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The Joe Biden Presidency Thread


swordfish

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Billions and Billions to Be Wasted: https://www.cato.org/blog/billions-billions-be-wasted

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The only good thing about the infrastructure bill that Congress just passed is that it doesn't include any money for high-speed rail. Unfortunately, it did include far too much money for things like Amtrak, urban transit, and rural broadband.

The infrastructure bill is really two bills in one: first, a reauthorization of existing federal spending on highways and transit; and second, brand-new spending on highways, transit, Amtrak, electric vehicles, airports, ports, clean water, clean energy, and broadband. This entirely new spending is almost entirely unnecessary as the infrastructure crisis was mostly fabricated in order to get Congress do what it always does, which is throw money at problems that are perceived to exist, whether they are real or not.

About half of the transportation dollars in the bill are dedicated to Amtrak and urban transit, modes of transportation that carry less than 1 percent of passenger travel and no freight. While the other half appears to be dedicated to highways, much of that will be spent on projects that will reduce, not maintain or increase, roadway capacities.

All of this is based on a presumption that automobiles are evil and the primary goal of government should be to wean Americans off the automobile and get them into various forms of government-owned mass transportation. Even if you believe that automobiles are a major contributor to global climate change, many states and cities have made enormous efforts to get people to reduce their driving since 1970, and all of them have failed.

States are already lining up to get some of the $66 billion that the bill included for Amtrak. But even if the bill had spent twice that on Amtrak, it wouldn't have significantly increase passenger train ridership. In most of the markets where Amtrak wants to expand service, airlines and/or bus companies already provide excellent service at fares that Amtrak won't be able to match even with all of its subsidies.

Senate Republicans managed to get the new funding for urban transit reduced from Biden's proposed $80 billion to about half that. But it is still way too much, especially considering that the reauthorization half of the bill includes more than $70 billion for transit.

The reality is that transit and intercity passenger trains are obsolete technologies that only survive because of giant taxpayer subsidies. I personally love passenger trains, but I don't think they should be subsidized any more than Tom Hanks, who collects manual typewriters, thinks taxpayers should subsidize a manual typewriter industry. If we end the subsidies, transit will survive in New York City and a few passenger trains might survive on especially scenic routes, but elsewhere no one would particularly notice their absence.

The bill also includes $65 billion for rural broadband based on overestimates of how many people lacked access to high-speed internet. According to the White House, which originally proposed this spending, "more than 30 million Americans live in areas where there is no broadband infrastructure." But according to the Federal Communications Commission, only 21 million Americans "lacked access to fixed terrestrial" broadband in 2019, and all of those Americans had access to satellite broadband if they wanted it. The main beneficiaries of this $65 billion will be broadband companies and high-income exurbanites.

All of this spending is on top of the three coronavirus relief bills passed by Congress in April and December, 2020, and March 2021, which included more than $116 billion for transportation. Some 59 percent of the transportation dollars in those bills, or $69 billion, was dedicated to transit systems that had lost more than half of their riders due to the pandemic. In retrospect, considering the supply-chain problems we are experiencing today, that money should have been spent on freight transportation instead.

The infrastructure bill does include $17 billion for ports, but most of this will be too little, too late to solve today's supply-chain problems. The real lesson of this bill is that the government shouldn’t be involved in funding marketable services, like transportation and broadband, as it is too likely to get captured by entrenched interests while it ignores real problems.

There are still those who believe Congress should fund a high-speed rail network, but recent news about China's high-speed rail systems provide another lesson about government failure. China has twice as many miles of high-speed rail lines as the rest of the world combined. To build those lines, China State Railways and provincial governments have gone trillions of dollars in debt. Some of China's high-speed rail lines earn less in ticket revenues than the cost of the electricity used to power those lines, and the system as a whole is losing $44 million per day.

To help pay for the lines, China State Railways has increased freight rates 11 times so that it now costs twice as much to ship freight by rail as by truck (compared with less than one-fourth as much in the United States). As a result, the share of freight moved by rail has declined from 50 percent in 2005, when China began building high-speed rail, to 17 percent in 2016, and probably less today.

Some experts, including Beijing Jiaotong University Professor Zhao Jian, believe that China's high-speed rail program will lead to a debt crisis far worse than the Evergrande crisis (which was manufactured by the government to punish wealthy housing developers). Americans can count ourselves fortunate that we at least dodged this bullet train.

Yet another huge spending bill,  yet another huge waste of taxpayer dollars.   Thanks Joe Biden.

 

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22 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Unfortunately, it did include far too much money for things like Amtrak, urban transit, and rural broadband.

...which means it didn't include enough for those things. 

22 hours ago, Muda69 said:

only 21 million Americans "lacked access to fixed terrestrial" broadband in 2019, and all of those Americans had access to satellite broadband if they wanted it.

This was clearly written by someone who has never used satellite internet. 

22 hours ago, Muda69 said:

that money should have been spent on freight transportation instead

rAilrOaD CoMPaNIEs arE PriVAte bUsInESseS AnD SHouLd paY FOR THEir oWN upGRades

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24 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

Define "success", please. 

In this context turning a profit on its operations, or at least breaking even.  

http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=18621

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...

Amtrak’s Insignificance

Intercity passenger train service in the United States peaked in 1920, when there were well over 10,000 trains per day and per capita rail travel peaked at more than 750 miles per year. Early data are a bit uncertain, but in 1920, intercity passenger trains carried Americans more than 40 billion passenger-miles. Transit, including commuter trains, carried people about 80 billion passenger-miles. Americans drove about 48 billion vehicle-miles, and vehicle occupancies were probably greater than today because family sizes were larger. If the average auto carried 2.0 people instead of today’s 1.7, then intercity trains carried about 18 to 19 percent of all passenger travel in the United States.

http://ti.org/images/APB102F1.jpg

Rail’s share of passenger travel was already low before Amtrak took over, and it has significantly diminished since then despite large subsidies.

