Invisible Man

Barack Obama's Struggle For Relevance

For his part, the president seems to simply ignore all the foolishness. What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the White House wall, to discover whether or not the president explodes in anger and hurls things and calls these idiots idiots. It must frustrate him, on some level, to know he is at least as white as many white Americans, perhaps moreso given his mother’s middle America Kansas roots. There is likely no more American a guy breathing than Barack Obama, whose life experience, DNA, and amazing, historic, storybook bootstraps rise is a purely and exclusively American story. Yet every day he is painted as a werewolf, and conservative white America simply inhales this nonsense, vilifying one of the most remarkable men of our lifetime simply and exclusively because of the color of his skin. If I had to guess, I’d suppose the president has simply accepted the fact a certain portion of the nation will never fully embrace him as president. After all, this could not possibly come as a shock or even as a mild revelation to him. I have to assume that, from the beginning, there was some discussion between himself and his family about the realities of not the presidency but the black presidency, a reality that includes the very real possibility of a single term and voluminous death threats. I am reminded of James Earl Jones’ wonderful portrayal of a circuit court judge in post-emancipation South Carolina in the Jodie Foster film Sommersby. Jones’ Judge Barry Conrad Issacs knew no one in that southern courtroom took him seriously, but he had the law and the army on his side and a pistol under his robes. He meant business and there wasn’t a thing they could do about it. This, in a perhaps more benign sense, seems to be President Obama. If he is frustrated by the Fox News-fueled racist carnival he won’t show it. His demeanor lends the impression he certainly anticipated this, anticipated worse, but has chosen to not be distracted by the foolishness and get on with the people’s business, not the least of which is the nation’s economic recovery, which the mess in Libya and other Arab nations now threatens.

The U.S. government has substantially

underplayed the severity of the economic crisis. Anyone with half a brain will understand that, in time of crisis, it is in the nation’s best interest to put as upbeat a spin on things as possible. So even the most grim statistics coming from Washington have been scrubbed and sanitized and made to sound upbeat. Numbers that frighten us to death are actually the Happy Face version of what’s going on. The government is not trying to create jobs, the government is trying to create hope. President Obama’s personality is not a Clintionian I Feel Your Pain connective empathy, but more of an iconic scholarly posture which relies on conceptualism, what we call “vision.”. Most people I know have difficulty dealing with concepts. You cannot describe an idea to these people, you have to build a model and show it to them. President Clinton would embody the emotion he desired to communicate to the American People. This Is How You Should Feel. Obama tends to describe how we should feel in terms of ideology and rhetoric. But he is all but incapable of personally modeling that emotion. Despite his eloquence, the president, therefore, comes across as aloof—which I do not believe he is.

Downplaying the severity of our national economic disaster and being personally incapable of modeling America’s struggle is a serious political weakness for the president. Republicans, who, since the halcyon Newt Gingrich Contract With America days, has been almost exclusively the political party of lies and deception, seem wholly incapable of mounting a fair and reasonable idea-based campaign. Republicans seem to only want to deal in manipulation and deceit. Which seems to anger and disgrace old-school Repubs, the Bob Doles and the James Bakers who actually knew Ronald Reagan and who understand the Gipper is likely spinning in his grave because of the grotesque caricature modern Republicans have concocted by distorting Reagan’s record and his values. The extremism and disingenuous hate-based personal attacks which have come to be the Republican party’s stock and trade were never, ever, employed by Ronald Reagan. Reagan trounced his political opponents with his warmth, humor, and by simply being better at it than they were. Were his ideas better? Of course not. Most every economic woe this nation has suffered in the modern era has been a result of Republican whack-job economic philosophy. It amazes me that Democrats—often idiots squabbling among themselves—have never made that case. President Jimmy Carter, whose own caricature is that of a bumbling and inept president, passed more effective legislation in a more bi-partisan manner than any U.S. president in modern history. Much like President Bill Clinton, Carter handed his successor a nation at (relative) peace (not counting the standoff in Iran), and an ostensibly sound economy. Reagan immediately imposed massive, unprecedented tax cuts which resulted in historic, massive deficits and took us to war. The Republican philosophy of Tax Cuts Are The Answer To Everything is provably wrong, provable first and foremost by their demigod Reagan himself, who ended up raising taxes and left office with a record economic deficit. His hand-picked successor, George H.W. Bush, was no Reagan (as Obama is no Clinton). While infinitely more thoughtful, focused, and intellectual, Bush lacked Reagan’s charisma and therefore came across as an elite stiff—the way Obama tends to. Stuck with the economic reality left behind Reagan’s rosy idealism, Bush was forced to raise taxes, which destroyed him politically.

