The Associated Press is reporting that Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a potential Republican presidential contender, accused the Obama administration Wednesday of favoring a run-up in gas prices to prod consumers to buy more fuel-efficient cars. Obama-administration officials rejected the charge, saying they view rising gasoline prices as bad for average Americans and the economic recovery.
Barbour suggested that President Obama wants to see higher energy taxes that would lead to more expensive gasoline. He cited 2008 comments from Steven Chu, now Obama's energy secretary, that a gradual increase in gasoline taxes could coax consumers into dumping their gas guzzlers and finding homes closer to where they work. Chu, then a Nobel Prize-winning professor, argued that higher costs per gallon could force investments in alternative fuels and spur cleaner energy sources.
Perhaps someone should tell Barbour that Chu's 2008 comments are pretty much common knowledge, so there is no grand conspiracy. People aren't stupid. If gas goes over $5 a gallon, folks are going to seek alternative forms of transportation (public transit) or smaller vehicles. That's common sense, not a conspiracy. If he wants to take on Obama, he has to do better than that.
Read more at Yahoo.
In other words: The Queen of Soul: Pancreatic Cancer Reports Were Just Rumor.