By Carter Clews
Unbeknownst to most, January 11, 2009, was a red-letter day for TV network news. On that day – circle it, laminate your calendar, and tuck it away as a family heirloom – CBS News finally admitted that they had failed miserably to report on a story that was as obvious as the nose on everyone else’s face.
Well, let me rephrase that: “as obvious as the nose on everyone else’s face – other than the folks at CBS News and the Hard Left politicians for whom they had provided cover until that fateful day.”
Here’s the scoop …
On Sunday, January 11 of this year, CBS News reluctantly conceded that they had failed to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about what actually caused last year’s horrifying spike in gasoline prices. Oh, they didn’t come right out and say, “We lied.” But, even a casual reading between the lines of their story entitled “Did Speculation Fuel Oil Price Swings?” makes it more than abundantly clear that they finally thought it was time to come clean.
You may recall that month after month in the spring and early summer of 2008, as gas pump prices skyrocketed, Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, and the other talking heads at CBS, made it their stock in trade to portray the crisis as irremediable. They told us that prices would continue to climb through the stratosphere. And that there was nothing in the world anyone could do about it (except, perhaps, resort to windmills, solar panels, and bicycles built for two).
Least of all, they proclaimed, would domestic drilling in any way, shape, or form help alleviate the problem, even in the slightest. Not now. Not ever. They took great pride in ferreting out leftwing politicians who would declare, as Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin did on May13, 2008, “We can’t drill our way out of this.”
And they became almost apoplectic with joy when, after President Bush had lifted the executive ban on domestic drilling in July, The Dragon Lady, Nancy Pelosi, sneered:
“Once again, the oilman in the White House is echoing the demands of Big Oil. The Bush plan is a hoax. It will neither reduce gas prices nor increase energy independence. It just gives millions more acres to the same companies that are sitting on nearly 68 million acres of public lands and coastal areas.”
Of course, the Bush “hoax,” coupled with the American people forcing Ms. Pelosi, et. al., to lift the congressional ban did reduce gas prices. In fact, they plummeted. Immediately. Just as ALG News and scores of other commentators had predicted. And CBS News had denied. Time after time, and again.
Now, as of January 11, CBS is finally admitting that, well, gee whiz, maybe the lifting of the moratorium did help bring gas prices down – but only because it stopped the evil speculators from continuing to drive them up. Which, of course, gets it all exactly backwards.
Those of us with even a modicum of good sense (and a smidgeon of erudition and integrity) knew all along – and tried tirelessly to tell Ms. Couric, Mr. Gibson, and their political cronies – that the speculators paying top dollar on the futures market was the result, not the cause, of rising gas prices. And that once said speculators knew that America would, indeed, start drilling for its own oil, they would, in turn, stop paying top dollar for tomorrow’s yield. And gas pump prices would, as a result, begin to drop.
It’s called “simple logic.” Something that TV anchors and political hacks apparently find too abhorrent even to consider when it stands athwart their own firmly entrenched political agenda.
But, drop gas prices have. Like a rock. Much to what should be the chagrin of Dick, Nancy, Katie, and Charlie. Dick and Nancy, of course, have gone to ground on the issue, refusing to admit even for one moment that they were, in fact, dead wrong. (Which may help explain, at least in part, why The Dragon Lady’s approval rating is now hovering somewhere around 5% nationally, thereby making its plunge second only to that of gas prices).
To its credit, CBS News has, at last, taken the bold step of admitting that, indeed, gasoline prices have dropped. And in their own “we-weren’t-really-wrong” way of recognizing the obvious, they have even conceded that the speculators’ abandoning the futures market may have had … well … at least something to do with the precipitous plunge. Though they still get the whole cause and effect thing exactly backwards.
All of which reminds me of one of my favorite Ronald Reagan squelches. It came some two to three years into his first administration, when it had become clear to all by the Hard Left media elite and their political co-conspirators that Reaganomics had, indeed, worked to near perfection. Asked by one of those in attendance at an informal briefing how he felt about his critics continued caviling, the President smiled and responded, “Well, at least now they have to admit that it works in practice – even though they still insist it won’t work in theory.”
On January 11, 2009, in a dramatic break with its own historical precedent, CBS News actually admitted that drilling for domestic oil had, in practice, brought down gas prices. Now, they just need to get their theories straight. Which, if you check your calendar, should occur sometime around the twelfth of never.
Editor’s Footnote: On Sunday, January 11, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid began pushing through his omnibus land grab bill to prevent America from tapping some 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 300 million barrels of oil in Wyoming alone. And President Obama’s Interior Secretary designee has already announced that he intends to bring back the domestic drilling ban. So, get ready to retrieve your bicycle built for two.
Carter Clews is the Executive Editor of ALG News Bureau.
