It is not an accident that gas prices have gone up by $1 since the beginning of this year – since the beginning of the Bidet regime. By next year, gas prices are likely to be $2 higher than they were before the president selected was absentee-ballotted into office.
Or more.
This is necessary – in order to push the public into the electric cars being mandated into mass production by the same government that is mandating (via regulations) non-electric cars out of production.
But the problem remains.
Electric cars suck. Money and time. While they may be appealing to affluent people who live in cities and close to cities, where the EV’s abbreviated range is a non-issue, people who live farther out do have to worry about how far they can go – as well as how much it will cost.
There are still millions of non-electric cars in the hands of such people and these will continue to serve as an end-run around “electrification” for decades to come. And as a kind of control group, making all-too-apparent the EV’s gimps.
Unless, of course, it becomes impossibly expensive to fuel them.
And now you understand why gas prices are rising.
This is the other half of the pincer enveloping personal mobility in what was – less than a year ago – still more or less America. Gasoline is being made artificially expensive via government-induced scarcity, achieved by curtailing production and distribution via regulations and various federal fiats, such as the cancellation of pipelines and leases on government-owned property where there is plenty of oil that is to be left purposely unused.
The oil companies are being made to understand that their future profits depend not on finding and refining and providing oil but on being partners with the government, which will create a new regime of energy scarcity. It may not make the companies as much money as they made finding, refining and providing oil. But they will still be allowed to make money – on “renewables” – which the government will subsidize and ration.
They will no longer have to compete for customers – as customers will have no choice. They will pay for what they get – as billed via the SmartMeter already attached to their homes.
The Tesla (and GM) model of car-making, in its essentials.
This method of raising the cost of gas is far more sly than the clumsy tool of raising taxes, which would be all-too-obvious. The average person is enraged when the government adds 5 cents per gallon in tax to the cost of gas. He sighs when the cost of the gas, itself, goes up by $1 over the course of nine months – accepting it with the equanimity of inevitability. Because he does not see that it is due to the government. He attributes it to “inflation” and other non-specific ephemera which he neither understands nor feels he has any control over. He does not grasp the method – or the purpose.
That purpose being to to herd most of the public closer to the cities, where people like the president selected and those feeding his TelePrompter want them.
The areas outside the city are to be depopulated. These being largely “red” (i.e., more generally American) areas than the urban areas. This has been the stated goal of the political Left since the 1960s.
The political Left despises the car – not because it “pollutes” but because it frees. It made it possible for almost anyone who didn’t want to live in a city to leave the city. Rather than live in an expensive (and small) apartment in the city, where his kids would never know the freedom to explore the nearby woods or go skinny dipping in a pond, he could afford to buy a house in a safe neighborhood, in a county controlled by people more like-minded than the arrogant apparatchiks who run all big cities. Who are remote and unaccountable, even if nominally subject to the vote.
There are too many voters for your vote to matter much in a city – and most of the others are government apparatchiks of one type or another – or depend on the government for their employment (or benefits). 
But outside the city, there is fresh air – and freedom. Political as well as economic. In a small town or rural county, you may personally know the sheriff, the local politicians – and they know they had better not annoy the majority of the people among whom they live.
Jefferson – who died in 1826, long before the car was born – instinctively understood that there is political safety in decentralization and diffusion. That so long as Americans were free to own their piece of land – and free to move about – they would be free of the yoke of political authoritarianism.
The personally owned car, more than any other thing, fully realized Jefferson’s vision. It cut the cord – mark that! – which tied most people to cities, before there were affordable, personally owned cars. It alone is responsible for the rise of the American middle class, defined more than anything else by the owning of a single-family home outside the city, which would be unfeasible on practical and economic grounds without the personally owned car. It alone makes it feasible to not live near a train or bus station. To buy a house and a bit of land in an area that would otherwise be too inconveniently distant from work. 
Leftists have seethed with resentment toward this for generations – because Leftists understand that a comfortable middle class doesn’t like – doesn’t need – Leftism. Hence the importance of eliminating the middle class. The “environment” has just been the excuse – the evil trick that uses unearned guilt to shame into silence opposition to the Left.
One can see this trick used to further the same ends in the form of what’s been going on over the past almost two years now in the same of “public health.” Which was used – not uncoincidentally – to remove the previous president selected, whose policies were empowering the middle class, especially as regards the making of energy more abundant and more affordable.
