Guest essay by Eric Worrall
After shutting down pipelines right and left, frightening investors with climate extremism, threatening or implementing new taxes and tougher regulations, and banning new leases on federal land, the Biden administration suspects foul play may be driving up the price of gasoline.
President Biden calls on the Federal Trade Commission to look into whether “illegal conduct” is pushing gas prices up
BY SARAH EWALL-WICE
NOVEMBER 17, 2021 / 5:32 PM / CBS NEWS
As gas prices soar across the United States, President Joe Biden called on the Federal Trade Commission to look into whether illegal conduct is driving up the cost of gas prices for families. Americans have seen rising costs, from prices at the pump to shopping at grocery stores.
In a Wednesday letter addressed to Lina Khan, chair of the FTC, Mr. Biden called her attention to “mounting evidence of anti-consumer behavior by oil and gas companies.”
“The bottom line is this: gasoline prices at the pump remain high, even though oil and gas companies’ costs are declining,” Mr. Biden wrote. “The Federal Trade Commission has the authority to consider whether illegal conduct is costing families at the pump. I believe you should do so immediately.”
…
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gas-prices-biden-federal-trade-commission/
The following is a copy of Biden’s letter to the FTC:
I’m pretty sure I remember an economics unit in which the professor explained that if you choke off the supply of a commodity, with new taxes or punitive regulatory attacks on availability, the dot moves up this curve thing, resulting in consumers paying higher prices for less.
Perhaps President Biden needs an advisor who studied economics.
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All the world’s a stage for political posturing and misdirection plays.
It’s all a Sheer Con
Was that an intentional or unintentional reference to “The Jungle Book”?
Well it’ll certainly be more expensive to run your Kaa
Joe Biden is a DOLT. And we are at his mercy.
Don’t insult the dolts please.
Let’s go Brandon!
I have come to realize that Hunter is the smart one in the family and Hunter’s IQ is just south of my shoe size. There can be no greater proof that politicians are mere hand puppets for the faceless cultural elite than Joe and Giggles his VP for International travel and shopping.
Biden tell us that Hunter is the smartest person he knows, which does a lot to explain his cabinet.
A lot of Stupid Writ Large in this group around Brandon, but also a lot of lying and corrupt socialists. What’s next? Maybe Brandon’s annual physical exam with a cognitive decline test?
Well ,Obama was not even allowed to chose his own cabinet.
This was chosen weeks before he even was elected by the City Bank.
(i wonder how the City Bank knew beforehand that he’ll win).
Those who chose the cabinet run the show.
And if we take a look how many people from Obama can be found in Bidens regime ( similar thing happened when George junior inherited George seniors staff )
and that Biden is doing 100% Obama politics
then its safe to say the same run the usa now into the ground are the same ones who already did it when Obama was Pretendisent.
Giggles or Cackles ?
Joe is not in charge
There’s something called Nord Stream 2 waiting to pump as much as you like.
Hi Vuk, Isn’t Nord Stream 2, whenever the Germns allow it, for Russia”s Natural Gas and not gasoline.
It’s called petrol on this side of the pond, on my hand held device I just saw gas missed the o’line. Price of gas on this side has been launched into cosmos by tzar Vlad the Terrible, hence my not so rare lapsus liguae.
The reason natural gas prices have skyrocketed in Britain and the EU is the complete and utter failure of wind and solar electricity generation in combination with the insane decision not to develop the eminently economic shale natural gas that lies directly underneath the Sceptred Isle.
And why store natural gas for winter when winter is a thing of the past in the catastrophic climate crusades and children will not know what snow is?
Put on ICE for at least 6 months yesterday. NordStream AG is a Swiss firm, and after years of construction someone found a legal twist to stop it.
It is puerile to say Russia itself stopped NordStream 2 – even Greta has more smarts than that!
But it has a red flag so cannot be touched.
Waiting is right.
All politicians do it all they time. That’s how they function.
It doesn’t matter whether there is any foul play or not, they will find some.
When a left wing president orders a federal agency to go after a common enemy of the left, the hunt will be relentless and will continue until trophies are bagged.
