The war on working Americans continues at the gas pump, and House Speaker John Boehner is now on the front lines, protecting his Wall Street backers and buddies. As part of our week-long series in conjunction with The Nation magazine, we explained Monday night how Wall Street speculators are jacking up the price of your food and gas and getting rich off it.
Speaker Boehner is blocking Democratic efforts to fund the enforcement needed to rein in Wall Street speculators. And his blog now has the following explanation for high gas prices:
...it's time for President Obama to explain to the American people why he spent the last two years blocking new American energy production, working to raise prices on families and small businesses, and making it harder to create new jobs.
We've been telling you all along the right wing would try to pin this on the president.
And sure enough, last Thursday, Fox News came out calling for an end to the gas tax. Neil Cavuto introduced a guest he said was calling for the gas tax to be eliminated.
But the guest said that cutting the gas tax would do little good -- because prices would just rise again to fill the vacuum. The guest blamed speculators. Cavuto didn't say a thing.
In the very next segment, Cavuto focused on food prices. The guest AGAIN blamed speculators -- and Cavuto ended the interview.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Strangely, the White House has apparently said nothing about Wall Street's role in high commodities prices -- let alone about Republican efforts to shield those speculators. We spoke to Chris Hayes of The Nation about whether the White House gets how important this is.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Tonight, we'll get the inside story on this vital issue from one of the people in charge: CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton. That's on tonight's Ed Show, on MSNBC at 10pm eastern time.