Big Oil blames government for high oil prices

OK, for starters, let's scrap every last free handout for Big Oil tomorrow since taxpayers are supporting billions per year in tax breaks for that industry. Then let's have a deeper look at how Big Oil invests money to destroy climate change initiatives that might have an impact on how Americans view the oil industry. After that we can dig in deeper to look at how Big Oil does their best to eliminate any ideas that might move people away from oil and onto alternative energies.

It's a pity Congress and the White House are so afraid of taking this destructive industry on. Someone needs to step in and end this blamestorming BS.

Shortly after posting first-quarter earnings of nearly $11 billion Thursday, Exxon Mobil (XOM, Fortune 500) issued a defensive statement arguing that it's not to blame for $4 gas. The company put part of the blame for soaring oil and gas prices on the U.S. government.

"For every gallon of gasoline and other products we refined and sold in the United States, we earned about 7 cents," said a statement from Exxon vice president Ken Cohen. "Compare that to the 40 to 60 cents per cents per gallon that went to the government (state and federal) in gasoline taxes."

The industry's top lobbyist also went on the offensive, saying the earnings that these companies reported this week reflect a strong economy and are a boon for investors, including many pension funds.

"The U.S. oil and natural gas industry's strong earnings signal growing strength in our economy," said Jack Gerard, chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute. He said Americans "should be proud" of an industry that supports millions of jobs and provides income for retirees who have shares of profitable oil companies in their retirement accounts.

No, oil is expensive not because of the strength of the economy, but because of the weakness of the US dollar. Read the rest of this post...

US court backs funding for embryonic stem cell research

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/us-court-backs-funding-for-embryonic-stem-cells Read the rest of this post...

Boehner now against ending Big Oil handouts

In other words, he got the call and knew where his bread was buttered. Only the GOP could defend the indefensible like this. What a spineless coward.

As the country's largest oil companies report near-record profits, the office of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) rejected on Thursday Democratic calls to consider legislation eliminating billions of dollars in tax breaks for the same corporations.

“The Speaker wants to increase the supply of American energy to lower gas prices and create millions of American jobs," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said in an email. "Raising taxes will not do that."

Boehner said on Monday that oil companies should pay their fair share of taxes and that the industry did not need at least one of the subsidies Democrats want to terminate. But he started walking those comments back in the same interview, and his spokesman’s statement continued the rearguard action.

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Report: Trump avoided Vietnam thanks to multiple deferments

His odd tirade about a CNN poll that doesn't exist was suspicious but now it seems that his story about having a high draft number was not true. Like others born with a silver spoon in their mouth, he skipped past his military service thanks to deferment after deferment. Trump continues to struggle with the truth, but that's not really a problem with the GOP. Sounds like yet another GOP Chickenhawk.

During a TV interview Tuesday morning, Trump--who spent his high school years enrolled at the New York Military Academy--said, “I actually got lucky because I had a very high draft number. I’ll never forget, that was an amazing period of time in my life.”

He went on to recall, “I was going to the Wharton School of Finance, and I was watching as they did the draft numbers and I got a very, very high number and those numbers never got up to.” The word “deferment” was not mentioned by Trump during his chat with the morning show hosts on WNYW, the Fox affiliate in New York City.

However, Selective Service records reveal that Trump, the fortunate son of a multimillionaire real estate baron, took repeated steps to avoid serving in Vietnam.

By the time his number (356) was drawn during the December 1, 1969 draft lottery, Trump had already received four student deferments and a medical deferment, according to military records on file with the National Archives and Records Administration. An extract of Trump’s Selective Classification record, seen here, was provided in response to a TSG records request.

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Mitt Romney's father was born in Mexico, how did he run for President in 1964?

Yes, George Romney was born in the Mormon colonies in Mexico (colonies originally set up to get around those pesky American polygamy laws). So how is it Mr. Romney got to run for president in 1964, not being born in America and all? Read the rest of this post...

