Tuesday's Parade of the Absurdities: Biden, Harris Double Down on Failure as Gas Prices Skyrocket
The Biden administration continues to double, triple, quadruple down on its already-failed Green New Deal energy policies, even to the extent of offering visions of a distant green energy future filled with EVs, windmills, unicorns and sugarplum fairies as the solution to high gas prices today.
At a presser with braindead child Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg Monday, Harris urged Americans struggling to afford skyrocketing prices for fuel, groceries and all other consumer goods to delight in her vision of a beautiful green future. “Imagine a future: the freight trucks that deliver bread and milk to our grocery store shelves and the buses that take children to school and parents to work,” she said. “Imagine all the heavy-duty vehicles that keep our supply lines strong and allow our economy to grow. Imagine that they produce zero emissions.”
Oh, yay! You go, Kamala!
Meanwhile, AAA provided this stark reminder of the reality U.S. consumers face at the gas pump:
That price of $4.173 is up by 11 cents overnight, and 55 cents more than you paid just a week ago. Since election day, 2020, the average price has almost doubled, up by $2.06 since that day.
But Pete Buttigieg wants you to know that help is on the way in the form of new green vehicles:
“Transit gets riders where they need to be efficiently and affordably with far less pollution to thrive,” Buttiegieg said. “And it's even good for drivers of cars, because it means less congestion and traffic on our roads. And transit is even better when it's clean transit with modern electric buses that don't pollute at all.”
But Buttigieg wasn’t done boasting of the administration’s new spending efforts, going on to note another spending program targeting charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs). “Clean transportation can bring significant cost savings for the American people as well. Last month, we announced a $5 billion investment to build out a nationwide electric vehicle charging network so that people from rural, to suburban, to urban communities can all benefit from the gas savings of driving an EV.”
Awesome, dude!
But wait: The price for the average EV is now up to $55,000 in the U.S. and will only go higher as prices for the rare earth and critical minerals needed to make their batteries rise on a seeming geometric progression. Plus, there’s the inconvenient truth that, as I wrote at Forbes.com this morning, that the Ford, GM, Toyota and other automaker lots are fairly devoid of EVs to buy at this point due to ongoing supply chain issues that Buttigieg and the President promised last September to solve. That was 6 months ago, and here we still are.
Oh.
But never fear, Biden himself is now going to put a ban on imports of oil from Russia today, as if that will somehow help anything.
FYI, this year, the U.S. has averaged importing less than 100,000 barrels of oil per day from Putin’s country, so this is the proverbial drop in the old oily bucket in terms of volumes impacted. But, as Jesse Wheeler, analyst at Morning Consult notes, "Even though the U.S. does not import a lot of oil directly from Russia, oil trades on a global market, and the partial eviction of the world's third largest exporter will drive up prices everywhere.”
Despite speculation that Oil markets had already priced in a U.S. ban on Russian crude, traders responded to news of the announcement by doing this:
Oh. Guess it wasn’t priced in after all, huh?
As I noted yesterday, gas prices typically lag behind oil prices by several trading days. Given that the price for crude is now up by 11% since just last Friday’s close, you should expect the average U.S. price to surpass $4.60 by this coming Friday.
And it has nowhere to go but up from here.
But never fear, like Vice President Harris, Stephen Colbert has words that will no doubt provide you all great comfort next time you fill up at the pump:
So, hey, that guy who makes $30 million or so each year for being an unfunny late night talk show host says he’ll be happy paying $15 a gallon, and you should be happy to do that, too.
There, don’t you feel better now?
You just cannot make this stuff up, folks.
That is all.
David, can you explain what is going on with Putin now tying his energy sales to gold instead of the dollar? Maybe I have it wrong- and sorry I know you are on vacation!