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Somehow I doubt you'd love David Duke for firebrand statements alone so I doubt that is literally true. But at least she does say whatever she is thinking.
But if it is a conspiracy then why is Citco's gas so expensive too? Surely Bush and Hugo Chavez haven't come to a secret pact?
Why do people have such a problem accepting two things:
1) There are market effects that will at times cause increases in the cost of gasoline and heating oil and at other times cause a decrease in cost (such as through most of the '80s and early '90s).
2) There are market-distorting effects (such as Balkanization of blends, regulatory shifts, and taxation) that will almost always simply increase the cost of gas and heating oil.
When #1 and #2 are both creating increases then prices will go up quickly, particularly in speculative spot markets.
I have no particular problem with the idea that someone is gaming the system but so far haven't really seen anybody point to anything real other than simply crying "it costs a lot and those guys are getting rich!" The possibility that we have entered into oligopolistic pricing should be considered and if necessary break up the ownership a bit. But on the surface this doesn't look like it would have much effect since the commodity is already being sold in an open market and not at prices set by the producers. The same forces that appear to be causing this uptick and making oilmen rich are the same ones that made a ghost town of Houston in the early '80s, they're just moving in the other direction now.
I still haven't seen any of the Democrats calling for Bush's head on this provide an answer for how they would have prevented this or fix it. There was the one congresswoman this morning saying "Mr. President where is all the Iraqi oil you promised us!" I wonder what happened to no war for oil.
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