A more agreeable replacement was absentee-balloted into office, riding the coat-tails of an invisible bug, tasked to cure the real sickness – from the standpoint of the Left:
America’s middle class.
They – like the non-electric car – are to be squeezed until they no longer exist.
. . .
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Hey Eric,
I’m out in VA Beach past couple days and until Tue. Interesting experience and the liberalness just drips from the air around here.
Almost got in a fight (or even a conversation) with some hot head out here that was convinced that I cut him off twice. Pretty sure he got the wrong dude but I was willing to talk but he wasn’t. Fuck ‘em because I was also willing to apologize (if I were in the wrong) or willing to fight if he wanted to be a dick. Apparently dude was only interested in venting regardless of anything and he walked away instructing me that “we don’t drive like that here” and to “drive better”. Ok sure.
My wife thought she was about to witness me “in action”! You never know because a certain segment of our society “cannot abide” the rest of us that just want to mind our own business. And they’re “emboldened” apparently because these guys, their attitudes, and they’re inability to physically match the gusto of their mouths is quite remarkable.
I’m an easy going guy. I let shit go but if someone else can’t I’m also comfortable with all manner of “unhappy” confrontation.
I can also own my shit and deal with others.
But these people. It’s almost like they have turrets or something. It’s jaw dropping.
There has been considerable discussion on this site as to whether the people who boss us around are stupid, evil, insane, or some combination.
I was thinking this morning about how my brain works when I have an idea for building something. It might be a little bracket that I want to 3D print or a bridge over the creek. This week it has been a rack to hold our new bicycles. I wanted it to fit in the living area of our RV so we can take them along camping, and also attach to the modular trailer hitch anchors in the bed of my truck for when we want to haul them to a nearby trail.
As is my usual practice, I measured a few things and made a rough sketch on paper. Then I created a 3D model so I could visualize the assembly and work out the details. With the exact dimensions in hand, I could cut all the pieces, drill the holes, and assemble it. It’s mostly 2x4s, so pretty low-tech, but it went together perfectly and looks like it will work. In either situation, we’ll take the front wheels off and clamp the quick-release forks securely in the rack for rock-solid transport.
When I have a project like this, I become borderline obsessed with it. I spend a lot of time manipulating the design in my head, and even “work” on it when I can’t sleep at night. Yes, I’m retired, so I have fewer obligations requiring brain-time now. And yes, I do have a very boring life.
So I wonder: Do the Faucis, Kamalas and Whitmers of the world daydream about new mechanisms of control in the same way that I imagine using pop rivets instead of screws or machined aluminum instead of plastic? Do they wake up in the morning with pictures in their heads of something new they can build to more effectively force us to do as they say?
That’s the role of the think tank. People who are paid to come up with plans. They’re the people who craft the legislation, who are paid to try to come up with answers to “what if” questions. Politicians acquiesce to their ideas, possibly because they lack confidence to question the assumptions, more likely because the politician sees an opportunity to be loved. I imagine the average think tank employee is extremely intelligent and under-socialized. The sort of people who don’t engage with anyone outside of their little circle. To them, we’re all just numbers on a spreadsheet. They probably aren’t psychopaths, but they aren’t going to be up for sainthood either.
Seems like just yesterday that the UK’s Small Business Minister Paul Scully said: “There is no need for people to go out and panic buy.”
The British people, no fools, responded appropriately and vigorously:
‘Panic buying at the pumps has already begun today amid fears fuel rationing is on the way due to the UK’s crippling HGV [Heavy Goods Vehicle] driver shortage – as Transport Secretary Grant Shapps tried to calm nerves by urging Britons ‘carry on as normal’.
‘Queues of cars were seen spilling out on to the road from forecourts in Tonbridge, Kent, in Ely, Cambridgeshire, Bright and Leeds this morning – just a day after fuel bosses warned of petrol and diesel rationing and petrol station closures.
‘One petrol station in Essex, was already said to have run out of diesel by this morning, while outside another forecourt on the A12, also in Essex, queues were said to be ‘three rows deep to every pump’.’
https://tinyurl.com/ae53fz2w
Carry on as normal, British comrades: rush to your nearest Tesco and pile tinned hams into your shopping trolley till the freaking wheels break.
“Ministers say ‘there is no question of the lights going out, of people being unable to heat their homes.” — Daily Mail
Oy, better lay in some candles, torches and kerosene heaters too! That’s a gilt-edged government guarantee that you’re gonna freeze in the dark.
