We say: CNN is doing its darnedest to help President Biden and Democrats ahead of the November midterms, arguing that based on an average household consuming 90 gallons a month, the recent drop in gas prices equates to a $100 monthly tax cut from the government. Yet did CNN mention at the same time that the spike in prices, from $2.42 when Biden took office to $5.03 in June, was like a $235-a-month ($2,820-a-year) tax hike, based on that 90-gallon figure — far more than offsetting the $100 “cut”? Of course not.
This statement:
“Without evidence, the mayor [Eric Adams] has blamed the bail reform law for letting repeat offenders out of jail.”
— The New York Times, Saturday
We say: Uh, it’s the Timesthat’s making that claim “without evidence.” If the paper actually took an interest in the city (instead of focusing on, say, where Mayor Adams eats dinner), it might’ve noticed the endless stream of recidivists being freed soon after arrest, thanks to bail reform. Indeed, Adams has held pressers flagging NYPD data to back up his claim. And The Post, too, has cited countless examples — like the sex fiend whose unprovoked sucker punch knocked out an innocent bystander. Or the guy arrested 41 times left free to pummel a subway worker. Indeed, we flagged 10 career criminals who alone racked up 500 arrests since “bail reform,” with most still out on the streets. So much for “without evidence.”
Spot the difference:
“[The president] does not have that power [to cancel student debt].”
— Speaker Nancy Pelosi, July 28, 2021
“Now clearly, it seems he has the authority to [cancel student debt].”
— Pelosi, Tuesday
We say: Give Speaker Pelosi credit for flexibility. One day the president lacks the power to cancel debt, the next day he doesn’t. What changed? Nothing, except President Biden’s decision this week to buy votes from progressives and college kids by . . . forgiving their debt. If only the rest of us could change the rules whenever we wanted.
(Read two more cases of liberal gaslighting as exposed by the New York Post)
While this may be the big one (and the gaslighting on Hunter’s laptop probably gave many undeserved votes to Biden), anyone who is awake expects it
It has been four days since the Biden administration announced the cancellation of student loan debts, causing a massive wave of mixed reactions.
In true Biden fashion, the White House has yet to clarify who will be responsible for paying off those cancelled loans, skirting around the questions at every chance.
Perhaps it will be taxpayers ultimately paying for the loans, since the plan calls for the government to forgive the debt, which will only add to the nearly $31 trillion in existing U.S. debt taxpayers are already on the hook for.
During press briefings earlier this week, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre struggled to answer basic questions on where the money will be coming from.
At one point, Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy and Jean-Pierre had a heated exchange where he had to ask six times about who will be paying for the loans, to which she refrained from ever really answering.
During a segment on CNN, the Biden administration once again dodged questions on the plan that will forgive thousands of dollars in federal student loans.
“New Day” host John Berman incessantly asked Education Secretary Dr. Miguel Cardona how much the plan was going to cost.
Offering no firm answer, Cardona insisted that the cost of the plan would be offset and that there should be no concerns about inflation.
However, the Biden administration has yet to even explain how the added spending will be offset.
Meanwhile, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation predicts that the cost of student debt cancellation could average $2,000 per taxpayer, and that’s on the low end.
(Read more on the billions of dollars of additional costs predicted at Townhall)
Do you think inflation is bad when just a $1,400 to almost everyone got mailed out?
Just think of what a bailout of who knows how many student loans (each at $10,000 or $20,000) might do. No wonder Biden has dodged this question. No wonder he is building a wall around his compound.
…
More free money gaslighting: The true cost of “free money”
A new Penn-Wharton model goes beyond the media gaslighting and shows the true cost of Biden’s student-loan bailout
New analysis shows estimates predicting President Joe Biden’s student loan bailout will cost taxpayers $300 billion are grossly underestimated.
According to the University of Pennsylvania Penn Wharton business school, the reallocation of student debt payments from wealthy degree holders to the working class could cost up to $1 trillion.
