Round Trip, A Losing Bet

As our cartoonist Paul stays warm inside our home office in Nebraska, the rest of our staff still have tasks that require traveling in a car today - and may also include putting more gas in the tank. While that kind of pain may not be like the blinding snow hitting the Midwest, fueling most vehicles these days is like gambling with a slot machine where you have no chance of winning.

If it seems to you like the price of gasoline has unexpectedly been going through the roof lately, you're not alone.

Gas prices have risen for 35 straight days across the nation, and could potentially hit record highs well before the traditional summer driving season. Refinery shutdowns have played a small part in driving up the price of oil early this year, and they've certainly been drilling - but the real monster grabbing your paycheck at the pump is the same one that's been drilling Americans ruthlessly for years: The speculators of Wall Street.

What may anger you more is that you may have been helping them do it.

Back in 2010, a Democratically led U.S. House and Senate passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which boosted the regulatory power of agencies like the CFTC and the CFPB - the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The problem with Dodd-Frank was that it did not go far enough - and it has not been allowed to go even as far as it was intended to. In July of 2012, two-thirds of Dodd-Frank regulations were not in place. In the latest progress report for the legislation, fully sixty percent of Dodd-Frank rules are still in limbo.

This problem has been made even worse by Republicans like Mitch McConnell in the U.S. Senate, all of whom - like unruly children at bedtime - have insisted on nearly every delaying tactic known to humankind to prevent President Obama from installing powerful directors at agencies like the CFPB. Politically, obstruction is the only tool the GOP seems to currently have, that they know how to use.

What's worse, with the looming sequester on the way, what few lower-level regulators there are may end up like nearly a million other government employees - furloughed, if the sequester cuts go into effect.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street speculators will continue their unethical practices, effectively unchecked - practices nearly identical to the ones that drove the Great Recession of the Bush economy, just over four years ago.

The next time you pull up to the pump, to pull that lever or push that button and get some fuel, you really need to drive that blame bus round trip.

Before you start cussing out the greedy corporate oil executives, or the barely restrained gambling oil speculators on Wall Street, or even the craven and cowardly politicians in Washington, you need to go back to the person who grabbed the wrong lever or pushed the wrong button in the first place. That same person who pushed the button for his or her candidate - but then never pushed that candidate, once elected, to follow through and represent that person's needs. That person who simply yanked the lever and bet that everything would be ok if the candidate whose TV ads they liked won the election, is really the one to blame for not putting the right people, in the right places, to strongly regulate this mess.

That, most likely, would be you.

Too bad our cars and trucks don't get the same milage our American blame game gets.

Monkeying Around With America

With nine days left until the Congressional Republicans once again yank the economic self-destruct lever and send millions of Americans back into the unemployment lines, we're more than a little concerned with our colleagues in the media.

As the deadline has swung ever closer, many in the media apparently have preferred to - literally - fling stories about poo, or screech loudly about how politics just isn't the same as it used to be. There has also been a great deal of unnecessary chest beating and blame-shifting going on surrounding the sequester issue.

Watching the media fail to report this critical issue clearly is more fun than a barrel of monkeys - and we don't mean the child's game. That's actually still fun. This failure? Not so much.

It's not as though coverage of the looming sequester is actually all that complicated. Michael Tomasky of The Daily Beast made it very clear exactly who is responsible for the sequester cuts. Yes, President Obama may have come up with the idea, when the Republicans in Congress held him and the nation economic hostages in August 2011. That was the hostage situation that Republicans thought they won, when Speaker John Boenher said Republicans got 98% of everything they wanted. As Tomasky notes, 218 Republicans in the House voted for that "everything," including the sequester penalty in the Budget Control Act of 2011.

Not a single House Democrat backed the idea.

Even though members of only one party - the Democratic Party - have been willing to compromise, President Obama and many Congressional Democrats have accepted their share of responsibility in passing the 2011 bill that included the sequester. Democrats on Capitol Hill have shown a surprising amount of willingness to find compromise with Congressional Republicans on finding tax and budget solutions that would end the sequester threat.

President Obama even called a press conference Tuesday morning, explicitly detailing what kinds of harsh effects the American people will feel if Congress invokes the sequester by doing nothing. From cancer researchers to workers employed in military support functions, from first responders to teachers, hundreds of thousands of workers will lose their jobs - some as soon as nine days from now. Loan guarantees to small businesses will fall through too - and don't even think about going to the park to get away from it all.

