This week marked act two of Fox News Bill O’Reilly’s rant on gasoline prices. Act one occurred when the gasoline price ran up under the Bush presidency. O’Reilly put forth his socialist theory that the US oil companies need to rebate money to gasoline consumers. That time it was colleague Neil Cavuto who took him to task. Neil upset O’Reilly so bad that his face was red for minutes. He was angry for the rest of the show.
Act II, this week. This time it was Charles Krauthammer who did the damage. Krauthammer asked O’Reilly if he owned an apartment in Manhattan would he think the government should force him to reduce rent if rents went up to the point where the media got involved. O’Reilly stuttered and stammered and finallly said that is a different situation. He said the oil was America’s oil. Especially if it came form government owned land. Krauthammer than asked if O’Reilly thought the government should break a contract that gave the government royalties on that oil and gave the oil company that got the oil the rights to that oil. More stuttering and stammering and more red face. Finally, O’Reilly said no, that wouldn’t be right.
In one of his books O’Reilly wrote that his father worked as an accountant his entire career, for an oil company. He was an unhappy man who felt the was passed over for promotions and obviously hated his oil company employer. Dinner conversation in that house must have been interesting. Obviously, O’Reilly still wants vengeance for how one oil company treated his father. He has totally lost his objectivity.
It’s bad enough that mainstream media gives Obama a pass for the gasoline prices while they skewered Bush every day for a year. It’s the clearest message since the 2008 campaign that they are in bed with Obama. And, they are incapable of presenting objective reporting to readers, listeners, and viewers. But, now Fox News, through O’Reilly, is pimping for Obama.
It reinforces that truth that O’Reilly, despite his Harvard eduction, is just a talking head, incapable of thinking independently about a pretty simple subject. He is also is old enough to remember what happened when Jimmy Carter put in price controls and allocations and tried to run the oil business. Lines, shortages, and black market gasoline and oil by daisy chaining rights to buy gasoline allocations in the supply chain.
Ignorance reigns when it comes to gasoline prices. It is passed on in big doses by the likes of O’Reilly and Leno and the mass media. Real solutions are never discussed by most. Politicians spin and media regurgitates that spin.
Come on people, it’s a global economy and we import most of our oil. We choose to pay the world price because our politicians use their and your ignorance to foster inane ideas about cause and effect. Obama isn’t even being questioned about his budget proposal that raises taxes on US oil companies. Taxes that will be passed through in higher gasoline prices and taxes that will reduce incentives to drill here.
No one has done more to raise gasoline prices in America than Obama and he needs to face that front and center. If you give him a pass, I feel bad for you and your kids and grand kids. It will only get worse if he gets another four years. At that point he won’t care. Which he doesn’t now. Unless it keeps him from getting reelected.