Well, that’s what they get for secession. (sarcasm)
I will state this. EVs in the city will be even worse than in the country. Most city people in many areas live in apartments with their car parked yards away from a building. How to get power to these cars to recharge the batteries? Lots of expensive electric parts. That most landlords will not pay for. If your landlord has provided you a garage, will he allow you to park your fire prone EV in his garage? I do not think so. And what about rental properties? Are those landlords going to put in chargers for EVs? I don’t think so. And how will the overworked city electric grids handle the EV charge stations? The power will have to be rationed. Will there be EV charge stations in the high rise living buildings in the major cities in the parking garages? I do not think so.
Will the people renting older houses with 50 year old electric wiring be allowed to have a EV charge station? I do not think the landlord will want that, as he would then have to electrically upgrade the whole house.
How will the residential areas of houses mainly on 110V power handle the sudden increase in demand for 240V lines to every house? How many streets and driveways will need to be altered to accommodate the charge stations?
There is an induction charging system that seems promising. You simple park your car over the unit, which is imbedded in the floor. I can envision these in parking garages, activated by the swipe of a credit card.
No way in hell that passes California charger efficiency regulations.
Also at that point might as well just drive a gasoline car. It won’t be saving any energy.
Back when the USA was a free country and battery EVs were dominating the market more than a century ago there would be garages throughout the city. In one of the groups I follow on old chicago buildings someone posted a photo of an old electric car charging garage and later someone followed up with a 1915 map of these businesses. That’s how it was done. However, that was over a century ago and people were more or less free to buy a piece of land, build a charging garage on it, and then serve customers. That would of course not be allowed today. Maybe a giant corporation could undertake it and make all the required payoffs and jump all the political and regulatory hoops but why would they want to? Easier to simply have a mandate from government and let people deal with it.
Hi Brent,
Yup; thanks for bringing up that piece of Lost History as regards EVs! Of course, 100 years ago, the IC car was still a balky and difficult machine to operate, which gave EVs the advantage. Which they lost when IC cars became less balky and easier to operate; at that point, the IC car’s natural advantages – versatility, faster refueling, the portability of the fuel, etc. – completely ended the EV as a competitor.
“President Biden’s American Jobs Plan includes a transformational $15 billion investment to fund this vision and build a national network of 500,000 charging stations. Through a combination of grant and incentive programs for state and local governments and the private sector, it will support a transformational acceleration in deployment of a mix of chargers in apartment buildings, in public parking, throughout communities, and as a robust fast charging along our nation’s roadways.”
So there’s your answer. Tear up all the streets for upgraded cables, more natural gas peaking plants, more handouts to favorable businesses.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/22/fact-sheet-biden-administration-advances-electric-vehicle-charging-infrastructure/
The press release specifically mentions a company called EVGo…
https://investors.evgo.com/overview/default.aspx
I am convinced EVs will be the final nail in the coffin of US automakers, as a corrupt government thieves from the American people, and takes bribes from the communist Chinese. The CCP will flood the US market with cheap EV cars, just like everything else. They own the means of rare earths as well. Check and mate.
The dims will kill off big oil here too. So many jobs and lives are going to go poof if you don’t start an uprising.
Hi Anon,
The car companies believe they will transition into mobility providers; selling transportation as a service rather than car ownership. Since most people will not be able to afford an EV, they will pay a subscription to be able to summon/use one.
That is their explicit future business plan.
Fine. I’ll find and keep running a ’70 Plymouth Satellite with a 225 Slant Six and “Three on the Tree”. Easy enough to stockpile parts to keep it running. The trick is getting and STORING gasoline. If I have to convert the fuel system to burn ethanol, it’s not “rocket science” to do that and make a STILL; again, a matter of getting feed stocks to make “alky”. Plus get “shit-faced” off a bit of the “product” at times.
The government wants electric cars because they bought into the narrative. The manufactures want electric cars because they can be assembled easily. Most of the public wants an electric car, but with an asterisk, that it has to be better than what they have today. The idea of home charging is somewhat appealing but it’s not like stopping at a gas station is a big hardship. The idea of not needing to maintain an ICE is appealing, but again, getting the oil changed a few times a year isn’t a big hardship either. But everyone who wants an electric car is desperate for a better battery. Everyone involved is dumping money into “moon shot” programs to cause a breakthrough in energy density. But it isn’t happening. Oh sure there’s a few interesting lab experiments, but nothing other than LiPo has really been able to scale at the rate necessary to replace every ICE on the planet with electric motors. Until then, they’re all just toys.
