Thursday, April 27, 2006

Schumer plans to learn Law of Supply and Demand... someday


Egg-cellent snippet from Hugh Hewitt regarding the attack on big oil by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-Moonbatia). That's right, Chuck: ignore the incredible growth in oil demand exemplified by China and India. And ignore the fact that the Democrats' rhetoric has kept U.S. supplies tight by locking up ANWR for a generation (if all of Alaska were a football field, ANWR would be the size of a postage stamp). And let's also ignore the fact that oil prices get the jitter when, oh I don't know, Iran goes nuclear. Lastly, let's set aside the fact that multiple investigations have led to exactly zero assertions of collusion or price fixing. Supply. Demand. It's not real complicated. Unless you're named Chuck Schumer.

"I don't forecast prices of either gasoline or oil," Secretary of Energy Bodman told me at the start of today's show, but he did agree that events in Iran, Venezuala and Nigeria could send oil to prices which would result in $4 a gallon gas.

The key to our conversation was that pricing is out of the hands of the oil companies, and has been for some time. Senator Schumer's grandstanding is an extended display of either economics illiteracy or shameless opportunism, or both, but no matter the source of Schumer's absurd statements, they are another vivid example of the proposition that, no matter what the problem is, the answer can't be more Democrats.

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