High gas prices=Mormon President

[_BartBurk]

It's a miracle!

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/gop ... our-points

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_ ... cking_poll

[_Brackite]

This News will Not make Kevin Graham happy.

[_Dr. Shades]

[MODERATOR NOTE: BartBurk, please start all threads that concern Romney only--and not Mormonism itself per se--in the Off-Topic Forum.

Thank you.]

[_Kevin Graham]

This News will Not make Kevin Graham happy.

Why do you say that? I think it is hilarious that after four years of Obama, the Republicans cannot find a non-phony candidate who could stand up to him and mop the floors with him as expected. I mean isn't that what we were told two years ago when the country elected a swarm of Tea Party morons to Congress? That Obama doesn't stand a chance in hell in 2012 because Americans have seen the light and refuse to tolerate more of Obama?

Polls this close mean nothing, especially when they concede a 4% margin of error. In any event, it is the electoral college map that is most significant, and even the Conservative National Review admits that Obama still has the edge over Romney.

Oh, and gas prices have nothing to do with who is President. That is the big lie that Republicans like to propagate. Those in the know, understand that Wall Street oil speculation is behind rising gas prices.

Opportunistic billionaires like the Koch brothers "bet" on oil now that they are, thanks to increased regulation, less likely to profit from derivatives. They park giant oil tankers off our coast, filled with oil they never plan to use, just to tilt the supply scale. They do this to drive up prices so they can then turn around and sell it for massive profits. So what we need now is more regulation over these people making huge amounts of profits at our expense. It has become the American way. But what's truly sad is the way they've managed to fund a propaganda campaign to convince a growing number of idiots (Loran!) that this is all in their best interests.

[_Droopy]

Oh, and gas prices have nothing to do with who is President. That is the big lie that Republicans like to propagate. Those in the know, understand that Wall Street oil speculation is behind rising gas prices.

Actually, speculation has little to do with domestic gas prices. In the first place, some 54% of each gallon of gas at the pump is pure tax. Secondly, the reasons we have reached gas prices of this magnitude is because we haven't brought any new petroleum refining capacity online for over thirty years and drilling, both onshore and in shallow waters has been severely prohibited since the late seventies. Our indigenous petroleum drilling and refining industry is a shadow of its former self. The effect of speculation on gas prices, if having any effect at all, would only effect the price over the short term and in a marginal way. In a competitive market, a business has to unload its inventories sooner or later, and the laws of supply and demand control the both the price of oil and the behavior of oil speculators far more than do the speculators particular whims, whatever they may actually be.

There appears to be little empirical evidence, at any rate, that speculation is a salient feature of the present gas price increases:

http://www.forbes.com/2011/04/19/oil-fu ... print.html

Please forget Graham's pop Marxist populist class war fluff. He doesn't understand the subject or the principles involved, and what are apparently the primary sources of his opinions, the Daily Kos, MoveOn.org, Media Matters for America, the Workers World, and Rachel Maddow, are among the key epicenters for the continuing dumbing down and Morlockification of America.

Another problem is the bizarre and irrational continuance of Obama's illegal drilling moratorium, a mindless politically motivated war again American oil companies that have already directly or indirectly cost at least 19,000 jobs and pushed one oil company (Seahawk Drilling) into bankruptcy.

Another major reason is the ever increasing demand in China and India, as the economies of these nations continue to grow as ours shrinks due to purely artificial conditions created primarily by the political class and government bureaucrats.


Think for yourself, think often, and think well.

[_Brackite]

The Following News Opinion Article is from CNN:

Will high gas price be Obama's Achilles' heel?

By Ford C. O'Connell, Special to CNN
updated 7:49 PM EDT, Wed March 21, 2012

...

(CNN) -- Thanks to the circular firing squad nature of the 2012 Republican presidential primaries, it had begun to look as if President Obama would coast to re-election in November.

But then came along high gas prices. The recent dramatic increase in gas prices could become the issue that slows the economy, stalls the recovery and sinks the president's chances at a second term.

