Lawmakers question oil executives on price gouging, but seem cool to price controls
WASHINGTON — As consumers fume over skyrocketing prices for gasoline and other commodities, congressional Democrats on Wednesday called executives from big oil companies on the carpet to explain why they appear to be making unseemly fat profits in the face of an international crisis.
The House hearing, given the title "Gouged at the Gas Station: Big Oil and America's Pain at the Pump," was in part a response to Republicans' campaign to blame Democrats for inflation, now running at a 40-year high and rising.
But in both parties, the blaming amounts to little more than political rhetoric and jawboning because neither side is prepared to push for the kind action that Washington has sometimes resorted to in wartime emergencies, experts say.
"This is theater," said Dean Baker, senior economist at the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research. "I wish I could say they're going to learn something and they're going to somehow shape anything they might do. But this is theater."
—Los Angeles Times
AOC hits back at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for ‘weaker sex’ attack on people who identify as transgender
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., called out Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA, late Tuesday for defining a woman as “the weaker sex” and “our husband’s wife.”
Greene pushed the right-wing talking point that the only person who can be considered a woman is one who was defined as a female at birth.
“I’m going to tell you right now what is a woman... We came from Adam’s rib,” Greene said. “We are the weaker sex, but we are our husband’s wife.”
Hitting back hard, AOC accused the GOP of “incit(ing) epic meltdowns and moral panics” over the issue of respecting the rights of people who identify as transgender.
She said Greene confirmed what should have been obvious: that it’s part and parcel of a right-wing war on women.
“It threatens the GOP’s own definition of a woman as ‘weak, male property,’” AOC tweeted.
—New York Daily News
DeKalb NAACP decries permit approval for Confederate event at Stone Mountain Park
ATLANTA — A Confederate Memorial Day event poised to return to Stone Mountain Park next month has garnered opposition from activists, including a local chapter of the NAACP.
After their permit was denied last year, the Sons of the Confederate Veterans received approval this year to hold their annual celebration in front of the mountain and its massive carving of three Confederate figures. The Stone Mountain Memorial Association, which handles event permitting at the park, denied last year’s application due to the possibility of “a clear and present danger to public health or safety” among the reasons.
In a Tuesday news release, NAACP DeKalb decried the permit approval and called for the Stone Mountain Memorial Association to reconsider.
“The permit issued to the Sons of Confederate Veterans continues the perpetuation of racial terror in America and should be revoked,” Lance Hammonds, president of NAACP DeKalb, said in the release. “We believe that Stone Mountain Park will never be a symbol of unity in Georgia until the Stone Mountain Memorial Association is prepared to tell the whole truth about the Civil War.”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thousands lie down in Berlin to demand ban on Russian oil and gas
BERLIN — Several thousand protesters laid down on the lawn in front of Germany's parliament on Wednesday to commemorate the people killed in the war in Ukraine and to demand Berlin stop purchasing Russian oil and gas.
The Alliance of Ukrainian Organizations had registered 5,000 participants in the protest outside the Reichstag building in Berlin's government quarter.
Many were dressed in the blue and yellow colors of Ukraine and had red tears painted under their eyes. Signs held up read "No money for war" and condemned the stance of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
At the start of the demonstration they chanted slogans demanding an embargo on Russian oil and gas. Accounts of civilians caught up in the war were then read out before the participants sprawled out on the ground and formed a "human carpet."
Many of the demonstrators had their eyes shut and their hands behind their backs, as if they had been tied up.
—dpa
