“I’ll always be honest with you”
Poor Joe. He may want to speak the truth to the American people but it’s hard to do so when the Green Left has its hand up his backside, making his mouth move.
To borrow a favorite phrase of the President, “Here’s the deal.” On January 21, 2021 the newly-inaugurated Joe Biden issued an executive order “pausing” the issuing of new oil and gas exploration leases on public lands. According to the Bureau of Land Management, a year before there were approximately 37,000 such leases in the hands of US companies, 4,700 of which were new. 886 new drillings permits were issued that year, the first of the COVID pandemic panic, when oil consumption dropped dramatically.
Today there are fewer than 9,000 leases and 3,557 new permits, largely in the gaslands of New Mexico and Wyoming. But many new permits have been halted by Green-addled courts. The Biden Administration didn’t contest most of these injunctions, so the “issued” permits are meaningless. This is important because unlike what the president seems to believe, many separate leases are necessary to drill enough successful wells to develop an economically-feasible oil or gas field.
Despite the theoretical uptick in releases, US production is still hobbled by a growing thicket of new regulations and opposition from Wokesters in financial boardrooms and among Washington’s political class. Joe let that last slip when he blamed “profiteering” and “greed” for at least some of the recent increases we’ve seen at the pump. Yet another shopworn tactic of the Left: slander the producers on whom we rely. Oh, brilliant.
But don’t worry. Joe’s on the case. While his increasingly loopy Veep says paying six bucks a gallon and more for gas is a great opportunity to force us all to buy a new electric car whether we can afford it or not, Joe’s more practical. At the moment he’s trying to wheedle more production out of the thuggish Maduro regime in Venezuela. And his State Department is recreating 2015’s yard-sale negotiation with Iran, trying to stretch a fig leaf over their attempt to get nukes ASAP, so he can whine them out of a few barrels of oil as well.
Which is dangerous folly. Two years ago this country was energy independent. Had we continued the track we were on, Europe might have been talking to us now about replacing Russian natural gas, and the world might have had a more positive geostrategic arrangement for the West. But no. Instead, the Green Left – still in control of the Democrat party as far as anyone can tell – took aim at “climate change” and shot the American people dead in the wallet and Ukraine in the head. The result of their idiocy is the chaos before us now.
Nothing could more clearly and succinctly show the truth behind the ongoing fabulation by Democrats: they don’t give a damn about how much you have to pay for gas – or food, or heat, or even electricity. Because they don’t give damn about you. Climate Führer John Kerry said it best when asked why he felt it appropriate to flit about in private jets: “it’s the only choice for somebody like me…” And you can go back to your oxcart, peasant. You’re only here to sit down, shut up and do as the Green fascists tell you. You don’t count.
Hey Joe. Here’s a suggestion: instead of begging for help from people who would kill us all if they could, how about negotiating more production out of Texas, North Dakota and Louisiana? They’re pretty friendly if you treat ‘em nice, and they even speak English. Mostly.
But that wouldn’t serve the cause, would it?