As a Republican who recognizes President Obama's great skill as campaigner-in-chief, I'm shocked he has handled the issue so poorly. Even most of those who agree presidents can't do much to lower gas prices acknowledge they must be perceived as doing everything they can to ease the suffering. Sixty-five percent of Americans tell pollsters they disapprove of the president's handling of gas prices.

Average gas prices have reached $3.87 nationwide, the highest ever recorded in March. The prices are expected to go even higher as the summer driving season arrives. If President Obama can't change the perception that he can't do anything about it, he could find himself pumping his own gas after November.

The international markets are unlikely to save him, given the current unrest in the Middle East and rising demand in China, India and elsewhere.

Popular opinion -- and the U.S. economy -- could take a strong turn against him if the situation is not rectified by summer. Americans will not appreciate paying $5 per gallon or more on their vacations. Those in the battleground states of Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Nevada and Colorado could be particularly annoyed.

...

(HyperLink:)



The State of Nevada is an important swing State this coming Presidential election. In 2008, Barack Obama won in the State of Nevada by as much as 12.5 percentage points. Now the State of Nevada has gas prices averaging as high as $3.96 a gallon, and has an unemployment rate that is as high as 12.7%. Nevada also has a large Mormon voter population. Now Nevada has six electoral votes, up from five electoral votes from last decade. I bet that Mitt Romney will beat Barack Obama in the State of Nevada this coming Presidential election in November. The high gas prices very well could end us up indeed getting a Mormon President.

[_Kevin Graham]

Ford C. O'Connell is a Republican strategist and a moron.

Nuff said.

I have yet to hear a single idea coming from the Republicans that would effectively reduce gas prices. Anything the President could do would be interpreted as Socialism. For instance, if he were to take measures to crack down on excessive speculation, which is the primary cause of the price spike, then he would be attacked as a Socialist who hates the free market.

The only thing the idiots on the Right have argued is to drill more on American soil, which we already know won't do anything to ease prices at the pump.

[_Kevin Graham]

How the Koch Brothers help fuel the rise is gas prices.

In April, ThinkProgress caused a stir when we uncovered a series of Koch Industries corporate documents revealing the company’s role as an oil speculator. Like many oil companies, Koch uses legitimate hedging products to create price stability. However, the documents reveal that Koch is also participating in the unregulated derivatives markets as a financial player, buying and selling speculative products that are increasingly contributing to the skyrocketing price of oil. Excessive energy speculation today is at its highest levels ever, and even Goldman Sachs now admits that at least $27 of the price of crude oil is a result from reckless speculation rather than market fundamentals of supply and demand. Many experts interviewed by ThinkProgress argue that the figure is far higher, and out of control speculation has doubled the current price of crude oil.

Reached for information about its trading division, Koch Industries — America’s second largest private company — declined our request for comment.

Writing on his political blog, an attorney working for Koch’s law firm angrily replied to our initial investigation by claiming that Koch is solely a bonafide hedger, meaning that it only participates in speculative markets to reduce risk for the oil the company refines (he also bizarrely argued that speculation has no relation to the price of oil). The spin obscures reality: much of Koch’s oil trading business is actually akin to a hedge fund, buying and selling financial products based on oil with little interest in the actual delivery of the product. In fact, Koch pioneered the risky speculation industry that dominates the world’s oil markets today, first by inventing oil derivatives back in the ’80s, then by working to kill off regulations. ThinkProgress has delved into the history of Koch’s oil speculation business and the following timeline spells out Koch’s leading role:

– October 6, 1986: First oil derivative is introduced to Wall Street by traders at Koch. Koch Industries executive Lawrence Kitchen devised the “first ever oil-indexed price swap between Koch Industries and Chase Manhattan Bank.” At the time, such derivatives had been limited to currency markets, and the shift of creating a synthetic financial instrument based on the value of crude oil was revolutionary. For an agreed-upon period, an oil swap is a contract where one party makes payments based on a fixed oil price, and the other party makes payments back based on the changing spot price of oil. In July of 2009, EnergyRisk magazine, a publication for commodity traders, posted a piece exploring the very first oil derivatives and Koch’s role in developing them.

