Either Steven Chu is really good about keeping his tires properly inflated, or the Energy Secretary is considering a career in education.
During a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Tuesday, Chu said he’d give himself an A for controlling gas prices.
Meanwhile, everyday Americans like myself are now paying around $4.25 a gallon at the pump. According to the Energy Information Administration, that’s more than double the price paid per gallon when Barack Obama took office in 2009.
In response to Mr. Chu’s grade inflation, Sean Spicer, the Republican National Committee’s communications director, had this to say.
“I would have loved to have Secretary Chu as a professor in college if he thinks $4-plus a gallon and over a 100 percent increase gets an A. It would probably take $10 a gallon for him to get to a B under this curve.”
Hold it right there, Mr. Spicer. You should know that what we used to call a curve, we now call weighted grades.
Hey, Charles, can you handle a few more facts? Here’s the take of Glen Kessler, the Washington Post’s fact checker. Check it out:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/oil-war-the-ad-battle-between-big-oil-and-dnc-part-1/2012/03/30/gIQA9yQZlS_blog.html#pagebreak
“Obama’s Energy secretary said we need to — quote — boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe. That’s $9 a gallon.” — Narration from an American Energy Alliance ad.”
Here’s what Kessler found:
“As for the comments by Secretary Chu, the ad quotes him accurately and in context. But he made those comments before Obama was president, and while working as director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a group that researches biofuels and solar-energy technology.
“The quote may very well reveal Chu’s true personal beliefs about the best way to combat climate change and reduce fossil-fuel dependence, but the Energy secretary still answers to the president, who said just before his 2009 inauguration that ‘putting additional burdens on American families right now’ with higher gas prices would be ‘a mistake.’”
“Much has been said about a certain comment Obama made during an interview when he was running for president. Asked whether high gas prices could help the nation, he replied, ‘I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment.’
“We explained in a previous column how the interview transcript reveals that Obama was talking about his proposal to keep prices in check with a holistic approach. His overall pitch included investing in alternative fuels and raising efficiency standards, as well as implementing immediate tax cuts to help citizens cope with pain at the pump.
It’s also worth noting that the president declared his bottom line on gas prices during a March 6 news conference, during which he said, ‘I want gas prices lower because they hurt families.’ Regardless of what Chu prefers, this is the policy he has to follow.”
Oh, and about the gasoline prices, here’s Fact Checker backing up, well, the facts:
“So how about the issue of pain at the pump?
“The Post created a graphic a while back to show how perception about gas prices doesn’t quite match the reality. Despite the way prices look, they are roughly average after adjusting for inflation. A rate of $1.38 per gallon in 1981 sounds amazing until it’s converted to $3.35 in today’s dollars — better than the current price, but still much higher than when Obama took office.
“Inflation-adjusted gas prices have indeed doubled during Obama’s time in the White House, but they were unusually low when he took office because of the massive economic downturn. Rates have gradually increased back to normal levels as the economy has improved. As we said in a previous column, it’s doubtful that anyone wants to return to those conditions for the sake of cheap gas.”
Now Fox News (that’s right, the organization that’s part of Newscorp, which had to close down one of its major daily newspapers in Britain because of massive criminality, and whose senior editor has just been arrested again, and members of whose controlling family are in danger of also being arrested) will probably distort and lie, but that’s just what it does. But thinking people look for the facts.
Charles, I didn’t cite “opinions” regarding gasoline prices, I cited the facts. Do you understand the difference between opinion and fact? Again, Charles, the facts prove you wrong.
Now how about those research reports you that months ago you would supply this community on weighted grades? You have repeatedly stated that weighted grading was the biggest problem facing Greenwich High School. Yet you haven’t provided any proof at all to support that contention. And a majority of your colleagues rejected a change in that grading structure.
So don’t just sit there silently and refuse to respond; come forward with proof to support your arguments. Seriously.
And you’re a smart guy also, Charles. But you aren’t a math teacher. A “plurality” of 28% isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement. It merely means that there are 6 other news sources identified that split the balance of 72% among them. IOW, about 3/4 of those interviewed did NOT choose Fox as their most trusted source of news. That number may match the percent of far right Republicans in the country.
