Inflation at 2-Year High, As Rising Food, Gas Costs Boost Prices

From: CNSnews.com

Consumers paid more for gas and food in April, pushing inflation to its highest level in two and a half years. But so far this month, inflationary pressures have begun to ease.

The Consumer Price Index increased 0.4 percent in April, the Labor Department said. In the past 12 months, prices have risen 3.2 percent. That's the biggest 12-month gain since October 2008.

Excluding volatile food and energy, prices ticked up 0.2 percent and have risen only 1.3 percent this year. That's double the gain posted six months ago, but still below the level the Federal Reserve considers a healthy pace of inflation.

Oil prices have fallen from their peak of $114 a barrel earlier this month to about $100 Friday. And the price of corn and other grains have also declined in recent days.

JammieWearingFool: Only Takes 394 Years To Break Even On Hybrid Car

This is a great post from Jammie WearingFool. I thought I'd share it with you.It is one more example that pokes a hole in green alternatives.

From: JammieWearingFool: (video provided)

This ain't gonna sit well with the enviro weenies at the EPA. It isn't just this one model but pretty much all hybrids across the board.

It’s Hard Out Here For A Pump

FROM: National Review Online

The administration whose Energy Secretary wants Euro-level gas prices tries feeling your pain:

At a fundraiser in Southern California last week, where pump prices are the highest in the country, Obama acknowledged the political peril of high gas prices. He said, “My poll numbers go up and down depending on the latest crisis, and right now gas prices are weighing heavily on people.”
He tried to show that he feels motorists’ pain. “I admit, Secret Service doesn’t let me fill up the pump anymore,” he said. “But it hasn’t been that long since I did.”

True. He had to pump his own gas when he commuted from the manicured lawns of Hyde Park with its private police force to whichever decrepit part of town two miles away he was “community-organizing” in. The Post’s reporters, Steven Mufson and Jon Cohen, neatly illustrate the “stubborn nature” of J-school reporting on this issue and “the difficulty of weaning” the media “off its dependence” on lazy tropes:

The poll also shows the stubborn nature of gasoline consumption and the difficulty of weaning the country off its dependence on imported oil.

Gas Prices Too High? Shell Cancels Drilling After Denied Permits

The EPA is at it again. So, where is a sensible approach to our energy needs?

From: YID With LID

Obama Continues War Against Oil. EPA Rules Force Shell to Abandon Drilling Plans in Alaska

The Obama administration continued war against oil drilling as the Shell Oil company threw its hands up in the air and scraped efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The reason? EPA regulations.

The needed air permits were approved, but after a challenge by an environmental group, the board changed it's mind. Here's the "fun" part. The reason the EPA refused to grant the permit was the appeal board’s suggestion that the Arctic drill would somehow be hazardous for the people who live in the area. This is a very remote section of Alaska, the town of Kaktovik is the nearest community to the drilling site, its 70 miles away, occupies one square mile and has a population of 245. There is very little chance for Kaktovik to be affected by the drilling.

Shell has spent five years and nearly $4 billion dollars on plans to explore for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The leases alone cost $2.2 billion. Shell Vice President Pete Slaiby says obtaining similar air permits for a drilling operation in the Gulf of Mexico would take about 45 days. He’s especially frustrated over the appeal board’s suggestion that the Arctic drill would somehow be hazardous for the people who live in the area. “We think the issues were really not major,” Slaiby said, “and clearly not impactful for the communities we work in.”

Barack Obama's "Marie Antoinette" Moment

The video is about four minutes long and the comment comes at the end, but it's telling. "Let em eat cake" is now "You Might Want To Think About A Trade In". All this as gas prices rise. Funny stuff. It sure is good to know that as he said "remembers what it was like to pump gas". The common touch. Absolutely amazing. Here it is:



Of course, Barack Obama has never liked low gas prices or utility bills. Higher energy costs are the price we will pay for his green energy policy. Don't believe me? Here's a reminder:



"Necessarily skyrocket". Yeah, but hey at least he remembers pumping gas. If we were patriotic we would shell out $42,000 for the "VOLT". After all, we already paid for it with our taxes. When Barack Obama said he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America, he meant it. We all pay the price as while someone else pays for his gas.

Obama's 'Let them eat cake' moment deep sixed by media

Quote Barack Obama: "If you're complaining about the price of gas and you're only getting 8 miles a gallon"Obama said laughingly. "You might want to think about a trade-in."

From: American Thinker

As gasoline prices soar, while domestic oil production struggles under regulatory and permitting burdens imposed by the Obama administration, the American public is suffering, and so are Obama's reelection prospects. The sad fact is that Obama wants high energy prices.

"Under my plan of cap and trade plan makes electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket"'; "coal powered plants, natural gas, you name it..whatever the plants were...they will have to retrofit their operations..that will cost money and they will have to pass those costs onto consumers"

In 2008, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar indicated he would still oppose a measure to open up offshore areas to new oil and natural gas drilling even if gasoline prices reached $10 a gallon.

Yesterday, speaking to a crowd in Pennsylvania, responding to a question about high gasoline prices, the mask slipped, and Obama revealed how out of touch and arrogant he is.:

"If you're complaining about the price of gas and you're only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know," Obama said laughingly. "You might want to think about a trade-in."

This is truly a "let them eat cake" moment. People struggling to pay for gasoline rarely have the resources to buy a new car. Ed Morrissey of Hot Air points out that "the last time anyone drove an 8-MPG vehicle that didn't include a half-track was in the mid-1970s." When do suppose the last time was that Obama filled the tank on his own car?

