President Joe Biden rightly announced a ban on Russian energy imports Tuesday — though only after a bipartisan group in Congress twisted his arm.
Biden had resisted the move, despite the purchases funding Vladimir Putin’s deadly Ukraine invasion, worried it would further boost gas prices (and further tank his polling).
But Biden’s doing plenty to jack up prices through his policies here at home.
On Monday, his own Environmental Protection Agency announced it wants to slap new rules on tractor-trailers, buses, delivery vans, and moving trucks.
The regs, aimed at cutting nitrogen oxide and carbon pollution, will make life harder not only for working-class truck and bus drivers, our essential backbone already exhausted by COVID fatigue — they’ll hit all American shoppers hard.
As Climate Depot’s Marc Morano put it, “US climate sanctions on Americans have more impact than US sanctions against Russia.”
The EPA’s move toward “zero-emission vehicles in the heavy-duty fleet” will spike driving costs right as transportation professionals are facing a fuel crisis.
It will make everything in the supply chain more expensive when we’re already seeing record inflation. The Independent Women’s Forum tracks a market basket of typical family goods each month, and we’ve seen food costs explode in the last year: Bacon is up 18%, beef 16%, eggs 13%, and bread 6%.
Poor and middle-class families are hurt the most by Biden’s failed energy policies and obsession with the Green New Deal.
They spend a higher percentage of their family budget on consumer goods carried by these trucks.
Families just below the poverty line fork out 10.2% of their budget for food at home, while households with annual incomes over $150,000 spend just 5.4% on it.
Team Biden simply doesn’t care that it’ll hurt poor and middle-class families at a vulnerable time.
Former Obama-Biden Treasury official Mark Mazur said the quiet part out loud last month: “We don’t want lower prices for fossil-fuel buyers, we prefer higher prices,” to achieve “climate change goals.”
Mazur was referring to a possible gas-tax holiday, but his comments apply to a range of Biden policies.
The EPA claims this new rule will annually prevent “up to” 2,100 early deaths, 18,000 cases of childhood asthma, and 78,000 lost days of work.
But its assumptions are based on highly disputed cost-benefit analyses that overstate the assumed cataclysmic risks and underestimate consumer harm.
And of course environmentalists, some of the most violent activists alive, say the EPA doesn’t go far enough, demanding it push for even more regulations to not just punish gas-powered trucks but promote electric-powered ones.
Andrea Vidaurre, the co-founder of the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice in Southern California, told The Washington Post she was angry at Biden “for pushing for more hours of operation at the Los Angeles port amid supply-chain bottlenecks.”
Yes: A liberal, coastal elite is angry the plebeians desire relief as their hard-earned dollars shrink before their eyes as the cost of everything spikes.
Similarly, Biden’s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg touted a $5 billion taxpayer-funded electric-vehicle charging network, claiming “rural to urban to suburban communities can all benefit from the gas savings of driving an EV.”
What a Marie Antoinette “Let them eat cake” moment. The average Kelley Blue Book transaction price for an electric vehicle is $56,437, far higher than the median per capita income of $34,103.
Biden’s EPA move coincides with his continued assaults on North American oil and gas producers: discouraging domestic fracking, shutting down the Keystone pipeline, banning new oil and gas leases on public land.
Meanwhile, the prez continues begging foreigners in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to produce more oil.
As Nick Freitas, a member of Virginia’s House of Delegates put it, “Apparently buying oil from countries that hate us is ‘environmentally friendly.’”
While squeezing Putin as hard as possible is praiseworthy — and it’s heartening to see our UK and continental allies commit to phasing out Russian energy imports also, though too slowly — Biden is showing he can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.
Don’t slap your truckers and bus drivers with Green New Deal regulations while they’re suffering through record energy-price spikes. Let common sense rule the day.
Read more at NY Post
Biden once again abuses his power of office and wants more useless Regulation more rad tape and more useless paperwork because he stole the election and proclaims he is a Emperor just like in the Star Wars movies
“Transaction price for an electric vehicle is $56,437, far higher than the median per capita income of $34,103.” Though this shows how much more expensive electric vehicle are, it is still miss leading because the middle class and lower income groups mainly buy used cars. I’m a retired aerospace engineer and have never owned a new car. When my wife’s car was totaled last month due to icy road condition we replaced it for $5,500. The average age of US cars on the road is 12 years and many are at 20 years. It is not economically feasible for most families to move to electric cars.
I wonder if anyone has seen the EPA studies of 2,100 early deaths, 18,000 cases of childhood asthma, and 78,000 lost days of work. The studies are certainly fraudulent. I have seen the details of other studies. They assumed that all cases of asthma and 100% of respiratory deaths are caused by climate change.
The impact of Biden’s war of fossil fuels goes way beyond the inflated cost of delivering goods. Energy is used to irrigate crops. Diesel is needed for combines. Trucks deliver the goods. Energy is needed in processing plants and for some foods to run refrigeration. As war of fossil fuels is essentially a war against the American people.
A Tesla owner told me that a simple body moulding replacement costs $7000. He knows this because someone backed into his EV .
“President Joe Biden rightly announced a ban on Russian energy imports Tuesday”
I’m sorry but are you that ignorant? Oil is fungible so if we stop buying from one supplier (Russia) but buy from some other supplier the country who was buying from the latter will need to find another supplier and that would be Russia. One would expect someone who wrote a column on this would understand that basic fact.
The only way a boycott on Russian oil would do a damn bit of good to hit Putin is if all countries that imported his oil gave him a big middle finger but no chance Biden can get a coalition of the agreeable.
Somebody somewhere is getting discounted crude from Russia. Even then, Putin’s getting over $100 / barrel.