Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

I haven’t felt like I have much to say about the damage to New Orleans, Biloxi and Gulfport. Watching the television, I get this sense of helplessness. We haven’t yet even figured out how many hundreds of thousands have been left homeless by this, and we seem to be unable to do anything to help them out. New Orleans is one of our nation’s oldest and greatest cities, and it appears that it has become a modern Pompeii.

One of the things I have tried to resist is commenting on the politics of this whole thing. Like it or not though, the politics exist.

The other night, The News Hour featured an interview with Red Cavaney, president of the American Petroleum Institute. The interview dealt with the supply problems that this will create since 25 percent of the gasoline and 20% of the natural gas in our country come through the region. One question he failed to answer however, why are prices increasing in this part of the country? Because of the way the supply chain works, supplies for this part of the country (mostly from refineries in California and Texas) are not affected. They aren’t taking gasoline from here to supply the east; the industry doesn’t work that way. So, what is that all about?

Here was something else that struck me, reporter Jeffrey Brown was asking about the impact of EPA waivers on the supply and price of gasoline:

JEFFREY BROWN: In the immediate term the impact on most citizens will be at the gas pump?

RED CAVANEY: Yes. They will see more opportunity for supply with this kind of flexibility than we would have otherwise had.

As much as I hate the waivers, if they are temporary, maybe they can be justified. But, I wonder how quickly consumers will see the “benefits” of this. By the way, Cavaney admits that they wanted the waivers even before the hurricane.

I always wonder why prices go up quickly in this situation, but it takes forever for them to go back down. Brown wonders about this too:

JEFFREY BROWN: And why does it hit so quickly? People wonder how that works — why is it overnight that prices rise so high?

RED CAVANEY: Well, what happens is there are about 160,000 retail outlets where the consumer actually buys their gasoline and diesel. About a little less than 10 percent are owned and operated by the industry itself, the refiners and the people that produce it. The rest are small businessmen and women, small companies that they own those things and it’s very competitive marketplace because I don’t think there’s any other industry that actually posts its price for everybody to see every time they go by. And so what you see is the dynamic move of people trying to decide that I want to steal some customers away from my competitors. I’m going to lower my price by 2 cents or somebody else saying, look, I think I can make more money by holding my price with fewer customers. And so those are the kinds of decisions that ultimately drive the market.

JEFFREY BROWN: Right now people are seeing it go up though.

RED CAVANEY: People are seeing it because the problem with a commodity is if that’s the product you’re giving to consumers, you don’t want to be caught without it, so you’ll pay almost anything to get that last truckload to be able to take care of your customers.

So, in other words, the price increases are not the industry’s fault, and our dealers are only increasing prices because they want to help people. Geez.

I have to give Cavaney some credit though. He didn’t as crass as some oil types are. Of course, that is faint praise. At the very least, he hid his glee at being able to work under relaxed regulations with higher prices.

It can at least be argued that Cavaney is arguing a public policy angle. Others, however, have taken this as an opporitunity to take shots at people that are not even envolved in this whole thing. Jonah Goldberg, for example, decided that it was a good time to take a pot shot at Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel. He has also decided that this is the time to blame the environmentalists, particularly the “deep ecologists” and wiccans. Yeah, because wiccans run everything, especially the rescue agencies.

I have to give him a bit of credit though. In The National Review Online’s Corner he has a response to liberal critics (like me) who are questioning whether money that could have gone to FEMA and the Corps of Engineers went to Iraq instead. He says that instead, we should look at other wasted money. I don’t agree with him, but at least he’s a conservative that admits that money is actually limited:

The choice should be between the highway bill, ag subsidies and the like. The Don Young Highway should at least be renamed to the “Go Suck Eggs New Orleans Highway.”

I hate to give the guy props for anything, but there’s some truth there.

Also, our man Rush Limbaugh is blaming the victims for their own plight. His argument, if you actually want to read it, is that liberals are wrong to say this is about race and class, but conservatives are right to say it is about race and class. Understand? Keith Olbermann also quoted Limbaugh on his program as saying that it is their own fault for living there, I couldn’t find the quote online. Well, Limbaugh never claimed to be a compassionate conservative.

A couple of my own pot shots: wouldn’t it be nice if the Louisiana National Guard wasn’t tied up elsewhere? Or…too bad that these folks no longer have a good way to declare bankruptcy when the creditors come around.