A conspirator sees conspiracies everywhere.
Well, lying to the government is popular these days. Kind of pressures the subject to offer up even the smallest misdemeanor for which a case can be made.
Next will be call for government to take over the industry a la Venezuela
Probably not next, but it’s on the agenda, that’s for sure.
God I hope so forthwith. The only way to truly defeat these “socialists” is for their policies to be so severe that people will no longer vote for them. The government taking over fuel production will be such a fiasco that EVERYONE will become believers in Ronald Reagan’s quip about the government being here to help. Same with inflation. I suspect shortly people will become tired of hearing that Trump caused inflation and will begin to clamor for Democrats to move on from trying to blame someone and actually start to fix the problem.
When industry implements your vaccine mandate before it’s legal and/or official, what’s the difference?
Biden’s nominee for Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has already stated this is one of her main goals in here public statements. She thinks the government should take over the industry and set price controls of fossil fuel and wage controls on the workers in the industry.
Central planning of the economy has worked *so well* everywhere it has been implemented. Venezuela is just the most recent place.
Brandon hit 36% in the Quinnipiac poll today.
Let’s go Brandon!!
Is Brandon the first president to have his disapproval number to break the 50% mark?
Could well be, not sure but he has to be past Jimma now.
Brandon is in the 20s for 18-30 YOs.
Brief side note.
DeSantis signed a bill in Florida banning some of Biden’s mask mandates.
He chose to sign it in Brandon Florida.
lol – epic burn. That is like the time Churchill had a wartime meeting the obnoxious de Gaull and greeted his arrival at Waterloo station.
The man is a demented old fool.
For an old fool he is darn good in intalling tyranny disguised as good intentions
and doing sabotage and then investigating the cause of the problem.
Just a variation on the Marxist theme of “accuse your enemy (opponent) of that which you are doing”.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions as you’re finding out
Biden was the nominee because his handlers deem him controllable.
Harris is VP because they didn’t want a VP smarter than Joe.
With all the leaks recently regarding dissension and incompetence in the VP’s office, I can’t help but wonder if they are getting ready to ease her into an early retirement. If so, they can’t wait too long since the Senate has to approve the replacement and they won’t control the Senate past next year.
That way when Biden retires, they won’t be replacing him with the only person in the country who is less popular than Biden.
Idle question, if the sitting vice president has to resign before a new VP can be voted on by the Senate, who sits in charge of the Senate, and would this mean the Senate is in a 50/50 tie until a new VP is selected?
No worries, Mark, they can count on Reliable Romney to break the tie.
Short answer, yes, the Senate would be in a 50/50 tie until a new Vice-President was nominated and elected. The President nominates the candidate, who must receive a majority vote of BOTH houses of Congress to take office. The Senate alone doesn’t decide. In a 50/50 Senate, seating a new Vice-President could be difficult since a tie vote does not satisfy the requirement for a majority.
He’s a puppet to the Leftist radicals around him. Dementia Joe has serial liars to his right, socialist liars to his left.
Susan Rice is a senior domestic policy advisor, a retread proven serial liar from the Obama Maladministration. These tools are no doubt taking their direction from Obama, not dementia-ridden Joe and telling Biden what to say and writing the WH agenda.
Since August, Dementia Joe has been leaving the WH every Friday for the weekend,usually to his home in Delaware or Camp David. Also since August, the WH has stopped publishing the WH visitors logs.What is likely happening is the Communist-style Central Committee of the DNC-WH meets without Joe on Saturday. They review the past week’s Biden disasters and plan the next week’s activities for Sleepy Joe.
Joe is just a puppet.
I worked with Democratic US Senators in the early 80’s and got to know quite a few. Biden and John Kerry were, as they say, not the brightest bulbs on the tree. In fact, I’m not sure Biden’s bulb was even lit. The one thing about Joe was he had no shame. He absolutely didn’t give a flip about what anyone said about him and was just more interested in publicity and power. One of my favorites was (believe it or not) Teddy Kennedy. He was pretty sincere and extremely personable and had a lot of friends on both sides of the aisle.
