Gas Prices Near 6$ a Gallon At Some Florida Gas Stations

TAMPA, Florida (CBS Tampa) - Talk about pain at the pump! Some Florida drivers are spending nearly $6 a gallon to fill up their gas tanks.
According to GasBuddy.com, motorists are shelling out $5.89 for a gallon of regular gas at a Shell station in Lake Buena Vista, topping out at $5.99 a gallon for premium. It doesn't get better at a Suncoast Energy station in Orlando, where drivers are paying $5.79 for a gallon of regular.
"Prices over in the Disney World area are much higher than any other place in Florida," Jessica Brady, AAA spokeswoman, told CBS Tampa, adding that people regularly complain about gas prices in that area.
The Sunshine State is opening up its wallet, paying an average of $3.67 a gallon of unleaded gas, 12 cents more than the national average. And it's only expected to go up.
"It doesn't look like we will have relief at the pump anytime soon," Brady told CBS Tampa. "I do think we will see prices surpass $4 a gallon. I think we will see that closer to spring time."
One reason for the high prices is the conflict with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has threatened to disrupt oil shipments through the waterway due to the European Union sanctions leveled against the country over its nuclear program, causing the price of crude to skyrocket. Trading on a barrel of crude today is a little over $106.
Another reason for the high gas prices: positive economic news. The drop in the unemployment rate and improved housing market numbers have caused gas and oil prices to rise.
"I know it frustrates quite a few consumers why positive news will lead to higher prices," Brady told CBS Tampa. "It really just comes down to speculation."
A third culprit behind the gas price boom is Greece. The EU's bailout for the indebted country only adds to the global fuel demand.
And because of these reasons, Brady believes that Florida and the rest of the U.S. could see historical gas prices.
"I think this year we will see much higher highs."

Marist Poll; Romney Leads Santorumn By 2, Michigan, 16 Points In Arizona

John Mccormack - In Michigan – which has turned into a make-or-break contest for Romney – the former Massachusetts governor gets the support of 37 percent of likely GOP primary voters, including those who are leaning toward a particular candidate.

Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, gets 35 percent, and he’s followed by Texas Rep. Ron Paul at 13 percent and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 8 percent.[...]

But in Arizona, Romney is on safer ground: He receives the support of 43 percent of likely GOP primary voters, Santorum gets 27 percent, Gingrich 16 percent and Paul 11 percent.

The RealClearPolitics average of polls shows Santorum barely ahead of Romney by 0.8 percent in Michigan and Romney ahead of Santorum by 8.2 percent in Arizona.

Surtax In United Kingdom Results In Lower Tax Revenue

Ed Morrissey - Barack Obama has spent the last several months insisting on a tax hike for higher income earners in the US, casting it as an issue of “fairness” and of deficit reduction.  In his State of the Union speech, Obama used the word “fair” or a derivative nine different times, and calling for the wealthy to pay their “fair share” of taxes — even though the wealthy account for a much higher percentage of income-tax revenues both as a share of the revenues and as a share of income than the rest of the population.  Democrats have tried to push through a “surtax” on income over a million dollars in a year in order to put Obama’s rhetoric into reality.
Speaking of reality, the UK did exactly what Obama and the Democrats propose to do here — pass a surtax on high-income earners.  The new tax rate of 50%, which took effect at the beginning of the year, was expected to raise a billion pounds in extra revenue each month.  So how did that work out?  Tax revenues dropped by more than £500 million:

The Treasury received £10.35 billion in income tax payments from those paying by self-assessment last month, a drop of £509 million compared with January 2011. Most other taxes produced higher revenues over the same period.

Senior sources said that the first official figures indicated that there had been “manoeuvring” by well-off Britons to avoid the new higher rate. The figures will add to pressure on the Coalition to drop the levy amid fears it is forcing entrepreneurs to relocate abroad.

The self-assessment returns from January, when most income tax is paid by the better-off, have been eagerly awaited by the Treasury and government ministers as they provide the first evidence of the success, or failure, of the 50p rate. It is the first year following the introduction of the 50p rate which had been expected to boost tax revenues from self-assessment by more than £1billion.

