Have you seen the picture on the right showing a Shell station in San Francisco with gas prices in excess of $4 per gallon?
Well, there’s only one problem with it: this isn’t close to indicative of what gas prices are in the Bay Area. Not even close.
Yet, the following was captioned next to this Associated Press picture at Yahoo Thursday (h/t NB reader Brian Mortimer, emphasis added):
High gas prices are posted at a Shell gas station in San Francisco, Thursday, May 10, 2007. With gasoline prices poised to break records at the pump, energy futures prices jumped Thursday as traders noticed a gas supply imbalance in the fine print of Wednesday's government inventory report.(AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
Sadly, the caption didn’t make clear that the prices at this station are high as a form of protest by the owner. As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle Thursday (emphasis added):
Putting the price way up over $4 a gallon isn't about making a profit. It's about making a statement to a multinational corporation. After Shell forced him to pay higher prices for gas in San Francisco and jacked up his rent, [owner Bob] Oyster says, he decided to fight back.
"I got fed up,'' Oyster admits. "It makes a statement, and I guess when people see that price they also see the Shell sign right next to it.''
In reality, as identified by AAA’s Fuel Gauge Report, the average price for regular unleaded in San Francisco is currently $3.62 per gallon.
Certainly, that’s nothing to cheer about, but a far cry from the $4.39 in the picture.
Of course, none of this should come as a surprise to folks that have been watching the media predict $4/gallon gas prices for the last two years. As reported by the Business and Media Institute in its special report "Media Myth: Gassing Up":
ABC, CBS and NBC have done at least 70 stories that mentioned $4-a-gallon gas or higher since Jan. 1, 2005. The national average for regular has never gone above $3.06 in that time.
Maybe some day they'll be right.
To read the complete report on the media's fascination with higher and higher gas prices, please go here.
—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.
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Looks like they have "updated
May 13, 2007 - 18:09 ET by Warner Todd HustonLooks like they have "updated" the image to this...
Which you can see at this Yahoo site.
I wonder... does this new image look photochopped to you? A composite of two signs?
I'm not knowledgeble enough
May 13, 2007 - 21:38 ET by motherbeltI'm not knowledgeble enough to judge, but I'll bet others are. I was shocked when I saw the picture the first day, but now I realize it's just the drive-by media's usual procedure. Go with the shock picture or headline right away; you can print the correction a couple of days later if necessary. I just wonder if they knew it was a put-up job when they first published it.
High gas prices are awesome
May 13, 2007 - 18:26 ET by ghost of Mary Jo KopechneHigh gas prices are awesome according to the left... except where it can be used to harm this administration.
Support Our Troops. God bless the military.
http://adoptaplatoon.org/new/index.htm
I think you meant to say &q
May 13, 2007 - 21:39 ET by motherbeltI think you meant to say "especially" where it can be used to harm this administration??
Many Leftist want gasoline to
May 13, 2007 - 19:40 ET by alamojbMany Leftist want gasoline to go higher to discourage driving and encourage "mass transit" or as I like to call it "terrorist mass casualty waiting to happen". Many of the folks in New Orleans who had cars got out. The folks reliant on "mass transit" did not.
If you want to see which states in the US are currently drilling for oil and natural gas, see this link:
http://www.bakerhugh...
I wish I could provide a link where a new (non-ethanol) refinery is being built, but I cannot.
Alamo--Any idea why no new re
May 13, 2007 - 20:20 ET by ncstevemAlamo--
Any idea why no new refineries haven't been built since 1976(?) in the US?
I read that there was more the double the number of refineries in the 1970's as there are now but many of those were marginal and relied on government subsidies to remain operational. Once the subsidies were eliminated when Reagan became president, those refineries closed. Then the low price of gas through the mid 1980's to late 1990's made investing in new refineries prohibitive.
Don't know if this info is accurate but it sounds plausible. One would think the the price of gas the last several years would have investors jumping at building new refineries.
Anyone know if it's strictly government regulation that leaves us with no new refineries on the drawing board now?
ncstevem,First of all, let me
May 13, 2007 - 21:39 ET by alamojbncstevem,
First of all, let me quote from this site, http://www.refineryreform.org/spotlight_yuma_az.html, an anti refinery site, where they say “A grass-roots citizens group that opposes the proposed refinery vowed to take their fight to the Environmental Protection Agency, asking that agency to take over responsibility for enforcement and compliance…..Glenn McGinnis, Arizona Clean Fuels chief executive officer, said he believes the company can raise the necessary capital and start construction in time….McGinnis said all are U.S. investors and wish to remain anonymous.” (Emphasis Mine)
That last sentence has got to be one of the most telling statements I have ever seen.
