Category Archives: regulation

A Thought on Gasoline Production

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I had one. Take a breath.

California citizens pay a far higher price for a gallon of gasoline than even the average nation-wide: $5.79 against $4.29. Most of that difference comes from California’s State-unique regulations imposing, for instance, a low-carbon fuel standard and cap-and-trade taxes.

Separate from President Joe Biden’s (D) war on fossil fuel-sourced energy inflating the price of energy generally and gasoline in particular, that California price-inflating set of requirements also inflates the cost of gasoline nationally, since refiners are reluctant to produce separate kinds of gasoline for separate markets. Which brings me to my thought.

Refiners should produce a single type of gasoline related to carbon content, cap-and-trade taxes, and other froo-froo, based on the lower levels of regulatory interference in the rest of the nation, and sell that gasoline virtually nation-wide. Then they should offer to sell that single type to California buyers together with license(s) so those buyers can to modify the refiners’ product as they wish to bring that gasoline to within California desires.

In this way, drivers in the other 49 States would get a lower cost fuel from the refiners’ not having to impose some of that California cost on the rest of us, and the refiners would be able to recoup in the form of license fees most, if not all, of the putative costs of not selling directly into the California driver market.

It’s a Start

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The House, by an overwhelming bipartisan majority—424-8—passed a bill that would strip Russia and its satrap Belarus of Most Favored Nation status. The bill, if passed by the Senate and signed by President Joe Biden (or his veto overridden), would allow us to

raise tariffs on goods from Russia and Belarus and give President Biden power to impose even stricter import taxes on their exports amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. …
The bill also sets up strict guidelines for when the president can restore normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus based on the state of the Ukraine war.
The Biden administration will additionally be obligated to push for Russia’s removal from the World Trade Organization and oppose Belarus joining the group, which would subject both to higher tariffs and steeper trade barriers.

Eight Republicans voted against the bill; their concerns centered in part on their push to make President Joe Biden’s Executive Order barring importation of Russian oil statutory by including that in the bill.

The more we pile economic burdens onto Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and the atrocities Putin’s barbarians are perpetrating on Ukrainians, the better. However, we need to keep such moves in perspective: they’ve forced Putin to withdraw zero battalions from Ukraine, and they forced Putin to drop zero fewer bombs, rockets, or missiles on Ukrainian women, children, hospitals, schools,…. Weapons, ammunition, and medicines need to flow freely and rapidly to the Ukrainian military.

Political Disapproval of Private Enterprise Production

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors are touting the withdrawal of Sarah Bloom Raskin from the nomination to the Federal Reserve Board’s Vice Chairman position, laying that defeat off to this:

But Ms Raskin’s most significant opponent was her oft-expressed view that the Fed and other regulators should deny credit to companies that produce or heavily consume fossil fuels.

It’s good that this one failed, but it’s just an early skirmish.

The problem is broader than this. It’s dangerous to our republican democracy that anyone would be nominated to the Fed or to any Executive Branch position who would willingly abuse that position’s authority to discriminate against any government-disapproved American enterprise.

Drill, Baby, Drill

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Progressive-Democrats really do not want our nation to be energy independent or to be able to support our friends and allies—and acquaintances around the world—with energy exports for the foreseeable future. For motives known only to themselves, they want to kill our energy capability until their dream of “green” energy comes to fruition, in that future distant beyond the foreseeable.

Senate Democrats are threatening to punish US oil companies with a windfall-profits tax if they increase production.

This also illustrates Progressive-Democrats’ utter disinterest in the way economics and economies work (I’m reluctant to say these Know Betters are ignorant of those ways).

The Senators plan would require companies that produce or import at least 300,000 barrels of oil per day (or did so in 2019) to pay a per-barrel tax equal to 50% of the difference between the current and average price between 2015 and 2019 (about $57 a barrel).

Since increasing supply relative to demand brings down price, one counter to this Progressive-Democrat war on our energy economy is to drill, baby, drill.

Another counter becomes available this fall—we need to fire Progressive-Democrats from our State and Federal governments so that energy producers can drill, baby, drill.

Disingenuous and Insulting

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Congress is putting together a bill, the Social Media NUDGE Act, that Congressmen pretend is to combat “misinformation” in our social media.  Misinformation, mind you—mistakes. Not disinformation, deliberate lies.

The legislation applies to commercial enterprises specializing in user-generated content with more than 20 million monthly active users for most of a 12-month period. They must devise plans for “content-agnostic interventions” and submit them to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for approval.
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While [the bill] never refers to misinformation or false information, it also never defines the “harmful content” it seeks to prevent….

Notice, too, that false equivalence. All misinformation is false information. Not all false information, though, is misinformation. Much of false information is disinformation—wrong information put out deliberately to mislead, or to hide truth.

This bill is disingenuous because it assumes “misinformation” must be blocked and Government/Big Tech are to be the ones to define “misinformation.” That’ll be whatever is politically inconvenient to those in power. And those in power will leave their disinformation alone.

This bill is insulting because it assumes us average Americans are too grindingly stupid to understand what is misinformation, what is disinformation, what is uncomfortable information, or the distinctions among the three. We must, instead, be “advised” by our Betters.