Oopsie!  It turns out that the wealthy can find ways to shelter income when government drives the cost of taxes high enough to make it worthwhile.  If that means taking their money and going where the tax laws are more welcoming to investment, then this particular population has fewer barriers to making that solution work than most of the middle class.  Instead of gaining more revenue, the UK will end up losing revenue, and not just from the sheltering — but also in lost economic growth as the wealthy have to put that capital to sleep rather than make it work in the economy.
Obama’s plan to hike capital-gains taxes to 20% and push a surtax on higher earnings will produce the same result here.  The capital that might have gone to work in the US will go to work somewhere else or not at all, which will not just kill the direct revenues expected in static tax analysis from the hike, but also discard the revenues that would have occurred had the capital been put to work here.  That’s the lesson from the British face-plant on surtaxes, and hopefully the US learns that lesson the easy way.

Real Unemployment Rate 36%

John Hayward - How would you define “unemployment?”  Statistics on unemployment are bandied around in the media all the time.  Changes in these statistics are hailed as good or bad news for the President, with varying degrees of emphasis from the news networks, depending on which party the President belongs to.  But what do these statistics truly measure?

Would you define “unemployment” as measuring “people who want a job, but can’t get one?”  This is, broadly speaking, the definition embraced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The trick to making those numbers dance lies in measuring “people who want a job.”  The widely reported U-3 unemployment metric, currently standing at 8.3 percent, is very aggressive in shaving off people who have not made recent efforts to find work.  It is further distorted by massive “seasonal adjustments,” which made over a million people vanish into thin air last month. 

This is why the official unemployment rate gets lower when the American workforce contracts.  Workforce contraction is a very bad thing.  People who simply cannot find work, and languish on unemployment insurance for years, are the last thing a prosperous country needs… but those people don’t count in the official unemployment rate.  For example, if everyone under the age of 25 abruptly stopped looking for work, it would be an economic disaster, but the official unemployment rate would go down, because the pool of people looking for work would get smaller. 

(That’s not quite as far-fetched an example as it might sound, incidentally.  Even the heavily-massaged U-3 unemployment rate currently sits at 23.2 percent for ages 16-19, and 13.3 percent for ages 20-24… and it’s about two percent higher for young men.  Policies that increase the cost of labor, such as minimum-wage increases and mandated benefits, have a particularly punishing effect on young entry-level workers, since their labor has less intrinsic value than experienced older employees.)

This is precisely what has been happening under Barack Obama.  The workforce is contracting with horrible speed, but it has the beneficial side effect of making the official unemployment rate go down a little, although 8.3 percent is still pathetic.  The Administration bounces happily before the cameras and announces its policies are “working,” and job creation is now “on the right track,” even as their best months post job creation only slightly in excess of population growth – and they’ve only had a few such months.  Pundits begin wondering if the old political rules that say re-election is impossible with unemployment over 6 or 7 percent might not apply to this President, if he can campaign on a slowly declining unemployment rate.

Another side effect of the way our unemployment statistics are prepared, and reported, comes when America's employment picture is compared to the figures from other nations.  Are the unemployment statistics reported from, say, Greece or Italy calculated in precisely the same manner as the American U-3 rate?  If not, then how can we make valid comparisons between them?

Since the concept of people who aren’t looking for work is so fluid, and some of those people have clearly been persuaded not to look for work because of job-destroying government policies, it might be more logical to measure unemployment using the standard incorrectly offered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the U-3 rate: “total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force.”  That’s what the U-3 rate claims to measure, but it doesn’t, not by a long shot. 

What is the current percentage of working-age Americans, eligible to participate in the civilian labor force, but not currently working?  Answer: 36.3 percent.

That’s the worst labor participation rate in three decades, and it’s part of the worst employment picture we’ve seen since the Great Depression.  Labor force participation is the number we should really be looking at, even more than the unemployment figures cooked up on the monthly basis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Those figures have their uses as well, but it seems reasonable to measure the overall health of the economy by the number of people who simply are not participating in the labor force.