But the American people are not and have never been interested in dealing with reality. We want somebody to tell us a story. To entertain us. The nation is not at all interested in the fact that what we called and continue to call a severe recession is actually much closer to a global economic depression. If you don’t count oil-rich Arab states, virtually all industrialized nations on the planet are in economic crisis. Nearly every one of them are looking to the United States to help. Japan’s shaky economy is now threatened with collapse, which will certainly send the dominoes tumbling across global markets and affect us here.

The president has no choice but to downplay the severity of our economic climate. For, were he to speak frankly about it, panic would ensue. Most of us would simply stop spending, period. Which would grind the economic recovery to a halt and make things exponentially worse.

The major economic frustration is likely the oil companies.

The biggest threat to America is not radiation clouds from the Pacific, not (yet) Arab revolts. It is petroleum industry greed. The petroleum industry has been sharply raising prices at the pump since the beginning of the Middle East unrest. This is a reaction to sharp price hikes on global oil markets, where speculators—businessmen and women out to make a buck—are betting that the upheaval in Arab nations will inevitably lead to an oil shortage. Mind you, there is no oil shortage, these money people are simply betting there will be, and that they can, therefore, make a profit if they buy oil now and sit on it while the prices rise and then sell it at a profit. These speculators are, as a result, causing an oil shortage where there is, in fact, no oil shortage but buying up all the oil and keeping it off the market. Less oil on the market causes prices to rise. And the petroleum industry sees the market price tick up and sends the guy out to your corner gas station with new giant numbers for the sign.

On its face, it does not seem to be anybody’s fault (but the speculators—many of whom work for the petroleum industry), but this cause-and-effect distracts from the reality that the oil industry realized record, even obscene, profits over the past few years, due largely to the economic misery this country has endured. Oil companies profiteered by unimaginable sums. These companies are so fat, so obese, so stuffed full of cash, that the notion of their "having" to raise prices is an offensive lie. There is an at least six-week (likely longer) buffer between oil market prices and your local Texaco station. Why do they change the signs immediately? The oil giants paid $70 for the barrel of oil that created 42 gallons of gasoline currently at your gas station. That gas has already been bought and paid for. But they immediately jump the price on that gas—already bought, paid for and delivered to your local gas station—based on the oil market price, even though one had nothing to do with the other.

Any hike in fuel costs is like taking a sledgehammer to the American economy. It ripples through every area of commerce, costing businesses only now slowly beginning to rehire to slow that process, causing fuel-reliant businesses like delivery and trucking firms to layoff employees and raise prices. Which in turn causes other businesses and consumers who rely on those services to cut back their spending, which reduces the income for those fuel-reliant businesses and causes them to lay off more people and raise prices even more. Raising fuel prices hammers the U.S. economy. The oil companies know that. They also know they have six, maybe ten weeks of fuel in the pipeline between the greed-driven oil markets’ manufactured “oil shortage” and the local gas station. There is absolutely no reason why oil companies need to jump your gasoline prices thirty-five cents overnight just because of twenty dancing rebels in downtown Bin Jawad.

They do it because they can. They do it because they know the president is not going to impose a price freeze or call them out. I have no way of knowing whether or not the president is having any talks, on any level, with the oil companies about this. But he could, at least, admonish them. Presidential admonishments are an embarrassment to business. Congress could certainly hold hearings, and the president could certainly call these people out on their selfish behavior. Having profited in obscene, unprecedented amounts as a result of the U.S. economic crisis, the very least the oil companies could do is police themselves better, imposing a kind of a buffer between market forces and the local Shell station. Oil companies could make an at least token effort to do their part for America’s economic recovery by coming up with some cryptic formula of percent of market increase-to-retail pricing ratio and call it some ridiculous name like “Commitment To Rebuild America.” It would, at the end of the day, be a shell game (literally) and mostly propaganda that wouldn’t actually cost the oil giants much, but it would at least bolster American economic confidence (or at least slow its degradation) and make the oil companies seem less evil.

Only, the oil companies aren’t concerned with seeming less evil. And the president, for reasons I can’t begin to imagine, seems unwilling to even commit to the token gesture of slamming these folks. The president, in a relentless series of YouTube videos, could go after these people with Ross Perot-style charts and graphs, making his case against this insane profiteering and how it is a direct threat to the U.S. economic recovery and, by extension, to national security. He could make a case for how, at a time of nation urgency, these companies routinely, every time, refuse to sacrifice, refuse to contribute, and have no concern whatsoever for American families and American business, when it would only cost them x-percent of y-percent to create a “Rebuild America” buffer between volatile oil markets and your local 7-Eleven gas pump. Why isn’t he doing this? The bully pulpit is one of the few unrestricted weapons at Obama’s disposal. He has, instead, been all but missing in action as global and domestic events dominate the headlines.

