We’ve been hearing for several weeks now that gas prices are headed up, and that has borne out. Oil is trading at a high for the month, and gas prices have ticked up, with the expectation of an average of over $4 a gallon by Memorial Day. Needless to say, this will put a crimp [...]

New polling shows overwhelming support for the Buffett rule. The National Journal poll shows 76% in support of a minimum effective tax rate of 30% for millionaires. It’s a simple policy, easily explained. And so it does well in public opinion polling. But another simple policy, easily explained, is the facile notion that America should [...]

Let’s briefly go through a few of the other proposals in last night’s State of the Union Address, none of which will come to pass this year if they include an act of Congress, but which offer some insights regardless: • The broader mortgage refi plan: HARP 2 is already operative, and Fannie and Freddie [...]

Small hints have been dribbled out to journalists ahead of tonight’s State of the Union Address, which in an election year invariably signals an attempt by an incumbent running for re-election to set the terms of the debate, to state what they will campaign on throughout the year. And this year is no different. For [...]

If you think about it, the megacity of Lagos, Nigeria, almost devoid of public services for the poor, is the perfect place for the Occupy movement to spread. Nigerians furious over gasoline prices and government corruption clashed with police as a nationwide strike began Monday, the latest iteration of an ongoing protest dubbed “Occupy Nigeria.” [...]

I’m saving my “What to Look for in 2012″ listicle for tomorrow, but one of the issues that may not make the list, but which is terribly important, is the battle in the states over hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. 2011 was the year when this issue finally bubbled up to the surface (pardon the pun) [...]

As part of the omnibus spending bill, which has not quite yet been made law due to the blowup of the payroll tax deal, the federal government will delay enforcement of new regulations for increased energy efficiency in light bulbs. Republicans claim that this delay, achieved through blocking Energy Department funding for enforcement through Fiscal [...]

Maybe Warren Buffett’s purchase of a California solar farm will finally force a recognition of the potential of solar energy from an economic standpoint. Since the dissolution of Solyndra, oil-besotted conservative lawmakers have dismissed this potential, saying that the industry was simply unprofitable. When Buffett makes an investment, that becomes a harder sell: Buffett’s MidAmerican [...]

Here’s your daily (hourly?) outrage. The movie Gasland featured the residents of Dimock, PA. It’s one of the first cities filmmaker Josh Fox visits. He is handed a jar of putrid water and asked to have it tested. Predictably, it comes up contaminated with methane. The company that did the fracking in Dimock, Cabot Oil [...]

The “We Can’t Wait” series of executive orders and announcements has strayed away from the economy in recent weeks and toward perfunctory things like improving executive branch performance, and also counter-productive budget cutting under the guise of eliminating “waste.” But this latest effort, which involves former President Clinton, actually sounds like a pretty good piece [...]

Enbridge, a competitor to TransCanada, announced plans to purchase a controlling interest in an existing pipeline that runs from the Gulf of Mexico to Cushing, Oklahoma, and to reverse it, in an effort to transport tar sands oil to Gulf Coast refineries. The plan would do part of what the controversial Keystone XL pipeline would [...]