The first thing you'll notice on The Ed Show tonight, of course, is that Ed is back. And the day's big political issue? Jobs. We learned Friday about May's crappy job numbers, and much of the weekend was spent in political debate about their meaning. One question -- whether this recovery qualifies as a jobless recovery. Technically, no. Jobs are being created. A lot of jobs, when you factor out all the jobs government is self-destructively shedding thanks to the bizarre no-spending-therefore-no-tax-hikes mantra of the Putting Money First crowd. But when you factor in population growth, no, the job creation is not keeping up. That's a huge problem and one that neither party is putting front and center in any way other than rhetorical.
The one story that no one else will be talking about like Ed will tonight, is gas prices. Americans for Prosperity is launching a campaign to blame President Obama for high gas prices. Americans for Prosperity is bankrolled by the Koch Brothers. The group has consistently opposed the Dodd-Frank Law. One of the things Dodd-Frank is supposed to do -- but has not yet, due to GOP resistance to enforcing and implementing the law -- is bring down gas prices by curtailing speculative activity on oil. Well, guess who calls themselves one of the world's top five traders in oil commodities? Yep, the Koch Brothers.
So, to bring it all full circle...the Koch Brothers are making hundreds of millions of dollars by pouring investment money into oil. They also hoard oil when it helps to drive the price up. And now they're using their profits to simultaneously block efforts to rein them in and to blame the president for the consequences of their actions.
Follow Senior Producer Jonathan Larsen (@jtlarsen) on Twitter