Analyst: Gas may hit $6 per gallon over summer – National & International News – FRI 20May2022

Analyst: gas may hit $6/gallon this summer. Former agent: FBI still not doing enough to prevent white supremacist violence. Putin holding global food supplies ‘hostage’.

NATIONAL NEWS

Analysts predict gas will hit $6/gallon over summer

The price of a gallon of gas is already up 70% over what it was this time last year. Now, JPMorgan commodities analyst Natasha Kaneva predicts that increasing demand and still-limited supply will push gas prices even higher this summer. Specifically, Kaneva suggests that the retail price for gas may rise 37% between now and August to an average $6.20 gallon nationwide.

Patrick De Haan, petroleum analyst of GasBuddy, doubts that we will cross the $6 threshold. De Haan simply doesn’t believe the market will bear a $6 price tag, since at that price, people will simply drive even less. However, he sees a national average of over $5 as a strong possibility.

Supply and demand or price gouging?

Normally, refineries increase production in anticipation of increased demand over summer, but right now US gas inventories are actually falling. Kaneva attributes this to growing export volume to Mexico and Latin America. But Democrats in Congress see another explanation: price gouging by oil and gas companies.

Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) says, “I’m a proud capitalist, and what we’re experiencing with fuel prices is the result of a broken market. Big Oil executives are bragging to shareholders about price gouging families at the pump“. Porter argues that oil companies are deliberately throttling production, “keeping supply low to earn record-high profits, squeezing families — and our entire economy— in the process”.

House Democrats passed a measure yesterday to crack down on price gouging in US oil markets, which Porter sponsored. Not a single Republican voted for it, which doesn’t bode well for its chances of passing the Senate. The Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act would make it illegal for Big Oil to excessively increase prices. It would also empower the Federal Trade Commission’s power to investigate cases of price gouging by oil and gas companies and grant the president greater emergency powers to address exploitative pricing.

Former agent: FBI still not doing enough to prevent white supremacist violence

Former FBI special agent Michael German says the agency is dragging its feet when it comes to tracking and preventing violent acts by white supremacists. Rhetorically, FBI officials have publicly acknowledged that such right-wing extremists groups are the greatest terror threat in the US. FBI chief Christopher Wray has said that “racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists” were the main perpetrators of ideological killings, far surpassing Islamic jihadists.

However, German says their actions do not match their words. The FBI and other law enforcement agencies still devote a mere fraction of their counter-terrorism resources to tracking white supremacist groups.

White supremacists infiltrating law enforcement

One possible reason for this mismatch is intrinsic bias, since FBI agents are predominately white males. But German says the problem goes deeper even than that.

As an agent in the 1990s, German infiltrated white supremacist groups. “When I was going undercover in the 1990s I was warned about sympathy towards white supremacy among [FBI] officers,” German says. “That was raised as a hazard for my undercover operation”.

In 2006, the FBI identified the phenomenon of white supremacists in law enforcement as “a concern”. But little has been done in the years since to address the problem. “If there had been an internal FBI report that Isis had infiltrated US law enforcement, you’d expect a nationwide attempt to get to the bottom of it,” German says.

Republicans likely to block domestic terror bill

House Democrats narrowly passed a bill on Wednesday to combat domestic terror. The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022 would create offices at DHS, DOJ and the FBI dedicated to tracking domestic terror threats. When it was introduced earlier this year, it had broad bipartisan support and even some Republican sponsors. But on Wednesday, the only Republican to vote in favor was Adam Kinzinger.

Ahead of the vote, House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy denounced the bill, saying it would enable the Biden administration to target parents “who just want a say in their children’s education”. He was referring to an October DHS memo urging law enforcement to follow up on threats of violence against teachers from parents angry about contentious topics like masking and discussions of race and gender.

Rep. Don Bacon, a GOP sponsor of the bill, says he did not vote for it because of calls from constituents who believed they’d be targeted for being pro-life.

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

US says Putin holding global food supplies ‘hostage’

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, experts have been warning of the catastrophic implications for the global food supply. Ukraine and Russia supply a huge amount of the world’s grain and fertilizer, with their primary markets being Asia and the Middle East.

While sanctions prevent many countries from importing grain and fertilizer from Russia, the US and its allies say the Russian military is deliberately blockading crucial exports of grain from Ukraine. Russian soldiers have also destroyed or stolen farming machinery and grain from silos.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused the Kremlin of holding the world’s food supply hostage in hopes of obtaining sanctions relief.

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