The military strikes in Libya have pushed the president back

into our central view, but only the very plugged-in or the very thoughtful will realize the president has been on the front lines all along, but has likely moved himself out of the center in order to build that all-important coalition inclusive of most Arab states. Is he doing the same thing with the oil industry? In politics, it's better to look like you’re doing something even if there’s nothing that can be done. George W. Bush never failed to take a bow for each and every boneheaded thing he ever did. This president, possibly in the interest of actually achieving a goal rather than political pandering, seems almost The Stealth President as he endures the cartoonish toils and snares of people who hate him, ignoring the circus as he does the job we hired him to do. But that’s a politically risky choice.

He's doing important work, vital to the nation. But it's not sexy. It is, after a fashion, presidential grunt work—last week’s trip to Brazil, the world’s seventh strongest economy and an important crude oil resource. These tasks don’t get America up off the sofa cheering the president’s name, but it makes the country better and stronger. It helps the nation heal. But this path also runs the very real risk of a single-term presidency and that someone will come along after him, when the economic recovery hits its stride and global tensions cool, and take credit for it.

Christopher J. Priest
20 March 2011
editor@praisenet.org
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An American Story

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Barack Hussein Obama II, born August 4, 1961, is the 44th and current President of the United States, having taken office in 2009. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008.

A native of Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.

Obama served three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, he ran for United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Democratic primary and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in November 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 general election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009.

As president, Obama signed economic stimulus legislation in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 in December 2010. Other domestic policy initiatives include the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010. In foreign policy, Obama gradually withdrew combat troops from Iraq, increased troop levels in Afghanistan, and signed an arms control treaty with Russia. In October 2009, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Fill'er Up

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Gasoline usage and pricing in the United States This article is outdated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. Please see the talk page for more information. (November 2010)

U.S. gasoline demand is projected to average 9.12 million barrels per day in 2011. Americans are expected to travel 8.27 billion miles per day in 2011. This equates to an average of 33 miles per vehicle per day. The markup on gasoline in 2010 was 16.3 cents/gallon, or 5.6 percent, and the federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel fuel. In January 2011, motor gasoline taxes averaged 48.1 cents per gallon and diesel fuel taxes averaged 53.1 cents per gallon. Factoring in all gasoline sales in 2009 transactions — whether the customer paid by cash, check or by either debit or credit card — credit and debit card fees averaged 4.7 cents per gallon.

Despite high demand in the country and despite rising fuel costs, gasoline prices were low in the United States when compared with most other Western countries. As of December 21, 2008, the United States average price of self-serve regular unleaded gasoline was $1.65/gal (43.5 cents/litre). Finished motor gasoline amounts to 44% of the total US consumption of petroleum products. This corresponds to 18.5 Exajoules per year. According to national figures from the US Department of Energy, in March 2007 52% of the cost of gasoline went to pay for crude oil, 24% for refining, 15% to taxes, and 9% for distribution and marketing. By April 2008, these had changed to 72.7% for crude oil, 10% for refining, 11% to taxes, and 6% for distribution and marketing.

In 2008, a report by Cambridge Energy Research Associates stated that 2007 had been the year of peak gasoline usage in the United States, and that record energy prices would cause an "enduring shift" in energy consumption practices. According to the report, in April gas consumption had been lower than a year before for the sixth straight month, suggesting 2008 would be the first year US gasoline usage declined in 17 years. The total miles driven in the US began declining in 2006.

On May 21, 2010, the price of oil had dropped in two weeks from $88 to $70 mainly due to concerns over how European countries would reduce budget deficits; if the European economy slowed down, this would mean less demand for crude oil. Also, if the European economic crisis caused the American economy to have problems, demand for oil would be reduced further. Other factors included the strong dollar and high inventories. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, gas prices nationwide averaged $2.91 on May 10, dropping to $2.79 two weeks later. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was not a factor in gas prices since the well had not produced.

In February 2011, with the crisis in Egypt, oil prices began increasing. Oil supplies remained high, and Saudi Arabia assured an increase in production to counteract shutdowns. Still, the 2011 Libyan uprising, along with the fear of further protests, led to a rise in oil prices to the highest level in two years, with gasoline prices following. Though most Libyan oil went to Europe, all oil prices reacted. The average price of gasoline in the United States increased 6 cents to $3.17. On March 1, 2011, a significant drop in Libyan production and fears of more instability in other countries pushed the price of oil over $100 a barrel in New York trading, while the average price of gas reached $3.37. Despite Saudi promises, the sour type oil the country exported could not replace the more desirable sweet Libyan oil. On March 7, 2011, the average price of gas having reached $3.57, individuals were making changes in their driving.

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