Or not.
In a Friday op-ed centered on California’s hog-raising requirements for pork sold in the State, Robert Alt, President and CEO of the Buckeye Institute had this throw-away line:
California—which boasts of recent policies that require residents to reduce electricity use to prevent rolling blackouts….
The only State—and possibly the first nation in the world—to institutionalize steady state brownouts.
What a legacy for the Progressive-Democratic Party running California.
Finally.
The Biden administration has granted a waiver to the Jones Act so American shippers can ship diesel fuel directly from American refiners to Puerto Rico, which desperately needs the fuel—still—after Fiona ran over it.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement that the administration granted the “temporary and targeted” waiver to “ensure that the people of Puerto Rico have sufficient diesel to run generators needed for electricity and the functioning critical facilities as they recover from Hurricane Fiona.”
Finally, because the Biden administration should have granted this waiver preemptively a month ago, if not sooner: they knew the hurricane was going to do serious damage to the territory—which still hasn’t fully recovered from the prior hurricane—whether or not this hurricane ran over the island. Worse, this administration had been sitting on a request for the waiver since 20 September, when BP asked for it for just this reason.
It would be even better if President Joe Biden (D) granted a broader and longer-lasting waiver so New England States could get the natural gas, oil, diesel fuel, gasoline, and so on that they so desperately need and for which they must pay especially exorbitant prices to foreign entities to get.
New England also could get these energies overland, but for the Progressive-Democratic regimes running New York. Those regimes have blocked development of a natural gas pipeline from Pennsylvania into New England that must transit New York, and they have block development of that part of the Marcellus Formation that lies under New York—which obstruction inflates energy costs not only for New England’s citizens, but for all the rest of us citizens, as well.
New England may face one this winter. Too many who should know better are laying this prospect off to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
There are more proximate origins of the risk. One is the Biden administration’s naked war on our nation’s overall domestic energy production industry, including canceling pipeline projects in progress and denying permits for other pipelines—including one from Canada down into New England—canceling drilling leases and slow-walking permits (or outright denying them) to drill on other leases, withdrawing Federal lands from any sort of fossil fuel exploration or development, and on and on.
But that is only backdrop, and corrections to those failures would have no immediate effect on New England’s risk.
A more immediate origin is the domestic blockade of energy to New England, which consists of two barriers. One is ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo’s (D) decision to block a natural gas pipeline from Pennsylvania to New England, a pipeline that would have transited New York, coupled with Cuomo’s decision to deny development from within New York of the Marcellus Formation, a shale formation rich in, among other things, natural gas. These decisions have been upheld, and enthusiastically so, by current New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D). New England’s energy needs be damned.
The other barrier from the blockade is the Jones Act, a century-old law that in pertinent part mandates that goods (for instance, oil and natural gas) carried from one American port (vis., a Gulf Coast refinery) to another American port (vis., Portsmouth, NH, or Portland, ME) must be via an American freighter.
These barriers already have combined to force New England to buy its natural gas from…Russia. Which is the only way the barbarian’s invasion of Ukraine enters into the problem at all.
Immediate and mid-term solutions should be obvious: waive the Jones Act restrictions on energy shipments into New England, something well within the authority of President Joe Biden (D). Given the state of American ship building capacity, this cabotage aspect of the Act should be rescinded altogether, but that would require Congress to do.
Another, more mid-term, solution would be for New York to get out of the way of exploitation of Marcellus and to allow pipeline shipments of natural gas into New England from Pennsylvania. That, though, will require replacement of the Progressive-Democratic Party-run State government with a more balanced and Conservative and Republican Party-run government.
It’s in serious jeopardy from House Progressive-Democratic Party members—70 of them—and Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) hasn’t even released the language of his permit reform proposal (but West Virginia’s other Senator, Republican Senator Shelly Moore Capito, has released hers). Despite this, Manchin blames Republicans for the jeopardy.
On top of that, Manchin says he’ll release his proposal in the coming days.
This, of course, is nonsense. Manchin, responsible Senator that he is, has had his proposal written since early in the days when he was negotiating with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D) the price for which Manchin would sell his vote on the Progressive-Democratic Party’s then-latest spendthrift bill.
Manchin has no reason at all for withholding his proposal from public scrutiny for so long, much less from the other party’s scrutiny before demanding their vote on it.
President Joe Biden (D) and his White House spokesmen have been bragging about what a strong economy we have.
Even CNN waved the BS flag at that. Here’s how strong our economy really is.
The Labor Department on Tuesday reported its consumer-price index rose 8.3% in August from the same month a year ago [albeit down slightly from the prior two months’ year-on-year inflation]
And
[C]ore CPI, which excludes often volatile energy and food prices, increased 6.3% in August from a year earlier, up markedly from the 5.9% rate in both June and July
And
Food prices continued to climb sharply this past month, rising 0.8% in August from July, as did those for new vehicles leapt 0.8%. Prices also rose last month for medical care, education, electricity, and natural gas
Inflation in energy cost is especially troublesome. That’s the price of heating and cooling our homes, our places of business, our schools, how we power our industrial facilities. The impact on our health and finances from that exacerbates our demand for/need for medical care.
That inflation is made the worse by the growth in wages that’s been occurring since inflation took off with Biden’s ascension to office (if not since his election). Wage growth had been at half the rate of inflation, meaning us Americans’ income actually had been shrinking relative to the prices we face. But last month, despite that 8.3%/6.3% inflation, our wages grew…not at all.
Median household income was essentially unchanged last year on an inflation-adjusted basis….
Our wage dollar buys ever less in the Biden version of a strong economy.
Biden and his Progressive-Democratic Party are either wholly unaware of the real economy us average Americans face, or they’re blatantly lying about the situation.
Meanwhile, they partied on the White House lawn the day those numbers were released, celebrating this wonderful news.
Remember their obliviousness or their dishonesty this fall.