Many parks and monuments will be closed without federal employees to take care of them.

The message that this sequester is not some abstract idea still doesn't seem to be getting through the proto-simian skulls of Congressional Republicans like Mitch McConnell  - who frankly can't afford any more political failures this year. Most of Congress is actually in a similar political situation to McConnell, with overall Congressional approval ratings still scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel.

Unlike many media pundits, we still think Congress will hang everything on a last-minute solution, and fix things - at least temporarily - before the sequester cuts actually hit in nine days.

After all, even if the GOP continues playing war games with itself, monkeying around with open elected seats while working Americans worry about losing their jobs, there's one game all Republicans hate to lose more than they hate each other - or Democrats.

It's called the "staying employed" game - a game they'll have a nearly impossible time winning in 2014, if the sequester cuts go through.

Red In The Face

As more than one national media figure whined about the relatively slow media day on Monday, we were intently watching the excitement unfold in Nebraska politics in ways we've yet to see or hear anyone else discussing. Of course, if you haven't been watching Nebraska politics, you may have missed a few things.

Over the last few weeks we've mentioned briefly and noted in our links (in our expanded daily editions) the rise and fall of Nebraska Republican Gov. Dave Heineman's destined-to-fail tax reform bill. While Heineman tried to paint a large and rosy picture of his reforms, in less than a month, his plan to shift much of the state's tax burden onto small and medium sized ag businesses - and off of big corporations - blew up in his face.

While Heineman was making a mess of his tax plan, Nebraska's now-former Lieutenant Governor Rick Sheehy was busy making a mess of both his personal and professional life - a mess that ended with Sheehy's resignation in January.

Sheehy had been the Nebraska Republican Party's front-runner to replace Heineman, after Speaker of the Legislature Mike Flood removed himself from the 2014 race due to his wife's battle with breast cancer. As we noted at the time of Sheehy's political meltdown, the revelations that led to Lt. Governor's resignation were oddly timed. That resignation cleared the field in Nebraska's political race for Governor at a very opportune time for someone, even though Sheehy's philandering ways had been known by many in media and politics for over a year before his resignation.

Enter the 2014 political races - and announcements galore.

We were not at all surprised by the Monday announcement of extremist Republican state Senator Charlie Janssen that he will be running for Governor in 2014 - especially after the timing of the events surrounding Sheehy. Janssen is an opportunist at his core, and a suddenly empty GOP field is - all too conveniently - the only way he would likely ever get a shot at the Governor's chair.

We were surprised by the announcement on Monday that the senior Senator from Nebraska, Mike Johanns, will not be seeking a second term in 2014. According to a report from Deena Winter of Nebraska Watchdog, Johanns had a cancer scare in 2009, and after consulting with his wife Stephanie, he decided not to seek re-election.

While there were many in the media who immediately began calling the 2014 U.S. Senate race for Heineman on Monday morning, we had a feeling another shoe would drop - which it did Monday afternoon, when current U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry announced that he would consider a run for the U.S. Senate to replace Johanns.

Frankly, we'd love to see someone like state Senator Ernie Chambers run for the seat from the Democratic Party. That said, we're of no illusion that most people in the Western part of Nebraska would ever bring themselves to vote for anything other than someone or SOMETHING that has an "R" attached to it - even a stupid pelican. That means, sadly, that in statewide Senate races, Democrats in Nebraska will likely remain without any politically compatible representation in Washington for the foreseeable future.

What this sets up, from our collective perspective, is a 2014 GOP race for Senate between a relatively moderate Jeff Fortenberry and another Republican - possibly even Gov. Heineman. Fortenberry's primary opponent will likely have to side with the extremists - like those who support racist immigration plans similar to state Senator Janssen's. Remember - Janssen will also be running for the Governor's office in Nebraska in 2014, waiting to paint his far-right, tea party colors all over whomever Fortenberry runs against. If that's Heineman, good luck getting Western Nebraska farm and ag interests to forget about Heineman's tax plan.

In other words, Nebraska will be ground zero for the GOP's civil war for the next two years - barring any other surprise announcements.

If you think Nebraska Republicans are red in the face now, just wait until they begin tearing each other apart in 2014.