– 1990-1992: Koch, along with several oil companies and Wall Street speculators, form a coalition lobbying group to deregulate oil speculation. A coalition called “The Energy Group” is organized to press the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to allow oil derivatives to be traded off the NYMEX or any other regulated exchange. Participants in the coalition include Koch, Enron, Phibro (a powerful commodity speculator firm recently sold from Citigroup to Occidental Petroleum), J. Aron & Co (a commodity trading division of Goldman Sachs), BP, and other companies.

– January 21, 1993. Wendy Gramm makes first major move to deregulate oil speculation. “On the final day of the [George H.W.] Bush administration, January 21, 1993, [CFTC chairwoman] Wendy Gramm … approved the rule exempting key energy futures contracts from government regulation and returned a great chunk of the energy market to the grand old days of unregulated futures trading,” writes author Antonia Juhasz in the book Tyranny of Oil. The move mirrored the demands made by Koch’s lobbying coalition, The Energy Group. Gramm, the wife of then-Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX), leaves the Commodity Futues Trading Commission and a month later joins the board of directors of Enron.

– 1997: Koch continues to shift from oil refining and pipelines to financial products. As Koch continues its embrace of selling exotic financial products, the company pioneers the first “weather derivatives,” essentially insurance policies sold to utility companies that bet on future temperature and weather patterns. Although Enron and Koch were the first to develop such financial products, hedge funds and investment banks like Goldman Sachs later expand the weather derivative business globally.

– December 12, 2000: Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX), after being lobbied by Koch and Enron, creates the infamous “Enron Loophole” vastly deregulating the oil speculation market. On the night of December 12, 2000, Gramm attaches a 262-page amendment to the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, which is then attached to an omnibus spending bill that is signed into law by President Clinton before leaving office. The Gramm amendment, which received absolutely no public scrutiny or committee hearings, radically expands and codifies the energy deregulation agenda began by Gramm’s wife during the first Bush administration. The Gramm amendment allows so-called “over-the-counter” energy derivatives not only to be traded outside of regulated exchanges, but for private unregulated exchanges to deal in these sorts of financial products. Thus, massive “dark” oil speculation markets are born, including Enron’s platform for trading energy futures, and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) — an online speculation exchange founded by BP, Shell, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and other firms. Private e-mails reported by the New York Times reveal that members of The Energy Group, led by lobbyists at Enron but including at least two lobbyists from Koch and several more from Goldman Sachs and Sempra Trading, wrote Gramm’s amendment and pressured him to slip it into the bill.

– 2008: Rampant oil speculation spikes prices to unprecedented levels. As academics from the Peterson Institute, the James Baker Institute at Rice University, and others conclude, non-commercial speculators begin to dominate the market, forcing up prices. Although the evidence was abundant that speculators caused the massive price spikes during the summer of 2008, regulators were toothless to act. A bipartisan majority in the House overwhelmingly passed legislation to award powers to the CFTC to oversee rampant oil speculation, but Republican in the Senate — acting with help from Koch lobbyists — killed the bill, called the Energy Markets Emergency Act.

– 2009: Koch presentation to ICE boasts that Koch is on the level of transnational big banks and can now be considered one of the world’s top five oil speculators. The presentation, and our analysis, can be found here. Of course, Koch is not the only large corporation engaged in this practice. Large investors, like pension funds, hedge funds, investment banks, and others flocked to the commodities market after the financial crisis of 2008 and the collapse of mortgage-backed securities.

– 2010: Koch’s Tea Party front groups and lobbyists fight financial reforms designed to reign in the unregulated energy market. While Americans for Prosperity, as well as other Koch fronts, decry the Wall Street reform bill debated in Congress, Koch lobbied to water-down provisions of the bill related to derivatives. The sweeping Dodd-Frank reform bill contained broad new powers for the CFTC to crack down on excessive oil speculation, while also requiring that derivative are eventually traded on a regulated and open exchange.

