Tag Archives: political economy

Biden’s Attack on Our Oil and Gas Industry

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President Joe Biden’s (D) and his Progressive-Democratic Party syndicate’s hatred of our oil and gas production industry is well known, and he wants to include $6 billion in additional taxes, fees, and fines on those industries in their reconciliation bill.

But those penalties also will explode the cost of a myriad products Americans use, and destroy the availability of too many others—all beyond such petty uses as fuel for our getting to and from work, or heating our homes in winter and cooling them in summer.

Here’s a partial list of those other uses to which our oil and gas production is put. The full list would run to some 6,000 products.

  • asphalt and road oil
  • components for producing chemicals, plastics, and synthetic materials
  • electronics
  • luggage
  • office supplies like ink and pens
  • computer chips
  • paint and paint brushes
  • floor wax
  • safety glasses and regular eye glasses and contacts
  • linoleum
  • caulking
  • roofing
  • curtains
  • electricians tape
  • fertilizer
  • insecticides
  • tires
  • mops
  • rugs and carpets
  • toilet seats
  • pillows (down-filled are much more expensive)
  • upholstery
  • refrigerators
  • dishwasher parts
  • rubbing alcohol
  • aspirin and other medicines
  • heart valves and other medical devices
  • bandages
  • anesthetics
  • surgical masks (never mind their claimed need for Wuhan Virus protection)
  • dentures
  • antiseptics and hand sanitizers
  • antihistamines
  • cortisone
  • artificial limbs
  • clothes
  • hair tinting and dying
  • perfume
  • sunglasses
  • lipstick
  • purses
  • shoes
  • roller skates
  • shampoo
  • deodorant
  • toothpaste and soap
  • balloons
  • tents
  • fishing rods
  • footballs
  • football cleats and helmets
  • golf balls
  • parachutes
  • telephones
  • cameras
  • candles
  • drinking cups

Of course, Progressive-Democrats know all of this. They also know that wind, solar, even nuclear sources will produce none of these.

Intrusive Government

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President Joe Biden (D) wants to make climate change a matter of government regulation in our nation’s financial sector.

Calling climate change a systemic risk to the financial system, the White House will release a report Friday outlining its strategy for new rules that could affect investment disclosures, insurance policies and home loans.

And

[T]he US needs “a road map for measuring, disclosing, managing, and mitigating climate-related financial risk across the economy.”

No. To the extent global warming (let’s stop hiding behind euphemisms) is a risk to our nation’s financial system, it’s a risk best handled by those who are actually expert in handling risk and the impact of risk to us citizens: our financial institutions operating in a free market, and us citizens making our own decisions regarding the risks each of us individually choose to run or not run and the impact of those risks on our individual lives.

Government can only make one-size-fits-all moves, whether nationally or regionally—it cannot tailor its moves down to the level of individual businesses, much less down to the individual.

Gina McCarthy, White House National Climate Advisor, rationalized:

This road map isn’t about protecting our financial system. It’s about protecting people, their paychecks, and their prosperity[.]

Again, no. This “road map” has nothing to do with that. In the first place, we don’t need protection beyond what we can, and should, do for ourselves in a free market. In the second place, it isn’t Government’s role to protect us from the vagaries of free markets; Government’s role is only to provide a stable economic environment in which our free market can operate. Government does that best with minimal regulation, minimal intrusion, into our markets.

What’s the Problem?

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It turns out that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has been on maternity leave since mid-August.

Some, including the New York Post, are dismayed with his being absent while things like the supply chain crisis, driven in large part by clogged ports, full warehouses, and a lack of freight trucks, truck drivers, and freight trains—i.e., transportation matters—in between.

I ask what the big deal is. It’s not like the supply chain crisis is going anywhere. It’ll still be here when he comes back to the job.

Lies of Progressive-Democrats

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Here’s another example.

Colorado’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade, plans to hand out Wuhan Virus relief funds (which the State styles “COVID-19” relief funds) to businesses based on the race of the business’ owners. Stephen Collins, Resort Meeting Source owner and represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, is suing the State over that.

Federal Judge William Martinez issued a temporary restraining order barring the OEDIT from acting on the discriminatory release of funds pending final adjudication of the matter in his court.

[H]e found that Collins was likely to prevail in the lawsuit because the Colorado law at issue “expressly requires OEDIT to prioritize minority-owned businesses in distributing grants under the Disproportionately Impacted Business Grant Program” and because “the process for qualifying as a disproportionately impacted business differs for minority-owned and non-minority-owned businesses.”

The lie(s):

OEDIT…forward[ed] two legal documents to Fox News. The office filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on Wednesday, claiming that “race played no role in OEDIT’s funding decisions.”
OEDIT also filed a declaration from Michael Landes, director of OEDIT’s Opportunity Zone Program. Landes claimed that racial preferences will only come into account after all other criteria have been adjudicated.

[R]ace played no role—OEDIT is calling the judge a liar, or OEDIT is violating the State’s law requiring exactly that.

[R]acial preferences will only come into account after….  Landes calls himself a liar: either race played no role or it played a role after all other criteria. Landes calls himself a liar a second time: racial preferences will only come into account after—either racial preferences are being acted on, or they are not. When they’re being acted on doesn’t matter.

Paranoia Strikes Deep

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President Joe Biden’s (D) Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, is at it again.

She’s defending the plan, buried in the Progressive-Democrats’ reconciliation bill, to snoop into all of our deposit accounts to collect data on each of our transactions of $600 or more. In a CBS News interview, cited by Fox Business, Yellen had this:

…there are “individuals” the IRS does not receive enough information about.
“Look, the big picture is that we have a tax gap that over the next decade is estimated at $7 trillion,” she continued. “Namely, a shortfall in the amount that the IRS is collecting due to a failure of individuals to report the income that they have earned.”

And,

But high-income individuals with opaque sources of income that are not reported to the IRS, there’s a lot of tax fraud and cheating that’s going on….

If she’s not getting enough information on what folks have earned, what information is she using to support her allegation of underreporting? She doesn’t say.

Her “tax gap” is estimated at $7 trillion. Estimated by whom? She doesn’t say.

[A] lot of tax fraud and cheating that’s going on. Based on what evidence does she make this claim of this magnitude of cheating and fraud? She doesn’t say.

Most likely, there is a measure, even a significant measure, of tax cheating and fraud. But when it comes to individuals—including members of the Left’s hated rich and successful—speculation must give way to facts and specific achievements. Beyond that, these allegations of tax cheating and fraud are allegations of crimes, and to investigate these, including snooping into personal or business financial matters, specific probable cause must be demonstrated before a judge and warrants must issue before the snooping can be done.

Absent hard data that we all can see, this preemptive snooping that Progressive-Democrats want to do is simply borne of paranoia.

Into their hearts it has creeped.