(Sorry — I posted this and then deleted it, but it’s back by semi-popular demand.)
The right is trying to flood the zone with the message EEK! EEK! OBAMA MADE GAS PRICES SKYROCKET! — here, for instance, is a clip of Eric Bolling singing “The Gasoline Blues” on Fox & Friends, if you can stand it. Some local news reporters are helpfully retransmitting the propaganda:
Florida Drivers Shelling Out Nearly $6 A Gallon At Some Gas Stations
TAMPA (CBS Tampa) — Talk about pain at the pump! Some Florida drivers are spending nearly $6 a gallon to fill up their gas tanks.
… at a Suncoast Energy station in Orlando, … drivers are paying $5.79 for a gallon of regular….
Yeah, that hippie eco-freak Obama really jacked up the price at that station:
Orlando Forum: Suncoast Energys- Don’t Pay Double for Gas
DON’T PAY DOUBLE FOR YOUR GASOLINE. Steer clear of Suncoast Energy on Semoran Blvd, north of 528. This is the closest gas station to the airport and they are RIPPING OFF customers by charging DOUBLE the national average for gasoline (God knows what they are charging for a bottle of water!)….
Whoops! So, um, this station charges much more than the average. Oh, and the complaint I just quoted is contained in a Trip Advisor message-board post dated November 20, 2008 — two months before Barack Obama was sworn in as president. So the problem at that station isn’t Obama, it’s the policies of that station.
Nawww, that can’t be right. Obama must be using the time machine to raise prices retroactively, and change all the archived news stories!
Gas gouging is sometimes situational — as when Hurricane Ike was about to hit, a couple of months before the ’08 election (Obama in the time machine again?), and stations in Florida and other states were being accused of opportunistic price increases. Funny thing — back then, Fox News didn’t seem to mind:
In Defense of Price Gougers
Written By John R. Lott, Jr.
Understanding economics has never been a requirement to be a reporter or a politician. With gas prices moving back toward $4 a gallon, “price-gouging” seems again to be everyone’s favorite phrase these days. With the price of gasoline already Americans’ greatest concern, more so than the economy or taxes, it is a message that many people will be primed to hear. Presumably that is why a majority of Americans want higher taxes on oil companies.
Yet, if political threats of price controls and price-gouging lawsuits prevent prices from rising now, it is the consumers nationwide who will suffer in the long run….
Expect a Fox op-ed from Lott any day now, complaining about the price of gas and demanding government action now.
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)