He might be related to griff.
They both love big government.
ALL lefties are demented fools, old or young.
“The most harm of all is done when power is in the hands of people who are absolutely persuaded of the purity of their intentions.” Milton Friedman
Great quote but Joe wouldn’t know an intention if it bit him on his arse. He moves in the direction he is pointed. The people that are running the deep state bureaucracy and moving Biden’s mouth when they speak are evil with Central Authoritarian Visions which will not bode well for you and I.
Bill, my thoughts exactly. I often wonder if under the back of his suit jacket there’s a hole for a wind-up key.
The five laws of stupidity,
1. Always and inevitably, each of us underestimates the number of stupid individuals in the world
2. The probability that a certain person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of the same person
3. A stupid person is one who causes harm to another person or group without at the same time obtaining a benefit for himself or even damaging himself
4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the harmful potential of stupid people
5. The stupid person is the most dangerous person that exists.
Where does Joe stand?
Without fossil fuel infrastructure we’re supposed to have an ENERGY CRISIS!
For decades, the ASCE Infrastructure Report Cards have taught us those infrastructures deteriorate with under-investment.
Socially responsible investing is decades old, but ESG (Environmental, social, and governance) considerations now propagating throughout the world continues to make firms reluctant to invest in oil and gas exploration and infrastructure which is destined to lead to deteriorated infrastructures. Tinkering with the supply chain of oil could impact the supply chain and shortages of thousands of products, and fuels, needed by current lifestyles and worldwide economies.
https://www.cfact.org/2021/11/05/without-fossil-fuel-infrastructure-were-supposed-to-have-an-energy-crisis/
“As gas prices soar across the United States,”
I’m sorry, but this is funny – on this side of the pond.
The average price of petrol in the US is now ~$3.76 per gallon (4.544L) or so
The average price of petrol in the UK is now ~£1.48 per litre or $ 9.06 per gallon
And that is taxed twice – once on the fuel itself and then on the total of that as ‘value added’.
I would like your prices even now.
Somebody has to pay for the nanny state. The fact that Europeans are forced to pay so much for their Socialist tendencies is not lost on those of us who don’t want it in America. The evil of Socialism comes from its popular support which arises from 2 places. First are those who covet the benefit of wealth they did not earn and the other are those who feel guilty about wealth they have. Anyone who thinks that a society based on the pillars of guilt and greed is sustainable is an idiot.
I added the last three sentences of your post to my list of great quotes. You are in good company there, my friend.
Here’s another you might like and that’s been validated by recent events.
CO2 is not the control knob of the temperature, but energy prices are the control knob of inflation.
Voters can peacefully elect to have a socialist government but they usually have to shoot their way out.
So sad,
Glen
Actually the Europeans pay significantly less for their socialists tendencies than people do in the US and get more for their money. Health care costs in the USA are twice what they are in Europe and the outcomes in terms of measurables such as infant mortality, life expectancy etc are worse. So while the Europeans might be paying more for petrol they easily recoup that in terms of health savings plus other benefits like cheap public transport, university education etc.
I don’t believe you.
That lie is frequently told, but it has never been true.
Socialists hide most of the costs of their health care under other budgets, and you can’t directly compare the medical outcomes because they are measured differently in every country.
For example, in the US if a baby takes a single breath after birth, it’s counted as a live birth. In Germany any baby that dies in the first 24 hours is considered a still birth. In France, any baby under a certain wait at birth and then dies, is considered a miscarriage, regardless of how long it lived.
There are also issues with the US and Europe having different demographics.
Mark,
where is the evidence that the health care is hidden under different budgets and not counted?
With your evidence the converse is true. You made a claim with no evidence and then demand evidence to the contrary.
Does this mean that you are conceding the fact that your claims that Europe has better medical care than does the US is just another lie?
If European health care is so great, why have England and Italy been so devastated by COVID? I remember when COVID was an item of discussion here and somebody from Germany was trying to rub our noses in the failure of America to deal with it. From what I have been reading lately, Germany is now doing much worse than the USA.
