My Beautiful and Talented Wife (The BTW) pointed me to this story from Lisa de Moraes in this morning's Washington Post about what's available to watch on cable TV today.  The money quote:

And nothing says "founding fathers" like a 17-hour MSNBC "To Catch a Predator" marathon, including two blocks of extra-special "Predator Raw: The Unseen Tapes.

I'm heading to the movies, where Maxwell Smart and Indiana Jones await.

Stan asks an excellent question:

If consumers are willing to pay higher prices for gasoline, why should we think that energy companies are going to do anything but charge those higher prices?

I'm not one who blames oil companies for high prices.  I'm more impressed by how quiet the media gets when oil prices are low.  In the U.S., we act as if God decreed low energy prices. We act as if the laws of supply and demand don't apply to us.

You don't have to spend much time driving in Europe to see the difference that high gasoline taxes make.  People drive smaller cars, mostly diesel fueled, and public transportation is first class.  People also live very close to their jobs and to all the services they need.  They actually walk to market.  What a concept?  It keeps you slim too!  Try walking to most U.S. stores, and you're very likely to end up as a pedestrian fatality.

The top line numbers in today's Employment Situation news release from the BLS showed net job losses in the establishment survey (-62,000), making for a total of 438,000 net jobs (0.32%) lost since the December peak, and the unemployment rate holding steady at 5.5 percent.

With more bad news, we are likely to hear news reports about the unequal burden of the labor market contraction.  I was curious in particular to see how female heads of household were faring.  The BLS reports their unemployment rate on a seasonally unadjusted basis, so the following chart shows 40 years of annual data, measured in June of each year, for all persons (in the civilian noninstitutionalized population) 16 and over, all women 16 and over, and all female heads of household:

A few features of the chart stand out: 

At some point in the past month or so, John McCain and Barak Obama or their advisors have both said that they will pay for some or all of what they're proposing with reduced military spending. 

The problem is that, even if all US troops are withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, it's not at all clear that the Pentagon budget will fall much or even at all.

Consider the following:

The New York Times and other media outlets reported today that Rush Limbaugh has signed a contract extension through 2016 worth about $400 million.  Perhaps with an eye toward higher marginal tax rates in the years to come, about $100 million is in the form of a signing bonus.

I think Rush Limbaugh could lay claim to being the original blogger.  The core of his 3-hour weekday show is Limbaugh's commentary on and parody of what newsmakers have said.  Roll an audio clip.  Criticize or find an inconsistency in the speaker's argument.  Lampoon the speaker in the process.  Reaffirm ideological views.  Roll another clip.  He makes no apologies for his conservative ideology and his partisan edge.  You find a lot of this in the blogosphere, except that Limbaugh constructs and distributes his work as audio rather than as text. 

Consider this quote from this Sunday's New York Times Magazine cover story by Zev Chafets.

Stan asks an interesting question:

If consumers are willing to pay higher prices for gasoline, why should we think that energy companies are going to do anything but charge those higher prices?

We should not think anything but that, except that we should acknowledge that producers of any good might be willing to trade off some short term profits for greater profits over the longer term.  With gasoline, we are certainly not in that environment, whether or not we ever were.  (Were low energy prices of past decades "teaser" rates?  Did we get discounts on our first "hits" of petroleum?)

He then asks two other questions that come up in various guises when dealing with economic policy:

In other words, in what's supposed to be a market-driven economy, aren't we complaining about the market working?

[...]

Finally, are we starting to think of gasoline as a public good that the government should provide?

Pete's post on gasoline prices obviously hit a nerve.

So here's my question:

If consumers are willing to pay higher prices for gasoline, why should we think that energy companies are going to do anything but charge those higher prices?

Much of this was prompted by Pete's post.  We..and I'm definitely including myself in this category...have lives that assumed that relatively cheap energy would continue.  We have gas guzzling cars, like air conditioning, drive many miles to work, haven't supported mass transit or oil altenatives, etc.   We might not like today's higher prices, but didn't we set ourselves up for this?  Whosever said that prices would always be low?

In other words, in what's supposed to be a market-driven economy, aren't we complaining about the market working?

Yes, I know that supply is being set by a cartel.  But given the amount of refining capability and the worldwide demand, it's not clear to me that pumping more oil would make that much of a price difference in the current environment anyway. 

Andrew, as usual, asks an interesting question: "...how long it should take people to make up their minds about how to cast their ballots..."?

Unless the situation has changed dramatically in the past few years, the answer is that the overwhelming number of voters have already decided who they are going to vote for.  Indeed, most voters make up their minds long before the balloting is ever conducted.  My guess is that as much as 80 percent of the electorate know from the start who they are supporting.  That's especially true in the general election where party affiliation, which is obviously known from the start, rather than any issue, is the most important reason for most people.

I was wondering over the past few days, particularly with the recent media attention devoted to General Wesley Clark's appearance on Face the Nation and its several day aftermath in the news media, how long it should take people to make up their minds about how to cast their ballots in an election like this year's primaries or general election.  The relevance Clark's interview is that I think it is a good example of a political celebrity saying something that is not well considered (to put it charitably), easy to sensationalize in an excerpt, and of almost no consequence in helping voters decide which candidate to support.

Up on Capitol Hill today, talking to a senior Democratic Senate staff protege, I was asked "What can we do to counter the Republicans on offshore drilling for oil?"  My response was, "There is no short-term fix to our long-term energy problems.  Drilling won't do it because it will take years to land any oil."  "Yes, but the voters think it's going to help now."  I responded, "Now you're asking me for cosmetics, not a solution."

In a nutshell, that's why we're 58% dependent upon foreign oil.  Every time we have an energy crisis, in 1973, 1979, 1990, and 2008, we rush short-term expedients and cosmetics into law without doing much to solve the long-term problem.  If we were serious about the long-term problem we would never have allowed gas guzzling SUV's onto the road; we wouldn't have starved mass transportation; we would have developed much more renewable energy; we would have done a lot more conservation; and MOST OF ALL we wouldn't have allowed prices to decline after the crisis, killing energy saving investments and leading us right back to profligate energy consumption.