Let the Political Paranoia Resume

Drudge’s big headline this afternoon is that gas is down to $2.05/gallon in Iowa. Did I not catch the news story proclaiming that the federal government had moved in and enforced price controls?

No, I (and you) missed nothing of the sort. Instead, as the Captain notes, market forces (remember those things?) are at work.

A number of factors play into this drop in price. First, as the article notes, the summer driving season has passed. Gas prices normally drop after Labor Day as children go back to school and family vacations make their way to the scrapbook. Also, this season has seen much lower levels of violent weather, and while we’re not out of hurricane season yet, the chances of a really damaging storm in the Gulf of Mexico gets less likely with each passing day. Traders buy oil on futures, which means their speculation now extends past the hurricane window — and since they had built bad weather into previous pricing, it makes sense that we would see a sharp drop now.

It seems that, just as Al-Qaeda has, the market, the weather, and American families have conspired to give the Democrats one less campaign issue. In the same way as leftist paranoids looked with suspicion on the release of terrorist videos, prepare for more hand-wringing over the “curious timing” of this news.

Yes, the market has been allowed to work and prices are now coming down. Understand, however, that I loved high gas prices. My wallet didn’t all that much, but I can telecommute 3 or 4 days a week, so it didn’t complain too loudly. But there were so many upsides to high prices, most of which liberals purport to love. There was the encouragement to conserve or telecommute or car pool. The higher prices increased the demand and the funding for research into alternative energy sources. They helped pay for college tuition (people in the middle class work for oil companies, too, y’know). There was so much good that came from them, yet liberals wailed and whined about it. Truth is, they’d rather the prices go up due to a tax increase so the government gets the money rather than R&D departments of the evil “Big Oil”. Then they could siphon it off, pad their wallets, and be magnanimous with the scraps as grants to R&D departments of the evil “Big Oil”.

By the way, will all the Democrats who wanted to blame Bush for the high gas prices now turn around and credit him for lowering them? Hold not thy breath.

Technorati Tags: gas prices, oil, free market, Democrats, paranoia

Filed under: Democrats • Economics • Government • Politics

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