Handsy Joe cancels Keystone

[rogue06]

The natural gas compression company for whom I worked had a lot of contractors who were "blue collar Democrats" who are absolutely stunned that Biden would do such a thing, because they voted for him.

Like many in Pennsylvania who are stunned that Biden appears to be targeting fracking after he assured them he wouldn't.

[Thoughtful Monk]

We better get use that for Democrats the economy is less important than other goals: climate change, equality, etc. Not that this is necessarily wrong - I've done enough times the thing that isn't the most economically sensible but other reasons make it the correct choice for me.

Its going to be like the Obama administration. I lost track of how many times he said he was going to pivot to focus on the economy. His pivot seemed to be broken because it wasn't too long until he was focused on something else instead. The Democratic party just never seemed to internalize the saying "It's the economy, stupid" when they work on their policies.

[Cow Poke]

The natural gas compression company for whom I worked had a lot of contractors who were "blue collar Democrats" who are absolutely stunned that Biden would do such a thing, because they voted for him.

[rogue06]

image_46405.jpg
Thousands of high paying permanent jobs lost and a blow to Canada-U.S. relations all with the stroke of a pen

[Cow Poke]

Is everyone forgetting how in 2008 Biden told everyone that paying higher taxes is patriotic? Obviously he's just trying to get everyone to be more patriotic!

Biden calls paying higher taxes a patriotic act

Sept. 18, 2008, 7:26 AM CDT / Source: The Associated Press
Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said Thursday that paying more in taxes is the patriotic thing to do for wealthier Americans. The Republican campaign for president calls the tax increases their Democratic opponents propose "painful" instead of patriotic.

Under the economic plan proposed by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, people earning more than $250,000 a year would pay more in taxes while those earning less — the vast majority of American taxpayers — would receive a tax cut.

"We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people," Biden said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Noting that wealthier Americans would indeed pay more, Biden said: "It's time to be patriotic ... time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut."

[rogue06]

pipeline.jpg

[Ronson]

Is everyone forgetting how in 2008 Biden told everyone that paying higher taxes is patriotic? Obviously he's just trying to get everyone to be more patriotic!

I don't remember that. But if he said that before 2008, it was probably plagiarized (since that was his M.O. for several years).

[rogue06]

For Democrat elites, the poor are "useful idiots" and the middle class is the enemy. So their strategy is to dupe the MC into voting for their candidates, who will lie and then tax them into oblivion.

What I don't understand is how anyone who is in the middle class could have voted for Biden. They could have simply hit themselves in the head with a hammer and spared the rest of us.

Is everyone forgetting how in 2008 Biden told everyone that paying higher taxes is patriotic? Obviously he's just trying to get everyone to be more patriotic!

[Ronson]

"...anyone making less than $400,000 a year won’t pay a penny more..."

Right, it looks like we will be paying several hundred dollars more at least, so it's technically not a broken promise.

For Democrat elites, the poor are "useful idiots" and the middle class is the enemy. So their strategy is to dupe the MC into voting for their candidates, who will lie and then tax them into oblivion.

What I don't understand is how anyone who is in the middle class could have voted for Biden. They could have simply hit themselves in the head with a hammer and spared the rest of us.

[Mountain Man]

"...anyone making less than $400,000 a year won’t pay a penny more..."

Right, it looks like we will be paying several hundred dollars more at least, so it's technically not a broken promise.

[rogue06]

The Washington Compost is not a reputable source. Obama made it clear on multiple occasions, through words and actions, that he was in favor of raising the cost of conventional energy:

(2014) In early 2008, candidate Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that "under my plan ... electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."

Obama was referring to his plan to cap greenhouse-gas emissions, which would, among other things, effectively choke off coal as an energy source. He was just as fond of high gasoline prices, telling CNBC in June 2008 — as gas prices shot up to $4 a gallon — that he "would have preferred a gradual adjustment."

Six years later, and Obama has succeeded.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the energy price index has been higher than the overall Consumer Price Index since December 2010 — 46 straight months and counting.