How long have we been using batteries? Yet it appears the only monumental improvement in them includes setting your garage on fire.
“The political Left despises the car – not because it “pollutes” but because it frees.”
I forget the specifics, but the general complaint of commies was that the American middle class had what the rich had [just at a cheaper level] so they had too much trouble enacting their required hatred of the workers vs the rich.
Cars do free us & are a bane to the left who wishes mass transit upon us. The EV is their compromise. Give us limited mobility, but need to have a vax pass approved transport for long travel.
it is true….all these leftists live in cities anyway…they’ve no need for cars. They see the joys of freedom and the joys of enthusiasts and want to squash that. These are miserable and psychotic people. Nothing short of a Civil War will stop them, and boy…we need part II yesterday.
Hi Anon,
I hope it will not come to that; I fear that it will. All people such as myself and other liberty-minded people ask is just that – liberty. To live – and let live. We don’t seek to control the movement of Leftists or any other facet of their lives. We defend their right to live as they like. We only ask that they extend us the same courtesy. So long as neither harms the other, each can live without interfering with the other. The problem is the Leftist cannot abide others living differently than they like. They insist everyone share their values, affirm them and live by them.
This cannot be reconciled. It is like a bad marriage in which one of the two parties refuses to work on the marriage and insists the other party just shuts up and does what he/she is told to do.
There’s an anecdote that when Khrushchev visited the US in 1959; he was with Ike in the Presidential limousine as the motorcade traveled across the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge. The other direction was backed up with commuter traffic. The First Secretary was flabbergasted, not only at the SIZE of the American “iron”, but that for the most part, there was ONE person, the driver only, in EACH. Ol’ Nikita was convinced for some time that the entire thing was staged for his benefit, but Assistant Ambassador (he’d later be Chief Ambassador to the USA for 24 years, meeting with SIX Presidents) Anatoly Dobrynin assured him that in fact, those were the typical cars owned by an American middle-class family. Khrushchev was astounded that the majority of American families owned at least one automobile, just about every “peasant” farmer had a pickup truck, and some households owned TWO or MORE, with many TEENAGERS able to buy a car for themselves while still in school. Supposedly he was heard muttering to himself as he boarded his aircraft to return to the USSR: “That bastard lied. Stalin…what a bastard…he LIED to us all.”
Vaccine-induced Stockholm syndrome:
An Oklahoma man said he caught COVID-19 while teaching at college preparatory high school despite receiving three shots of the Pfizer vaccine and requiring students to wear masks.
The teacher first developed a fever before a scan conducted at an emergency room showed pneumonia in his lungs, and a subsequent test found he had COVID-19.
He’s currently being treated with the antiviral medication remdesivir and sleeping with the aid of an oxygen tube.
Ted Hartley is also urging people to get vaccinated. “Get as many as you need,” he said. “I needed three.”
https://tinyurl.com/j2wefjsw
Failed by the triple-vax protocol, treated in hospital with costly (but near-useless) remdesivir, this misled, manipulated medical captive has only praise for his tormentors.
Of course, this bleak story is brought to us by MSN and Newsweek. So you already knew the desperate, preposterous rationalizations by leftist ‘journalists’ that would be needed to deny stone-obvious facts and transform abject failure into self-proclaimed medical triumph (assuming the gasping victim survives).
This reminds me of that story a few weeks back of the fully vaxxed guy who died of Covid, with the news reporting his outcome would have been worse if he was unvaccinated. Maybe the fourth time would have been the charm for Ol’ Ted. Thank you, sir, may I have another?
Hi Jim,
An Oklahoma man, and professor of medieval studies, said he was stricken with a severe case of catarrh while teaching at college preparatory high school despite receiving bi-monthly blood-lettings and requiring students to do the same.
The teacher first developed a fever before a scan conducted at an emergency room showed high levels of phlegm in his lungs, throat and nasal cavities, and a subsequent test found he had a phlegmatic humor.
He’s currently being treated with an aggressive regimen of blood-letting and it is expected that his liver will produce enough new, clean blood to eliminate the humor and restore his health.
He is also urging people to increase the frequency of their blood lettings. “Get as many as you need,” he said. “I assumed two a month was sufficient, it wasn’t.”
Cheers,
Jeremy
Jeremy that’s very funny, but too subtle! At first, I took it for some kind of accidental dupe-post, and I almost skipped over it entirely. Glad I paused and thought, Maybe I missed something.