Department of Transportation data indicate that, by 1960, rail passenger miles had fallen to 17 billion while driving and flying had grown so that intercity trains carried less than 1.5 percent of passenger travel. In 1970, the last year of private passenger service before Amtrak took over, rail passenger miles were down to 6.2 billion, which was less than 0.3 percent of passenger travel. Amtrak immediately killed more than half of the nation’s passenger trains, so in 1975, even after the OPEC oil embargo, it carried just 0.16 percent of travel. Amtrak ridership has grown since then, but not as fast as highway or air travel, so in 2019 Amtrak’s share was less than 0.11 percent.

Debating the Case for Amtrak

Despite Amtrak’s insignificant market share and its failure to increase that market share, passenger-train supporters still want taxpayers to subsidize Amtrak. Here are the reasons they give for such support and why those reasons are not valid.

1. All transportation is subsidized: Actually, not all transportation is subsidized. The nation’s seven class 1 freight railroads operate largely without subsidies; the only subsidies are mainly subsidies to a few shippers. Except in times of crisis such as 9/11 or the pandemic, the nation’s airlines have been largely unsubsidized; the main subsidies have been to little-used airports in small communities that Congress has (for political reasons) deemed need “essential air service.”

Relative to Amtrak subsidies, the subsidies that exist for air and highway travel are small. In 2019, air travelers received subsidies averaging 1.1 cents per passenger mile (mainly, as noted, to smaller airports) and highway subsidies averaged about the same. Amtrak subsidies, however, were 36 cents per passenger mile. Since Amtrak fares averaged 38 cents per passenger mile, almost half the cost of riding Amtrak was subsidized compared with 7 percent of the cost of flying and 4 percent of the cost of driving.

2. Other countries subsidize trains: China has spent hundreds of billions of dollars building new passenger train lines. China also politically represses its people in many different ways, but no one would suggest that the United States should engage in such repression just because China does.
Taxing people to pay for train rides they rarely if ever take is a form of economic oppression, and it is particularly bad considering that most taxes are regressive and most passenger train riders are economically well off. Just because other countries engage in such economic oppression doesn’t mean that the United States should as well.

Profits aren’t just a way for capitalists to get rich. They are a sign that you are doing something right. If people are willing to pay all of the costs of what you are doing, then you are producing net economic value. If they aren’t, and you demand that they pay anyway in the form of taxes, then you are producing net economic losses.

3. Passenger trains work well in Europe: European passenger trains work great for American tourists who are willing to confine their travel to places reached by such trains. They don’t necessarily work well for European residents. According to Eurostat, passenger trains carried 7.8 percent of travel in the European Union in 2019. While that is considerably higher than Amtrak’s 0.1 percent, it is still not very much. Moreover, it overstates the number for two reasons.

First, the EU number includes urban rail travel such as trams, metros, and commuter trains. About 18 percent of that 7.8 percent is urban rail, leaving 6.4 percent for intercity trains. Second, in calculating market share, the EU leaves out air travel. In 2006, air travel within Europe accounted for 42 percent more passenger-kilometers than intercity rail travel. From 2006 to 2019, air travel (measured in passengers) grew by more than 50 percent, while rail travel (measured in passenger-kilometers) grew by less than 22 percent. Assuming the average airline trip was about the same number of kilometers in 2019 as in 2006, intercity rail’s share of travel including air travel was just 5.7 percent in 2019, down from 6.1 percent in 2006. Rail subsidies haven’t kept European passenger trains from losing market share.

Nor are claims that passenger trains in some European countries make money valid. A report by Amtrak’s inspector general looked at such claims and discovered that many major costs, including capital costs, debt service, and pensions, are paid for by national governments and not shown on the books of the state-owned railroads found in most European countries. For example, the Economist once reported that the French national railroad “earned a profit of 695 million euros in 2006.” Amtrak’s inspector general instead found that the railroad was losing about $1 billion a year.

In addition to subsidies, the other factor that boosts European rail ridership is punitive taxes on motor vehicle fuel. Whereas federal and state gas taxes in the United States average about 52¢ per gallon, they are more than $2 per gallon in almost every European country and in major countries including France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom they are more than $2.75 per gallon. Revenues from these taxes are not dedicated to roads; instead, they go into general funds, some of which might be spent on roads but often more are spent subsidizing trains.

These high taxes do more to suppress mobility than they do to boost rail ridership. While the average American traveled 16,000 miles by automobile in 2019, the average European traveled less than half that, about 7,800 miles, by car. In exchange, Europeans gained about 635 miles of rail travel per capita, not exactly a fair trade off.

4. Amtrak saves energy: When compared with flying, Amtrak saves very little energy. According to fuel and passenger-mile data published by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, airlines used 2,181 BTUs per passenger mile in 2019 while Amtrak used 2,116. (To calculate this, I counted the BTUs lost in electrical generation and distribution to support Amtrak’s electric-powered trains. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics didn’t include this in its BTU table.)

http://ti.org/images/APB102F2.jpg

Although some cars, such as the Toyota Prius and Hyundai Ioniq, are more fuel-efficient than Amtrak, the average automobile, including both cars and light trucks, uses about 50 percent more energy than Amtrak per passenger mile. However, buses use much less than Amtrak and airlines are about equal to Amtrak. Amtrak, airline, and auto numbers based on 2019 data; bus numbers are from 2012.

Moreover, airline energy efficiency is growing much faster than Amtrak’s, so it is likely that, without the pandemic, airlines would have become more energy efficient than Amtrak by 2021 or 2022. Of course, with air travel recovering much faster than Amtrak ridership after the pandemic, airlines are likely to be more energy efficient than Amtrak in 2020 and 2021 anyway.

