Comments on: Newt: There Are 3 Ways to Lower Oil Prices

By: Mike D.

Mike D. — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:40:21 +0000

Darryl, the Republican party feels the pain of days-old balls of fetal stem-cells, hedge fund managers suffering under a 15% capital gains tax burden, and biology teachers unjustly prevented from teaching Creationism as a viable alternative to the scientific method.

I would consider this the height of imaginative empathy.

By: Daryl Scroggins

Daryl Scroggins — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:01:00 +0000

A parallel to this wishy-washiness of the free marketers is the herd of republicans who have been trained to hold out for “less government”–but are the first to scream “Somebody do something!” when disaster strikes. I’m sick of people who can only see the real impact of deprivation and calamity when it happens to them. It is a failure of imagination that causes this, among other things. There is no morality where there is no capacity to imaginatively–and accurately–empathize.

By: Cooper Renner

Cooper Renner — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:44:01 +0000

Another problem is that Newt Gingrich is exactly the wrong messenger for this message, unless he first does a public volte-face (did I spell that correctly?) and owns up to how he and his beloved political party deliberately helped to create this mess.

By: Mike D.

Mike D. — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:59:04 +0000

I’m with you, Jeff, regarding speculation: there’s no doubt that the market has gone apeshit crazy over the past few years, and a huge part of the price increase is psychological. The market, for whatever reason, thinks prices are going higher. Some of this is greedy speculators rubbing their hands and twirling their waxed mustaches (facetious, I know, but I really mean that), but some of it is businesses hedging against higher costs that they correctly predicted. One of the reasons Southwest has been so successful over the past couple years is they bought heavily into oil futures as the market began to rise. Their speculation meant my $74 fare from Orlando to NYC last month.

(This is, of course, dangerously similar to the Wal-Mart Argument: our globalization is your $24 DVD player. Higher prices hurt. I feel terrible that people are struggling with heating costs, that for many families it’s gas-or-healthcare. Or tuition.)

Thing is: get me drunk at a party, and eventually you’ll find me lecturing someone on my cause celebre, urban planning. America has been built around cheap oil for the past 50 years, and the result has been suburban sprawl, strip malls, social alienation, destruction of the commons, and…hey, where are you going? Let me get another beer, and I’ll tell you how walkable cities are the future!

By: Sheila Ryan

Sheila Ryan — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:10:30 +0000

Jeff, your point about speculation is especially well-taken. That market forces should within the span of eighteen months produce such radical changes — no, I think not. “I did not just fall off the turnip truck.”

And: I was (virtually) a grown-up in 1973, when the world changed forever, and you’re spot-on about the amnesia that dates back to 1974.

By: Jeff Ventura

Jeff Ventura — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:41:14 +0000

Mike, I actually agree with you on some levels. I have the same argument when it comes to Detroit’s Big 3. The “Buy American!” rhetoric is alive and well in Michigan, and I, for one, find it ironic that when the capitalist free markets start benefiting a foreign company’s coffers, suddenly our consumption motive becomes patriotism, not buying the best product a competitive market yields.

The oil, however, would be different because it’s not about being competitive. It’s not that the markets are working as designed and we’re being out-competed. There’s tons of inside market speculation, and nobody in his right mind thinks our president — an oil man — isn’t benefiting from this in some way. It’s time to do what we’ve never been able to do: tell OPEC to fuck off. Introducing supply into the markets is good to make a statement and help endless Americans who are in dire straights right now. But — and this is a big but — we cannot get lazy and just go back to our ’standard American life’ when oil prices ease. We have to remember this lesson and find new energy sources. We forgot our lesson in 1974, and we can’t do it again.

By: Cindy Scroggins

Cindy Scroggins — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:36:47 +0000

Mike D, you need to be brought into the flock. I’ll begin working my magic.

By: Mike D.

Mike D. — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:39:50 +0000

It’s endlessly entertaining how the those on the right are the first to dump the “free market” when it starts working against their interests. Dump the strategic petroleum reserve to “punish speculators,” huh. Could we also invalidate some essential drug patents to punish GlaxoSmithKline and help the developing world? Maybe cut cut federal subsidies on cotton production to punish large agribusiness and support the small farmers they harp on about at length? Guys?

By: TJ McFisty

TJ McFisty — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:59:56 +0000

Totally read the RSS too fast…read “I think Newt Gingrich makes some solid man points”. Like, hell yeah, Newt did! Grrr…he’s a real he-man with the oil.

Then I re-read it. Oh. Oops. Carry on.