to your points as you made them.

1. Taxes. You’re right and you’re wrong, by the way. SOME of the tax on gas is on a percentage. SOME of it is on a flat cents-per-gallon. Technically, since we haven’t had an increase in the last few years, the PERCENTAGE of tax we pay on gas per gallon is actually LOWER than it was a few years ago. But thank you, you helped make my point. We are paying the same PERCENTAGE of gas tax as we have been in Illinois. Taxes on gas have NOT gone up. At worst, they’ve increased proportionately to the retail price, but as I said, since some gas taxes are set amounts, the overall percentage has actually decreased. Plus, let me point to this link back to George Ryan’s rollback on state tax on gas in 2001: http://www.artba.org/economics_research/current_issues/indiana-illinois_gas_tax_2001_.pdf. That rollback only proved to further fatten the wallets of big oil, because Illinois’ gas prices DID NOT go down as far as the tax rollback took away from the state’s coffers. Where the state tried to “save” us 7.5 cents per gallon only ended up lowering gas prices by 4 cents…another 3.5 cent per gallon profit for big oil. So lowering taxes WILL NOT WORK. We have the history to back it up.

2. Agreed…speculation is indeed the major cause. But what do they base their “speculations” on? Among other things, it’s supply from the Middle East, and that is based on the current political climate more than any single factor. And because of our attack and occupation of Iraq…by our president…there is instability in the region. And speculators play on that. Do you think speculators try to buy cheap? Hell no, they’re in it for profit baby, and whatever they can do to increase that bottom line, they’ll do. BTW, are you admitting quite clearly that even at $2.50 per gallon the oil companies would be making a similar per-gallon profit they were used to making BEFORE they started to gouge the public? I’d definitely prefer seeing “$2.49″ at the pumps compared to what the crap is now.

3. How did we get instability in the Middle East? U.S. aggressiveness, led by GWB. How did we get a weakened dollar? Well, let’s see…for the first time in history we tried to lower taxes while waging a war, and we end up with deficit spending that would make Ronald Reagan blush…who decided this plan of action? GWB. Now, to fight off an impending recession, our fed has to lower interest rates so low that foreign investors look at their yield on our interest rates and say “no thanks”, thus putting their money elsewhere and contributing to the weakening of the American dollar. Why is our fed in this fix? GWB’s tax cuts combined with waging a costly war combined with deficit spending would be a good place to start, donchya think?

4. Speculation caused by terrorism. I agree. Let’s look at something else, here. The biggest terrorist act of our lifetime led to the World Trade Center disappearing, and 3,000+ lives lost. Yet three months later…three months AFTER this terrorist attack…gas was $0.99 cents per gallon in Princeton, IL. I know, because I bought gas three times a week in Princeton, IL in January of 2002, and I keep sickeningly anal records of such things in a little notebook in my glovebox. It was $1.09 in Chillicothe, and $1.14 by the time I got to Peoria on my drives home. (There’s that “Peoria Cartel” making huge profits again.) When did this recent skyrocketing of prices happen? Over the last two years. Not 2001. Over the last two years. What’s different about terrorism in 2008? Well, let’s see. Al Qaeda is in Iraq now. Seems they weren’t before we attacked that country in 2003, but why quibble over small stuff, right? Reason they’re there now? Saddam is gone. Reason Saddam is gone? GWB attacked him. There we are back to Ol’ Dubya again.

5. American oil…I agree with you again. Can we say this is Bush’s fault? Nope. If he and his buddies had his way, we would indeed by drilling for more American oil, not only in Alaska and in the Rockies, but off the east coast, the west coast, and the southern coast. If we had a northern coast off of Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana, he’d want to drill there, too. So I’m giving you that one…but then you have to give me this in return: Do you honestly, seriously believe that opening up more American oil fields would lead to lower prices in the current climate? Many people (on the right, mostly…Bush fans, generally) think so, I think not. I think not until we have a less oil-friendly adminstration. Just because Exxon and BP could access more oil doesn’t mean they’re going to give up their profits, just because they could access more oil doesn’t mean there would suddenly BE more oil reserves, they’d just act like OPEC does now and “create” supply and demand as they saw fit. Plus, one final thing, even if we opened it up right now, and let the oil companies start drilling away on our soil, it’s would be 4-5 years minimum before we’d see a huge spike in production. It takes time to build the rigs, place the rigs, drill the holes, connect to the pipeline, etc.

I want relief now. I want the gouging to stop. I want the administration to take blame and get it fixed. Thanks to that last sentence, I’m not holding my breath.