But your response avoided the issue, didn’t it? The fact is that Fox continues to talk about the “record high” gas prices that aren’t really record high at all. And Fox continues to show a gas price sign that shows regular at $5.05, which is mythical. And they continue to follow the Republican line that gas prices doubled since Obama became president without mentioning that gas prices were low due to the economic collapse that occurred in August 2008, when Bush was president. You can easily google “Gas prices history” to find charts that show gasoline prices at a record high in July 2008 and plunging in the following months. Oil prices are impacted severely by economic conditions. When factories shut down, and trucks stop running, demand for oil drops, and so do prices. When the economy recovers, so do oil prices.
You have interesting comments about teaching and education. Stick to what you know best.
You’re a smart guy, Publius. I’m sure you know that, according to a March 21-25 Suffolk University poll, Fox News and Bill O’Reilly are the most trusted news sources.
From the Boston Herald:
Fox News is the choice of a plurality of voters who consume television news. About 28 percent of respondents identified it as their most trusted source, while 23 percent identified one of the three major networks – CBS, ABC and NBC. CNN captured 17 percent while MSNBC garnered 8 percent, Comedy Central received 3 percent and CSPAN received 2 percent. Nineteen percent were undecided. Fox News host Bill O’Reilly was chosen by 7 percent of respondents as the most trusted reporter or analyst on TV. He is followed closely by Diane Sawyer (5 percent), Brian Williams and Anderson Cooper (4 percent each), and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity (3 percent each). About 24 percent of respondents were undecided.
You might also be interested in knowing that, among Democrats, O’Reilly tied Jon Stewart.
If you want to talk about propaganda and hypocrisy, the Left has that covered.
anonymous has this one exactly right, Charles. Didn’t you notice when Fox News talks about gasoline prices, they always say “the highest they have ever been….at this time of year”. And, of course, standard Fox video background for anything about gas prices is a photo of a gasoline sign with prices all above $5.05 a gallon. Exactly where is that sign? CT has some of the highest prices in the country, and they are nowhere near $5.00 for regular.
Bush had the answer to high gasoline prices: have the economy collapse. That’s how gas prices got to be so low when Obama took office. Unfortunately, there were some negative side effects to the Bush Plan to reduce the price at the pump.
Watch out for the propaganda, Charles.
Good grief, Charles, try a little research. In early July 2008, when Bush was president, the average price of gasoline in the United States, which had been rising steadily since 2006 from just over $2.00, hit $4.12 per gallon. When Bush’s economic policies resulted in a housing, financial, then economic collapse, domestically, then internationally, the price of gasoline plummeted to about $1.69 per gallon in December 2008. As the economy has rebounded, both domestically and in high-oil consumption Asia, and as tensions with Iran over the Straits of Hormuz have escalated, the price of gasoline has rebounded. It’s now about $3.87 per gallon, less, Charles, than the peak under Bush.
Now the Obama administration has tried to escalate domestic energy production, which it has: American oil production has hit a record, and shale gas is also rising sharply. And it’s been attempting to stimulate alternative energy technologies, including electric vehicles, solar, and other alternative technologies that were largely ignored under the Bush administration. Further, it has attempted to invest in more mass transit with ARRA, the stimulus bill, which would also bring down per capita energy consumption.
But, Charles, energy prices are global, and the United States, which produces just a fraction of global oil, can’t set the price itself. There’s more to it. So Energy Secretary Chu is right that the Obama administration has made valiant attempts to move forward with policies that will wean the country off foreign energy sources. And, Charles, if you’re really interested in the facts, our dependence on foreign energy is at the lowest point in decades.
So instead of the snark and cherry-picked data points about gas prices, why not actually produce those research reports you were constantly promising you would explaining how weighted grades are the biggest problem in Greenwich High School? You’ve pushed that line for months, yet you’ve produced not one iota of research, not one study, not one report to back up your contention. All you’ve offered up is a table showing how GHS ranks relative to other Connecticut high schools’ grade weighting schemes. That’s not research; that’s not proof that it’s a problem.
So how ’bout it?