Oil companies and our Southern border ...

Nothing will illicit a response out of Titus quicker then a defense of either ... hehe.

My insect free ointment ...

My point about extreme weather was driving increases during the summer, and furnaces kick on during the winter. When demand goes up, price goes up. Increased operating costs are not the only legitimate reason companies increase the price of their product.

Now as to those increased prices, lets discuss "gouging." As residents of South Mississippi for multiple decades I think we can all attest to what a common sense definition of gouging is. When you're the only post storm store open in a 20 square mile radius and you're charging $6 for a bottle of water & $15 for a box of Cheez-its, thats gouging. We're talking 50, 100, 500% increases in price because supplies are tight to nonexistent. That is not the case here. 6 months ago when gas was hovering around $2.89, no one was bitching, here or in the press. Now it's at $3.14. That's roughly a 10% increase over 6 months. 10% is to be considered "gouging" now? In addition, supplies, according to you, are plentiful. Now a 10% increase over 6 months when supplies are plentiful sounds quite a ways away from our S. MS definition, doesnt it?

Now ... you seem to have a beef with the increase cost to the consumer when there is no discernable increase in cost to the supplier. So let me get this straight. A private company, lets say Exxon, who's sole purpose for existing is to make money, figured they could raise the price of their product, that the consumer would bare that cost, and the company would as a result increase their revenues, I got that about right? Tell me, how does that make them any different from any other business? "Their product is vital", is sure to be your response. So what do you want to do, create a "sliding scale of vitality" for the private sector? Your ability to profit will be determined on how "vital" your product is? Shall we cap Bill Gates income given his operating systems are vital to 90% of the world's computers? And if we were to single out "big oil" for price controls and profit caps, those investors in shares of Exxon (which include teacher and firemen pensions) might invest elsewhere, drying up capital for new, deep horizon exploration. You could end up decreasing supply while demand goes up, actually increasing cost to the consumer you're trying to protect or recreating the dreaded gas lines. I cant begin to contemplate the number of unintended consequences of profit caps or price controls, but I can safely assume they'll almost all be negative.

Now if you think I enjoy paying 3 or $4 a gallon of gas, you're out of your mind. When I wrote, "(oil companies) are charging what the market will bare", it wasn't an endorsement of the status quo. I want reform.

I want you to think of oil like hate speech. The answer to hate speech isn't to limit it, pass laws against it, or any other imposition. If some jack-wad wants to burn my flag the best response isn't imprisonment or fines. It 's getting 10,000 people in my town to recite the Pledge in tandom on TV in front of the biggest flag the guys at Guinness have ever seen, Fox would cover it live. In other words the answer to hate speech, is more speech.

I don't mean for you to endure a lecture here, I'm simply saying that rather then focusing efforts on narrowing Exxon's profit margin we should be setting our sites on widening the entire energy sector. Lift bans on drilling; slash the mountain of red tape on opening new refineries; build nuclear power plants ( & that's energy that would not be exported to the world market by the way); aggressively explore coal options; natural gas, the works. If we want real reform we have to make America a serious energy player again, and drive down costs at home and even world wide. The problem is this President, the Democrat Party, and certain high profile Republicans have a death grip on this nation's energy potential because they've either bought in to or have been bought out by the global warming zealots & their lobby.

So look, you can go on hating oil companies with the heat of a thousand suns all you want, that's fine, they're not saints (nor are they in the business of sainthood). But if what you want is an energy policy that works for the little guy, you should hate the green movement even more.