I have no problems with my health care. I have a choice between an HMO supplemental under Medicare, or Veterans Administration coverage. I use both. Typically, for any kind of procedure I’ve needed, I can get it in less than two weeks. If the VA can’t get me in quickly, they refer me to either the Wright-Patterson AFB hospital, or a civilian doctor. That is in contrast to Canadians who sometimes travel to the USA to see a specialist so that they don’t have to wait a year to be seen.
Every single time the WHO studied health care of different nations, the U.S. had the best care actually delivered, both to rich and poor. This is backed up by the U.S. leading the planet in cancer survival rates. Unfortunately, care received by patients was only 25% of the overall score (labeled Responsiveness in their studies). Leading the world in funding for medical research was counted as a negative by the WHO. The life expectancy in the U.S. is dragged down by the murder rate and traffic fatalities, neither of which are the fault of the health care system. In fact, just being socialist was given just as much weight as getting care to people that needed it in the WHO rankings.
That reminds me of study done several decades ago that sought to rank public safety in various cities. The biggest factor in the survey was how much was spent on police on a per capita basis.
In the survey, spending more was counted as proof that the city was safe from crime.
But you see, a year ago I was paying $1,95/gal in Phoenix, AZ.
in some places in the USA the price at the pump has more than doubled.
A year ago in the EU, was the price 1/2 of what it is today?
Mr. slider: We yanks are glad to give you a laugh at our low, low prices on gasoline. Sorry we whinge about the price going up, but we are in the process of discovering that, in our democracy, the vast majority who think the low price is good find ourselves being governed by a few folks who think the low price is just ghastly. And this discord only gets worse with elections! Democracy indeed.
Fretslider …. u are forgetting that US gallons are around 3.8 litres … an imperial gallon is 4.54 litres.
Plus there is no petrol over here …. only gasoline and it is delivered in trucks not lorries. Maybe ur stuff would be a lot cheaper if u called it gasoline and got it from trucks? I won’t even mention boots and bonnets or the craziness of driving on the wrong side of the road.
“the craziness of driving on the wrong side of the road.”
Yes, I’ve often wondered why you do that. Were you ever conquered by Napoleon?
Maybe China is more at fault than Napoleon. If China had not switched to driving on the right in 1946 …..
Now, now, let’s all come down here.
Let’s all drive down the center of the road.
Then we can all, literally, meet in the middle!
I’ve lived in both the UK and US and have seen both sides. Whatever your stance on him, the low taxes during the Trump era, including gasoline/petrol had a huge stimulus effect on the economy, it was visible everywhere. Hi taxes on everything are choking off growth, industry, entrepreneurship in Britain and are one of the reasons I moved to the US in the first place.
What stimulus effect? In 2015 the GDP growth in the US was 3% in 2019 it was still 3%. The economy grew at about exactly the same rate under Trump as it did under Obama.
Got yer booster #2 juice yet?
There is a lot of lies hidden in averages.
Obama inherited a good economy, and it got worse during his term.
Trump on the other hand inherited a bad economy, and improved it, until the Democrat pandemic restrictions caused a big constriction.
Yes, the average over the two presidencies was the same, but the trajectories were radically different.
Obama inherited an economy suffering from the effects of the global finanical crisis and the great recession. The state of the US economy in 2008 could hardly have been described as good. Do you remember the bail out of the US auto industry, mulitple banks, the printing of trillions of dollars in quantative easing etc?
And in regards Trump I pointed out that in 2019 before any effects of the pandemic the growth rate was exactly the same as it had been Obama.
The banks paid back every penny with interest, giving the economy an artificial temporary boost during the Obama administration. The auto bailouts were Obama’s gift to unions at the expense of ordinary retirement funds and billions of taxpayer dollars. The printing of trillions of dollars was also the choice of the Obama administration. His own economic advisors said that unemployment would have returned to pre-recession levels in half the time if they had done nothing at all.
If the growth rate under Obama was the same as under Trump then exactly what negative effects did Obama inherit?
