Gas prices, catering to the rich, and Obama's place in the political spectrum

Ezra Klein looks at concerns about price gouging in the gasoline market and comes up empty. The real explanation is increasing world demand and Saudia Arabia's unwillingness (or inability) to increase production to compensate.

In another post he also writes about polling data that indicates the rich are less concerned about the state of the economy than other people. One effect of this, due to the fact that decision makers are not only wealthier than average themselves but also more attuned to the needs of the wealthy, is a considerable bias in Washington against taking action to improve the economy.

Nate Silver has a great post that not only looks at where Obama falls in the conservative-liberal spectrum relative to previous Democratic presidents but also at how the two parties and the Congress as a whole has simultaneously shifted to the right and become more polarized since the 1970s.