https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/14/biden-gas-prices-jimmy-carter/
Want proof that the Biden administration is really the second incarnation of the Carter administration? We have runaway inflation, Americans trapped overseas, a member of the first family who tried to do business with Libya and a president begging the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies (OPEC Plus) to increase oil production. It’s like the 1970s all over again.
Gas prices have risen $1 a gallon since Joe Biden’s election, while crude oil prices have doubled since November to $83 per barrel — and some analysts predict they could rise by another $10 before the end of the year. Natural gas prices have shot up more than 150 percent in the same period, which means winter heating bills for the half of American homes that use natural gas are projected to be 30 percent higher than last year — 49 percent higher in the Midwest.
This is the result of deliberate policy choices. Biden has made clear his intention to tax and regulate the fossil fuel industry out of existence. During the 2020 campaign, he declared, “I guarantee you. We’re going to end fossil fuel.”
Well, those threats have consequences. Today, the number of rigs producing oil across the United States is 528, roughly half its 2019 peak under President Donald Trump. When you tell oil producers you plan to put them out of business, they are not going to bolster production or drill more wells. When your $3.5 trillion “Build Back Better” plan would impose punitive taxes oil and gas, the producers are going to get the picture that building back better doesn’t include them.
And when you make clear you plan to destroy an industry, banks and investment firms stop investing in it. The New York Times reports that the “flow of capital from Wall Street has slowed to a trickle after a decade in which investors poured over $1.4 trillion into North American oil and gas producers through stock and bond issues and loans” as woke capitalists “pare their exposure to fossil fuels to meet the commitments they have made to fight climate change.” BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has announced that it intends to have “net zero emissions across our entire assets under management by 2050.”
The result? Less fossil fuel production and higher prices — with lower-income Americans who can afford it the least penalized the most at the pump.
Biden’s energy policy is not only hostile, it is incoherent. The president canceled the Keystone XL pipeline between the United States and Canada, but then greenlighted the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany. He declares his intention to reduce fossil fuel production at home in the name of climate change, but then asks OPEC Plus to produce more oil abroad. Increased production will result in the same carbon emissions no matter where the oil is drilled. Why not produce it here in America?
Under Trump, the United States became an energy superpower. He withdrew from the Paris climate accord, approved the Keystone XL pipeline, opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to exploration, rolled back Obama-era regulations such as the Clean Power Plan that held back domestic exploration and production, and enabled the United State to supplant Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer. That not only created millions of jobs, it made America energy independent for the first time in years. And it transformed the national security landscape, strengthening the United States vis-a-vis Russia, China and Iran.
Now Biden seems determined to cede our status as an energy superpower. In just a few short months, he has brought us back to where we were in the Carter years — pleading with a foreign oil cartel to increase production rather than increasing production ourselves.
During the 1970s, when America was locked in a twilight struggle with Soviet communism, what did the left demand? Nuclear disarmament. It took the election of a new president, Ronald Reagan, who launched a massive nuclear buildup, to secure our position as the world’s preeminent nuclear superpower and win the Cold War.
Well today, America has become the world’s preeminent energy superpower. And what is the left demanding? Energy disarmament. At the very moment the United States has achieved strategic dominance in a critical area for our economic and national security, the Biden administration and its progressive allies want to unilaterally disarm. And with energy prices skyrocketing, Americans are now paying the price for the Democrats’ war on fossil fuels. All we need is for bell bottoms and disco to come back, and our transformation into the Carter era will be complete.
Add to the Carter-like aspects three new ones;
1. Ripping our borders open for illegal aliens, drug cartels and human trafficers.
2. A disastrous escape from Afghanistan, including arming a terrorist organization and abandonment of our citizens.
3. Destroying our energy sector.
This makes Biden much worse than Carter ever was.
Don’t forget the astronomic debt future generations will suffer from.
I think by the end of the Biden regime we will find out he’s even worse than the Carter admin. Bidenov could even end up worse than the Johnson administration which tried to reverse the result of the Civil War.
Nothing to reverse. The Confederate States won, Lincoln lost… died. 😂
Yeah, YOU killed Lincoln! :))
I wish. 😎
GFY…….;))
Red, the decrepit old fool is already the worst!
Sometimes I think that he doesn’t really know what’s going on anymore. He is surrounded by leftist scum in his administration that is taking advantage of him. I’m sure that a group of high school students would do a better job leading our country than this pack of nincompoops.
[…] Opinion: It’s the 1970s all over again, and Joe Biden is the new Jimmy Carter […]
The Wapo is usually a Dem supporting outlet is it not? Judging from this pretty decent article, there seems to have been a massive change of direction. New editor perhaps?
The destruction is so bad that even many Leftists are jumping off the SS Karl Marx ship. Bidenov’s rating now hovers between 40- 43% already.
Do you know the movie Prayer of the Rollerboys? Our future will sadly go into that direction.
I think that we nearly already have such conditions in parts of some cities, especially where defund the police has been implemented, like Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and more.
I clicked the author of this piece. He is a Republican. Wapo is on the turn!
“Marc A. Thiessen:
Washington D.C. Columnist focusing on foreign and domestic policy
Marc Thiessen writes a twice-weekly column for The Post on foreign and domestic policy. He is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the former chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He is a Fox News contributor.”
Ha! I wish the WashPo was on the turn, I doubt that though since they’re still run by the woke oligarch Bezos. Thiessen is a good counterweight for some of their left wing drivel though.
It has consistently supported Ukraine though, to be fair. One of its writers; Anne Applebaum, is robustly anti-putler/pro-Ukraine. Being Polish and Jewish, she is no doubt on one of the nazi rodent’s kill lists. I hope she is well protected.
I don’t think you can call Bezos an oligarch. He’s not a criminal and he’s not pro-putler as far as I know. He put Captain Kirk in his spaceship, so he can’t be all bad!
Yeah, she’s one of my favorites. She would probably agree that truth should be a human right.
She wrote a great book; Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine in 2017.
I hope she will write a new book entitled Fascist imperialist Russia: putler’s war on Ukraine. Perhaps she’s waiting for the tiny poisoner to croak?
Writing the truth about the monster Stalin is about enough reason for the mafiosi to put her on the to-die list.
They have been publishing Biden critical articles of late. I suppose that the old fart is just so horrid that even some in the leftist media cannot or don’t want to support or cover up for him anymore.