American Thinker: The Energy Myth That Won't Die

From :American Thinker

The renewed prospect of $4.00 or even $5.00 per gallon gasoline has brought greater urgency, if not clarity, to a debate about national energy policy.

Predictably, the response of liberal energy navel-gazers has been off the mark. According to this group, the answer to the liquid motor fuel supply problem is...more ethanol.

Ethanol remains a case study in poor choices and the negative effects of government intervention in markets. The problems with alcohol-based "renewable" fuels are well-documented. Both corn-based and cellulosic ethanol have significant drawbacks, not the least of which is that artificial demand for corn to produce ethanol is driving up global food prices and contributing to civil unrest in parts of the world.

Using carbohydrates to replace hydrocarbons is not nearly as simple as the words politicians use to promote the practice, and the outcomes from converting carbohydrates to fuel are not as benign as they would have us believe.

Not only is the EPA prepared to authorize an increase in the domestic ethanol mandate from 10 percent to 15 percent, there is pressure to authorize importation of foreign-sourced ethanol.

A several-year-old ethanol scheme has recently attracted more interest - a demand to open American energy markets to Brazilian biofuel. Some call the Brazilian product "the good ethanol."

If we're smart, we'll kill this monstrous idea - and quickly.

Brazil, the world's largest producer of sugar, uses much of its sugar to produce ethanol, a process which bypasses the prior distillation of corn to sugar. American advocates of importing Brazilian ethanol ignore two inconvenient facts: Not only does Brazilian cane ethanol have the same problems as corn ethanol, Brazil has proven that, even by removing a step in the manufacturing process, ethanol is not a competitive fuel.

Brazilian ethanol has been a nightmare of impracticality. Production began in the 1970's as a response to the Arab oil embargo and to use only surplus sugar. Over the years, the Brazilian ethanol program morphed into a national energy policy. In order to "support" their expanding ethanol market and to make up for ethanol's fuel efficiency deficit, Brazil mandated flex-fuel vehicles and taxed ethanol at a rate less than gasoline (America taxes ethanol motor fuel content at the same rate as gasoline). Early on, Brazil mandated a 20-percent ethanol fuel mix for gasoline. Today, many vehicles in Brazil use mostly or only ethanol fuel. Brazil also nationalized their oil industry and generously and expensively subsidized ethanol production.

Surely, such massive government intervention in at least two markets would be sufficient to insure the success of ethanol.

It wasn't.

Since their ethanol program was conceived and implemented, Brazil has begun to aggressively develop newly-discovered offshore petroleum reserves. Petroleum development would be unnecessary if the Brazilian ethanol experiment had been successful. Environmentalists should note that the new Brazilian petroleum operations lie offshore some of the world's most pristine beaches.

The Brazilian experience with sugar-based ethanol has proven that alcohol fuels can't compete effectively in markets fixed to favor them, much less in open markets.

The socialization of ethanol in America and Brazil has encouraged large agricultural interests to acquire smaller farms and erode the family farm tradition in both countries. Other unintended consequences of both American and Brazilian ethanol policies are priceless -- as in unaffordable: The United States is the world's largest producer of ethanol from corn; Brazil is the world's largest producer of sugar cane ethanol. The world prices for both corn and sugar are currently at or near historically high levels, demonstrating the effects of artificial ethanol demand complicated by the vagaries of supply. The petroleum market works in the same way, except that the demand for petroleum, a single-use commodity, is practical, as is the development of untapped reserves by private investment.

The hypocrisy of elected officials on energy policy is staggering. Politicians demand more ethanol while preventing domestic petroleum exploration and production.

The price of oil recently exceeded $104 per barrel before retreating. It may go higher in the future, yet alternative energy advocates continue to tell us that we need not find and consume far more American gas, oil and coal. By denying practical supply sources, progressive energy policies play into the hands of some of the world's worst and least stable petroleum-producing countries.

At the same time, progressives denounce NAFTA and open trade with Mexico and Canada, our largest and best non-domestic sources of natural gas and oil.

Most American consumers favor free energy markets. They understand that, without overly-oppressive regulation and political obstacles to conventional sources of energy, free-market private investors and technological innovators accessing American energy resources can solve America's fuel-scarcity problems as well as associated environmental concerns.

Nevertheless, politicians prefer tinkering in energy distractions that are largely relevant only in the problems they create and the campaign donations they produce. If wind, solar, biofuels, wave power and other alternatives to hydrocarbon-based sources were economically viable and competitive in energy markets, all would be made available by "greedy" private investors without government subsidy. It is only government-enforced taxpayer investment in these alternatives that attracts private money interests. The real greed lies, mutually, in private "investors" chasing public funds for private profit with the complicity of politicians. Politicians promote energy alternatives and then harvest campaign cash from the recipients of taxpayer handouts. It's an insiders' game, a closed loop: politicians and rent-seekers are playing taxpayers and consumers for chumps on marginally viable and impractical alternative energy sources.

Any rational American energy policy must begin with carbon-based energy.

Our dependence on oil is one of necessity. The world's energy demands are simply too great for energy alternatives to provide much offset.

If the world is to move away from petroleum, radically new energy technologies must be developed. In the meantime, the most potentially successful solutions to lowering liquid fuel costs are the things progressives and many politicians oppose: increased exploration and responsible exploitation of our own fossil fuel-based energy resources offshore, in ANWR, in the Bakken Layer, in Marcellus Shale deposits and elsewhere in and around America.

The truth is that the best way to lower energy -- and, as a byproduct, food -- costs and to increase energy availability is to increase the supply of conventional, practical, domestic energy assets.