Joe Biden releasing oil from the strategic petroleum reserve did nothing except deplete it

 

Gasoline is quickly approaching the 2008 inflation-adjusted high of $5 per gallon

 Just after filling up yesterday at the corner for $4.79, the price was raised to $4.99.

 

High gasoline prices were a problem for Americans two months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and a political problem for Biden

 

Michigan is increasingly like a third world shit-hole: Day four without electrical power from Consumers Energy, over 81k still affected

My electric power went out Tuesday night at about 11pm.

It is still out.

Over 81,000 customers, just of Consumers Energy, remain without power four days after a line of storms came through.

The utility runs ads on the radio incessantly saying "Count on us"!

It spends more time and money trying to get consumers to curtail electric usage than it does providing it.

It decommissions coal fired generating capacity and then turns around and buys electricity from Indiana. Under Democrat Gretchen Whitmer we are increasingly like California. 

The utility is a cruel joke, especially this week as humidity levels soared with the heat. Indoor temperatures at night above 80 degrees F make for miserable sleeping, when sleeping occurs at all.

The air is full of the sound of generators, day and night. Lines are long at gasoline stations where people wait to fill their cans to get them through another night.

Green energy isn't green, and the power company doesn't provide it, green or otherwise.

 

 

I'm so old I remember when AIDS was going to wipe out America

"In 2017, 16,358 people with HIV died, and 5,534 of those deaths were from HIV-related causes." 

COVID-19 has wiped out that many since April 18th.

A gasoline pipeline hack, inflation, and Liz Cheney are bigger news.

The price of gasoline has shot up 32% since Democrat Joe Biden was elected last November

 

Hey Hey, Ho Ho, private homeownership has got to go, says anti-American Commie UCLA professor in The Nation

California’s Fires Prove the American Dream Is Flammable

If we want to keep cities safe in the face of climate change, we need to seriously question the ideal of private homeownership:

[W]e need to do more than upgrade the powerlines or stage a public takeover of the utility companies. We need to rethink the ideologies that govern how we plan and build our homes. ... The valorizing of homeownership and property rights results not only in increased exposure to climate-change-fueled fires, but also in our inadequate responses to them. ... This is the Jeffersonian agrarian ideal, transmuted through the urban, petrochemical century. Cheap energy—both the monetary price of subsidized gasoline and the hidden costs of fossil fuels—and the idealization of individual homeownership have created the scorching landscapes we face today. Cheap energy is untenable in the face of climate emergency. And individual homeownership should be seriously questioned. ... Even with the threats of climate change and rampant fire looming, the ideals of the American dream that have been instilled for more than 150 years will be difficult to dispel. ... We need another kind of escape route—away from our ideologies of ownership and property, and toward more collective, healthy, and just cities.

Gasoline price gouging in the wake of the attack on the Saudis: As if the pump nozzle here is directly connected to the tank there

Gasoline consumers continue to pay bubble-levels, $2.571/gal on average under 2.5 years of Trump, as oil company profits soar

https://www.wsj.com/articles/big-oil-companies-finished-2018-strong-despite-plunge-in-oil-prices-11549031069

A booming economy depends on cheaper inputs: To get 1990s-style growth we need gasoline at $1.53 instead of $2.70

The 1999 price of gasoline in H1 averaged $1.038. Adjusted for inflation that would be $1.53 in 2017.

Gasoline on the Fourth of July 2018 averaged $2.87/gallon nationally

But a year ago gasoline averaged $2.25/gallon nationally.

What happened to $2.50/gal gas, Mr. President?

Gasoline prices are up about 30% since the Trump election

Maybe gasoline wouldn't cost as much if we didn't export 8% of our consumption

In 2017 our consumption of gasoline came to 3.40 billion barrels, but that year we exported 0.273 billion barrels, or 8% of that consumption, a new record. Consumption actually fell in 2017 from 2016 when consumption hit 3.41 billion barrels.

The news today says prices are climbing because of increased demand and tighter supplies. But as prices have risen in the last year, miles-traveled are down sharply year over year in January. Growth of miles-traveled had barely caught up with pre-recession levels in 2016 and 2017 and is now on the verge of recession-like conditions to start 2018.

We'll see if any of this continues, but one thing's for sure. Paying $3.00+/gallon this summer isn't what we voted for when we voted for Donald Trump.

150 big spending House Republicans gave away the store in December 2015 in exchange for lifting the oil export ban

The Roll Call vote is here.

Since the vote on Dec. 18, 2015 what we got in return is US debt to the penny increasing by $2.33 trillion through 4/9/18, or 12%, and the price of a gallon of gasoline climbing by 65-cents, or 33%.

Way to go, Brownie!

Meanwhile, we get "broken window fallacy" nonsense from The New York Times about Hurricane Harvey

Destroy the previous products of GDP which produced GDP of their own, and presto! More GDP!

Might as well just print the stuff on steroids and spend it.

About 21% of taxpayer money and borrowings is already misallocated to expenditure by the federal government. Some of that is absolutely necessary, but even that is not spent well.

Hurricanes aren't called disasters for nothing.

Here:

Ellen Zentner, chief United States economist at Morgan Stanley, said that although Hurricane Harvey’s impact on national gross domestic product in the third quarter might be fairly neutral, “the lagged effects of rebuilding homes and replacing motor vehicles can lost longer,” providing a lift to gross domestic product in the fourth quarter and beyond.

On the other hand, an extended rise in gasoline prices could have a more immediate effect. Each 10-cent rise in the price of gasoline is equivalent to a $10 billion tax on consumers, Ms. Zentner said, so “should higher prices be sustained, it would rob other categories of spending as dollars are diverted to filling tanks.” ...

The economic impact of the storm will not be clear with any degree of accuracy for a while. But given Houston’s commercial importance — and its perch along a well-trod hurricane zone — economists and others have long taken it for granted that an epic storm would hit the region eventually, so have a head start on the numbers.

Trump's right, gas should go lower

After all, gasoline was $1.02 as recently as January 2002.

What's not to like this July 4th: Hillary's not president and gasoline averages $2.22 nationally

We have to repeal the Obamacare bill so that you can find out what is in the next bill

h/t Harvey

Gasoline prices on Thanksgiving Day 2016 return to what they were this day in 2005

Obama "you didn't build that" takes credit for $2 per gallon gasoline when he said $2.50 per gallon goal of Newt Gingrich in 2012 was a pipe dream

What a schmuck.

Here:

The progress we made with respect to carbon emissions has been greater than any country on earth. And gas is $2 a gallon.