Biden tries talk therapy on gas prices
The good news: President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci has given a thumb’s up to holiday gatherings for the vaxxed.
“I believe strongly that, particularly in the vaccinated people, if you’re vaccinated and your family members are vaccinated, those who are eligible — that is obviously very young children are not yet eligible — that you can enjoy the holidays. You can enjoy Halloween, trickor-treating and certainly Thanksgiving with your family and Christmas with your family,” Fauci said on Sunday during ABC’s “This Week.”
The bad news: You’re probably going to have to pack the pie in Tupperware and take the bus to grandma’s.
As the State House News Service reported, soaring gas prices are adding to inflation worries, rising 9 cents a gallon in the last week. AAA Massachusetts reported Monday that the average price of a gallon of gas hit $3.27 in its latest weekly survey. That’s up from $3.10 a month ago and just $2.10 a year ago.
“Compared to the price of gas a year ago, it now costs consumers about $17 more to fill up their vehicles,” AAA’s Mary Maguire said. “And unfortunately, it doesn’t look like drivers will be finding relief at the pump any time soon.”
Just what we need before Thanksgiving and holiday trips to see family. Driving to find the perfect Christmas tree, piling in the car to tour the houses bedecked in festive lights — it’ll cost a pretty penny this year.
The last time prices in Massachusetts were this high was October of 2014 at $3.32 per gallon, according to AAA, which said increasing crude oil prices are the “primary factor” behind the higher prices at the pump.
Oil — the fuel Biden and his fellow Democrats love to demonize, but on which the country depends.
As #emptyshelvesjoe trends on Twitter amid the supply chain crisis, inflation and real fears of Christmas shortages, the last thing the president needs is #gaspainbiden to follow.
And so the president, who can’t move the country away from fossil fuels fast enough, has been having chats with the oil industry.
As Politico reported, “Senior staff is preoccupied with trying to identify options to bring down oil prices, which they believe are driving (the) inflation uptick,” said Stephen Brown, a longtime energy lobbyist and current strategist with RBJ Strategies. “Some producers will talk to them, but it is also not like they have a lot of friends in this sector.”
We can’t guess why.
To hear the proponents of the Green New Deal tell it, oil and gas should be phased out yesterday, there should be electric vehicles in every garage, and Americans who haven’t yet bought a Tesla are all part of the problem.
Those White House talk sessions must have been awkward as heck.
Then of course, there’s OPEC, which is concerned first and foremost with OPEC. The oil cartel is careful not to turn on the tap too fast after prices fell so far during the pandemic.
The Biden administration has requested OPEC increase its exports.
Dependence on OPEC was one of the reasons the Keystone XL Pipeline contract was a good idea — it would have given America a stronger measure of energy independence.
Is it any wonder that amid a host of legal woes, Donald Trump still has the support of 47% of registered voters in another run for the White House, according to a new Hill-HarrisX poll?