Hi Free-Phi,
Glad you enjoyed it, subtlety and all. Gotta make fun, find some joy until nothing is left.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Hi Jeremy,
As someone said after two steatopygous skank hosts on The View teevee program tested positive on air …
China, you are forgiven!
AH HA HA HA … choke … gasp … ahahaha … help, I can’t breathe!
Hi Jim,
Consider this a tribute to your vocabulary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBk8MnT-Tvk
Cheers,
Jeremy
Jeremy,
Thank you. Credit is due to Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, who described his steatopygous companions as ‘pneumatic.’
You may be suffering from an imbalance of bodily humours or a small toad or dwarf living in your stomach.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edIi6hYpUoQ
Hi Worker,
Thanks for that, nice to be reminded that SNL was actually funny…, a long time ago.
Cheers,
Jeremy
It’s a case of the one that got SCAMMED blames those that haven’t fallen for it for his misfortune. I hear he’s doing better now, fine, but AFAIC, I’m not the one responsible for his poor health b/c I prefer to not “pays my moneys’ and takes my chances” with the “Jab”. I’ll continue to exercise, take my walks in the fresh air and sunshine, watch my diet, and not get overly concerned about a “disease” that has a fatality rate no worse than “ordinary” strains of influenza, and the actual ages of deaths of those WITH the “Coof” (not necessarily OF it, mind you) is the SAME as the general median age at death, with the SAME profiles of deaths at given age groupings. Ergo, it’s a “plague” that doesn’t actually make a DIFFERENCE!
And I refuse to genuflect or go to unreasonable lengths to assuage the irrational fears of those bamboozled by this “Fear Porn”. Nor do I apologize for continuing to live my life to its fullest. If that hare-lips the control freaks, good…FUCK ‘EM!
Since last year, whenever I heard the term “War on Covid” I mentally replaced the word “Covid” with “middle class.” Thank you for eloquently articulating what many of us have long suspected.
Thanks for the kind words, Jim! I do my best, coffee willing…
Not defending the guy for his excesses and wrongdoing, but I find it interesting that the evil Hitler wanted his people to have affordable cars, and threw the power of his National Socialist government behind the “people’s car” — the Volkswagen — and the speed-limitless autobahn.
Meanwhile, here in the U.S., we are adopting the model of our former communist ally, the Soviet Union, by restricting motor vehicle transportation, along with the model of our top trading partner, Communist China, by encouraging the people to ride bicycles while our overlords drive cars.
I should also point out that the fortifications being built around the government buildings in the Imperial City of Washington bear are not dissimilar in concept to the walled Forbidden City in Peking and the Kremlin Wall in Moscow.
Every time I see some 70-year old man being forced to wear a mask and get proofed to buy beer, I think to myself “Nazi Germany never required such idiocy.”
And yet the typical American moron still insists on waving his flag and believing that he lives in the “freest country on Earth….”
The VW “Beetle” (“Kafer” in German) was actually called the kDF (Kraft Durch Freunde, or “Strength Through Joy”) Car, but typically only Hitler himself used that term publicly. The method that it was paid for was innovative…buyers that signed up for one to be sent directly to them from the Wolfsburg factory (no “dealers”, the local kDF organization, which also organized concerts, cruises, and vacations for workers, handled the sale of the car, and contracted with local garages to service it) when they’d accumulated enough “stamps” in a savings book. It was a SAVINGS plan instead of a LOAN, as Hitler believed consumer debt to be one of the primaries “evils” of how the Jews put the working classes into bondage.
However, prior to the war, NO cars were delivered to savers, the first deliveries were supposed to take place in 1940. Since Germany went to war, the production capacity of the Wolfsburg plant was instead devoted to producing Volkswagen sedans for the Army as staff cars, also an all-terrain version of the vehicle (it’d already been developed as a utility vehicle for various businesses and agencies like the Forestry Service) known as the “Kubelwagen” was produced as an equivalent to the US military’s “Jeep”. So VW became known primarily as the chief all-purpose utility car of the Wehrmacht, long before it became the cute little “Flower Child” car! At war’s end, the RM 280 million in a German bank as the savings funds for the civilian VWs were confiscated by the Soviets. However, thanks in part to a British “Army of the Rhine” project to use the Wolfsburg plant to produce vehicles for their use, Volkswagen was reborn, and became the conglomerate we know today.