They have the royal wedding, we have Schoolhouse Rock

Jake Tapper tweeted this today. I already had it on my iPhone. It's likely my absolute fav of all of the Schoolhouse Rocks. I actually get chills at the end. Guess, in spite of everything, I'm still not a cynic. As for a geek...

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Donald Trump drops the f-bomb, I fear people will like it

This is one of those cases where I think we might just be acting a bit elite expressing shock at Donald Trumps repeated use of the f-word the other day.

First off, it was clearly intentional.  He figured it helped him with that audience, and a larger audience.  And he might be right.  I've heard people back in the Midwest this past week talking about how Trump was standing up to those Arab oil countries, and good for him, they said.  And I can't help admitting, I agreed with him.  Not that we should invade, but that we should tell them they'd better not increase the price of oil.  We saved Kuwait's behind, and Saudi Arabia's.  They owe us, to their dying days.  The least we should have gotten out of the deal was eternally low oil prices for the US.

Let me reiterate: Kuwait would be a province of Saddam Hussein's Iraq right now if we hadn't invaded.  Saddam would have executed the entire Kuwaiti ruling class.  They owe us their literal lives.  And the next stop would have been Saudi Arabia.  I'm not feeling a lot of oil love from either country.

Don't underestimate America's populist leanings.  Trump is clearly playing to them.  And while he's a bit coarse the way he's going about it, and a bit racist at times as well, I think some of it resonates with actual normal people. Read the rest of this post...

Krugman: "The intimidated Fed"

Ben Bernanke, head of the Federal Reserve and Paul Krugman's former boss (as head of the Princeton Economics Dept.), gave a first-ever press conference this week. It did not go well.

Mr. Krugman sets the stage (my emphasis throughout):

Last month more than 14 million Americans were unemployed by the official definition — that is, seeking work but unable to find it. Millions more were stuck in part-time work because they couldn’t find full-time jobs. And we’re not talking about temporary hardship. Long-term unemployment, once rare in this country, has become all too normal: More than four million Americans have been out of work for a year or more.

Given this dismal picture, you might have expected unemployment, and what to do about it, to have been a major focus of Wednesday’s press conference with Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

You might expect that, but you would be wrong. The column does a nice job of detailing the Fed's mandate — low inflation plus low unemployment, a kind of Goldilocks balancing act. The magic numbers are about 2% inflation and about 5% unemployment.

The reality?

Goldilocks has left the building, and shows no sign of returning soon. The Fed’s latest forecasts, unveiled at that press conference, show low inflation and high unemployment for the foreseeable future.

So what has gone wrong? According to Krugman, Ben Bernanke "is allowing himself to be bullied by the inflationistas" — the people who are always seeing hyper-inflation "just around the corner" and are never ever right.

Krugman is right about the consequences: For Bernanke and the Fed to not pull the trigger condemns "millions of Americans to the nightmare of long-term unemployment". His conclusion is merciless:

I’d say that the Fed’s policy is to do nothing about unemployment because Ron Paul is now the chairman of the House subcommittee on monetary policy. ... [S]o much for the future of America’s increasingly desperate jobless.

Farewell Fed independence.

Krugman is becoming increasing desperate himself, looking here and there for a solution, or a solution-supporter. He isn't finding one — no surprise, since neither are we — and is starting to return to his 2003 analysis; that the inflationistas are not sincerely wrong-headed, but insincere revolutionaries who want to tear up the social fabric. Bernanke's just the latest timid national Dem (Correction: figure) to fall on his sword before them.

GP Read the rest of this post...

GOP worried birtherism hurting their 2012 prospects, maybe Obama was right to hold "long form" until now

It's an interesting point. And could even suggesting that by NOT releasing his long form birth certificate until now, the President actually HELPED fuel the crazies by stringing them alone, which only helps convince independent voters that the Republicans are nuts.