When compared with intercity buses, Amtrak is a real energy hog. According to the most recent estimate, motorcoaches — the type of buses used for intercity travel — use an average of just 575 BTUs per passenger mile. Those estimates are based on 2012 data, and most forms of travel have increased their energy efficiencies since then. But even if buses are no more energy efficient today than they were in 2012, they will still be far more energy efficient than Amtrak.

Amtrak does better when compared with driving. According to the Department of Energy, the average car used about 2,840 BTUs per passenger mile in 2018 while the average light truck used 3,390. That’s about 50 percent more energy than Amtrak. However, if Amtrak ridership remains low after the pandemic, it won’t be able to approach its pre-pandemic energy efficiencies.

It’s worth noting that, in deciding to focus their rail systems on passenger trains and not freight, countries and Europe and Asia have gained at best a small energy savings in passenger travel while losing a large savings in freight. When comparing fuel and ton-miles for heavy trucks and freight trains, trucks used 11 times as much energy per passenger mile as trains. Americans use railroads to ship a third of their freight, while Europe ships only about 16 percent by rail and Japan less than 5 percent. If energy savings is the goal, Europe and Japan should switch their rail systems from passenger to freight.

5. Amtrak reduces greenhouse gas emissions: Amtrak does better in saving greenhouse gas emissions than in saving energy. Calculating emissions from petroleum-based fuels is straightforward: burning Diesel fuel produces about 10,180 grams of carbon dioxide per gallon. Amtrak Diesel-powered trains used 63 million gallons in 2019 for about 640 kilotons of emissions.

Calculating emissions from electric-powered trains is more difficult as emissions depend on the sources of power. Amtrak used 484 million kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2019. Using Amtrak pre-pandemic timetables, I estimated the number of train miles in each state that has electric-powered Amtrak trains and the emissions per kilowatt-hour produced by the electricity generated in each state. My calculations show that the electric power for Amtrak trains produced about 163 kilotons of emissions. Combining with Diesel brings the total to 802 kilotons, which means Amtrak’s 6.475 billion passenger-miles generated about 125 grams of carbon dioxide per passenger-mile.

http://ti.org/images/APB102F3.jpg

If greenhouse gas emissions were the only criteria for transportation, then Amtrak trains should be replaced with buses. But the reality is that, while Amtrak emitted less greenhouse gases per passenger mile than airlines and automobiles, improving the energy efficiency of the average automobile by just one percent would do far more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than doubling Amtrak ridership.

That’s better than the average car, at 197 grams, and the average airliner, at 155 grams. But Amtrak isn’t better than intercity buses, which are estimated to emit only 43 grams per passenger-mile. In any case, since Amtrak only carries 0.1 percent of passenger-miles of travel, the total savings is trivial. As economist Charles Lave’s “law of large proportions” suggests, we can do far more to reduce carbon emissions by improving the fuel economy of cars and plans than by increasing Amtrak ridership from 0.11 percent to 0.15 or even 0.20 percent of total passenger travel.

6. Amtrak is vital to the communities it serves: Whenever someone proposes to cut an Amtrak train, the media will find a mayor or other official of a town that would lose service who will claim that his or her town depends heavily on Amtrak. The problem is that there are 19,500 incorporated cities in the United States, and Amtrak serves only about 500 of them. If Amtrak were so important, then the cities it serves would be doing much better than the ones that it doesn’t.

Among the cities Amtrak doesn’t serve are Phoenix, Las Vegas, Columbus, and Nashville, These are some of the fastest-growing cities and urban areas in America. In Montana, Amtrak serves such cities as Whitefish, Cutbank, Havre, and Wolf Point, most of which aren’t growing very fast. Amtrak doesn’t service Bozeman or Missoula, both of which are thriving. In general, urban economic growth is completely unrelated to Amtrak service, which is predictable considering that Amtrak carries so few passengers.

7. Amtrak nearly made a profit in 2019: Amtrak claims that passenger revenues covered more than 99 percent of operating expenses in 2019, with revenues of nearly $2.7 billion and operating losses less than $30 million. Before the pandemic, it predicted that it would earn an operating profit in 2020. As I’ve previously noted, there were two problems with these claims.

First, Amtrak counts subsidies from the states as “passenger-related revenues.” The states, Amtrak misreasoned, were contracting with Amtrak to carry passengers, so it shouldn’t have to count those revenues as subsidies. In fact, funds paid out of state tax dollars are just as much subsidies as funds paid out of federal tax dollars. In 2019, such subsidies totaled to $234 million, which alone increased Amtrak’s losses to be nearly nine times as much as it claimed.

Second, when Amtrak counted operating costs, it neglected to include the second-largest cost on its annual financial statement: depreciation. Depreciation isn’t just an accounting fiction or tax dodge; it represents the amount that a railroad should be spending or setting aside to replace or rehabilitate its infrastructure and rolling stock as it wears out. Failing to account for depreciation allows railroads to deceive investors into believing they are profitable when they are not.

In 1983, after the bankruptcy of the Rock Island Railroad, which had attempted to boost its stock price by allow its infrastructure to deteriorate, the federal government required railroads to include depreciation in their annual financial statements so they could show investors that they were covering their full costs. Amtrak dutifully does so, and in 2019 its depreciation was $870 million. But it never mentions depreciation in its public statements just so that, like the Rock Island, it can deceive the public about the potential profitability of its operations.

After correcting for these two factors, rather than cover 99 percent of its costs, passenger revenues only covered 57 percent of Amtrak’s costs in 2019. Although past Amtrak leaders often promised profitability in the future, the reality is that Amtrak will never be profitable.