Another point seldom appreciated is that mobility and logistics are two of the most important necessities for an army or a militia. A mobile people is able to readily elude the ministrations of a tyrant’s goons, relocate to a place more favorable, and ambush them. An army/militia which cannot provide logistics- which cannot transport food, clothing, fuel, and weapons, is an army which is already defeated.
The personal car/truck of useful size and range is a threat to totalitarian regimes.
When Libya was under Ghaddafi, he was pushing around one of his neighbors, Chad. The Chadian Army, to put it mildly, was rather puny and under-equipped compared to the Libyans, flush with oil money. However, the Chadians got smart and turned to using Toyota pickups (“technicals”), equipped with machine guns and rocket launchers. Given their speed, nimbleness, and ability to go places where even enemy tanks dared not, they beat the crap out of the far more technically advanced and numerous Libyans.
If only we could buy those exact pickups here in the USSA ☹️
Joe is wondering if he is awake or not, every day has got to be a bad dream for the nattering old fool. It is the blind leading the dumb.
Hey Joe, go buy a case of Nugget Nectar from Troegs brewing in Hershey and drink it all. You’ll be glad you did.
In March of 2020 when oil prices went negative, I bought gas for a two week period at 1.299 USD. Now it is 3.099 USD for regular and 3.599 USD for premium.
Buena Vista Hills crude oil out in California is 79.40 USD per barrel today. Oil companies are making money, that’s why they drill for oil and strike it rich.
If you have mineral rights on land you own and the oil company wants to drill for oil, strikes the stuff, pumps and moves it to market, it then becomes economic supply, that which is traded and sold. You can settle for a 1/6th royalty if you lease, get a lease bonus check, the oil is yours, not the oil company’s, they just dig for it on your land. You can drill your own well and have 100 percent of the oil, but then you’re doing all of the work. If you go participating, no lease, you’ll make more money, but you have to help pay for the drilling and completion costs, you will delay any income from oil sales until you have paid your share.
You’ll be receiving letters in the mail to sell your mineral acres. Fat chance of that.
A driller has all of the tools, the oil company has to assume the risk, no oil, dry hole, a three million dollar cost that is loss. Continental Oil will be knocking on your door and you’ll need some money to help cover the loss.
Completed wells cost more, six million or so. The chance of striking oil is high when you are drilling at the depocenter. Continuous motion rigs aren’t free, you hope you hit a well that produces 1000 bpd plus for initial producing statistics, produced water is a no-no. 65,000 USD from oil production will add up fast.
For every 365 million barrels of oil produced in a year, there are approximately 268 million barrels of produced water, brine. Has to go somewhere, abandoned wells is where it goes.
An oil worker will make 800 USD per day under some circumstances. 250 working days, a little overtime, it is 200 grand a year. Don’t lose your job.
Rig operators make even more.
Oil companies want to have an oil price that makes them money. They’re in the business to make money, have a product that is in high demand all over the world, one fungible commodity. Civilization will collapse without hydrocarbons making it go. You can drive your car to far off places, Ecuador would have good weather.
You can’t have 1.2 billion ICE vehicles of all kinds in this world, too much oil is being consumed.
100,000,000 barrels per day consumption has got to stop. 20 million tons of coal consumed each day has got to stop. It can’t last and it won’t last. Enjoy it while you can.
During the 1920/30s, the price of gasoline fell to 2.12 cents per gallon in Texas and Oklahoma.
150,000,000 car owners in the US can quit driving for a week or two, prices of gas and oil will come down.
A general strike can do wonders for everybody. The gas can stay in the tank and at the gas station.
A boycott of that size would get some attention from the powers that be.
Joe will be even more confused, psychologically diffused is more like it.
Joe has been vaccinated, you see the results.
‘Joe has been vaccinated, you see the results.’ — drumphish
“If you got the Pfizer vaccine in January, February, March of this year and you’re over 65 years of age, go get the booster,” Biden said Friday.
“Or if you have a medical condition like diabetes, or you’re a frontline worker, like a health care worker or a teacher, you can get a free booster now. I’ll be getting my booster shot. It’s hard to acknowledge I’m over 65, but I’ll be getting my booster shot.” — NBC News
Pfizer took over Joe’s shriveled, spongiform ratiocinative faculties and turned him into a Chatty Cathy pharma pimp. Just pull his string.
