Paul Krugman says voters shouldn’t be mad at Biden because he has no control over the price of gasoline, but that’s absurd: the US is the world’s largest producer of oil; Biden froze new oil/ gas leases in January; and he may open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower prices.
It’s true that part of the reason that the US is not producing more oil and gas is because the sector expanded too quickly between 2010-2015, and US firms since have been wary to invest in new production.
But oil prices rose after 2015 & we did not see more investment
Biden could have expanded oil & gas drilling on taking office but instead did the opposite, freezing new lease sales as part of his plan to review the federal oil program for supposedly contributing to climate change. Biden appealed in court after a judge ruled against the freeze
A mid-August court ruling that Biden’s freeze on new oil and gas leases was illegal provided a good excuse for Biden to stand-up to the enviros and resume leasing, but instead he doubled down and appealed the ruling.
“The federal onshore and offshore oil and gas leasing programs are responsible for significant greenhouse gas emissions and growing climate and community impacts,” wrote Interior Dept.
More responsible than oil & gas production in Saudi Arabia & Russia?
According to Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg, and Financial Times, the main reason for under-investment in new oil and gas production since 2015 has been shareholder activism around climate change and “ESG”
Oil & gas exploration investments declined by half between 2011 and 2021. New oilfield discoveries fell to historic lows between 2016 and 2020 due to lack of investment. Today firms are spending 25 percent less than they need to hold oil production steady.
The result of successful climate activism is, paradoxically, rising coal use and rising carbon emissions. That’s because because electricity produced from natural gas produces about half of the emissions of coal.
Another result is the US increasing its dependence on OPEC.
Some worry that cheap oil increases its use, but petroleum use is highly inelastic, since our cars and trucks rely on it. Little oil is burned for electricity production, and natural gas is required to balance at the intermittency of solar and wind.
Even many Biden allies sense the political danger. “Biden has accepted the idea that the US will rely more on foreign oil,” noted The New York Times. “calling on OPEC to boost production even as it seeks to limit the growth of oil and gas production on federal lands and waters.”
In response to OPEC rejecting Biden Admin.’s pleas to increase oil production, Dems are doubling down on false claim that OPEC alone determines production levels, ignoring the fact that US is #1 global producer & that Biden restricted new development
Sen. Chuck Schumer understands supply & demand better than some economists
The website of NYC mayoral frontrunner says he'll "shift the tax burden" to "whiter neighborhoods." When asked about his openly racist agenda, @ZohranKMamdani insists it's not a proposal at all but rather "a description of what we see right now." That's next-level gaslighting.😬
This guy's ability to lie so calmly while smiling should send chills up the spines of every New Yorker.
He could have taken it down and said, "You know, I regret that the website said that and so I deleted it, because it doesn't express what I believe."
Instead, he's just asked millions of New Yorkers to believe his own obviously flagrant lie rather than their own eyes. That's creepy and wrong.
Everyone can see for themselves that he used a gratuitous racial reference regarding a tax proposal. We don't tax people on race. So why use it? Because he and his campaign wanted to introduce race.
And it's not the first time. @ZohranKMamdani should delete his flagrantly racist tweets and web site language, apologize, and promise to never invoke racism in these ways again.
The audacity of @ZohranKMamdani to cite Dr. Martin Luther King should make your skin crawl. King adamantly rejected anti-white racism.
Mamdani’s call for higher taxes on white neighborhoods should shock New Yorkers. If they elect him as Mayor then they will have no excuses. He’s made clear that he will advance a racist agenda and then demand that people believe his lies.
The idea that former Intelligence Community officials are working with European leaders to censor the Internet sounds like a conspiracy theory, but over the last two days, Obama’s CIA Director plotted with UK, EU, and Irish officials in Dublin to do precisely that.
These people are a direct and imminent threat to free speech and democracy worldwide. They are dangerous and out of control:
Former CIA Director John Brennan helped initiate the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. He used foreign spies to help trigger the FBI investigation of of the Trump campaign. And he manipulated the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment to falsely claim the Russians favored Trump over Clinton.
Niamh Hodnett, Ireland’s “Online Safety Commissioner,” leads Ireland’s censorship regime under the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act, which mirrors EU and U.S.-backed models shaped by intelligence-linked NGOs.
Aine Kerr, a Former Facebook Policy Manager, helped manage Facebook’s public policy as it partnered with U.S. intelligence agencies post-2016, then co-founded Kinzen, which received support from EU and transatlantic institutions focused on content surveillance. Her work connects platform moderation with state-funded narrative monitoring.
Nóirín O’Sullivan, a Former Garda (Irish police) Commissioner and EUROPOL Official, who went from leading Ireland’s national police to a senior role at EUROPOL, which works closely with intelligence and security services across Europe. She advocates for integrating security principles into online content governance.
Claire Loftus, Ireland’s Former Director of Public Prosecutions, oversaw prosecutions during a period of expanding legal efforts to criminalize online expression and misinformation. Her presence signals an effort to align the judiciary with state-backed censorship.
Robyn Simcox, the UK Commissioner for Countering Extremism,
operates within the UK Home Office, a department with direct ties to MI5 and GCHQ. She frames conspiracy theories and misinformation as forms of radicalization and demands surveillance and preemptive regulation. Her office channels intelligence priorities into speech policing under the banner of counter-extremism.
Brazil has been banning and censoring journalists and politicians for years. But now it is taking steps to ban X entirely. It’s time for @SecRubio to block President Lula, Justice Moraes, and their criminal accomplices from entering the US.
President Trump and Secretary Rubio must not let these tin pot dictators censor speech and ban the world’s most important social media company.
Everybody in L.A. knows there aren't enough police officers. It has little more than half as many per capita as Chicago. And yet @GavinNewsom @MayorOfLA @KamalaHarris and *every single* Democratic governor opposed calling out the National Guard.
California has half the population as Germany and a bigger economy. We pay the highest taxes by far. And yet, not only does LA have nearly half the police per capita as Chicago, Mayor @KarenBassLA wants to lay-off 400 police officers.
@KarenBassLA They're not going to be satisfied until the rest of LA burns down.
There's no shortage of police in L.A., said @GavinNewsom a few hours ago. In fact, L.A. has far fewer police per capita than other big cities. And now, the protesters have overrun the police and blocked the highway. Video: @AnthonyCabassa_
L.A.'s lack of police has been one of the biggest crime stories in California for a decade. As such, @GavinNewsom is either lying or even more in a bubble than we knew. And now, naturally, LA's radical-Left mayor and city council want to cut 400 more police officers.
@GavinNewsom Kamala Harris did more than anyone to pass the initiative that decriminalized open air drug dealing and shoplifting. She’s pro-crime because she’s against civilization — at least for poor and working class people, not her and her neighbors.