8. The Northeast Corridor makes a profit: Amtrak often claims that its Acela and other trains in the Northeast Corridor make money. Again, this comes down to failing to account for depreciation: most of the infrastructure that Amtrak owns is in the Northeast Corridor, so most of the $870 depreciation cost should be applied to Northeast Corridor trains.

Amtrak says that it has developed a method of allocating depreciation to individual passenger trains, but it refuses to reveal the results. Instead, all of its assessments of passenger train profits and losses are before depreciation. According to the Rail Passengers Association, Amtrak also attributes to other trains costs of running the Northeast Corridor, leading the group to call Amtrak accounting “fatally flawed, misleading, and wrong.”

“The Acela does not make money,” insisted Trains magazine political writer Don Phillips in May 2013 after he heard Amtrak leaders claim otherwise in Congressional testimony. “It loses money, big-time.” Amtrak gets away with making such claims, added Phillips, because “confused and shallow politicians [and] young reporters who have no idea what they are talking about” are easily confused by Amtrak’s “technical jargon.”

9. Amtrak carries more people in the Northeast Corridor than the airlines: This is true, but the reason it is true is that Amtrak serves more cities. Most Amtrak trains between New York and Washington make five to eight stops while trains between New York and Boston make four to eight stops. Airlines can outcompete Amtrak in Boston-to-Washington service, but not short hops such as Boston-to-Providence or Baltimore-to-Washington.

This comparison falsely assumes that airlines are Amtrak’s real competition in the Northeast Corridor. They aren’t; cars and buses are. A 2010 Amtrak report admitted that “highways presently handle approximately 89 percent of the roughly 160 million annual intercity trips in the Northeast Corridor.” At that time, the airlines carried slightly more traffic than Amtrak; today Amtrak is slightly more than the airlines, but the total between them is still only around 11 percent.

Buses fares are far lower than Amtrak’s: typical one-way Amtrak fares from New York to Washington or Boston are around $50, while bus riders can go round-trip for under $20 and rarely more than $40. My calculations of pre-pandemic bus schedules suggest that, due to these low prices, buses alone carried slightly more passenger-miles than Amtrak, or about 6 percent of corridor travel. Autos carried the rest, or about 83 percent, as neither buses nor trains can match the convenience of personal automobiles.

10. In some corridors, trains can compete with planes: One argument for passenger trains is that, because train stations are usually located in or near downtown, downtown-to-downtown travel times can compete with air travel because people don’t have to get to and from airports. The problem with this argument is that it assumes that large numbers of people live or work in or near downtowns. This may have been true a century ago, but it isn’t true today.

According to demographer Wendell Cox, an average of just 8 percent of urban jobs were in big-city downtowns before the pandemic, and the share may be even smaller after the pandemic. New York is exceptional, as usual, as 20 percent of the jobs in the New York urban area were in downtown and midtown Manhattan. But in many urban areas the number is much smaller: just 5 percent in Houston, 3 percent in Los Angeles, and 2 percent in Dallas.

Many of the largest urban areas have multiple airports: Los Angeles has four, or five if Ontario is included; New York, San Francisco, and Washington have three; Chicago, Dallas, and Houston have two. In most of these urban areas, more people live and work near one of the airports than near a downtown train station.

A Failure by Every Measure

At best, Amtrak’s “moment” means that its share of passenger travel will trivially increase from 0.11 to around 0.15 percent. Most of the money Biden proposes to give Amtrak will be spent repairing the Northeast Corridor. This will not generate many new riders as all it will do is maintain service at pre-pandemic levels.

http://ti.org/images/APB102F4.jpg

Despite billions in subsidies, Amtrak has never carried the average American as many as 25.5 miles a year, and for the last 25 years it has been around 20. Even if Amtrak could double ridership, it would at most reduce per capita auto driving by 40 miles a year, or 0.25 percent.

Amtrak has indicated it wants to use the other money to increase service in other corridors. Aside from the fact that most of these would require state support for operating costs, corridors such as Cheyenne-Pueblo, Minneapolis-Duluth, and Detroit-Toledo and corridor extensions such as Oklahoma City-Wichita, Roanoke-Christiansburg, and Brunswick-Rockland are simply not going to generate many new riders. Increased service in existing corridors such as Seattle-Portland, Chicago-Carbondale, and New York-Montreal will suffer diminishing returns: a 33, 50, or 100 percent increase of train frequencies will yield less than 33, 50, or 100 percent more riders.

This best-case outcome assumes that Amtrak manages to fully recover from the pandemic, but such a recovery seems unlikely. As of March, 2021, driving had returned to 97 percent and flying to 52 percent of pre-pandemic levels, but Amtrak was still less than 33 percent. In this case, Biden’s plan would spend $80 billion on a form of transportation that has already failed by almost every measure possible. Congress should save this money for programs that will actually work.

 

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7 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

Cite sources please.

Source:  Biden appears to mock Americans' intelligence, questions whether 'they'd  understand' supply chain issues | Fox News

While explaining that his administration (FTC) is going to monitor US companies for "illegal conduct" that might be contributing to increases at the pump he also signals to OPEC that "The cuts in production during the pandemic" should be "reversed". 

Here's an idea - maybe OPEC cut production when the US became a major exporter in the market.....

 

Just in case anyone forgot - Bidens "Bold" climate steps when he shreds the US oil industry earlier this year.

 

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Why is the President opening the SPR to other nations?  After cancelling the Keystone Pipeline and nixing getting more oil out of the US all in a push to accelerate the move to electric vehicles, this idiot is going to open the SPR.  smh

https://nypost.com/2021/11/23/biden-approves-release-of-50m-barrels-of-oil-amid-rising-gas-prices/

President Biden on Tuesday announced the release of 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help combat rising gas prices across the country. 