– 2011: As oil speculation again hits record highs, leading to record high oil prices, Koch’s allies in Congress fight to undermine new reforms and allow unchecked speculation to spiral out of control. As ThinkProgress has reported, oil speculation is currently at a record level, which experts, and even many Republicans now agree, is causing pain at the pump. After a furious lobbying campaign, the CFTC postpones Dodd-Frank mandated regulations on excessive oil speculation, known as position limits. As the CFTC grapples with how to implement these new rules, newly elected Republicans, many with Koch-backing, propose steep cuts to the CFTC to undercut any rules on oil speculation.

Charles Koch, the CEO of Koch Industries who is worth a reported $22 billion, likes to call his business an example of something he describes as the “Science of Liberty.” In reality, his company’s deregulation crusade has contributed to rolling blackouts, consolidation and monopolies in financial markets, and economy-wrecking oil price spikes. In comments to the CFTC, the reform-minded nonprofit Better Markets noted that, “the history of these markets is a history of anti-competitive, self-interested, predatory conduct that serves the interest of the exclusive few at the expense of the many and the system as a whole.”

After working furiously to unleash oil speculators like Koch and Enron, the Gramm family was rewarded with plum jobs, including spots on corporate boards and placements at speculator-funded think tanks. Wendy Gramm still holds a position at the Koch-funded Mercatus Center at George Mason University, although she hasn’t authored a paper in years. While the Gramm family has faded somewhat from the public eye, their actions have radically changed the global economy. Since the Koch-Gramm-Enron deregulation bonanza, non-commercial oil speculators have flooded the market and increased the price volatility of oil in leaps and bounds, hurting consumers and businesses across the globe while making a small set of oil barons and financial giants very rich.

A McClatchy investigation found: “Prior to the 1990s, speculators made up about 30 percent of the futures market. In the latest reporting period, the ratio on May 3 stood at 68 percent speculators to 32 percent users of oil.” The following chart illustrates the dramatic changes in the oil speculation market following the Koch-prescribed deregulation campaign, and how non-commercial speculators have pushed the price of oil higher and higher:



Michael Greenberger, a former top staffer the CFTC, explained to me that a common misperception is that oil companies are only bonafide hedgers, meaning they only participate in the futures market to lock-in prices for delivery of their product. With the exception of ExxonMobil, which has explicitly stated that it does not engage in speculation, all the major oil companies (Shell, BP, Occidental, etc) operate like Wall Street investment banks and use their privileged position in the oil market to make speculative bets on the price of oil. And as the unregulated oil market has grown, investment banks like JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley have become more like oil companies, buying tankers, pipelines, oil containers, and other physical assets to give them an edge while betting on oil. The Koch contango strategy detailed by ThinkProgress is not limited to Koch Industries either — Shell for instance is known for buying up cheap oil, storing it in tankers, and betting on future prices as they reserve the oil from the market.

Tyson Slocum, an expert on oil speculation at Public Citizen, has called Koch one of the worst actors when it comes to oil speculation. Koch, Slocum explained in an interview with ThinkProgress, is unique because of its status as a political powerhouse as well as a speculator with operations all over the world.

[_Kevin Graham]

20 Experts Who Say Drilling Won't Lower Gas Prices

In a pretty impressive act of journalism, the Associated Press recently conducted a "statistical analysis of 36 years of monthly, inflation-adjusted gasoline prices and U.S. domestic oil production." The result: "No statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump." It's neat to see math cut through the talking points and get straight to the truth of the matter -- which is that expanding drilling is a fundamentally ineffectual response to gas price spikes.

Given that changes in U.S. oil production don't move gasoline prices, it should be clear that U.S. government policies related to drilling are of even smaller consequence. Indeed, 92 percent of economists surveyed by the Chicago Booth School of Business agreed this week that "changes in U.S. gasoline prices over the past 10 years have predominantly been due to market factors rather than U.S. federal economic or energy policies."

