Things That Go Bump In The Night

"What we've got here is failure to communicate…"

There's a reason that cowardly legislators and childrens' monsters often have some of the same characteristics.

Those characteristics were on full display last night in the state of Wisconsin, as the Republican controlled Wisconsin Senate made a serious collection of grave errors. The Republicans there decided to violate the spirit, if not the letter of their own laws - as well as the will of the people of their state - and use a slimy, underhanded maneuver to jam through Gov. Scott Walker's illegal and immoral attack on the rights of workers.

In short, the Republican party in Wisconsin has now declared war on the working people in their own state.

We don't expect the working people of Wisconsin will sit idly by and quietly collect signatures for recall. Indeed, they already stormed their own capitol building last night, after the heinous vote. It would not surprise us if there is violent reaction over the next few days - or worse - aimed at the eighteen Republican state lawmakers, or anyone who supports them. We do not condone violence - but we also, in no uncertain terms, condone the actions of Scott Walker and the Wisconsin GOP followers who supported this heinous action. This standoff is fast becoming a ticking time bomb.

We're willing to bet that by the time these words reach your screens this morning, there will be legal challenges - and quite possibly more - happening all over Wisconsin. Our bet is that any serious physical violence will begin on the Scott Walker side of the trenches.

There continues to be all kinds of attacks on worker rights and union rights alike, from Idaho, to Iowa, to Ohio, and more. We thought our point last week - and the points of Wisconsin voters to their leaders - had been made clear. In fact, our original intention today was not to focus further on this subject. We were planning on continuing our discussion from yesterday, about America's addiction to oil, and letting the long, slow, safe process of negotiation work itself out in places like Wisconsin.

However, as our opening quote hints, there are some people you just can't reach.

That fact became brutally clear earlier on Wednesday, when Wisconsin Senate Majority leader Scott Fitzgerald - one member of an entire family installed into positions of political power in Wisconsin - went on Fox "News" and confirmed what everyone with sense already knew:  this battle has never been about the budget.

Fitzgerald said, "If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much difficult, much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin."

We don't think we have to say how monstrous Fitzgerald's quote is - or how completely against the spirit of democracy and justice his attitude and the attitude of those who support him are. In the light of reason and justice, neither childrens' monsters nor cowardly legislators usually survive long in their same frightful state. That's part of the reason we began our commentary as we did today.

The other reason we began as we did - with the quote we chose - may not be what some of our readers might think. We'll admit that quote is from the movie "Cool Hand Luke", about a prisoner who refuses to submit to the system. But that's not why we chose that quote today.

Those words are also the beginning lines of a rock and roll song by the band "Guns N' Roses". The title of their song?

"Civil War."

Knee Jerks And Plain Old Fashioned Jerks

Virtually everyone has been talking about it, if not grumbling about it for a while now - and we have to count ourselves among that group.

"It" of course is the price of gasoline, and it's not going to get better any time soon.

We're not sure everyone understands completely the economic relationships involved between what you pay at the pump and what's going on in the world. We thought we'd give a quick breakdown to you today, and help you to understand exactly which oily person or group is sticking it to you as you fuel up today.

For starters, the price you pay at the pump has significantly less to do with factors like the uprisings in Libya or Egypt, or how much it costs the oil companies to pump oil from a deep sea well versus one that's just off shore in Alaska.

In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, the five biggest importers to the U.S. are Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Venezuela. The U.S. continues to have solid relationships with both Canada and Mexico, and has a long-term - if not odd - relationship with Saudi Arabia. The U.S. also enjoys a stable relationship with Nigeria, and a relatively stable - if not always friendly - relationship with Venezuela.

In short, world instability - or distance - isn't why we're paying more.

The price of a gallon of gas has little to do with supply, either. Yes, India and China are using more oil and more petroleum-based products. But many of their major suppliers aren't the same as ours. The real cause of price increases at the pump have so little to do with the supply of our oil that opening the U.S. Petroleum Reserves really wouldn't do a thing to help - and might even hurt - the price we're paying when we fill up our vehicles.

The largest single reason the price of a barrel of oil is going through the roof - as reporter Johnathon Fahey touched on in the Washington Post on Monday (too gently, in our opinion) -  is the speculators. In other words, the usual group of Wall Street gamblers is screwing things up for the rest of us again. We saw this same game played by these jerks in 2008, when oil prices spiked near $150/barrel, right before the bottom fell out of the economy.

In answer to your unasked questions, yes; the Administration DID recently attempt to put curbs back on speculators through the new CFTC. And yes, Wall Street has tried to fight those restrictions which likely would have led to the re-regulation of the energy trading industry, and probably lower prices at the pump. Those two things being said, it remains true that the energy trading industry is basically unregulated, which means higher gas prices for us all.

Now, we're not saying the guy or gal running the Quick-E-Mart down on the corner near your house may not be partially to blame. Both our Lincoln and Washington, DC locations are in the top 15 highest margin cities in the U.S. where retailers can sell gas. Some retailers, fearing the speculators will get crazy and bet their wad all at once have indeed jumped to knee-jerk price increases lately. To them, we can only say, your time will come.

To everyone else, we simply note, as we have from time to time previously, the single biggest fight our nation faces over the next 50 years won't be water (we have oceans on both sides of the country, and plenty of lakes in between). It won't even be a fight with another country.

The fight we face is with ourselves, to break our collective addiction to oil.

It will take more than a simple kick in the pants to get us past that battle.

There's One In Every Crowd…

If there's one activity all of our staff members all enjoy doing, it's people watching. At the mall, at a sporting event where the outcome is obvious, at a church - if we've got a comfortable seat and a spare moment, there's a built-in entertainment center in virtually every crowd.

One thing we've all noticed over the years is that if you watch a crowd long enough, there's usually at least one person who's trying too hard to get the attention of someone else.

Maybe it's a lovesick teenager, primped and primed far more than they should be for the main event happening in front of them. Maybe it's someone older trying too hard to pretend the years haven't truly touched them. And, of course, there's always at least one person who is trying too hard to impress everyone with their clothes and jewelry and accessories.

Sadly, this kind of desperate plea for attention also seems to be the driving force behind many politicians these days. From Mitt Romney's recent claims that he shops at Wal-Mart, to the actions of extremist governors like Scott Walker, to the spate of insane bills proposed by state level legislators like Nebraska's Mark Christensen.

In case you'd missed it, Senator Christensen has been pushing forward some legislative proposals recently which have been unusually crazy, even for him. These bills include LB 516, nominally designed to allow teachers to carry guns in school - which has been panned by everyone from the Huffington Post on the left to The Christian Science Monitor on the right. They also include LB322, a version of a South Dakota bill which would have been used by some on the far right to legalize harming or killing abortion providers.

Christensen's latest stinker of a bill is LB654, a bill better known as the "Birther" bill. "Birthers" represent a group of people who, for whatever reason - racism, ideological brainwashing, intellectual incompetence - can't accept the fact that our current President is not only a man of color, but was born legally in our 50th state. Christensen's bill would attempt to create standards unique to Nebraska for someone filing as a Presidential candidate. Those standards are not in the constitution and they're unnecessary.

We understand that maybe Sen. Christensen is feeling a bit pressured by some on the extreme fringes of his party. Maybe he's got his eye on a bigger political prize than state senator, and feels he needs to pad his legislative resume with some deep appeals to certain extremists with large campaign donation accounts.

Whatever his reasoning, we frankly think he's trying to hard to be something other than what his constituents thought he was.

Maybe he should simply go back to being the kind of legislator who is better known for sensationally effective legislation, instead of the kind who is known more for sensational headlines.