This would always be a much higher number than the BLS unemployment statistic, even when the economy was humming along at maximum power.  There are always going to be working-age people who drop out of the labor force, for reasons that have nothing to do with the nation’s overall economic health.  The labor force participation rate hasn’t exceeded 67 percent in the past decade, so we would be looking at a true “unemployment” number that bounces between roughly thirty and forty percent.  The difference between good and bad percentages is relatively small, which makes the true “unemployment” figure less sexy for news coverage, and therefore less useful to politicians… but it’s more logical to measure small changes in a large, accurate number than big changes in a small, largely fantastic number.

Writing at Red State, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who chairs the House Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight, and Government Spending, offers an eye-popping chart measuring the effect of President Obama’s “stimulus” policies on workforce participation:

Jordan writes in support of the Jobs Through Growth Act, a package of dramatic reforms that includes a flat tax with two low rates, reduced corporate taxes, regulatory relief, and increased domestic energy production.  Those are the sort of changes America needs to make, if we want to do more than fiddle with imaginary unemployment numbers, whose very definition is subject to “adjustment” on a massive scale.  Those who define “unemployment” as “the number of working-age Americans who aren’t working” should waste no time on small reforms.

The New American Political Blacklist

Pat Buchanan - My days as a political analyst at MSNBC have come to an end.
After 10 enjoyable years, I am departing, after an incessant clamor from the left that to permit me continued access to the microphones of MSNBC would be an outrage against decency, and dangerous.
The calls for my firing began almost immediately with the Oct. 18 publication of "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?"
A group called Color of Change, whose mission statement says that it "exists to strengthen Black America's political voice," claimed that my book espouses a "white supremacist ideology." Color of Change took particular umbrage at the title of Chapter 4, "The End of White America."
Media Matters parroted the party line: He has blasphemed!
A Human Rights Campaign that bills itself as America's leading voice for lesbians, bisexuals, gays and transgendered people said that Buchanan's "extremist ideas are incredibly harmful to millions of LBGT people around the world."
Their rage was triggered by a remark to NPR's Diane Rehm — that I believe homosexual acts to be "unnatural and immoral."
On Nov. 2, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, who has sought to have me censored for 22 years, piled on.
"Buchanan has shown himself, time and again, to be a racist and an anti-Semite," said Foxman. Buchanan "bemoans the destruction of white Christian America" and says America's shrinking Jewish population is due to the "collective decision of Jews themselves."
Well, yes, I do bemoan what Newsweek's 2009 cover called "The Decline and Fall of Christian America" and editor Jon Meacham described as "The End of Christian America." After all, I am a Christian.
And what else explains the shrinkage of the U.S. Jewish population by 6 percent in the 1990s and its projected decline by another 50 percent by 2050, if not the "collective decision of Jews themselves"?
Let error be tolerated, said Thomas Jefferson, "so long as reason is left free to combat it." What Foxman and ADL are about in demanding that my voice be silenced is, in the Jeffersonian sense, intrinsically un-American.
Consider what it is these people are saying.
They are saying that a respected publisher, St. Martin's, colluded with me to produce a racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic book, and CNN, Fox News, C-SPAN, Fox Business News and the 150 radio shows on which I appeared failed to detect its evil and helped to promote a moral atrocity.
If my book is racist and anti-Semitic, how did Sean Hannity, Erin Burnett, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Megyn Kelly, Lou Dobbs and Ralph Nader miss that? How did Charles Payne, African-American host on Fox radio, who has interviewed me three times, fail to detect its racism?
How did Michael Medved miss its anti-Semitism?
In a 2009 cover story in the Atlantic, "The End of White America?" from which my chapter title was taken, professor Hua Hsu revels in the passing of America's white majority.
At Portland State, President Clinton got a huge ovation when he told students that white Americans will be a minority in 2050. Is this writer alone forbidden to broach the subject?
That homosexual acts are unnatural and immoral has been doctrine in the Catholic Church for 2,000 years.
Is it now hate speech to restate traditional Catholic beliefs?
Documented in the 488 pages and 1,500 footnotes of "Suicide of a Superpower" is my thesis that America is Balkanizing, breaking down along the lines of religion, race, ethnicity, culture and ideology, and that Western peoples are facing demographic death by century's end.
Are such subjects taboo? Are they unfit for national debate?
So it would seem. MSNBC President Phil Griffin told reporters, "I don't think the ideas that (Buchanan) put forth (in his book) are appropriate for the national dialogue, much less on MSNBC."
In the 10 years I have been at MSNBC, the network has taken heat for what I have written, and faithfully honored our contract.
Yet my four-months' absence from MSNBC and now my departure represent an undeniable victory for the blacklisters.
The modus operandi of these thought police at Color of Change and ADL is to brand as racists and anti-Semites any writer who dares to venture outside the narrow corral in which they seek to confine debate.
All the while prattling about their love of dissent and devotion to the First Amendment, they seek systematically to silence and censor dissent.
Without a hearing, they smear and stigmatize as racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic any who contradict what George Orwell once called their "smelly little orthodoxies." They then demand that the heretic recant, grovel, apologize, and pledge to go forth and sin no more.
Defy them, and they will go after the network where you work, the newspapers that carry your column, the conventions that invite you to speak. If all else fails, they go after the advertisers.
I know these blacklisters. They operate behind closed doors, with phone calls, mailed threats and off-the-record meetings. They work in the dark because, as Al Smith said, nothing un-American can live in the sunlight.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?" To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Iran War Propaganda Media Steers World Toward Disater