BTW,. the covid effects started in 2019, where were you? You really don’t remember everyone telling Trump that he couldn’t get the covid vaccines done in less than five years? But by the end of 2020 Trump was getting out more than a 1M vaccine shots per month?
Either you are sadly misinformed or you are just plain lying. Probably both.
In another thread, Izaak makes the claim that the reason that Venezuela is an economic basket case is because the US refuses to trade with them.
The so called effects of the financial crisis were over long before Obama took office.
And you are still hiding behind averages.
Government printing money has never, not even once, improved an economy.
The bail out of the auto industry didn’t save a single job, it just transferred it from non-union to union shops.
2016 the GDP growth was 1.7%. Two of Obama’s last four years the GDP growth was below 2%, and he told Americans that would be the “new normal”. The economic growth was not the same under Trump and Obama. Also lost is the fact that the amount of taxes collected from the rich went up after the Trump tax cuts.
Much of the increase in taxes from the rich came because of Trump capped SALT (State And Local Tax) deductibility.
The Democrats are devoted to removing this cap, thus providing rich Democrats with the biggest tax cut in decades.
You’re right about UK petrol prices being outrageous and making US look cheap, fretslider.
But wrong gallon. 3.785L per US gallon. Your 4.544L is the imperial gallon.
At $1.34/£, £1.48/L = $1.98/L = $7.50/gallon
(or $9.01/imp. gallon)
Stalin k!illed 20 million and Hitler only got 12 million, if you catch my drift.
There is a tight correlation between oil and gasoline prices which only changes with taxes.
Chutzpah:
After murdering his parents the child asks
the courts for mercy because he’s an orphan.
Surely,the biden regime is underestimating the proletariat and their ability to discern BS when they see it!
Having been elected on media peddling of BS as truth, he thinks that will keep happening. But the media can only go so far before they lose the power to sway the majority of their BS.
With the MSM refusing to cover it, and all of the social media giants actively suppressing all mention of it, how is the proletariat supposed to find out that it is BS?
“With the MSM refusing to cover it, and all of the social media giants actively suppressing all mention of it, how is the proletariat supposed to find out that it is BS?”
The interweb thingie.
Another diversion. The reason gas prices are high right now are obvious to anyone, except perhaps a recent economics grad.
How much of the Biden agenda is diversion? How the fight over vaccine mandates? Is a vaccine mandate an actual tool to combat the pandemic or is the mandate, especially the fight over the mandate, a diversion from failed Covid policies?
I could keep going along these lines. How much of what Dr Fraudi, er, Fauci spouts is diversion, for example?
Don’t bring up AOC.
She double-majored in international relations and economics from Boston University, and graduated cum laude. I guess you really don’t get a better education at private schools…
Dear ScienceABC123,
You write: “I guess you really don’t get a better education at private schools…”
In this case the result (AOC) clearly demonstrates, that the value and quality of the education at private schools would be ZERO (best case)… AOC has already demonstrated many times very clearly that she doesn´t have even the slightest idea about economics.
Hmmm … when filing one’s taxes you are required to report you income from tips.
When she was a barmaid,
Did she learn enough in getting her degree to be able to keep track of her tips? What did she report on her tax returns?
An honest and accurate number due to her integrity and the ability to count?
An honest but wrong number due to her economic incompetency despite her degree?
A dishonest and wrong number because she has no integrity and/or can’t count despite her degree?
“The World Wonders”
To resolve such questions is one of the reasons why the Democrats want the IRS to have the ability to monitor all checking accounts.
Are you sure that wasn’t “cum loudly?”
I cringe watching her give speeches…she is quite dumb.
I wonder what Boston University thinks about her?
Wait, leftists don’t think they “feel.” I assumed too much in my question…
Wasn’t Chair Khan a tiger in The Jungle Book?
Sher Khan
I think they just misspelled Sheer Con
Sher Khan hated humanity.
And so do most leftists.
Actually,I think Biden is being advised by someone who did study economics, as taught by a deconstructionist intersectionalist.