When energy prices were low, there was little drilling here in Texas. (Look at the historical rig counts in the link on my previous post) Now that prices are up, its boom time again. I take great pleasure while driving around watching drilling rigs going up and oil wells pumping, just the opposite feeling I had when I was younger and watched the wells grow still and start to rust. Several of my cousins now work in those fields. The media will lament the loss of manufacturing jobs, but they ignore the well paying blue collar jobs in the oil and gas industry. I am a private fence contractor, I lament paying the high price for fuel, but I rejoice for the good Blue collar American jobs that are coming back to those States where the political climate allows for use of natural resources.
The Oil and Gas were under the ground even in the bust times. But when the price and demand were right, it was profitable to drill again even in America, where the wells are not always as productive as they are in the middle east. However, you cannot escape the fact that in the good ole USA, part of the price of doing business is regulatory, litigation, "environmental impact studies", etc.
My guess is that applies to the refineries as well. When the price gets high enough to overcome the cost of doing business, there will be new refineries built. But part of the cost is regulation.
I attach at the bottom a few links en regards to business climate. This is about the energy sector, but more specifically Wind Power. Where the natural resource and business / regulatory climate are friendly to wind farms, they are being built, but where one of those are absent, the industry suffers.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/09/25/texas_is_more_hospitable_than_mass_to_wind_farms/?page=1
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2006/06/25/environmentalism_yee_haw/Liberals make me so mad the
May 13, 2007 - 23:35 ET by liberal_bug_zapperLiberals make me so mad the way they are lying and getting away with it. I was just in San Francisco on Friday and can tell you that pulling into some random station, the prices are nowhere near that high. What concerns me most is that there is one site like this, up against hundreds, if not thousands on the other side spouting lies.
As many of you probably know, both my parents are raving liberals. Well, that boiled over a week ago when I was in Seattle on business. My mom came down to visit and we went from civil discourse to an all out fight. She always tries to shut me up when I speak in positive terms about big business and of conservatives, this time she basically called me a Nazi without actually saying I was a Nazi and I had enough. I raised my voice at my mother and told her to sit down and shut up, and that I had had enough of her insane lunatic rantings about how George Bush is responsible for 9/11 and how WalMart is the greatest evil and threat to our nation. I asked her, why she would call me a Nazi, and she got ultra offended, but she had just finished saying that people who think that conservatism is good and WalMart is good are no better than Nazis... she said it before realizing that her own son is a staunch conservative and thinks WalMart is good for the country.
My point is that news like what you expose here is what my mother and other libs soak up as gospel, and when you call them on the hypocrisy and absolute lies, they get offended or claim you're a nazi.
Needless to say, we had a major blowout where I railed on my mother with such passion (did not yell in spite of how much I wanted to) that I brought her to tears. I have to admit, it's the first time I felt good about standing up to her and shooting down the BS, while at the same time, feeling like crap for making my mother cry.
I'm afraid that part of my family is lost to the evils of liberalism, and I hate Liberalism and all liberals for it.
____________________________________________________
"It's not that they're [liberals] not aware of all the things we're aware of, it's that they need to reject them in order to remain in this five-year-old utopia that they've been told is the only hope for mankind." ~ Evan Sayet
LBZ
May 13, 2007 - 23:47 ET by Noel SheppardLBZ,
I hope you called your mother today to wish her a happy Mother's Day, and resolve this. I have liberal parents, and the discussions can get heated as well. However, they're still our parents, and always deserving of our respect.
We've all got to find a way to put politics in perspective somehow, and not allow ourselves to become so emotional. Trust me, I'm speaking to myself as much as to you, for I got into an argument at my athletic club Friday with a nice guy who clearly wasn't as knowledgable or passionate about the subject matter as I.
After a shower, I went back and apologized to the guy; he had no idea what he was up against, and didn't deserve the tongue-lashing. After you think about it, the same could probably said for your mom. Respectfully. ns
Hi Noel,Thank you for shari
May 14, 2007 - 00:49 ET by liberal_bug_zapperHi Noel,
Thank you for sharing with me your recent run-in with a raving ignoramus. I run in to that type all the time. I'm beginning to feel outnumbered.
As for my mother, I love her dearly as she is my mother, but I do not respect her. She regularly goes on diatribes about evil corporations, evil Republicans and evil polluters who are destroying ma and pa stores, killing people of color for oil and destroying our planet for profit. I don't respect her beliefs, her stance on almost everything and I certainly don't respect her spouting the leftist party line, while at the same time, getting offended when I point out that what she is stating is in the Communist Manifesto.
In my opinion, showing respect to those people is to allow the argument some weight. It has to stop somewhere, and it if means families will be torn asunder, so be it.
I'm torn about how to deal with my mother, but at least we were able to come to the agreement we would watch what we talk about together. We've also come to the agreement that if one asks the other to stop talking on a subject, they must stop right away and find a neutral topic to talk about, like how the family is, or about the recent opening of an Art Museum or something like that.