Still not convinced? How about another 20 economists and analysts from across the political spectrum who will tell you the same thing:

Ken Green, American Enterprise Institute, "If the U.S. produced more of its own oil, it would probably reduce imports, but it's not likely that it would reduce prices ... We probably cannot produce so much oil to exert downward pressure on prices compared to the world market."

Peter Van Doren and Jerry Taylor, Cato Institute: "Sure, more domestic oil creates the possibility of fewer refined imports tied to the price of Brent crude, but given that the price of Brent sets the price for crude generally, the result would be more profit for domestic crude producers rather than significantly lower gasoline prices for Americans (not that there's anything wrong with that)."
Doug Holtz-Eakin, American Action Forum: "Domestic action to increase production will not lower gas prices set on a global market."

Christopher Knittel, MIT economist: "There are not many markets where the United States can't impose its will on market outcomes ... This is one we can't, and it's hard for the average American to understand that and it's easy for politicians to feed off that."

Pinelopi Goldberg, Yale economist: "US domestic policy has only tiny effect on the world price of oil. US foreign policy is probably more relevant than energy policy."

Steve Koonin, Institute for Defense Analyses: "When you hear the international oil companies advocating for energy independence, it's really about making money, which isn't a bad thing ... If they produce a million more barrels a day, they're not going to change the global price much. And since they know the global price is going up, they'll just make more money. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't solve the price problem or the greenhouse gas problem."

Michael Levi, Council on Foreign Relations: "The amount of oil you produce at home doesn't affect the price ... You can lower your vulnerability to price by lowering your consumption of oil, but not by increasing your production."

Severin Borenstein, UC Berkeley economist: "Producing more oil domestically will enrich the U.S. economy, particularly U.S. oil companies and their workers. With oil so valuable, it may be a good idea, though the value must be weighed against environmental consequences. But it will have no discernible impact on gas prices, because it will change the world's supply/demand balance for oil by less than 2 or 3 percent over a decade or more."

David Peterson, Duke statistician: "U.S. production and demand have little to do with the price of gasoline in the U.S."

Edward Melnick, NYU statistician: When U.S. production goes up, the price of gas "is certainly not going down ... The data does not suggest that whatsoever."

David Sandalow, former Brookings fellow: "Drilling offshore to lower oil prices is like walking an extra 20 feet per day to lose weight. ... It's just not going to make much of a difference."

Tom Kloza, Oil Price Information Service: "This drill drill drill thing is tired ... It's a simplistic way of looking for a solution that doesn't exist."

Richard Newell, former Administrator of Energy Information Administration: "We do not project additional volumes of oil that could flow from greater access to oil resources on Federal lands to have a large impact on prices given the globally integrated nature of the world oil market."

Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research: "There is almost no disagreement among economists that drilling everywhere all the time offshore will have almost no impact on the price of gas in the United States. The reason is that we have a world market for oil. The additional oil that might come from offshore drilling is a drop in the bucket in a world oil market of almost 90 million barrels a day."

Lou Crandall, Wrightson ICAP LLC: "Higher oil prices today are a global phenomenon, and the additional supply from increased drilling by the U.S. would not alter the global balance of supply and demand greatly. Gasoline prices at the pump would be higher either way. The only difference is that a somewhat larger share of the revenue would accrue to domestic interests (governmental and private) rather than to foreign suppliers."

Paul Bledsoe, Bipartisan Policy Center: "The notion that somehow we can produce so much domestically that we will move the global price is incorrect."

Tom O'Donnell, The New School: "The amount of extra oil that the U.S. would produce, as far as affecting the world price of oil, is almost insignificant."'

Deborah Gordon, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: "We can drill doggedly in our own backyards, but the price of gasoline will remain more a matter of speculation over externally-driven factors than tapping new sources of oil at home."

Joseph Dukert, energy analyst: "Americans tend to exaggerate the price effects of fluctuations in domestic production in relation to the total amount of oil in global trade. On the larger stage, the perception of geopolitical risks is more important."