“President Biden’s new student loan forgiveness plan includes three major components. We estimate that debt cancellation alone will cost up to $519 billion, with about 75% of the benefit accruing to households making $88,000 or less. Loan forbearance will cost another $16 billion. The new income-driven repayment (IDR) program would cost another $70 billion, increasing the total plan cost to $605 billion under strict “static” assumptions. However, depending on future IDR program details to be released and potential behavioral (i.e., “non-static”) changes, total plan costs could exceed $1 trillion,” Penn Wharton released Friday morning.
The White House has not conducted an official assessment about how much Biden’s bailout will cost but officials continue to insist the move is “fiscally responsible” and won’t add to inflation.
(continued)
Economic experts, including Democrats, disagree.
Even Obama economist Jason Furman is slamming Biden’s student debt debacle as a “bad idea."
“We really don’t need… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
(Read the four methane-filled tweets I omitted at Townhall)
Most of us got $1,400 in “COVID stimulus,” that got invalidated by $5,000 of inflation
Was the $1,400 COVID funds worth the $5,000 inflation that we have suffered since? Of course, not all of the COVID were the cause for the inflation, but it contributed. So, was it worth it?
Will it be worth it when the college loans (each at about $10,000) go on the federal free-money system?
…
Gaslighting at its greatest: A regime that contradicts itself within the same day
Jerome Powell’s speech tanked the market just as Biden claimed credit for a great market
Central bankers gathered in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, this week for an annual Federal Reserve symposium and to hear a highly anticipated Friday speech by Chairman Jerome Powell as the Fed plans for how it will continue to grapple with inflation at 40-year highs and a recession kicking in ahead of the midterms.
“Restoring price stability will take some time and requires using our tools forcefully to bring demand and supply into better balance,” Powell said, actions that will “bring some pain to households and businesses.” No kidding.
Powell reiterated the Fed’s aim, saying “we are moving our policy stance purposefully to a level that will be sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2%.” That means stomping on the current 8.5 percent inflation shown in July’s Consumer Price Index with more interest hikes that are more aggressive in the months ahead. “We will keep at it until we are confident the job is done,” Powell pledged.
Notably, Powell’s awaited declarations on the state of the U.S. economy and what the Fed would be doing in response ran less than 10 minutes, far less than the half-hour speech that was expected.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell was expected to speak for 30 minutes at Jackson Hole, but ended up speaking for only a thir… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
The shortness of the Fed chair’s remarks did not, however, limit their impact on American markets. Powell’s words saying previous interest rate hikes are “not a place to stop or pause” shook markets and sent the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 tumbling more than two percent on Friday.
“The economy’s looking good.” That’s was the president’s take as he was departing the White House on Friday afternoon — before he spends another weekend at home in Delaware. “I feel good about it,” Biden added of the economy his tax-and-spend policies have ruined.
Biden says "the economy's looking good" as the Dow drops 750+ points and Americans grapple with the highest inflati… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
President Biden was mocked online for touting falling gas prices — although they are still nearly twice as high as when he took office — in a tweet that contained a typo.
”For American families looking for a little more breathing room, these savings matter,” the president said in a post on Monday.
The tweet included a graphic showing that “At current prices, the average driver will spend $35 less per month for one peson [sic] or $70 less per month for a family with two cars than they would if gas prices stayed at their peak.”
The average gallon of gas on Monday, according to AAA, was $4.35, nearly twice the $2.37 a gallon it was when Biden entered the White House in January 2021.
Gas prices hit their peak of $5.01 nationally, according to AAA, on June 14.
Some critics pointed out the hypocrisy of Biden taking credit for falling gas prices even as his administration blamed others, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, when they spiked, dubbing it the “Putin Price Hike.”
As war rages in Ukraine and debate over drilling on American public lands is once again in the news, a new dashboard from the Center for Western Priorities provides an at-a-glance look at onshore oil and gas activity under the Biden administration, including permitting and production that has occurred on leases sold prior to the start of the administration and statistics from past and upcoming lease sales. The dashboard will be regularly updated with the latest information available from federal agencies.