The announcement was made jointly with several other nations including China, India, Japan, Republic of Korea and the United Kingdom. 

Out of the 50 million barrels, 32 million will be an exchange over the next several months, the White House said Tuesday. The other 18 million will be an acceleration of an oil sale already authorized by Congress. 

“The President stands ready to take additional action, if needed, and is prepared to use his full authorities working in coordination with the rest of the world to maintain adequate supply as we exit the pandemic,” the White House said.

The announcement comes one week after Biden asked the Federal Trade Commission to look into whether oil and gas companies are involved in “illegal conduct” in order to keep prices up, noting “mounting evidence of anti-consumer behavior by oil-and-gas companies.”

https://nypost.com/2021/11/17/schumer-biden-offer-utter-bull-to-fix-the-high-gas-prices-theyve-intentionally-given-us/

Democrats are admitting they have a pump-price problem — but their “answers” are utter bull.

Sen. Chuck Schumer devoted his usual headline-seeking Sunday press conference to positioning himself as pro-lower-gasoline prices. But he dragged up the same answer he always offers: the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

As we’ve noted before, opening the reserve is a Band-Aid on a chest wound: At best, it offers brief relief without addressing the fundamental supply problems.

But President Joe Biden sank even lower on Wednesday, calling for the Federal Trade Commission to probe supposed “illegal conduct” by large oil and gas companies who he argues are the real villains driving up your per-gallon pain.

What garbage: The FTC lacks the power to do anything fast, and the issue is straightforward supply and demand. If prices didn’t soar, gas stations would rapidly see shortages, and we’d be back to the days of long 1970s lines at the pump (lines the prez is certainly old enough to remember).

All this, because they won’t face the simple fact that Democrats’ own policies are creating the supply shortage and driving up prices. They want this to happen.

The prez canceled he Keystone XL pipeline and nixed new oil and gas leasing on federal property. He’s seeking new taxes on fossil-fuel industries as Democrats aim to end all carbon-fuel use in the name of saving the planet.

They don’t dare own up to it, though, when the public is furious. So instead they offer bogus solutions and phony villains. Pathetic.

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  • 3 weeks later...

https://nypost.com/2021/12/08/white-house-working-with-media-to-get-positive-biden-coverage/

White House ‘working behind the scenes’ with media to get positive coverage

The White House has been secretly begging news organizations to give “favorable” coverage to President Biden rather than focusing on his failings, according to a report.

The administration is “not happy” with the unflattering headlines and coverage of the supply-chain disaster and handling of the economy — and so “has been working behind the scenes trying to reshape coverage in its favor,” CNN’s Reliable Sources said.

Senior White House and administration officials “have been briefing major newsrooms over the past week,” a source told the outlet’s media reporter Oliver Darcy.

The meetings have been led by a trio of administration officials: National Economic Council deputy directors David Kamin and Bharat Ramamurti, as well as ports envoy John Porcari, Darcy wrote in his newsletter.

“I’m told the conversations have been productive, with anchors and reporters and producers getting to talk with the officials,” Darcy wrote.

Reliable Sources has itself been leading the way, with its latest tweet on Monday about how the White House is “absolutely right” to have grievances about brutal coverage of Biden’s time in office.

Darcy’s report about the secret talks also linked to the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, who recently wrote an op-ed titled, “The media treats Biden as badly as — or worse than — Trump. Here’s proof.”

In it, he pointed to data analysis reportedly showing that “Biden’s press for the past four months has been as bad as — and for a time worse than — the coverage Trump received for the same four months of 2020.”

He said that the findings during a time when Biden’s approval ratings have plummeted “confirmed my fear: My colleagues in the media are serving as accessories to the murder of democracy.”

Milbank admitted that “Biden has had his troubles,” mentioning the Delta variant, Afghanistan and inflation, but not numerous other scandals that have seen the president’s ratings plummet.

The columnist appeared on CNN Monday to further push his theories — admitting that the negative press was bipartisan, having ramped up from the spectacular failings of the doomed withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“The left-wing media is tough on him … He has no real support,” Milbank said of Biden, showing his own feelings as he hailed the commander-in-chief as a leader “trying to restore the organs of democracy.”

His views knocking the media were — unsurprisingly — shared by the White House, with chief of staff Ron Klain sharing the Washington paper’s op-ed, writing, “Submitted for your consideration.”

Reports of the secret PR mission quickly had the administration roasted online.

“Biden’s policies are so popular that he’s begging the MSM to do a better job at lying about it,” one person wrote on Twitter.

Another wrote, “BIDEN’S HANDLERS MEETING WITH THE MSM ASKING FOR A BETTER SPIN ON HIS POLICIES AND A MORE POSITIVE IMAGE OF HIM. ALL THEY DO IS LIE.”

Others suggested that the spin was “the opposite” by being favorable to the president, noting the lack of media coverage of The Post’s numerous scoops on first son Hunter Biden.

“Had they not protected [Biden] and his con artiste son for months we wouldn’t be here now,” one person complained, while another urged the media to “strap their balls back on and show this pathetic president for exactly what he is.”

Really?  Does anyone have any sympathy for the current President considering the unrelenting negative press the former President had for 4 solid years?

 

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58 minutes ago, swordfish said:

Really?  Does anyone have any sympathy for the current President considering the unrelenting negative press the former President had for 4 solid years?

 

I don't.  Nor would I have sympathy for any sitting President, they know what they are getting into.

 

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The 'Build Back Better' Bill Will Spend a Lot of Money To Make Our Problems Worse

https://reason.com/2021/12/09/the-build-back-better-bill-will-spend-a-lot-of-money-to-make-our-problems-worse/

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Should we ignore the costs of the "Build Back Better" bill and simply focus on the benefits? Wouldn't that be nice? Unfortunately, the most constructive criticisms of the legislation reveal why the magical thinking behind this monstrously expensive spending package will not improve American society.