“deconstructionist intersectionalist”? Is that a fancy term for moron?
It is rather the description of someone without brains with a chainsaw in his/her/its/etc hands.
But, but, but… Biden has 13… er… 14 Nobel winning economists advising that massive government spending and barrowing will actually reduce consumer costs and won’t cause inflation. Maybe these economists have repealed the law of supply and demand. Apparently they hand out Nobels for economists like Halloween candy.
They do for climate modelers now too.
This is how tyrants behave. We’ve seen it in the old Soviet Union, Cuba, China, and Venezuela. When the government chokes off supply and causes rising prices, they use the executive arm to threaten the companies.
They’re not confused about the economics. They know exactly what they’re doing.
They drive up retail prices, but refuse to allow companies to raise their prices.
Then when the companies go under, they proclaim this as proof that the free market doesn’t work and that the only solution is for the government to own and operate everything.
Mark, you hit it !…and in step 1 “drive up retail prices”, they do that by pretending to wrestle with the cost of some “emergency”…for example, say carbon pricing for a climate emergency…
“President Biden Orders a FTC Investigation into Gasoline Prices”
Look in the mirror, you dotty old fool!
I am writing to call your attention to mounting evidence of anti-American behavior by Joe Biden and his puppeteers
Signed,
The American People
aka Traitor Joe
It’s going to take more than a “sternly worded letter”…
So…the spread between pump prices and unfinished gasoline is widening. Sounds like the FTC needs to investigate the rack operators and retailers, the vast majority of whom are not affiliated with the oil majors. Not to mention the increase in ethanol / compliance cost. Should be fun when these guys push back through their local congressmen.
How many small refineries have been shut down since OBiden’s executive order to review all permits issued for continued operations during the TRUMP! administration?
I heard there were 30 or more they were
I just got back from a cross country trip (US) and noted at least 10 small refineries visible from interstate of which only 2 had any signs of activity. A refinery on the York river in Virginia that was in operation since WWII was also shut down. So there are fewer refineries operating, and as is the want of the leftists, only the MOST EXPENSIVE to run, i.e., those built with the most restrictive regulations, are operating. So the costs WILL go up.
The problem is that it does not matter what push back the business owners give, the MSM will not cover their positions, only those of the left.
COP26 insider report from SP!KED
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/11/17/cop26-where-democracy-goes-up-in-flames/
Find a scapegoat to brand as “the enemy.” A long line of tyrants from Lenin on would be proud of the Democrat Marxist puppet masters working President Demented Sock Puppet.
I wonder if there’s a political angle not previously incorporated into economic theory on supply and demand. Every fossil / thermal energy producer has been subjected to world-wide declaration of economic warfare and eventual annihilation. Doing nothing right now complies with the progressive while increasing profit from rising prices and gaining at least temporary leverage on their enemies who demand their destruction.
Well, the agencies need something to do in between press conferences and reports about catastrophic climate change and administration efforts to combat it with your money.
As Joe either doesn’t remember or perhaps never understood all the things his administration did to deliberately push up the price of fuel, this probably makes perfect sense to him.
Both Biden & Obama admins tried to say the the jump in gas prices was a good thing as it indicated a strong demand and a strong economy.
… guess that nobody was buying that logic.
What happens if the FTC reports the truth and tells Biden that it’s his anti-energy policies that are driving up the cost of gasoline.
That would be the truth. There’s no way any member of this administration would ever permit that out.
That and I though Biden wanted higher prices to phase out fossil fuels was that not his stance at COP26?
They want higher prices, they just don’t want their voters to have to pay those higher prices.
There is the rub.
This is simply the precursor for the justification for Price controls
Swell! Then we can add unavailability of gasoline to the litany of this admin’s self imposed economic problems.
The policies are in trouble and they want to use that to destroy the energy industry. The only problem is the old saying, when you are in trouble first look at yourself, applies here, there and everywhere.
Kind of like the first thing to do to get out of a hole is to quit digging.
Translation: White House to FTC: “You are ordered to investigate the rise in gasoline prices, and you better not find it to be our fault!”