Kurt Nimmo - The establishment media has slipped into overdrive. It is determined to fan the flames of hysteria and set the stage for a devastating attack on Iran.
On Thursday, CNN’s Erin Burnet interviewed New York’s Rep. Peter King who said Iran will unleash Hezbollah in America and the result will be worse than an attack with ballistic missiles.
Erin Burnet and Rep. Peter King fan the flames of hysteria.
King and Burnet threw around a slew of lies and fabrications in order to fan the flames of hysteria – from the cartoonish plot by a failed Iranian used car salesman to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador cooked up by the DEA and the FBI to highly suspect and largely inept attacks on Israeli diplomats in India, Georgia and Thailand.
Law enforcement officials in New York and Los Angeles “are keeping an eye out for potential Iranian operatives or anyone with links to the country’s proxy terrorist group, Hezbollah,” reports Fox News. The public can now expect more cops dressed in black with automatic weapons at airports, subways and bus terminals.
Following attacks in India, Georgia and Thailand attributed to Iran and Hezbollah by Israel, the United States and the corporate media, the NYPD’s intelligence boss said Iran is the number one threat to the Big Apple.
In Los Angeles, a city with one of the largest Iranian communities outside Iran, the hysterical and unlikely prospect of an Iranian attack has overshadowed intelligence briefings for weeks.
Israel is barraging a complaisant corporate media with all sorts of dire predictions, especially in regard to the safety of Jews around the world. “Iran and Hezbollah are continuing to try to carry out other attacks on targets abroad,” an Israeli counterterrorism official said Friday, without offering specific details or bothering to provide evidence. “That means asking Israelis abroad to be vigilant.”
Grasping at straws: Iran pulled off inept attacks because it is “desperate.”
In Britain, foreign secretary William Hague said Iran’s drive to obtain nuclear weapons – an assertion that remains unsubstantiated – will result in a new and uncontrollable Cold War.
The Mirror – no slouch when it comes to producing sensationalized pablum of the most lurid sort – posted a story today claiming Iran is training “Al-Qaeda terrorists in advanced explosives with a view to new 9/11-style attacks,” according to nameless experts, and the “2012 London Olympics is believed to be a prime target.”
An absurd case of lies and fantastic conjecture passed off as truth is now rolling full-steam down hill at record speed and will soon result in a disastrous collision that will deal a coup de grâce to the global economy and result in the implementation of a police state.
It’s not that we didn’t learn from the propaganda campaign and invasion of Iraq almost a decade ago. Most Americans now realize that the war was cooked up under false pretense, but there is little they can do because the political system is so corrupted and captured by the military-intelligence-bankster complex.