Gasoline

President Biden’s team of progressive bow-tied brainiacs are getting out their Champagne flutes. Can you blame them? Sure, the rest of the country may be struggling with inflation, high gas prices and soaring crime, but Team Biden is not going to let normal people problems get in the way of their celebrations. According to the mainstream media, Biden is killing it. The New York Times tells us, “Biden Is on a Roll That Any President Would Relish. Is It a Turning Point?” New York magazine writes, “Biden’s On a Roll. So When Will His Approval Rating Go Up?” Politico wonders, “Biden suddenly is piling up wins. Can Dems make it stick?

During the course of my daily media interviews, one of the most frequent questions I hear is, “when will things get better?” Being the bearer of bad news is frustrating, but unfortunately that’s all I see for the next few years. Following the basic laws of economics, energy prices can only come down based on two factors: increase the supply or decrease the demand. They may not like to admit it, but President Joe Biden and his team understand the need for a supply increase. It explains the president's trip to Saudi Arabia to ask their king to increase oil production. He has dispatched envoys to Venezuela and Iran for the same purpose. Unfathomably, his administration continues its relentless attacks on domestic oil production.

Joe Biden promised on the campaign trail in 2020 that he would "transition away from the oil industry,” convert to 100 percent "clean" energy by 2035, and "end fossil fuels.” Shortly after taking office, he started to make good on this pledge by suspending all new gas and oil leases on federal property and ending the Keystone XL pipeline. Now, faced with gas prices at a record high $5 per gallon and runaway inflation — aka the consequences of his own actions — Biden is looking for an off-ramp. Somehow, the Biden administration has decided it can still convince oil companies to ramp up domestic production in the short term while simultaneously promising to adhere to the president’s ambitious climate change goals in the long term.

Cockburn can’t help but tune into the late-night shows. On Wednesday night, he was spoiled rotten: President Joe Biden showed up on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, kicking off a West Coast tour to revive his declining popularity. While the audience applause lasted more than a minute upon his arrival, Cockburn wasn't quite impressed with the interview. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEtPV-qvLe8&ab_channel=JimmyKimmelLive From the start, it was clear Kimmel would carry the show like a pack mule, clarifying Biden’s points and continually asking questions that led the president towards easy answers, along with the occasional jab at Trump and Fox News. Kimmel kicked off proceedings by asking: “Do you mind if I ask you some serious questions?

With the travel-heavy Memorial Day weekend upon us, the fast-rising cost of gasoline is getting a lot of attention. Last week, gasoline rose above $4 a gallon in all fifty states. That’s the first time that has happened. Some are predicting gas could reach $6 a gallon this summer. If that comes to pass, the average American family could see a major impact on their budgets. (It might be noted as well, that the price of home heating oil has nearly doubled this year. If that continues, the economic impact next winter, especially in the northeast, where a high percentage of homes are heated by oil, will be considerable.) The threat of a recession is rising thanks to fuel shortages. Why has the price of gasoline risen so far so fast?

Congress on Thursday approved a bill that gives the White House power to enact price controls on gasoline. The Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act lets the Federal Trade Commission treat so-called price gouging as a deceptive trade practice. Congress specifically directs the FTC to prioritize cases “concerning companies with total United States wholesale or retail sales of consumer fuels in excess of $500,000,000 per year.” In other words, all the major suppliers of oil and gas to the United States. “This is a major exploitation of the consumer, because this is a product the consumer must have,” droned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose love of fuel price gouging legislation dates to 2005.

Who is the most intriguing political artist of the Biden era? Cockburn is happy to welcome a new contender to the fray: Thomas Richard Glazewski of Manor Township, Pennsylvania. Glazewski is part of a daring street collective who have been posting stickers of Joe Biden on gas pumps. They show the president pointing with the caption “I did that!” and are placed next to the price of gasoline — which has risen significantly in the past year or so. The vinyl stickers — available on Amazon — are manufactured in China. Just like the Biden presidency, right? But Glazewski took his piece to a whole new level: risking his freedom last month, he turned his sticker protest into performance art by getting himself arrested. A viral video shows the artist’s arrest.

The price of petroleum products is inherently cyclical, rising and falling over time due to natural and ineluctable economic forces. This has been going on since the dawn of the petroleum industry 163 years ago. The reason is that exploration for and development of petroleum resources are extremely capital intensive activities. Thus when prices are low, there is little incentive to increase production by taking the risks inherent in looking for and developing new supplies. But then, as the world economy expands over time, the demand for petroleum products increases, and prices rise. This increases the incentive to go look for more oil and gas, and the rig count goes up. New fields are located and new technologies (such as fracking) come on line.

Bewilderment, a novel by Richard Powers issued last September, has been praised to high heavens by Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, Naomi Klein, and reviewers at NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The New Republic, among others. This ought to be enough to warn any sensible reader to stay far away from its pages and to resign promptly from any reading group that nominates it for collective perusal. But I am not always sensible. The title lured me, for what better word to describe our Zeitgeist?

Breaking news from off the wires this morning. Apparently the guy who almost punched out a Detroit factory worker on the campaign trail may not be our most adept of presidents. That Joe Biden's administration is flailing has suddenly dawned on our establishment as though a miraculous epiphany. Think a kind of political Fatima, only instead of the sun moving across the sky it's just that TikTok influencer with the long nails prancing about the clear blue. How bad has it gotten for the White House? Even Chuck Todd thinks Biden has a 'pretty big credibility crisis on his hands.' And Chuck Todd once let Dr Fauci interview him. The abruptness of this realization does seem weird.