Democrats Worry Inflation Will Hurt Them at the Polls. Do They Care About the Pain it’s Causing for The Rest of Us?
By: Joe Grimaldi
Fowl Play – Branco
Democrat Chickens are coming home to roost like Defund Police, Crime, Inflation, CRT, Russia Collusion. Political cartoon by A.F. Branco…
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Democrats Worry Inflation Will Hurt Them at the Polls. Do They Care About the Pain it’s Causing for The Rest of Us?
WASHINGTON, DC, Feb 21 – A penny for your vote, says President Biden. To be fair, Mr. Biden and his congressional henchmen are mulling over the idea of suspending the federal gas tax, which would reduce the big bucks you are paying at the pumps by nearly 18-and-a-half pennies, according to a Newsmax report . Asked if it is true, says Newsmax, the president responded: “Every tool is on the table to reduce prices. All options are on the table looking ahead.”
If it weren’t such a critical matter that severely impacts our lives, it would be laughable.
Gas prices are at the highest they’ve been in almost a decade. Across the nation the average cost of a gallon of gas is hovering somewhere between $3.50 and $4.00 these days and in some places, such as California, you might find yourself paying much more than four bucks – somewhere between five and six dollars.
One report at Yahoo! News quotes one energy expert who suggests that we might soon be looking at an a cross the board average price per gallon of $5.00, $6.50 or even $7.00.
Making matters worse is the threat that Russia, which controls about 10% of the world’s oil production, will go to war with the Ukraine in the near future. When that happens it will destabilize Russia’s petroleum business. The experts say such a disruption would likely serve to put even more pressure on oil and gas prices, particularly since it appears that OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, is showing no signs of increasing production to help us out.
The combination of Russia at war and OPEC’s reluctance to provide more product is bound to result in a higher than expected per gallon price of gasoline, eventually pushing prices up to seven dollars per gallon.
Senator Joni Ernst [R-IA] puts the blame on President Biden for the predicament we are in. She says, “The United States is one of the greatest producers of energy out there and yet under the Biden administration he has made us ever increasingly dependent upon Russia and Iran for oil sources … the United States has increased its imports from Russia to 202,000 barrels a day — the highest it has been in 11 years and, again, we are one of the largest producers of energy right here in the United States. So why on earth are we ratcheting down on our energy independence and becoming increasingly reliant on an autocratic thug, Vladimir Putin … Let’s ramp up our own energy production here in the United States, let’s uncouple from Vladimir Putin [and] let’s become an exporter of American energy once again.”
Inflation has been soaring at an almost out-of-control pace since Mr. Biden and Democrats took control of our government last year. The rate of inflation has increased to a 40-year high and it currently stands at 7.5%. In other words, consumers are paying about $276 a month more for necessities, adding some $3,312 a year to their cost of living, says the Newsmax Finance website .
The Labor Department estimates that inflated consumer prices left the average worker with a 2.4% pay cut last year. And Greg McBride, chief financial analyst for Bankrate, notes that “In what was the best year for wage growth that we have seen in many, many years, it still comes up as a loss for many households. Their expenses increased even faster and chewed up all of the benefit of whatever pay raise they had seen.” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has noted that if an average worker did not get a pay raise of at least eight percent last year, he or she, in fact, had a meaningful reduction in wages.
It’s a cycle. The price of gasoline has an exceptionally powerful impact on the cost of foodstuff and other consumer goods. In December, the analysts at Pew Research reported that “Regular gas costs, on average, 58.7% more than it did a year ago this time – $3.491 a gallon last month, versus $2.20 in November 2020.”
To make matters worse, we can look forward to the annual winter-to-summer gas price increase. More people take road trip as we approach summer and that increases demand and cost. During this period energy companies conduct maintenance at their refineries. They also begin to switch from winter-grade to summer-grade blends and that can limit capacity, adding to the cost of driving. Disruptions like this tend to increase costs by as much as 15 cents a gallon.
The Consumer Price Index [CPI] measures the price changes of consumer goods and chief strategist Seema Shah at Principal Global Investors says the U.S. annual CPI is the highest it’s been since 1982. She told Fox News that “what’s worse is that this likely isn’t the peak. Higher-than-expected monthly gains in core CPI indicate continued underlying heat and will do nothing to relieve pressure on the Fed to tighten sharply and urgently.”
Mr. Biden seems to be in denial when it when it comes to the issue of inflation; he blames it on supply chain disruptions and on the covid pandemic. He dismisses the fact that the costly socialist spending spree Democrats propose to enact may be at the core of the problem.
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If there were only something we could be doing to counter that. Oh wait. We did have something in the works but it among several other items were shut down by this blithering idiot within a week of taking office.
We had complete energy independence and could have been the supplier of natural gas to Europe but for Brandon.
But as one liberal nimrod told me, it was all "done for the betterment of the US".
It would take a real nimrod to actually believe that nonsense.
I never claimed they were smart.
Because clearly they are not…