We are ideologically, diametric opposites of each other. I still cannot explain this fully. I remember thinking it funny, and joining in with my mother in calling Ronald Reagan "Ronny Raygun". Of course, around twelve or thirteen years old, I started to change and started to not like the way my mom talked of Reagan. Eventually, I found out more about him and lost quite a bit of respect for my mother in the process. The more I read, the more I realized that she was completely ignorant.
Now when you say 'Respect', I am assuming you mean being respectful in how we treat our parents. I think that, not raising my voice, and standing firm against her ignorant rantings and shocking her in the process is a show of respect. If I did not love her, I would have ignored her and just walked away. Never argue with an idiot as it soon will become difficult to tell the difference between you and them.
Ah well, what can you do?
I have not yet called my mother, and don't think I will.
____________________________________________________
"We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities." ~ Thomas Paine
LBZ -tell me to take a hike if you like
May 14, 2007 - 01:04 ET by misterbillLBZ -tell me to take a hike if you like. Some very trite platitudes but true--hate the sin not the sinner. I know how frustrating it can be-I grew up in Assachusetts.
The land of liberals.
My Mom and Dd are gone many years now. I am afflicted with some common old age syndromes. I think of them both a lot. I am glad that we were friends when they passed. I loved them dearly, I love them dearly. My oldest boy passed away at 41 years of age from a mitral valve failure. We were not speaking at the time of his death. He was, what was described in old books as a "ne'er do well." I had a very bad argument with him and asked him to never see me until he had stabilized his life. Enough! I do not need to go into any more of it now. I moved from Tampa to Atlanta. He stayed in Tampa. I never saw him or spoke to him before he died. I loved him dearly. I thought I was using "tough love" on him--I was. I never expected it to turn out the way it did. I know I did the right thing. I got advice from AA members on how to handle the problem. They will and have told me that everything I did was right. Why am I so sad, that after ten years I think of him every day and wish I had not been so righteous. You are right and righteous. That will be cold comfort if your Mom passes and there is a rift between you. Please forgive me for sermonizing--I don't want the same thing to happen to you.
Thank you MB for sharing wi
May 14, 2007 - 01:22 ET by liberal_bug_zapperThank you MB for sharing with me that which is obviously a painful part of your life. I know that in some ways, you are so right, and that if anything happens to her before we begin to patch up our relationship, that I will be sad. However, I try never to regret decisions as we cannot change them once they have been made. We can try and rectify them, but we cannot change those which have already been acted upon.
I am moving back to the US now after 13 years in Asia, and will be bringing with me my wife and daughter. I do want my daughter to know her grandmother and grandfather, and I will make sure that happens. As for resolving our differences, I'm afraid that will never happen. I think we will just have to accept that neither she nor I are going to change. The more we argue about it, the more we are pushed apart. I will call her, and it will be just an average call, for average run of the mill issues in life, but as for calling her on mother's day, it's too late for that.
____________________________________________________
"Important principles may and must be inflexible." ~ Abraham Lincoln
LBZ--I know it's trite---
May 13, 2007 - 23:49 ET by misterbillLBZ--I know it's trite---but you cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs. I do not know your mother's age. I am 74. When young, I was a staunch Democrat. I believed every liberal thing I heard. Once established in a career path, I began to look around at why I was a Dem,etc. Well, my Dad was Dem, he was a hardworking semi-skilled laborer. He gave as much love to the Democratic party as he gave to his union. If you were around then, it was a different story. The Democrats and the unions made things much better for the working man. Eventually, as a lot of things in life, the party and the unions really had little more to offer. I changed parties and my Dad did not understand. He told me that when big business cut my salary or job, I would no longer be in a party that would defend me. I don't think I need to say a whole lot more (although I could) for someone to understand why some of the older people are liberal Democrats. Fodr Heaven's sake, why would a young person feel that way? Why do our black brothers and sisters have such strong feelings for the liberal Democrats--the party that started the KKK??
If you have an answer, I would like to know.
PS My Dad and I (Mom too) had some interesting discussions and debates but fortunately, it never escalated in to a major dustup. My Dad would just sigh and say, "if you could only remember how things were" I would heave a fake sigh and say, "if you only knew how things are".
God bless him and Mom. I miss them.
this is what happens when a l
May 13, 2007 - 23:52 ET by jondelwichethis is what happens when a liberal Congress is elected:
gas prices soar
;o)
Where is the media castigating the Dems????
ns--I saw a story on this --Sat evening
May 14, 2007 - 00:34 ET by misterbillns--I saw a story on this --Sat evening. The owner of the station is embroiled in a leasing dispute with the oil company. He said he sky-rocketed his prices to raise some interest in his situation. He said he sold quite a few gallons when people stopped and asked him "why so high?'. An unnamed )of course) spokesperson from the oil company said that the owner had more than one station and was trying to negotiate a better price than one-station owners.
