WASHINGTON – Even the Evil Empire down on Water Street wouldn’t let this one go unnoticed. How’s this for an example of the widening gap between the conservative movement and the National Republican Party that the right-wing punditry often complain about.
Last week, all three members of the Mobile congressional delegation, Sens. Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions and Rep. Jo Bonner, voted to override President George W. Bush’s veto of the $290 billion farm bill.
According to WashingtonWatch.com, a Web site by Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, this piece of legislation, otherwise known as The Food and Energy Security Act of 2007 will cost an average of $5,643.27 per family.
Bonner, who is branding himself as the “Quiet Reformer,” may have blown a prime opportunity to show leadership as a fiscal conservative by quietly voting not to override Bush’s veto, but it wasn’t meant to be. There’s always next time.
The Race No One is Talking About
As the dusts settles after the primaries and the candidates have emerged, there’s a senate seat up for grabs in Alabama this coming up election cycle. But it isn’t shaping up to be much of a race.
According to polling data from last week’s Rasmussen Report, Sen. Jeff Sessions holds a commanding lead (62 percent to 29 percent) over his Democratic challenger Alabama State Sen. Vivian Davis Figures.
Figures probably wishes it was that close in the fundraising category. According to the latest campaign finance report filed with the FEC, Sessions has raised $5.5 million versus Figures’ $199,044.
It’s one of the few upbeat signs for Republicans nationally as most senatorial races nationally are trending Democrat.
Econ 101 and Gas Prices
According to AAA, Mobilians are paying $3.88 a gallon for regular gasoline (up from $3.04 a year and $3.56 just a month ago.)
As the Federal Reserve continues to play loose with monetary policy, but keeping GDP in positive territory (revised up to 0.9 percent growth in the first quarter of 2008), the dollar is still struggling. According to Sen. Jeff Sessions, you can blame those gas prices on that weak dollar.
“I’m very concerned about the value of the dollar,” Sessions said to Lagniappe. “It’s falling and it has some benefits, but on average I think most experts and economists would say the falling dollar is not good and that has caused us to have to pay approximately 15 percent more for oil. It takes 15 percent more dollars to buy the same amount of oil – everything else unchanged.”
Another factor forcing the price of oil higher than what it would be worth under other circumstances are market speculators.
“Speculators are involved in this – to the degree of which we don’t know, but perhaps 15 percent,” Sessions said. “Fifteen percent on speculators and 15 percent on the decline of the dollar and our prices are still too high. One way to break the back of the speculators is to make clear that this nation intends to start producing more and we’re not going to allow ourselves to be even more dependent on foreign oil, but we’re going to begin to produce more of our own resource and then the speculators may well conclude this bubble is headed to a burst, rather than getting bigger and bigger.”
The latest round of legislation to force the federal government to drill for more oil is the American Energy Production Act of 2008, sponsored by Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.). The bill is in committee, but is likely to stay in committee, making it more of a political game for congressional Republicans.
Each attempt to open up more areas for drilling, like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska or areas off the coast of Florida, is introduced by House or Senate Republicans, knowing it has a small chance of making it into law.
But, when the election rolls around in November, the GOP will be able to say, “Look who’s voting against drilling for more oil and keeping your gas prices high.”
That’ll make it an election issue, so you’ll probably see a couple more of these legislative attempts before November.
Karl Rove in Handcuffs
That sounds like the sexual fantasy of some left-wing zealot, but it’s now being pushed out there by some of the leadership of the House Judiciary Committee.
Former Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, after landing in the hot seat because of some allegations in former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s book, has refused to testify before the committee about the prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman. So, he is being threatened with a subpoena and if he refuses that, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told Politico he would be held in contempt and possibly arrested.
Although there’s not a lot of scientific polling data, the Rove/Siegelman/Richard Scrushy/Jill Simpson conspiracy has a lot more steam beyond the borders of Alabama than within it.
Contact Jeff Poor at jeffreypoor@yahoo.com.
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