Phyllis Martin, Energy Information Administration: "In 2009, the U.S. produced about 7 percent of what was produced in the entire world, so increasing the oil production in the U.S. is not going to make much of a difference in world markets and world prices ... It just gets lost. It's not that much."

Even Fox's John Stossel acknowledged recently that U.S. energy policy "doesn't make that much of a difference" on gas prices, contrary to what others at Fox News are claiming.

There's simply no excuse for political reporters to tolerate, let alone advance claims that more U.S. oil production will meaningfully address our gas price woes. (Here's a taste, from the past week alone, of the type of he-said/she-said reporting that is just not cutting it: CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today.) This is crucially important because once we understand that the U.S. is incapable of holding down the price of gasoline, we can start looking seriously at the options we do have to make ourselves less vulnerable to these inevitable price spikes.

[_Kevin Graham]

Gasoline Prices In Canada Have Followed Same Trend As U.S. The following chart shows that gasoline price trends are basically the same in Canada as in the U.S., underscoring the fact that prices are driven by the world oil market and not by Obama's policies. The difference between the two lines reflects the fact that the U.S. has relatively low gas taxes.




Analysts: Speculation, Refinery Closures Currently Pushing Up Prices. From a February 14 Bloomberg Businessweek report:

Strangely, the current run-up in prices comes despite sinking demand in the U.S. "Petrol demand is as low as it's been since April 1997," says Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service. "People are properly puzzled by the fact that we're using less gas than we have in years, yet we're paying more."

Kloza believes much of the increase is due to speculative money that's flowed into gasoline futures contracts since the beginning of the year, mostly from hedge funds and large money managers. "We've seen about $11 billion of speculative money come in on the long side of gas futures," he says. "Each of the last three weeks we've seen a record net long position being taken."

Refineries have also been getting squeezed by higher crude prices over the past several months, forcing some of them to shut down rather than operate at a loss, says [equity analyst Jason] Stevens. " [Bloomberg Businessweek, 2/14/12]

Number Of Oil Rigs In Operation In The U.S. Now Highest On Record. From the Energy Information Administration:



AP: "The Data Certainly Make It Harder For Republicans" To Back Up Their Claims About Obama's Energy Policies. From an Associated Press fact check:

From the presidential campaign trail to Congress, Republicans have been hammering Obama for locking up the nation's energy resources. GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney, for one, accuses Obama of pursuing policies "that keep us from using our own energy."

But such complaints don't hold up. The U.S. produced more oil in 2010 than it has since 2003, and all forms of energy production have increased.

[...]

In speeches and his first campaign ad, Obama also points to the nation's reduced dependence on foreign oil. But the energy information agency says that the decline began in 2005 and comes from a variety of factors -- among them the recession, high gas prices that dampened driving and changes in efficiency and consumer behavior that pre-date the Obama administration.

Even if Obama's policies aren't the cause for these trends, the data certainly make it harder for Republicans - and the oil and gas industry - to substantiate their claim that his policies have dampened energy production. [Associated Press, 2/6/12]

Oil Expert: "The Oil Industry Has Been Able To Convince People There Is A Connection Between U.S. Drilling And Prices." From a January 2011 Greenwire article:

If gas prices keep increasing, Republicans probably will make a push on increased fossil fuel production, said Ken Green, resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute think tank.

[...]

But experts disagreed about how much impact additional drilling could have. Crude oil is a global commodity, Green said.

"The world price is the world price," Green said. "Even if we were producing 100 percent of our oil," he said, if prices increase because of a shortage in China or India, "our price would go up to the same thing.

"We probably couldn't produce enough to affect the world price of oil," Green added. "People don't understand that."

U.S. production could be negated by decisions that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries makes, said Philip Verleger Jr., energy economist, and David Mitchell EnCana, professor of management, at the University of Calgary's business school.

"Suppose the U.S. were to boost production 1 million barrels a day," Verleger said. "OPEC has the capacity to cut 1 million barrels."

The oil industry has been able to convince people there is a connection between U.S. drilling and prices, Verleger said. [Greenwire via NYTimes.com, 1/4/11]