Townhall.com
If there is anything worse than partisan demagoguery, it is bipartisan demagoguery. Republican leaders have now joined the Democrats in blaming the oil companies for the fact that prices rise when demand expands more than supply.
Prices have been rising under these conditions for thousands of years, long before there were any oil companies. This has happened with everything from food to furs and it has happened among people in every part of the world.
Is it rocket science that, when huge countries like India and China have rapidly growing economies, their demand for oil goes up by leaps and bounds? Is it rocket science that, when demand shoots up but supply doesn't go up as much, prices rise?
Ironically, the people who are making the most noise about the high price of gasoline are the very people who have for years blocked every attempt to increase our own oil supply. They have opposed drilling for oil off the Atlantic coast, off the Pacific coast, or in Alaska. They have prevented the building of any new oil refineries anywhere for decades.
They have fought against the building of hydroelectric dams or nuclear power plants to generate electricity without the use of oil. They love to talk about their own pet "alternative energy sources," without the slightest attention to what these would cost in terms of money, jobs, or our national standard of living.
Even when one of their pet "alternative energy sources" -- windmills -- is proposed to be built near them, suddenly it is not right to spoil their view.
I have no way to improve upon to Thomas Sowell. Read him and read him often. I do want to point out that our Senator's particularily Byron Dorgan are now making a lot of noise when they've created the problem as much as anyone.