It certainly has been an unexpected first three months of the year so far. A senseless war in Ukraine with conservatives cheering on the wrong side for a great while, rising gas prices – while refusing to blame the robber barons of the oil companies, and the stock market getting schwacked by those two things as mentioned earlier – even though corporate profits are through the roof.
In other words, it’s just another day in teabagger’s paradise.
Here is the thing about the gas price issue.
Too many folks refuse to understand how an interconnected global market works……..Saying “just restart the pipelines” is stupid, and it makes you out to be an idiot. It’s a false equivalency.
For one thing- there are plenty of available leases that oil companies have yet to exercise options on. Second, even if you granted permission for Keystone XL, today, it would be eight years before oil flows through it, and all of that oil was for export anyway. Third, unlike other nations, the U.S. government does not control the production or refining capacity. The federal government does not claim any right to oil or gas under private land. It has no policy tool to increase or decrease drilling quickly.
During the first half of the 20th century, when America indeed dominated the global oil industry, one government in the United States was able to set prices at the global level in the same way that the OPEC Plus cartel does today. But this happened, remarkably, at the state level. The Texas Railroad Commission opened and closed the state’s formidable taps. Texas’s easy-to-reach resources have since dried up, so the commission no longer plays its price-setting role.
Now Texas oil comes from modern horizontal fracking wells, which take six to eight months to produce their first drop of oil. That means, under the U.S. oil industry as it exists today, there is no way to spin up new oil production in a few weeks or months. But more important, it means that U.S. oil companies have developed the opposite of independence. Since Congress lifted the ban on oil exports in 2015, all American-drilled oil and some natural gas have been priced on the international market. As a result, global market forces, not our abundance of domestic fossil fuels, set the price of oil and gasoline in the United States. Furthermore, thanks to our Galtian overlords, those who do produce oil are terrified of pissing off their investors, who are more worried about stock prices and bonuses, than they are the plight of the average American Companies are so concerned about shanking their investors that they have barely drilled new wells as prices have climbed (Last week, as Russian oil fell off the global market, the number of fracking wells in theU.S.. actually went down.) The country’s biggest shale company declared last year that no fracking company would drill a new well even if the oil price went above $100 a barrel—which it has “all the shareholders that I’ve talked to said that if anybody goes back to growth, they will punish those companies,” said Scott Sheffield.
Market dynamics, not overzealous regulations, have imprisoned the industry.
Glad we got that out of the way.
So you can stop whining and ride the bus now.
And while you are on that bus you can read about the other great threat to the Republic, namely the rise of fascists in our local and state governments who are in a race to the bottom to pass unconstitutional laws to inflict maximum pain on the citizens of this country. Fred Wellman has documented it in a Twitter thread that is well worth your time to read.
QUOTED TEXT FOLLOWS:
A rant: I have to admit I’ve been really angry the last 2 weeks Seeing the fight for Ukraine leaves me hungry to do more, but the rage comes from what is happening right here In state after state, the fascist wing of the Republican Party is passing absolutely horrifying laws.
In Florida, there is the ‘Don’t say Gay’ law, election police, a Surgeon General fighting against basic pandemic fighting approaches, and a governor who thinks he’s a dictator. In Idaho, not only are they going to punish parents of transgender kids, but they want to outlaw parents…..leaving the state to get care for their children. In Missouri, they passed the ridiculous ”2nd Amendment Preservation Act” leaving police with no choice but to let any guns be ignored and no longer cooperating with Federal agencies while Christian extremists have introduced a new version of the Texas bounty law that will let people sue families that cross state lines for abortions. The same lawmaker introduced a law forbidding schools from imposing mask mandates because…you know ”freedom.” This after the AG and Treasurer have used their offices purely for their subsequent campaigns to punish school districts just trying to keep kids safe and pissed away millions of taxpayer dollars while the legislature looks the other way. Texas…holy shit…Texas leadership is fucking insane with an AG under Federal investigation twisting the laws to attack transgender kids’ families and a Governor so desperate to stay in power they have basically eliminated absentee voting. All of this is being duplicated across the 30+ states with GOP-controlled legislatures like a wave.
And nothing is stopping them. The Democratic Party is so far up their asses that party members are literally offering two or three different versions of the State of the Union and pissing on each other to prove how righteous they are while the country falls to extremists. This is all part of the same global right-wing extremist march. Just as in the 1930s. People want to forget there were fascist sympathizers in every country. They fought against our involvement in the war. Defended Hitler and called those who opposed communists and warmongers.
Does that sound familiar? It should. History is repeating itself, and you’d have to be asleep not to see yet we are just as impotent and divided as they are. With all the world’s information at our fingertips, we can’t convince people to see what is happening and act.
It’s local folk. In Missouri, the stepson of one of the loudest, most poisonous anti-mask residents, and now a City Council candidate, was outed as a member of Patriot Front after getting caught defacing a mural celebrating famous black Americans.
They’re taking over school boards, city councils, election boards, and a host of others as Steve Bannon cheers them on and gives them support and tips. We are in a fight for our very democracy, and the hubris of “It could never happen here” will be our undoing. It can happen here.
It IS happening here. This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a scream into the void that we need to pay fucking attention to. Get your head out of your asses about culture war bullshit and GOP lies. Fight back at the local level. Out these haters for who they are. Give them no quarter.
A Wellman in my family line has served in nearly every conflict since before we were even a nation. But, unfortunately, this is our country, and it’s in danger while people look away and the powers that should be doing something are happy to ignore it as long as the money keeps flowing.
Get in the fight. If you think living in an autocracy or, even more terrifying, a theocracy will be comfortable or make your pocketbook safer… you’re a fool. Show up. Attend meetings. Protest. Vote. Get in the damn fight before there is nothing left to fight for. Rant complete.
END QUOTED TEXT
He’s right. These people deserve no quarter – nor will they give the reasonable people any. And as I pointed out a couple of years ago, this new set of Boers is deep in their dedication to an authoritarian order.
Several years ago, on one of my many trips to Israel, I visited the town of Zichron Yaacov in Northern Israel. It’s a beautiful place with several excellent restaurants and a winery. It is also home to the Museum of the First Aliyah. I visited it. It tells the story of the first folks to emigrate to Palestine during the period 1882-1904. This was at the beginning of the Zionist movement and during a time of heavy Jewish persecution in both Russia and Eastern Europe. Some 35000 people individually and as families realized that their own countries were becoming inhospitable to them. So they left everything behind and made a treacherous journey of aliyah to a land that did not want them, from a land that was turning them out.
Since 2017, I have thought about that place several times. I fear that moment of decision will approach many of us – but unlike the first pioneers, we have no dream of a new homeland. When the pogroms come, so many of us will have no place to go.
Thus as Mr. Wellman says, we have to fight. Now.