Uniformity?

In a year that has seen gas prices shooting upward already, a new EPA policy that makes fuel more expensive will not find a warm embrace with the public. Nevertheless, the Obama administration will announce today a new set of emission regulations that will in essence force all 50 states to comply with California’s standards [...]

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Terrific.

It is perfectly true that there are a bunch of factors that together determine the prices we pay at the pump — oil is supplied, bought, and sold in a very global market, after all — and that the federal government doesn’t always have the ability to impact those factors. That said, there are also [...]

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RIN trading

Filed under the “we hate when we turn out to be right” category, domestic energy producers are facing some tough choices in the coming months thanks for a one – two punch of ethanol and government regulations. A combination of the drought this summer wiping out a fair portion of the corn crop and an [...]

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Oof.

I find myself torn. On the one hand, Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell has generally managed to keep Virginia’s head on straight in most matters fiscal and economic since he was elected in 2010, but on the other, this whole thing seems mighty convoluted for what is absotively, posilutely not supposed to be a tax increase. [...]

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33 straight days of increases.

We’re in the middle of a colder-than-usual winter, with record snow storms in the Northeast and average-or-better snowfall in the Midwest.  After last year’s mild winter, temperatures have gotten much frostier in 2013.  Normally, this would lower demand for gasoline and push prices downward.  So why, the Washington Post wonders, have gas prices increased for [...]

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Solutions.

President Obama likes to include ‘infrastructure investment’ as part of the justification for his pushes for new spending, but he often conveniently forgets to mention how we’re supposed to pay for all that infrastructure development when we’re currently racking up trillion-dollar deficits every year — unless you count “asking the wealthy to pay a little [...]

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Seriously

While I was taking a short break from working this morning and fixing some breakfast, my TV was still on in the background, tuned in to MSNBC. The host of Up With Chris Hayes was holding court over a panel discussion on domestic energy issues, so since that’s pretty much my field I had decided [...]

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Er, are we looking at the same nation?

Of course, they’re obviously going to spin any seeming drop in the unemployment rate, no matter how paltry, as a win due to President Obama’s policies (nevermind that the president told us that the unemployment rate would fall below six percent by now with the stimulus), and use it as an excuse to tell Congress [...]

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Ramussen's data confirms.

Mitt Romney has enjoyed surprising strength among seniors — perhaps even more surprisingly after adding entitlement-reform crusader Paul Ryan to the ticket.  Most assume that the argument over raiding Medicare Advantage now to pay for ObamaCare costs later have resonated much more strongly than Democrats expected, and that’s probably true.  Glenn Reynolds argues in a [...]

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Strategery.

Rising gas prices never bode well for incumbents in national elections, and if there’s one thing Team Obama really doesn’t need right now, it’s the hard-felt ramifications of high energy costs that are felt by everybody in every area of the country that penetrate into so many material spheres. They were granted a reprieve after [...]

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Like our gas prices.

Who’d have predicted this? Just about everyone, as Josh Trevino reminded us last night: If only there were some friendly neighboring oil-producing country that we could build a pipeline to: nytimes.com/2012/08/17/bus… — Joshua Treviño (@jstrevino) August 17, 2012 After imposing a drilling moratorium in the Gulf in defiance of a court order, blocking oil exploration [...]

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Warm winter, cool spring?

Did a warm winter steal economic activity from the spring?  The Wall Street Journal’s Marketwatch warns that businesses and consumers may have already spent the cash they would have normally used in Q2.  The hiring boost from December to February may not have indicated any real economic boost, which is why March produced such anemic [...]

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Big surprise.

Barack Obama’s proposal to regulate trading margins in an effort to curb the influence of oil speculators was never really intended to either stabilize or lower gas prices. As AP put it, it was just the Obama campaign’s newest shiny object. His proposal was intended to communicate that he cares about gas prices — and [...]

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And maybe on ObamaCare, too.

Republicans have held two important votes on the Keystone XL pipeline this year, forcing Barack Obama and Democrats to take positions opposed to its construction.  As the elections approach and gas prices keep rising, though, fewer Democrats seem ready to go on record to back Obama.  The most recent vote produced a veto-proof majority in [...]

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More power to the IRS?

Time for another showdown over energy policy.  House Republicans included a provision in the new highway bill extension (five months) that would force the Obama administration to approve the complete construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.  The White House reacted about as well as one would imagine: The White House on Tuesday threatened to veto [...]

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Going after Gas Pump Moms?

Why not hit President Obama where he’s most vulnerable?  American Crossroads will spend $1.7 million in media buys for its new ad, “Too Much,” which hits Barack Obama on the rapid rise in gas prices, and attacks his claim to have been responsible for increased oil production: Politico calls this “the downpayment version” of the [...]

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Suddenly the White House wants to talk Women and the Economy?

For the third year in a row, the White House will host a conference to highlight women’s issues — and to tout all that this administration has supposedly done to advance the welfare of women in society: The White House Council on Women and Girls is hosting the White House Forum on Women and the [...]

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Just great.

The damage is done. Even if President Barack Obama decides to approve the Keystone XL pipeline at some point in the future, he already sent a message to Canada that our northern neighbor can’t rely on us as its only energy customer — and Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper heeded it. In an interview with [...]

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Ad wars.

Remember that gas price ad Barack Obama didn’t want you to see? You saw it anyway — and, thanks to a $3.6 million ad buy by the American Energy Alliance (the group behind the ad), so did viewers in the crucial swing states of Florida, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia. Because [...]

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Steven Chu attended Major League Baseball's opening game

While many Americans were filling up their tanks with $4 gasoline this week, Energy Secretary Steven Chu was enjoying Major League Baseball’s opening game on a taxpayer-funded trip to Tokyo. Taxpayers were also footing the bill for Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson to spend a few days in Paris. What are President Obama’s top [...]

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Ambitions.

President Obama knows the rising price of gasoline — averaging $3.92 per gallon nationwide for regular unleaded — is a huge vulnerability. It prompted his recent energy tour and a White House press conference yesterday. It also explains why the Democratic National Committee reacted so franticly to a new 30-second ad called “Nine Dollar Gas” from [...]

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Missing the mark?

The final report on US economic activity in the fourth quarter of last year puts the GDP annualized growth rate at 3.0%, the same as the first revision.  The BEA also reports that the final GDP figure for the year was 1.7%, barely into stagnation territory: Real gross domestic product — the output of goods [...]

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Cars, anyway.

It’s difficult to know whether this is a bug or a feature in Barack Obama’s energy policies. One might expect that voters would get angry over having to choose between the freedom of personal transportation and the economy of public transportation, but then again, this is the same administration that hired Stephen “Let’s push gas [...]

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Up, down, all around.

A slew of polls hit the wires today, most of which make no sense when compared with each other, and most of which don’t have the necessary sample data to analyze properly.  That doesn’t mean we should ignore them, but let’s consider them as a group rather than individually. First up, and probably the best [...]

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Coincidentally ... gas prices will be going up!

This morning, we have two videos to show you.  They are completely unrelated.  Totally, fully, and undoubtedly unrelated.  First, via the Right Scoop, Fox News takes a look at the rate of issuance for drilling permits on federal land over the last five years, and discovers that, to no one’s great surprise, the Obama administration [...]

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