SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Fools at the Pump
Do Our Leaders Ever Fill Their Gas Tanks Themselves?
Mar 04, 2011
The price of gas at the pump is now averaging $3.65 a gallon in California and has already edged up to $4 in San Francisco and Chicago. Nationwide, it's at $3.38, a 20-cent rise in the last week (six cents last Friday alone). Meanwhile, in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke optimistically of the economy and dismissed the impact of soaring oil prices, spurred by turmoil in the Middle East. "The most likely outcome," he said, "is that the recent rise in commodity prices will lead to, at most, a temporary and relatively modest increase in U.S. consumer price inflation."
Of course, let's take it for granted that no one inside Washington's Beltway has to fill his or her own car with gas. For them, pain at the pump may indeed feel "temporary and relatively modest." Tell that, however, to the official 9% of unemployed Americans who still have to drive a car in what Bernanke and everyone else who isn't suffering seems to agree is not a recession. (In 1940, the last year of the Great Depression, the unemployment rate was at 14.6% -- and in those days they still hadn't stopped counting people too discouraged to look for work.) In that light, consider what's already happening at the pump as the lifestyle equivalent of murder and now imagine that, by summer (if not significantly earlier), the price of a gallon of gas nationwide may, as just before the 2008 global economic meltdown, close in on the $4 a gallon mark and perhaps still be rising.
After all, oil fears have, as the New York Times business page put it recently, "rattle[d] the oil world" -- and there are already the first fearful mutterings about a coming "oil shock" or even a $5 price at the pump. With good reason. Middle East oil supplies are now far more vulnerable to every kind of disruption, including sabotage, than most people realize.
As Juan Cole wrote recently, "Workers in the [Persian] Gulf unhappy with their lives, unlike Wisconsin school teachers, can fairly easily disrupt the economy if they choose." And keep in mind that that's only the short-range view. If you happen to be energy expert Michael Klare, author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, and a man perpetually ahead of the curve when it comes to a future of limited resources, you know that this is just the beginning of the end of the oil age, the collapse of the old oil order, and part of our rude entry into a world of extreme energy. He's been pointing us in this direction for years. Brace yourself, says Klare, right now we're only experiencing the first tremor from an "oilquake" that could shake our world to its core.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
© 2023 TomDispatch.com
Tom Engelhardt
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Type Media Center's TomDispatch.com. His books include: "A Nation Unmade by War" (2018, Dispatch Books), "Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World" (2014, with an introduction by Glenn Greenwald), "Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050"(co-authored with Nick Turse), "The United States of Fear" (2011), "The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's" (2010), and "The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond" (2007).
The price of gas at the pump is now averaging $3.65 a gallon in California and has already edged up to $4 in San Francisco and Chicago. Nationwide, it's at $3.38, a 20-cent rise in the last week (six cents last Friday alone). Meanwhile, in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke optimistically of the economy and dismissed the impact of soaring oil prices, spurred by turmoil in the Middle East. "The most likely outcome," he said, "is that the recent rise in commodity prices will lead to, at most, a temporary and relatively modest increase in U.S. consumer price inflation."
Of course, let's take it for granted that no one inside Washington's Beltway has to fill his or her own car with gas. For them, pain at the pump may indeed feel "temporary and relatively modest." Tell that, however, to the official 9% of unemployed Americans who still have to drive a car in what Bernanke and everyone else who isn't suffering seems to agree is not a recession. (In 1940, the last year of the Great Depression, the unemployment rate was at 14.6% -- and in those days they still hadn't stopped counting people too discouraged to look for work.) In that light, consider what's already happening at the pump as the lifestyle equivalent of murder and now imagine that, by summer (if not significantly earlier), the price of a gallon of gas nationwide may, as just before the 2008 global economic meltdown, close in on the $4 a gallon mark and perhaps still be rising.
After all, oil fears have, as the New York Times business page put it recently, "rattle[d] the oil world" -- and there are already the first fearful mutterings about a coming "oil shock" or even a $5 price at the pump. With good reason. Middle East oil supplies are now far more vulnerable to every kind of disruption, including sabotage, than most people realize.
As Juan Cole wrote recently, "Workers in the [Persian] Gulf unhappy with their lives, unlike Wisconsin school teachers, can fairly easily disrupt the economy if they choose." And keep in mind that that's only the short-range view. If you happen to be energy expert Michael Klare, author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, and a man perpetually ahead of the curve when it comes to a future of limited resources, you know that this is just the beginning of the end of the oil age, the collapse of the old oil order, and part of our rude entry into a world of extreme energy. He's been pointing us in this direction for years. Brace yourself, says Klare, right now we're only experiencing the first tremor from an "oilquake" that could shake our world to its core.
Tom Engelhardt
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Type Media Center's TomDispatch.com. His books include: "A Nation Unmade by War" (2018, Dispatch Books), "Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World" (2014, with an introduction by Glenn Greenwald), "Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050"(co-authored with Nick Turse), "The United States of Fear" (2011), "The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's" (2010), and "The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond" (2007).
The price of gas at the pump is now averaging $3.65 a gallon in California and has already edged up to $4 in San Francisco and Chicago. Nationwide, it's at $3.38, a 20-cent rise in the last week (six cents last Friday alone). Meanwhile, in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke optimistically of the economy and dismissed the impact of soaring oil prices, spurred by turmoil in the Middle East. "The most likely outcome," he said, "is that the recent rise in commodity prices will lead to, at most, a temporary and relatively modest increase in U.S. consumer price inflation."
Of course, let's take it for granted that no one inside Washington's Beltway has to fill his or her own car with gas. For them, pain at the pump may indeed feel "temporary and relatively modest." Tell that, however, to the official 9% of unemployed Americans who still have to drive a car in what Bernanke and everyone else who isn't suffering seems to agree is not a recession. (In 1940, the last year of the Great Depression, the unemployment rate was at 14.6% -- and in those days they still hadn't stopped counting people too discouraged to look for work.) In that light, consider what's already happening at the pump as the lifestyle equivalent of murder and now imagine that, by summer (if not significantly earlier), the price of a gallon of gas nationwide may, as just before the 2008 global economic meltdown, close in on the $4 a gallon mark and perhaps still be rising.
After all, oil fears have, as the New York Times business page put it recently, "rattle[d] the oil world" -- and there are already the first fearful mutterings about a coming "oil shock" or even a $5 price at the pump. With good reason. Middle East oil supplies are now far more vulnerable to every kind of disruption, including sabotage, than most people realize.
As Juan Cole wrote recently, "Workers in the [Persian] Gulf unhappy with their lives, unlike Wisconsin school teachers, can fairly easily disrupt the economy if they choose." And keep in mind that that's only the short-range view. If you happen to be energy expert Michael Klare, author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, and a man perpetually ahead of the curve when it comes to a future of limited resources, you know that this is just the beginning of the end of the oil age, the collapse of the old oil order, and part of our rude entry into a world of extreme energy. He's been pointing us in this direction for years. Brace yourself, says Klare, right now we're only experiencing the first tremor from an "oilquake" that could shake our world to its core.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.