In urging us to focus less on costs, economist Alan Blinder asserts: "The House bill includes several real winners. Do you oppose universal pre-K education? You shouldn't; it works. Are you against more-affordable child care? Not many Americans are. Do you think we should ignore global climate change? If so, think again."

But these assertions are weak. You can support pre-K education and affordable child care and worry about climate change without believing that heavy-handed government is the best answer. A compelling case can be made that the most effective policy lawmakers could follow to achieve these goals is simply to get out of the way. Indeed, it's likely that a great deal of the BBB legislation will obstruct progress.

Start with pre-K education and child care. It sure does sound good to promise that this massive spending bill will lower what parents pay for pre-K education and child care more broadly, but it won't.

First, the legislation doesn't address why child care is so expensive in the first place. More people seeking it will only collide with ill-advised government restrictions on the supply of such care—restrictions like the excessive occupational licensing and credential rules that prevent plenty of qualified people from offering their services. A bill that truly aims to reduce the cost of child care would remove these restrictions and allow parents to choose any capable provider.

BBB doesn't lift any restrictions and adds more. As University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan explains, "the bill requires that child-care workers be paid a 'living wage' and that their earnings be 'equivalent to wages for elementary educators with similar credentials and experience.'" As a result, child care will become even more expensive for all families that don't qualify for "free" child care.

How much more expensive? Well, it depends how regulators implement the rule. But Mulligan notes that "elementary-school teachers earned an average of $63,930 annually in 2019, compared with $25,510 for child-care workers. By that benchmark, child-care facilities would need to pay workers 151% more." Matt Bruenig, founder of the left-leaning People's Policy Project, made the similar point that if child care workers were paid like teachers, it would increase middle-class child care costs by $13,000 per year.

Meanwhile, universal pre-K might increase moms' labor force participation, but we should not blindly assume it will be good for children. A recent paper on the effects of a universal child care program in Quebec that followed the children into their teens finds that "there was a large, significant, negative shock to the preschoolers' noncognitive development and health of children exposed to the new program, with little measured impact on cognitive skills," including "increases in early childhood anxiety and aggression."

Making matters worse is that, as some economists have noted, these provisions would create incentives for single parenthood. That's because a dad's income only counts against the child care subsidies received by a mother if they are legally part of the family, and vice versa. This, alongside the disincentives to work like the expanded child tax credit, could spell problems for those children the government is trying to help.

How about climate change? Well, it's amazing that here again legislators are more interested in subsidizing green companies than stopping some of the government's own problematic behavior. For all the demonization of oil and gas companies, the tax code and various agencies throw massive subsidies their way.

Climate solutions are mostly in the hands of private-sector innovators. As Arthur Diamond explains in Openness to Creative Destruction, his 2019 book, "In a system of innovative dynamism, creative inventors will find ways to reduce global warming, and innovative entrepreneurs will find ways to adapt to it." These innovators need capital, but BBB's increases in taxes on capital would ultimately lead to fewer investments in climate innovations.

As we've seen many times, green subsidies will line the pockets of the influential companies that are already involved in the space. That means we shouldn't expect many new entrants into this market—just lots of distortions in an area where we need real competition.

While the cost of this legislation is astronomical, the so-called benefits turn out to be costs, too.

 

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Biden's Stimulus Bill Subsidized Meat Producers. Now, the White House Blames 'Corporate Greed' for High Meat Prices.

 

https://reason.com/2021/12/14/bidens-stimulus-bill-subsidized-meat-producers-now-the-white-house-blames-corporate-greed-for-high-meat-prices/

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White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has a theory about why Americans are paying higher prices these days at the grocery store.

"The president [and] the secretary of agriculture have both spoken to what we've seen as the greed of meat conglomerates," Psaki told reporters at the White House's daily briefing on Tuesday. "The prices are higher. That is, in his view and in the view of our secretary of agriculture, because of—you could call it corporate greed, sure. You could call it jacking up prices during a pandemic."

Alas, Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D–Mass.) debunked and widely mocked claims about corporate greed being the cause of inflation have apparently made their way into the White House's official talking points.

The whole idea is patently absurd on its face. Psaki wants Americans to believe that these shadowy "meat conglomerates" were simply not very greedy for the past 30 years—during which time inflation has been relatively low—but now have suddenly become very, very greedy in the past six months.

By that same flawed logic, Walmart could have been far more successful over the past few decades by jacking its prices through the roof rather than by delivering lower prices than most of its competitors. But that's obviously not true of Walmart (or any other successful firm). High prices, by their very nature, nudge consumers to buy less than they otherwise would. Inflation isn't great news for businesses that make money by selling things.

But the real cherry on top of this sundae of terrible economic analysis is thatthe Biden administration just got done dumping $600 million worth of new subsidies into the meat industry.

The American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion stimulus package Biden successfully urged Congress to pass earlier this year, contained $500 million to "expand processing capacity and increase competition in meat and poultry" industries, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Then, earlier this month, the Department of Agriculture extended another $100 million in loan guarantees to "expand meat and poultry processing capacity" along with other "food supply chain infrastructure."

Is America's meat processing industry run by a bunch of greedy corporate fat cats lining their own pockets with the proceeds of higher prices, or is the industry in such dire straits that it requires taxpayers to spend even more money subsidizing necessary upgrades? Why not both, the Biden administration seems to be saying.

The White House's main motivation here, of course, is to deflect attention away from its own role in creating the ongoing inflationary spiral—a problem that voters now say is the most important issue the country faces. Economists warned that the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Act was too large and could overheat the economy, but Democrats passed it anyway.

