Slow Joe's Double Whammy: Ignorance & Demagoguery

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Riddick
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Slow Joe's Double Whammy: Ignorance & Demagoguery

Post by Riddick » 07-06-2022 12:53 PM

For Joe Biden, the buck stops with small independent business owners trying to make ends meet.

Over the holiday weekend, the president slammed gas stations for the purported sin of not passing along declining oil prices to motorists.

Biden took to Twitter to urge "the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump" to heed his message: "Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you're paying for the product."

Yes, sir, whatever you say, Mr. President!

The US Oil and Gas Association mockingly recommended that the intern who sent the tweet should sign up for Econ 101, but it's worse than that. Biden has hit the gas stations before on the same grounds.

It's hard to know where the economic illiteracy ends and the shameless demagoguery begins. Regardless, it's another indication that the president's approach on inflation is to cast about for scapegoats and villains, no matter how implausible.

Biden is going after the proverbial Liberty Gas Station and Uni-Mart down on Route 134 started by an immigrant couple hoping to send their children to college for the first time. These small-time entrepreneurs have done nothing wrong except remain in business at a time when the president's anti-oil-and-gas policy has backfired spectacularly.

Gas stations make a very small margin on fuel, with the cost of crude and refining, along with transport and taxes, accounting for almost all of the price at the pump. Stations earn a much higher margin on their sales of drinks and foodstuffs. Biden would be on more solid ground urging gas stations to cut consumers a break on the price of soda and Doritos.

Biden maintains that the stations should reduce gas prices since it's a time of "war and global peril." This appeal might make sense if Biden were browbeating gas stations located in Ukraine or Russia. But the United States is not at war, and business owners are under no obligation to sell their product at cost or below because Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to dismember Ukraine.

Counterintuitively, gas stations tend to be more profitable when prices are declining rather than rising, so they are unlikely simply as a business matter to be engaged in the pricing conspiracy that Biden alleges.

Although the president considers them worthy of a good kicking, gas stations aren't a growth proposition. The number of stations has markedly declined in recent decades, and the rise of electric cars is putting more pressure on the business model.

At least they are actually doing their job in difficult circumstances. The same can't be said of President Biden.

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A mind should not be so open that the brains fall out; however, it should not be so closed that whatever gray matter which does reside may not be reached. ART BELL

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Only One Thing Will Fix Inflation, Mr. President - Open The Spigots!

Post by Riddick » 07-06-2022 11:55 PM

New York billionaire and refiner John Catsimatidis, who owns hundreds of gas stations, blasted President Joe Biden’s pinning the blame on high prices at the pump on gas station owners, arguing there’s only one solution for inflation—boosting production of crude.

Catsimatidis reacted to Biden’s remarks by defending gas station owners, arguing that they’ve been “making the same margin that we’ve been making forever” as they have to cover payroll and pay rent, electricity bills, and other operating expenses.

While the margin gas station owners make fluctuates several cents one way or the other, Catsimatidis said it’s “ridiculous to put it on us. We’re not the ones that created the problem.”

Some experts and industry insiders have argued that the Biden administration’s anti-fossil fuel policies have discouraged companies from investing in refining capacity.

“It’s not the war in Ukraine. It’s really domestically caused constraint on the supply side,” said Ross McKitrick, a professor of economics at the University of Guelph in Ontario and expert on energy and environmental policy, in a recent interview with The Epoch Times.

“Nobody’s willing to invest in expanding refinery capacity because the outlook from everything that the government has said is you won’t get the approvals,” he added.

McKitrick’s view was echoed by Chevron CEO Mike Wirth, who said in a recent interview that he does not believe another oil refinery will be built again in the United States, arguing that government policies are the key factor.

“We’ve seen refineries closed. We’ve seen units come down. We’ve seen refineries being repurposed to become bio refineries. And we live in a world where the policy, the stated policy of the U.S. government is to reduce demand for the products that refiners produce,” Wirth said.

For his part, Catsimatidis said in the interview on Fox June 24th that there’s only one fix for the current inflationary spike—a big part of which is due to soaring energy costs.

“We have 100 years’ worth of oil,” he said. “Open up the spigots.”

“If we open up the spigots and flooded the market with oil, with crude oil, American crude oil, we bring the price of oil back” and “inflation goes away,” Catsimatidis said.

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Any bet Biden takes his knee off the neck off the domestic oil industry? A safer bet would be he'll dig it in even harder. If they're still capable of complaining it only means he hasn't sufficiently cut off their oxygen supply -

Never mind that'll choke off the economy, and the American public too - An "Incredible Transition" from living to dead.
A mind should not be so open that the brains fall out; however, it should not be so closed that whatever gray matter which does reside may not be reached. ART BELL

Everything Woke turns to Image
-Donald Trump Image

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