A reliable and honest news medium would get all the facts before they posted them. Irresponsible reporting. "Lion tracks man" turned out to be "man lying on tracks". Just a slight difference, eh?
MB
May 14, 2007 - 00:42 ET by Noel SheppardMB,
Yeah, our gas prices out here are high, but not that high. Where I live, we're between $3.51 and $3.67 for regular unleaded. Pretty ridiculous, though, when you consider the wholesale price closed Friday at $2.31. That's better than a 50 percent markup not including taxes.
Ain't ethanol great? ns
Georgia still has "relatively" low prices.
May 14, 2007 - 00:47 ET by misterbillGeorgia still has "relatively" low prices. We shop at Kroger's supermarket. They have a gas staion on site. At the local Kroger the price was $2.98 a gallon. I had bought more than $100 dollars worth of groceries at Kroger (A gallon of milk and a loaf of grass--teehee) and I got 10 cents off per gallon. So I paid $2.88 . Not bad.
But notice the "not bad". The conditioning that the oil companies have striven for has taken effect. I do remember paying (in GA) $1.29 before all this folderol started.
Well MB, the biggest proble
May 14, 2007 - 00:55 ET by liberal_bug_zapperWell MB, the biggest problem we face in terms of gas prices is the fact that we have a political party who will not let us drill for oil where it would count the most, in our country. We have a political party who is almost solely responsible for the rules and regulations that make it financially impossible, or at least unattractive to build new refineries to handle the capacity which would ease the demand situation substantially, and we have a political party whose activists are totally responsible for the endless cocktails of fuel formulas in across the country which jack the price up considerably. That same party is the one who blames us conservatives and our leaders for the problems we face... and the majority of the media let them get away with this garbage.... it's enough to drive a person nuts.
____________________________________________________
"If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law." ~ Winston Churchill
right on!
May 14, 2007 - 01:05 ET by misterbillRight on!
Never forget:$5/gal gasoline
May 14, 2007 - 09:50 ET by AlgerHissNever forget:
$5/gal gasoline where $4 is taxes is fine.
$3/gal gasoline where $2 is taxes is horrid.
Rochester, Minnesota: A Fem_Leftist City!
My friends who actually thoug
May 14, 2007 - 12:14 ET by fenderteleMy friends who actually thought they were conservatives and bought SUVs four and five years ago have all traded them in for rice burners because there comes a point where you just can't afford to spend $100+ to fill your tank no matter what your politics are.
BTW, are there any republicans who calling for investigations into the high gas prices we're experiencing?
Credit to Fender
May 14, 2007 - 13:08 ET by JimboFender – I give you credit for fitting some many completely incorrect generalizations and offenses into a three lined post.
“Thought they were conservatives and bought SUV’s”???
Huh? So only conservatives can own SUV’s? Doesn’t your idol Obama drive one?
“…have all traded them in”
And then what? They realized they weren’t conservatives?
“rice burners”
Isn’t that a racist remark?
Jimbo says - "There is a fine line between freedom of speech and treason"
I have every intention of tra
May 15, 2007 - 05:12 ET by UnsaneI have every intention of trading in my V-6 truck for an even bigger one at some point next year, come hell or high water.
Here is a very simple explanation of the gas prices we are experiencing: I am paying $2.83 a gallon for gas here, and it IS worth that much, for that is the price I am willing to pay for it.
Why can't you trouble yourself to study some economics before setting out to punish and steal from America's producers, like a parasite?
"HAV3 TH3 BRIDG3S OF INSANITY B33N CROSS3D AND FOR3V3R R3TRACT3D???." - Meshuggah, "3ntrapm3nt", from Catch Thirty Thr33 (2005)
We know why prices are high
May 15, 2007 - 05:42 ET by liberal_bug_zapperWe know why prices are high, we just can't understand why you liberals are always calling for investigations into high prices when it's completely obvious.... it's the fault of liberal policies plain and simple. Too much regulation, too many fuel standards and too much taxes.
____________________________________________________
"We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities." ~ Thomas Paine
I think there should be an
May 15, 2007 - 05:57 ET by sarcasmoI think there should be an investigation into why gas isn't better-labeled. I, and I'm sure others not-involved in petroleum, have no idea how many kinds of gasoline I'm actually being offered or buying every year, but unlike most folks I know it's sure as hell more than the 3 choices it seems to be. Why not make them call each different blend required by regulations something-different? I think this is the kind of idea we'd have seen in the old, pre-Exxon, Mobil Oil ads. The left always goes-on about truth in advertising, but in the odd case of gasoline, we have regulations forcing an unknown number of fuels onto American consumers, and nobody knows crap, and nobody seems to give a crap about that ignorance except me! Why???
JMR