Data for federal lands only
While many politicians are using the current crisis to call for opening more public lands for drilling, publicly-available data compellingly shows why watering down drilling safeguards is exactly the wrong path to take. Combined, the oil and gas industry holds leases to more than 26 million acres of publicly-owned minerals, more than half of which sit unused. Companies now hold more than 9,000 approved but unused drilling permits on federal and tribal lands, all of which could be put to use today. Further, oil production on public lands has reached levels not seen in nearly two decades, despite industry claims that the Biden administration has suppressed domestic production.
The Biden administration inherited a federal oil and gas program that is broken and rigged in favor of the oil and gas industry—allowing companies to anonymously nominate public lands they want to drill, purchase leases at bargain rates, lock up public lands, and pay below-market royalty rates that shortchange taxpayers. It has been this way for decades, as documented repeatedly by the Government Accountability Office, Congressional Budget Office, and the Interior Department’s Inspector General. And it reached a low point during the Trump administration, which tried to make oil and gas drilling the “dominant” use of America’s public lands.
“The system for drilling on our public lands is wildly outdated and fundamentally broken,” said Jennifer Rokala, Executive Director of the Center for Western Priorities. “Oil companies have amassed a massive stockpile of unused drilling permits and idle leases, essentially using public lands to pad their books at bargain rates.”
Upon taking office, President Biden ordered a pause on new oil and gas leasing to allow time for a comprehensive review of the federal oil and gas program. A federal court halted that pause in June, ordering the administration to resume leasing. Since then, the Biden administration has taken steps to resume leasing; however, another federal judge ruled in February that the department could not use the social cost of carbon to analyze the effects of future oil and gas drilling, contradicting previous rulings that the Interior Department could not offer oil and gas leases without analyzing the climate impact. Taken together, these rulings have left the administration in a legal bind,unable to proceed with lease sales either with or without climate analyses.
resident Joe Biden’s administration has leased far fewer acres for oil and gas drilling offshore and on federal land at the early stages of his presidency than has any other leader since Harry Truman at the end of World War II, according to a new analysis.
“The president said he was going to stop leasing, and he’s been remarkably successful,” former Trump administration Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, an energy lawyer, told The Wall Street Journal in response to its analysis, which shows Biden’s Interior Department has leased 126,228 acres for drilling in his first 19 months of office, through Aug. 20.
Only Truman, at this stage of his presidency, leased fewer acres, coming in at just 65,658 in 1945-46. However, notes the publication, at that time, the federal government did not control the deep-water leases that now make up the largest part of the federal energy program, and offshore drilling was just starting.
(Read at NewsMax how you’ll have to go back to Nixon to get it more screwed up)
Finally, a lay out of the state of drilling permits
Data from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) shows that approved permits to drill oil and gas on public lands have seen a substantial drop off under President Joe Biden’s administration after peaking in April of 2021, according to a report.
Last April, approved permits topped out at 643 but gradually declined since, with two minor increases in September and November of last year, Environment and Energy Publishing (E&E News) reported. In January — the month that saw the second-lowest permit approvals during the Biden presidency — only 95 permits were granted, marking an 85 percent drop-off since April 2021, according to E&E News. February produced a minor increase in permit approvals, registering at 186, which was still the fourth lowest in a single month during Biden’s term to date.
Moreover, outputs from New Mexico and Wyoming have gradually tapered off, according to the states’ BLM offices, per E&E News.
Spokesperson Melissa Schwartz of the Interior Department, which supervises the BLM, told E&E news via email that the agency is efficient, noting approval turnaround time had dropped more than 50 percent over the last decade. “Schwartz also noted that the oil and gas industry holds significant drilling rights already,” E&E News reports. “Many of the drilling permits held by industry — and 60 percent of the acreage leased to oil producers — sits unused, she said.”
As a dad, Christian, technical writer, fledgling professor, blogger, I try to address every day and every person as if I am an embodiment of Mark 1:1 (The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God;).
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It has been four days since the Biden administration announced the cancellation of student loan debts, causing a massive wave of mixed reactions.
Mark 1:1 