First B. J., taxes are directly related to the cost of fuel – I suspect you know this. $1.00 gas with a 10% tax = $1.10. $3.00 gas with a 10% tax = $3.30 – an extra $.20. AND the tax rate on motor fuel has gone up in the last 10 years. (remember motor fuel is taxed at the federal level, state level, county level, and home rule city level – more than once at a few of those levels) That being said, it is not the major cause for higher fuel prices.

Speculation is the real cause. Investors in the oil futures market are driving up the cost of crude. With the dollar continually losing value, investors are moving to more tangable assets such as oil and gold ($1000 / ounce). Wholesale price for a barrel of oil is somewhere around $70 which translates to something like $2.30 for a gallon of regular unleaded, which interestingly is near the price gas ought to be considering inflation.

“Never in American history has a president been MORE responsible for gas prices.” – Let’s try to quantify that instead of making rash statements. We already know (agree?) that taxes directly affect the cost of fuel, but any executive administration from any party plays only a very small part in the cost, so let’s just assume it’s a wash. As I stated eirlier, the weakening dollar has led speculators to move into oil, thus raising the cost of crude. Okay, here’s the nitty gritty: Can you prove that Bush lowered the value of the dollar? This is a major issue that I will discuss more at my blog in the next few days (transferring hosting services right now, my site will be down up to a week).

Spculation is also being caused by terrorism. The threat of terrorism has cause a so-called “terror premium” on oil. The threat of a pipline, port, refinery. etc. being targeted by terrorists have caused investors to predict that one of these events will happen in the near future causing a short term shortage, therefore huge profits for them. Remember, less than 10% of Americas imported oil comes from the Middle East. However, if any diruption in oil production happens anywhere on the planet, the remaining producers will be stressed beyond capacity and eventually the highest bidder will win. Can you prove Bush is causing speculators to “wish” for a terrorist attack on oil infrastructure?

Lastly, for now, American oil is not currently allowed to be harvested. Many oil producing wells were capped many years ago, still with oil available. New American oil feilds are not allowed to be opened. Canada (#1 oil and refined gas importer to America) gets their oil under the Canadian Rockies in the form of shale oil – Umm, America has Rockies too, I think. Of course there is Alaska too, but we don’t even need to go there. Can you prove that Bush is dissallowing the tapping of American oil feilds?

Oh yeah, I know I said lastly earlier, but I remembered something else as I was finishing up: ETHANOL! My questions are meant to be sincere to you and your commentors. I would just like a little more than Bush is an idiot, or Clinton is an idiot, or whomever. A little more in depth thinking is what I’d like to see. Sorry I took up so much of you blog.

“January, 2009 can’t come soon enough.” – I’m pretty sure no matter who wins the White House, fuel prices won’t come down January 21st (day after inaugration)

Beej: you wouldn’t know a genuine racist if J Wright or Louis capped one in your ass.

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By the way, I’ve added you to my blogroll, and my blog has moved to http://blargen.com/blog/

And I fuckin’ HATE the “drive less or live closer” bullshit argument. That one gets me pissed RIGHT NOW. A little personal history: I took a job in Kewanee, IL in March of 2006, and MOVED TO KEWANEE to be close to work. Less than one year later, the arrogant two-faced jerk that hired me decided to “eliminate the position” of General Manager, and I was on the beach. So I found the closest job I could, and it’s 55 miles away. Keep in mind that we moved to Kewanee and bought a house. If you’ll remember, the bottom has pretty much fallen out of the housing market since March of 2006. Plus, we LIKE our house. Plus, there’s another person living here with a job.

Bottom line, you don’t just snap your f’ing fingers and move. You don’t just snap your fingers and “drive less”. You don’t just snap your fingers and buy a 40-MPG car when you’re still paying on the 25-MPG vehicle. Do without cable? Sure. Do without gas, and right now lots of it? Not so simple, is it? Keep in mind, I’m not taking out anger on you personally, but on your statement. And your statement is ridiculous. Sorry, but it is.

Vonster…if the shoe fits… Maybe you should try a little less racism in your life, and I’ll consider dropping the “bigot” label.

And finally, again to Vonster: Guess how much of a gallon of gas is paid in taxes: The SAME as it was in 2001, when gas was a buck a gallon. Completely moot and irrelevant argument (as usual) on your part. STOP BLAMING TAXES for the price of gas. Taxas has nothing to do with. Being Bush and Cheney’s oil buddies has EVERYTHING to do with it.

I saw the argument the other day that “the president has nothing to do with rising gas prices” right next to an article about how “the unstable nature of the Middle East is driving up oil prices”. Um, duh. Why is there an “unstable nature” in the Middle East anyway? Because George W. Fucking Bush attacked Iraq and it’s oil fields! Jeezus H. How can anyone not see that this administration is DIRECTLY responsible for the gas prices we pay today. Never in American history has a president been MORE responsible for gas prices. Never.

Trade Wars, anyone?