let's ask david baker. he covers energy for the "san francisco chronicle" writing about various fuels, renewable power and local energy companies including chevron and pg&e. david, welcome. >> thank you for having me. >> i bet you don't have good news for me today. >> not a lot, actually, no. >> y we tape this early on a thursday, i filled my gas tank up on tuesday and it was $4.11 a gallon, the next day the price was up to $4.25. what is going on. >> i checked the prices before i came in here, the statewide average went up seven cents overnight. we were in for a couple more days of that. it will level off a bit but it's not going to go down in the near future. there are a number of reasons why it's going up and some of them are specific to california. most of them aren't. and, yeah, we are probably in for a bad spring. >> i'm getting cranky about this. there are reasons. i want names. who did this? what's going on? >> one name will be iran and the other is israel. the international oil markets are very, ver

david baker, "san francisco chronicle" energy writer. david, rising gas prices spurred hot political debate. why? >> it's going to keep doing that for months. this is one of those things that everybody feels anyone who has a car, and outside of that, even your grocery prices go up when gas and oil prices go up. it's something people see every day driving to work, they see the lines along the side of the road. a situation in california where in the last two days alone we've gone up 14 cents on average across the state. people see that. in the midst of their commute. it freaks them out. it makes them worry about where it's going next. and politicians feel compelled to jump in on that. and they feel forced to. sometime is by their constituents. when you're in an election year they can't resist -- >> right now they're blaming president obama. could any president have avoided this? i guess that's not a fair question. but is it likely that a president could have avoided this? >> this is one of those things, sometimes presidents for their own po

>> my name is david baker. as i said last time, i am in the unenviable position of asking for more parking. but in fact i would like to say that iw3 feel i would like to go through the history of this a little bit. it isç true that under the current planning code we exceed the 0.5, but thisok was a use permit that wasç modified. this is the original use permit. i do notq that is what dan solomon's office put together. this reqtust had approved five tandem spaces. just so you will be really concludes --ç confused, and ths is the thing about plans -- there are six tandem space is shown on the drawings that were approved, and five were listed. at that time, a tandem space consisted of two parking spaces that were not individually accessible. itç was counted as one parking space since only one owner could have it. some people with tandem spaces, a lot of traffic. other people, it is where they keep their maserati. we did not know about the change in the definition, so we thought a tandem space is one space. çw

david is a member of the baker hostetler's international enveermt groups and co-firms pellettes and major motion team. extensive experience in constitutional administrative and international litigation from 1992 to 1993 he was associated executive director and general counsel to the president's counsel on competitiveness. while at the white house he was responsible for the review and analysis of legal issues related to the regulatory review conducted by the counsel. he's also served as associate general counsel at the united states department of energy from 1990 to 1991 and played a significant role in developing the reagan and bush administrations regulatory and legislative proposals affecting natural gas and electric utility industries. david, the floor is yours. >> thank you. thank you to peter, and thank you to you for putting this on and giving an opportunity to visit and see a few old friends. to dispel any lingering doubt, i'm with mort and i thank peter, i think they're unconstitutional because the simple fact the senate was open for business and there was no real recess. i was pl

david ripken is a partner at baker and cochairs the firm appellate practice and white house counsel. mr. mark carter is a partner at d nsmoore where he advises clients on traditional employment labor law. mr. carter has experience litigating pursuant to committee rules all witnesses except members of congress will be sworn in before they testify. so i would ask you to please rise and lift your right hands. do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony you're about to give to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? may the record reflect all witnesses answered in the affirmative. we are pleased to recognize you for your opening statements. i'm sure all of you perhaps have done this before. know what it traditionally mean in life. with that, we would recognize ambassador gray. >> mr. chairman, thank you very much for the opportunity to testify. you've just heard extraordinary tutorial in a way from senator lee covering almost every aspect of this issue, both constitutional and practical. so i'm going to try to keep what i say at an absolute minimum since there's very

baker and abraham ribikoff helped carter get this done. and some months later, carter has the opportunity to mediate peace at the camp david accords. it was the vote -- the vote -- 28 democrats who went for and it 26 republicans. it was completely bipartisan and it was completely on the merits of how they saw that difficult issue. and they didn't spend months on