One is reminded of France’s General de Gaulle. After a forgettable visit from the Japanese prime minister, de Gaulle turned to his aides and asked incredulously, ‘Who WAS that transistor salesman?‘
Not satisfied with getting us out of our IC cars, they not only have done nothing to enhance the power grids to handle EVs, but have also done nothing to make the grids stable enough to reliably handle heating and air conditioning. So not only do you have to walk, ride a bicycle, or take public transport, you have to do it from a frozen or baking house. And go to a job that’s also frozen or baking. Having worked in the HVAC trade indirectly as a pipefitter for 25 years, I’ve long attributed the increase in life expectancy to heating and air conditioning rather than medicine. The elderly are the first to go in an extreme hot or cold weather event.
Hi John,
Around here the Uber-greenies are trying to get rid of natural gas. A few of the ultra commie towns even passed ordinances banning new hookups but got slapped down by the courts. The big push is on for everyone to convert to heat pumps, which are okay in Florida where it occasionally gets down to the mid 30’s but not much use when it’s in the single digits with a 30mph wind howling past your windows. Days like that my gas furnace will run practically nonstop just to keep the temperature at 68.
When I first started working for the electric company here in the early 70’s they were pushing heat pumps and all electric houses; at that time most of our generation was oil fired so when prices/kWh took off after the Arab oil embargo most of those people converted to natural gas.
Have to wonder where these idiots think the electricity is coming from to run their heat pumps and charge their EV’s, all but one of the nuke plants in the area have been shut down and Obama and the other elites don’t want their views from Martha’s Vineyard spoiled by windmills. Not that windmills are reliable anyway but there have been attempts to put windmills out that way for decades and every one has gone bust due to delays by being tied up with lawsuits.
Basic physics should be required for everyone so they have some understanding of what’s required to keep the lights on.
Nuclear gets in the way of the futures markets. By setting a solid production floor it makes it harder to make money on the spread. One of the fundamental problems with Texas last year wasn’t due to a shortfall, but because traders saw the auction prices going up and decided to hold back for a better price. If the auctions were used more for peak time the grid wouldn’t have had such a large swing that they actually had to take baseload plants offline to protect them.
As for the wind farms and large scale solar, they’re just another scheme drummed up to generate money not power. They usually are sold through a “special purpose vehicle” in different tranches as the farms are built out. The developers make their money up front and move on. The suckers are left with an underperforming asset that they might be able to sell on to the next sucker, or just start lobbying for ending fossil fuels and nuclear. But it does give them something to crow about at dinner parties.
We had a well managed, extremely well run “power grid” until the 1990s. Boring dividend companies selling boring reliable electricity. Sure it was regulated, but who cares? The people who built the system were still in charge, they understood that you don’t want to play fast and loose with electricity. But the new generation that came out of the 1980s MBA mills wanted to earn their suspenders and white cuffed shirts, so they got Al Gore into the Clinton dynasty, and put him to work f***ing up a good thing. They talked up a good game of deregulation, but what they delivered was nothing of the sort. We ended up with a new financial instrument for selling into the grid and a highly complicated purchasing auction, while still forcing utilities to pay regulated retail rates. And this had precisely the opposite effect of what was promised. Instead of coal and nuclear innovation, we got the cheapest capital cost (and easiest to get past regulators) power generation method, natural gas. Now the electric grid has to compete with home heat and cooking. And in the Northeast, no new pipelines or production either. So now we all live on the knife-edge of a shortfall on production, and this is considered progress. It’s almost like they want it to fail…
In the early 70s, there was an extended period of time here in mid Missouri, when the gas supplier was not selling new taps. A shortage I presume, since I was too young to worry about such things at the time. It had a somewhat serious side effect. Electrically heated homes were built MUCH tighter than gas heated homes. Which is OK to a point, except for all the rebreathing of the same air. What was NOT OK was lighting the fire place in one of those ultra tight homes. They wouldn’t draw. Without some fresh air leaking in, the fire had no combustible air source. The house filled with smoke.
A fireplace in a modern home, or a wood-burner, needs a duct with a blower to conduct outside air to feed it, else, the wood stove won’t work. Fundamental problem is that the “fire triangle” is made of heat, oxygen, and fuel. Take away one, no fire.
It’s not just gas, it’s heating fuel. My oil company just topped off my tanks for the start of fall, 250 gallons at over $800. Holy shit. Thank you, president Ass Sprinkler. The green new deal baked into the gazillion dollar infrastructure bill is going to bode so much fun for our future.
Same — just pre-bought 300 gallons of propane for over $800.