Other factors influencing inflation, like the disconnect between supply and demand that's largely a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, are well beyond Biden's (or any president's) power to change. When it comes to meat prices, one of those outlying factors is a massive drought in the western U.S. that has caused beef herds to shrink and the average cow to be 15 pounds less meaty when it is slaughtered. Another factor is the ongoing pandemic-related staffing problems at meat-packing plants, which are operating less efficiently even when fully staffed because they have to take necessary precautions to limit COVID-19 outbreaks that could cause even bigger disruptions.

Throwing $500 million in taxpayer cash at the meat industry isn't going to fix those problems. Blaming the meat industry's "greed" for "jacking up prices"—while actively throwing taxpayer money at the same meat industry—won't do it either.

This entire episode is yet another lesson in why it's folly to trust government officials to run the economy.

Indeed it is folly.  Yet the will continue to try, and be exposed as complete hypocrites in the process.

 

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The Biden Administration Crushes America's Brief Experiment in Showerhead Freedom

https://reason.com/2021/12/15/the-biden-administration-crushes-americas-brief-experiment-in-showerhead-freedom/

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Even in these uncertain times, we can be sure of one thing the new year will bring: worse, weaker showers.

On Tuesday, the Department of Energy (DOE) rolled back a bit of Trump-era deregulation that had allowed Americans to buy multiheaded shower units that emit more water, allowing a warmer, more pleasing cleaning experience.

This was a personal issue for President Donald Trump, who was known to lament the fact that even areas of the country with "tremendous water" had "sinks where the water doesn't come out….You have showers where I can't wash my hair properly, it's a disaster!"

The reason for this disaster: a 2013 regulatory change targeting multiheaded shower units and their supposed violation of energy efficiency regulations.

Since the 1990s, showerheads have been required by law to emit no more than 2.5 gallons of water a minute. In response, some manufacturers started selling shower units with multiple heads that individually complied with that water use limit but together surpassed it.

The 2013 changesrequired whole shower units to comply with the 2.5 gallons per minute limit. In December 2020, the Trump administration struck one of its few blows for freedom by repealing that rule and allowing multiheaded shower units back onto the market.

The final rule released by President Joe Biden's DOE yesterday continues the regulatory seesaw by reinstating the 2013 rule. Whole shower units must again spew no more than 2.5 gallons per minute. This new rule goes into effect within 30 days of being published in the Federal Register, which should happen within a few days.

Energy efficiency groups cheered the changes.

"This was a silly loophole from the beginning and the department was right to fix it," said Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, to Bloomberg. "The good news is there was no clamoring for products that took advantage of this, and we can put this whole episode in the past."

It's hard to clamor for a product that was legal for but a few months. (The Biden administration had announced it would be reversing Trump's showerhead deregulation back in July.) Nevertheless, it is true that industry groups, as The Washington Post notes in its write-up of Biden's showerhead reregulation, did not push for changes under Trump.

Indeed, trade associations representing appliance makers—alongside energy conservation and environmentalist groups—actively opposed the Trump administration's deregulation on the grounds that they'd already spent money complying with existing regulations and the new rule would just open them up new competition.

Many manufacturers were singing a different tune when President Barack Obama first tried to regulate multiheaded showers off the market. Back then, they complained that Washington had no business telling them how to make a shower. But with millions sunk into compliance costs, their views on showerhead regulation have changed.

If regulations did allow multi-headed shower units, "some manufacturer out there will make them and will probably garner some markets share," Ben Lieberman, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Reason in July. "From the perspective of manufacturers who are now making the compliant models, they see nothing to be gained by allowing the heavier flow models onto the market."

As with Biden's ongoing reregulation of dishwashers, the battle of the showerheads shows that industry is not inherently pro-regulation or pro-deregulation. Often, they're just pro–status quo.

You'll have to pry my multi-headed shower unit from the cold, dead hands.

 

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  • 1 month later...

Biden approval hits new low at one-year mark: AP-NORC poll  - https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-joe-biden-business-health-inflation-6b6b0abfef867fc405e9f358ce2c3a09

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 President Joe Biden ends his first year in the White House with a clear majority of Americans for the first time disapproving of his handling of the presidency in the face of an unrelenting pandemic and roaring inflation, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

More Americans disapprove than approve of how Biden is handling his job as president, 56% to 43%. As of now, just 28% of Americans say they want Biden to run for reelection in 2024, including only 48% of Democrats.

Asked on Wednesday at a wide-ranging news conference about his flagging popularity, Biden responded, “I don’t believe the polls.”

It’s a stark reversal from early in Biden’s presidency.

In July, 59% of Americans said they approved of Biden’s job performance in an AP-NORC poll. His approval rating dipped to 50% by late September in the aftermath of the chaotic and bloody U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan and amid surging coronavirus infections and the administration’s fitful efforts to push economic, infrastructure and tax policies through Congress.

The latest poll shows that Americans’ confidence in Biden’s handling of the pandemic — seen as a strength early in his administration — has further eroded as the omicron variant strains the health care system and further exhausts an American electorate that had hoped life would be back to a semblance of normalcy by now.

 

Just 45% say they approve of Biden’s handling of COVID-19, down from 57% in December and from 66% in July 2021.

Americans are even more downbeat about his handling of the economy, with just 37% approving. Growing angst about his economic policies comes as inflation rose at its fastest pace in nearly 40 years last month, a 7% spike from a year earlier that is increasing household expenses and eating into wage gains.

Joyce Bowen, 61, of Knoxville, Tennessee, said Biden deserves credit for encouraging Americans to get vaccinated, but she expressed frustration about the administration’s response to soaring inflation.