To say this is a historical anomaly is putting it mildly. Almost without exception, energy prices climbed more slowly than the overall CPI since 1957, the first year in the BLS' monthly energy price data.

Even in the wake of the "energy crisis," the energy index barely topped the CPI. And while the 2008 gasoline price spike pushed energy costs up, it lasted for only a short time. When Obama took office, the energy price index was 15% below the overall CPI.

Since then, gasoline prices have been stuck above $3 a gallon while electricity prices climb. In the first half of this year, they jumped 3.2% — the highest on record since 2009.

Why the big reversal? Despite Obama's alleged "all of the above" energy policy, he's declared virtual war on conventional energy sources.

Oil production on federal lands has dropped 6%, according to a Congressional Research Service report. Obama continues to block the Keystone XL Pipeline, and he's planning new smog rules that will dramatically raise the cost of energy production.

The EPA's greenhouse-gas rules could be the death knell for coal — which generates almost 40% of the nation's electricity.

So congratulations, Mr. President. You've made it that much harder for the economy to grow and for families to make ends meet.

https://www.investors.com/politics/e...r-under-obama/

He was trying to push us to "green energy" and did everything he could to prop that industry up with a massive slush fund that he used to pay off his friends, the majority of whom declared bankruptcy and pocketed the money while sticking tax payers with the bill:

(2012) It is no secret that President Obama’s and green energy supporters’ (from both parties) foray into venture capitalism has not gone well. But the extent of its failure has been largely ignored by the press. Sure, single instances garner attention as they happen, but they ignore past failures in order to make it seem like a rare case.

The truth is that the problem is widespread. The government’s picking winners and losers in the energy market has cost taxpayers billions of dollars, and the rate of failure, cronyism, and corruption at the companies receiving the subsidies is substantial. The fact that some companies are not under financial duress does not make the policy a success. It simply means that our taxpayer dollars subsidized companies that would’ve found the financial support in the private market.

So far, 34 companies that were offered federal support from taxpayers are faltering — either having gone bankrupt or laying off workers or heading for bankruptcy.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2012/10/...ergy-failures/

(2019) By every objective criteria confirmed by every independent investigation, the avalanche of green dollars in Obama’s first term was a colossal waste of money. In all, Obama (and George W. Bush before him) spent some $100 billion on giveaways to wind and solar power producers, electric cars and for weatherizing homes and buildings. It was arguably one of the largest corporate welfare experiments in American history, enriching an industry and its investors. Most of this money went for research to speed up commercial applications of green energy or was pipelined into bank accounts of individual companies.

The most infamous of these was, of course, Solyndra, the solar energy company that received $530 million of taxpayer handouts and was touted many times by Obama, and Vice President Joe Biden, as the next big thing in green energy. It never produced any energy to speak of before it went bankrupt.

https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/03...n-dollar-bust/

Looks like we are doomed to repeat history:

(2021) With Democrats about to control all the levers of power in Washington, the biggest winners might be the wind and solar companies. These firms' stocks continue to surge mostly because President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to invest several hundred billion dollars in green energy through a pipeline of taxpayer-funded grants, loans, tax credits and loan guarantees.

This game plan looks suspiciously like a replay of the litany of green "stimulus" fiascoes that Biden piloted as vice president back in 2009 with the $800 billion Obama stimulus plan. The experiment in the government as an investment banker belly-flopped with embarrassing failures from Solyndra, Fisker Automotive and Abound Solar. Taxpayers lost billions of dollars on these lemons.

https://townhall.com/columnists/step...scams-n2583315

And now we have this

Source: Pete Buttigieg Puts Gas Tax Hike “On the Table” During Confirmation Hearing

Only two days in office and the Biden administration is already considering breaking President Biden’s campaign promise that "anyone making less than $400,000 a year won’t pay a penny more" in taxes.

During his Senate confirmation hearing for Transportation Secretary, Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg told members of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee that a gas tax increase is "on the table" as a means to pay for infrastructure spending.