I'm not one to give the President much credit for 11th dimensional chess - meaning, every apparent mis-step is really part of his super secret master plan for victory - but on the birther thing, he might be right. Roll Call:

The question of whether President Barack Obama was born on U.S. soil will have zero impact on the 2012 campaign but could significantly damage Republicans’ prospects for retaking the White House if it lingers. That was the consensus analysis of more than a dozen experienced GOP political strategists, consultants and operatives who were interviewed Wednesday within an hour of Obama going on national television to publicly release the long-form version of his birth certificate.

These Republicans were nearly unanimous in their desire to see the issue permanently put to rest because they fear it could make the party seem too extreme.

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Paul Ryan's budget isn't class warfare, it's class genocide

The thirty year long subterranean class warfare of the rich and super-rich against the middle class is entering its final phase – Class Genocide.

Until now, the top 1% has appropriated to itself the benefits of the country’s economic growth, while the middle class stagnated.  While making the tax code more regressive, they wealthy have also cut programs that helped people out of poverty and into the middle class.  In part they rich were enabled by the American middle classes’ dreams of moving up.  Particularly during the booms, entering the top 10% seemed just one stock pick or house flip away for many people, so with a little luck that low-upper bracket could soon be theirs.  Since the first government programs cut  helped move poor people into the middle class, cutting them did not hurt already middle class Americans.  There was always a racial and ethnic component to shutting down entry into the middle class that the politicians subtly played off of.

That was the old class warfare.  It unfolded so slowly that for years it just seemed coincidence that the rich always won and the middle class always lost.  Even then, the middle class was at least running in place and not losing ground, it just wasn’t gaining.  The rich were getting more, but the middle class remained stable and reasonably secure in their ability to remain in the middle class, and they had reasonable confidence that their children and grandchildren would also enjoy middle class status.  That is what made it a class – a status that could be maintained for your lifetime and passed along to your descendants.

Now everything that defined the middle class is being dismantled.  In America, you are middle class if you have a white collar job requiring a college education, or a union blue collar job, own your own home, are secure in retirement and able to pass along at least a little something to your kids.  It’s pretty much what most of us grew up expecting.

With the Ryan budget, and the radical actions Republicans governors are taking in the various states, the GOP is destroying the foundations of middle class security and its ability to ensure that middle class children can become middle class adults.  Starting with the land grant colleges of the nineteenth century, public schools, the GI Bills and student aid, the state and federal governments have built the middle class through access to education.  When I attended the University of California, a world class education cost $750 a quarter in in-state tuition.  My father was the first in his family to attend college and the GI Bill paid for it.  I hesitate to think of the state of education and student aid in ten years, when my kids are ready for college, if Paul Ryan has his way.

The Ryan budget put a fear into me, for the very first time in my life, that in retirement I could go broke from medical bills.  This is a real fear for those of us on the downside of the baby boom who are not grandfathered into Medicare as we know it.  It is also a fear for those in Medicare, or soon to be, because they would be one line of legislation away from being swept into fending for themselves in the insurance market – where insurers will not fall all over themselves to offer good coverage at reasonable prices to eighty-year old diabetic cardiac patients.

It is so much more than the “safety net” that is currently being lost.  The continued fallout from the housing bubble/mortgage crisis is going to end the 30 year mortgage for good.  Along with the bottomless cup of coffee, the 30 year mortgage is one of America’s great contributions to civilization.  The 30 year mortgage exists because of Federal support and regulation.  The 30 year mortgage turned America into a nation of homeowners.  It also turned every home into a piggy bank where each mortgage payment represented a deposit, and this increasing equity provided an emergency fund, a college fund, retirement savings and the ability to pass something along to the next generation.  Think what losing all of that will mean to what we now think of as the middle class.

Without home-ownership, retirement security and college education, what then is left of the middle class?

The effect of all these changes cumulatively ending the middle class as we know it is not an accident.  As they say about software – this is not a bug, but a feature.  In some of my next posts I will look at why changing the nature of America’s class structure (what we lulled ourselves into thinking was a practically classless society because the middle class seemed to embrace almost everyone) is not a byproduct of what is happening, but the purpose of what they are doing.