The part-time cleaner at a public library said she and her older brother, who she helps support, have been eating less meat to offset rising grocery costs and intermittent spikes at the gas pump that have whittled the purchasing power of her $754 biweekly paycheck.

“It’s just hard to keep food on the table and gas in the tank,” said Bowen, who voted for Biden but said she’d prefer he didn’t run again in 2024.

Only about a quarter were very confident that Biden “has the mental capability to serve effectively as president” or “is healthy enough to serve effectively as president.” Close to half are not confident in Biden’s mental capability or health.

Asked by a reporter at Wednesday’s news conference about other polling that shows a significant percentage of Americans had concerns about Biden’s mental health, the president shrugged off those findings.

Gary Cameron, 66, of Midwest City, Oklahoma, said the president’s verbal gaffes and age — at 79 Biden is the oldest U.S. president in history — don’t give him confidence that Biden has the skill or energy to pull the country out of its malaise.

“Whenever he does a speech on television, in your mind, you’re thinking ‘God, is this guy even going to get through this this speech?’” said Cameron, an independent who voted for Donald Trump in 2020.

Other respondents said that Biden’s age — and life experience that’s come with it — has proven to be an asset.

Nicole Jensen-Oost, 79, of Plano, Texas, said that Biden has demonstrated leadership and empathy through the pandemic by speaking of his own personal grief.

Biden frequently raises the deaths of his first wife and a daughter in a 1972 car crash as well as the loss of an adult son who died of cancer as he has sought to reassure Americans who have lost loved ones to the virus.

“This man has heart,” said Jensen-Oost, a Democrat and among the minority of respondents who said Biden is healthy enough to serve effectively as president. “He’s compassionate and the country needs that right now. We didn’t see a lot of compassion in the previous four years.”

The poll shows only about a quarter of Americans think the phrase “strong leader” describes Biden very well, while about that many say it’s a somewhat good description. Roughly half say he is not a strong leader. Views of Biden’s understanding of “the needs and problems of people like you” are similar.

Just 16% think Biden’s presidency has made the country more united; 43% think it’s more divided.

Harlan Epstein, of Cleveland, didn’t vote for Biden but was hopeful that the 46th president, who sold himself to American voters as a consensus builder, would govern from the ideological middle.

But Epstein, an independent, said Biden’s push for a $2 trillion climate and social services spending bill and his effort to force larger employers to require their workers to get vaccinated or undergo regular testing have undercut Biden’s centrist reputation.

“He’s got to tamp down his far-left wing and start focusing on moderate policies,” Epstein said.

Some on the left have also been frustrated with Biden.

The president’s first-year legislative victories included passage of a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package and a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, but he failed to win passage of his signature domestic spending initiative.

Zachary Lindahl, 34, of Raleigh, North Carolina, said he was disappointed that Biden has been unable to pass the spending package dubbed “Build Back Better,” as Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona balk at the costs and scope.

“It started off well with them passing the $1,400 checks,” said Lindahl, referring to stimulus payments that were part of the coronavirus relief package passed early in Biden’s term. “But as time went on, it’s been just more of the status quo. Any big idea, they are willing to compromise it down until there is no longer anything there.”

Not all is lost for Biden: Many continue to be at least somewhat positive toward the president, his character and his governing.

The new AP-NORC poll shows Biden is in a better position than Trump was at a similar point in his presidency. In February of 2018, just 35% of Americans said they approved of Trump,

Overall, though, 28% of Americans say they have “a great deal of confidence” in Biden to effectively manage the White House, down from 44% who said that one year ago, just after Biden took office. Another 33% say they have some confidence, while 38% say they have hardly any confidence in Biden to manage the executive branch.

Rev. Joseph Courtney, 32, an Episcopal chaplain in Los Angeles, said that Biden in some ways has been pretty much the president he expected, bringing a measure of confidence to the electorate by empowering experts and scientists in the country’s battle against the health and economic crises caused by the pandemic.

But Courtney said that Biden has yet to deliver on his promise to build consensus with Republicans or even some of the more conservative lawmakers in his Democratic party. Biden on the campaign trail said that his experience over 36 years in the Senate — and eight years as vice president — would help him rebuild Washington’s “broken” politics.

“He just keeps getting railroaded time and time again,” Courtney said. “I don’t understand specifically what he’s adding to the presidency that would make me want to support him running another term.”

Mr. Biden's first year has POTUS has been a failure,  who is to think the next three years will be any different?

 

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https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-tweet-going-toe-toe-vladimir-putin-resurfaces-ukraine-crisis-russia-1681266?amp=1&fbclid=IwAR2QAQe_X-dkDLs0-_DOPgL7W2IP27nDPfA61IxtGRL7rbEZ3cJxfhbWPCE

Biden's account tweeted in February, 2020: "Vladimir Putin doesn't want me to be President. He doesn't want me to be our nominee."

"If you're wondering why—it's because I'm the only person in this field who's ever gone toe-to-toe with him," the then Democratic presidential candidate said.

Sure Buddy......

Putin and Biden Meet in Geneva, Switzerland

 

 

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59 minutes ago, Bobref said:

Is there anyone with an IQ above room temperature who doesn’t understand that what’s going on right now in the Ukraine is Putin testing Biden?

So you believe if Mr. Biden orders a massive U.S. troop deployment to say, Poland, that Mr. Putin will back down from Ukraine?

 

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57 minutes ago, swordfish said:

Putni just doesn't want NATO right next door.  He's willing to scare the bejesus out of the people OF Ukraine and take a couple areas in the East back over just to back it up, and our President seems to be OK with that.

If there was a Russian/Chinese equivalent to NATO would the U.S. be ok with say Mexico joining such an organization?  How about Canada?   

Sometimes I think we Americans forget how fortunate we are due to our geography.

 

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