When asked directly by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) if he supported increasing the gas tax and by what amount, Buttigieg replied, "I think all options need to be on the table, as you know, the gas tax hasn't been increased since 1993 and it's never been pegged to inflation."

"There are several different models, in the short to medium term that could include revisiting the gas tax, adjusting it, and or connecting it to inflation," Buttigieg continued when pressed by Sen. Scott to provide more detail.

Support for a federal gas tax increase would be a clear violation of President Biden’s pledge to not raise any taxes on any American making less than $400,000 per year. According to the Congressional Budget Office, raising the tax rate on gasoline would “impose a proportionally larger burden, as a share of income, on middle- and lower-income households,” while also imposing “a disproportionate burden on rural households.” Biden must immediately disavow a gas tax hike if he wants to stay in compliance with his pledge to the American people.

Buttigieg’s consideration of a gas tax increase also directly contradicts other statements issued by President Biden on the campaign trail.

"I've tried this before, we’re not going to be able to raise the gas tax," President Biden said at an infrastructure forum in Las Vegas in February. "I don’t think we’re going to be able to raise the gas tax from what it is now to what it would be had it been raised for inflation," Biden continued.

During today’s hearing, Buttigieg also raised the possibility of creating a new "vehicle miles traveled" (VMT) tax that would charge drivers based on a per-mile tax but cautioned that the technology might not be ready to support implementing this policy while also raising privacy concerns.



Source

© Copyright Original Source

One of the dirty secrets in Washington is that when gas prices rise it isn't the retailers or Big Oil companies that see the biggest gains but the government considering how the taxes work.

[rogue06]

Fauci the Fraud is out there saying that we have finally reached the plateau. And just after China Joe was inaugurated, too (but surely that's a coincidence).

Biden contradicted that yesterday doubling down on his claim from a month ago that the "darkest days" in the battle against the coronavirus pandemic "are ahead of us"

Source: Biden says nothing can change the trajectory of the Covid pandemic over the next several months

• President Joe Biden has painted a bleak picture of the nation’s coronavirus outbreak in his first few days in office.
• During a Friday press briefing, Biden said that Covid-19 deaths are expected to reach “well over 600,000.”
• The president also warned that “there’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”

President Joe Biden has painted a bleak picture of the nation’s coronavirus outbreak in his first few days in office, warning that it will take months to turn around the pandemic’s trajectory and that fatalities are expected to dramatically rise over the next few weeks.

“A lot of America is hurting. The virus is surging. We’re 400,000 dead expected to reach well over 600,000,” Biden said on Friday before signing two executive orders designed to reduce hunger and bolster workers’ rights amid the pandemic.

The U.S. surpassed 400,000 total Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday, with a quarter of those coming over the previous 36 days, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. On Biden’s first full day as president on Thursday, he told reporters following a meeting with his Covid-19 advisors, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, that the nation would likely top 500,000 Covid-19 deaths in February.

Biden warned on Friday that as the outbreak continues, “there’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.” The president has repeatedly warned that the situation is likely to worsen before it improves.

While it wasn’t immediately made clear what projections Biden was referencing, one key projection from Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates that the U.S. could reach 600,000 Covid-19 deaths by March if states were to ease social distancing mandates. However, the model’s current projections show Covid-19 deaths plateauing just above 560,000 Covid-19 deaths by late April.

A spokesperson for the Biden administration was not immediately available for comment regarding the president’s projections.



Source

© Copyright Original Source

[rogue06]

Post 52

Not even close.

TM was talking about how he had a "burst of optimism" about an "apparent end of Covid" to which I noted that Biden had informed us a month ago that the "darkest days" in the battle against the coronavirus pandemic "are ahead of us."

That has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any conspiracy to "downplay danger of pandemic even while it rages" and for the life of me I don't understand where you would even get that impression.

Try again.

[whag]

Where have I even suggested it?

Post 52

[rogue06]

If you’ve only been suggesting but are not serious that Fauci is saying the pandemic is over simply because Biden is in office, I retract what I said.

Where have I even suggested it?