The cumulative effect of all of these changes is not simply that millions will be moved out of the middle class, it is the end of the middle class as we have known it all of our lives.  There simply will not be a middle class – there will be haves and have not’s.   It will not be the America we want or knew. Read the rest of this post...

More Senate Dems. now tying debt limit vote to deficit reduction

The front page of today's Washington Post informs us that more Senate Democrats are jumping on the GOP's campaign to tie deficit reduction to an increase in the debt ceiling. They all know that playing politics with the debt ceiling could endanger our economic recovery. My guess is that Democrats know Obama will cave and cut a deal. Instead of giving full credit to the GOP, they want some. Just shows how warped our politics have become. And, says a lot about Obama's leadership and and complete lack of negotiating skills:

A growing number of Democrats are threatening to defy the White House over the national debt, joining Republican calls for deficit cuts as a requirement for consenting to lift the country’s borrowing limit.

The tension is the latest illustration of how the tea-party-infused GOP is driving the debate in Washington over federal spending. And it shows how the debt issue is testing the Obama administration’s clout as Democrats, particularly those from politically competitive states, resist White House arguments against setting conditions on legislation to raise the debt ceiling.

The push-back has come in recent days from Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a freshman who is running for reelection next year. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) told constituents during the Easter recess that he would not vote to lift the debt limit without a “real and meaningful commitment to debt reduction.”

Even Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), generally a stalwart White House ally, is undecided on the issue and is “hopeful” that a debt-ceiling bill can be attached to a measure to cut the federal deficit, said her spokesman, Linden Zakula. Klobuchar is also up for reelection next year.

There's no political cost to defying the White House because the White House always gives in. And, most Senate Democrats aren't exactly known for their strong spines either. Read the rest of this post...

Syrian army may be cracking as death toll now over 500

It's still limited, but there's hope that the repression against the people of Syria may not sit well with everyone in the military. Al Jazeera:

Ausama Monajed, a spokesman for a group of opposition figures in Syria and abroad, said clashes among soldiers had occurred since Assad sent the army into Deraa on Monday.

The deployment was a clear escalation in his crackdown on the uprising.

"There are some battalions that refused to open fire on the people," Monajed told The Associated Press news agency, citing witnesses on the ground in Deraa.

"Battalions of the fifth division were protecting people, and returned fire when they were subjected to attacks by the fourth division."

The fourth division is run by the president's brother, Maher al-Assad.

Read the rest of this post...

Bahrain sentences protesters to death

If the US is going to intervene with the military in Libya, maybe they can figure out old style diplomacy and do something about this disgraceful situation. The royals and their torturers and murders need to go now. Al Jazeera:

A Bahraini military court has sentenced four Shia protesters to death and three to life jail terms for the killing of two policemen during demonstrations last month, state media has reported.

Thursday's verdicts are the first related to the uprising against the Gulf kingdom's ruling family, which begain in February.

The seven defendants were tried behind closed doors on charges of premeditated murder of government employees, which their lawyers have denied.

A Shia opposition official named those sentenced to death as Ali Abdullah Hasan, Qasim Hassan Mattar, Saeed Abdul Jalil Saeed, and Abdul Aziz Abdullah Ibrahim.

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Bahrain's former head of "torture service" attending the royal wedding

It's a motley crew all around with this pathetic spectacle. The Guardian:

The former head of an agency accused of torture and human rights abuses is expected to be a guest at Friday's royal wedding, the Guardian has learned.

Sheikh Khalifa Bin Ali al-Khalifa is a former head of Bahrain's National Security Agency (NSA) and will attend the wedding in his role as the current Bahraini ambassador to London.

British sources confirmed he had been invited and a spokesperson for the Bahraini embassy in London said he was expected to attend.

Khalifa was head of the agency from 2005 to 2008. The pressure group Human Rights Watch alleges that in 2007 detainees in Bahrain suffered torture including electric shocks and beatings.

Read the rest of this post...