One of the Biden administration’s seldom-recognized triumphs is that it has enabled the average American to easily double his car’s value.
All he needs to do is fill up the tank.
While campaigning in New Hampshire in 2019, Joe Biden promised to “end fossil fuels.” This likely won’t happen, as China, India, and Russia — anywhere beyond the West, in fact — won’t be following us into the greentopian abyss. But with gas prices around $5 a gallon, critics worry that the administration’s policies are only ending American prosperity. And now there’s news maddening them further:
In a let-’em-eat-cake moment, Biden said Thursday that energy prices must remain high for “as long as it takes” to defeat Russia. Meanwhile, one of his officials just admitted that Americans are being bled at the pump to fuel the “liberal world order.”
What this “liberal” order might be — with China being a fascistic ethno-state, much of the Muslim world obsessed with Sharia, South America slouching into socialism, and Russia being Russia — was not reported.
The Daily Mail has the story, writing:
Biden economic advisor Brian Deese said that Americans should “stand firm” on paying record-high gas prices because the ‘future of the liberal world order’ is more important.
“What do you say to those families that say, ‘listen, we can’t afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not years?'” the director of the National Economic Council was asked on CNN Thursday.
“What you heard from the president today was a clear articulation of the stakes. This is about the future of the Liberal World Order and we have to stand firm,” he replied.
Deese added: “At the same time, what I would say to that family and Americans across the country is you have a president and an administration that is going to do everything in its power to blunt those price increases and bring those prices down.”
Biden has branded the skyrocketing fuel prices — which increase the cost of most everything else — the “Putin price hike.” The Mail helps perpetuate this claim, too, but the reality is that gas costs and prices in general have risen all throughout Biden’s reign. For example, while Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, gas had already reached $3.44 in November, up from approximately $2.31 per gallon when Biden assumed office (illustrative graph below).
In fairness, though the gas price increase did predate the Ukraine crisis, its rate did also accelerate upon the invasion’s initiation. Yet, assuming this correlation equates to causation, Biden is complicit via his policy-making — namely, the anti-Russia sanctions.
As the Financial Review recently pointed out, Russia not only is weathering the sanctions well, but is earning $1.4 billion a day more in oil and gas revenue than before; this means that we’re helping fund Putin’s war. What’s more, Biden’s vow to reduce the ruble to “rubble” has resulted in double trouble:
The ruble is now the world’s best-performing currency.
On the other hand, Western economies are, pun intended, seriously leaking oil. Coming to mind here is what they say about the “best-laid plans of mice and men” (or of mice masquerading as men).
Yet this is just the tip of this policy-disaster iceberg, which, tragically, hasn’t been melted by global warming. In fact, Americans for Prosperity lists 25 Biden administration policies that are raising energy costs. Among them are:
- “Adopting new EPA oil and gas rules.”
- “Restricting or impeding energy projects.”
- “Rejoining the Paris agreement.”
- “Instituting a new policy on carbon taxes in organized wholesale electricity markets.”
- “Stifling energy innovation.”
- “Imposing new costs on power generation.”
- “Raising taxes.”
- “Fueling the fire for future regulation.”
Then there’s the little-known phenomenon called ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance). What this means in a nutshell, according to this report, is that “woke” capital investors who favor greentopian dreams over fossil-fuel practicality have been choking off fuel supply.
Meanwhile, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg just announced a $1 billion plan to combat what have been called “racist roads” (no, blacktop pavement isn’t the issue).
With priorities such as that, it’s no wonder many observers suspect this economic damage is being purposely wrought. One of them, The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft, points out that Biden twice trumpeted the high energy prices, providing the following June tweet as an example:
All this really proves, one could counter, is that the administration is simply applying the Emanuelian principle, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” Then again, leftists have openly expressed their desire to make fossil fuels so expensive that greentopian fantasies begin seeming economically feasible. As Barack Obama’s then energy-secretary-to-be Steven Chu said back in 2008, “Somehow, we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
Now, 14 years later, they may have that figured out. What they haven’t figured out (because they don’t care) is how to avoid what former Greenpeace figure Patrick Moore warned of in 2019. If the Green New Deal were instituted globally, he stated, it could “result in the death of nearly all humans on Earth.” But before they met their miserable end, he added, they’d cut down every tree for fuel and kill every animal for food.
So what explains the Bidenistas’ greentopian folly? “Never attribute to malice what is better explained by stupidity,” the saying goes. It’s apparent now, however, that our current government is delivering a profound measure of both.