During the coming winter, spot prices of heating oil, natural gas and propane could spike drastically.
But Europe — and particularly fanatical Germany, as it shuts down nuclear and fossil-fueled power plants — is likely to be the canary in the coal mine.
Good Green Germans may find themselves freezing in the dark, if the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine.
That amount of LPG, 300 gallons, in Australia will cost +2700 Aud.
The “good green Germans” turning blue.
Ayn Rand, for all her faults, nailed it over 50 years ago in her work, Return of the Primitive:
“The immediate goal is obvious: the destruction of the remnants of capitalism in today’s mixed economy, and the establishment of a global dictatorship. This goal does not have to be inferred—many speeches and books on the subject state explicitly that the ecological crusade is a means to that end.”
She wrote extensively on Communism finding a new home in “environmentalism”
A very good and very chilling article. It paints the clear picture of what is being done to us and why in a way anyone can understand. I think of my grandparents living in a small rented apartment in a small town near Pittsburgh during the war, early 40’s. My grandfather slaved in the hot steel mill, grateful to be able to support the family. He bargained to buy a fancy car cheap from a man who could no longer afford to drive partly due to the gas rations. Grandpa kept that car in perfect shape. It was unusual for his lower middle class neighbors to own cars then. But he walked to work and family walked to the store. Every few months he would use their saved gas rations to take the family for long drives on the turnpikes into the country to picnic and sightsee. The roads were fairly empty since few could afford to drive. He always had a couple empty soda bottles of water to top off the radiator when it overheated. In the 50’s he drove the family across the country to see California where the kids moved when they grew up. No steel mills for them. They were lucky to be free to live, work and educate families who moved to beautiful suburban homes on acreage. For 60 years we lived free. Little did we realize we were lucky to live in this historically brief bubble of relative affluence and ease, a lifestyle enjoyed only by the extremely wealthy in the past.
Thanks, Rebecca – and, indeed.
Also: We can stop this. If enough of us wake up in time and act to prevent it. I am determined to do my part. I feel a debt is owed to the people who made what I have ben privileged to enjoy as well as an obligation to the future – to assure that others not yet born experience what I and others experienced.
“[I feel]an obligation to the future – to assure that others not yet born experience what I and others experienced.”
This is a rare and admirable trait for someone without progeny. So many leftists I know are unmarried and childless and it seems to affect their thinking as well. Particularly note our “Secretary” of Transportation and his recent trip to the hospital for the birth of his/her children. (he has “Peter” and “Butt” in his name and he’s from “South Bend”. Is our world being scripted by Dickens?)
I worry about the future for my four grandsons. However, I recently got a Massey Ferguson tractor. When the six year old saw it his first question was, “Gas or diesel?” There is hope.
I remember once Jordan Perterson said that one of the reasons for the fall of the soviet union was increased car ownership and the sense of individual freedom it gave a person…. i guess if you want to bring communism to the west – you must get rid of the car !
‘The personally owned car, more than any other thing, fully realized Jefferson’s vision.’ — eric
Yesssss … I can see ol’ Tom J now, cruisin’ the Blue Ridge Parkway in his V8 Ram pickup, with Merle Haggard blasting on the stereo.
Ain’t that America!
Meanwhile, back in Blighty, trouble looms:
LONDON, Sept 23 (Reuters) – Oil giant BP said on Thursday it was having to temporarily close some petrol filling stations in Britain because of a lack of truck drivers.
Small Business Minister Paul Scully said Britain was not heading back into a 1970s-style “winter of discontent” of strikes and power shortages amid widespread problems caused by supply chain issues.
Tesco, Britain’s biggest supermarket group, told government officials last week the dearth of truck drivers would lead to panic-buying in the run-up to Christmas if no action was taken.
“There is no need for people to go out and panic buy,” Scully told Times Radio.
When a government minister says ‘no need to panic buy,’ anybody with a lick of sense drops what they’re doing, races into town, and shovels stuff into shopping carts till their freaking hands bleed.
Jim, i was just thinking how widespread these guys and their reach is…. how co-ordinated they are…. interestingly have you seen the spike of gas prices in the UK over the past few weeks ? Its almost as if there was a plan for all this to happen somewhere 😛
Yes, I have seen that spike in natural gas prices. One factor behind it was America’s long, futile campaign to block the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany. It’s physically complete now, but too late in the season to rebuild Europe’s depleted gas storage, which affects the UK as well.
Meanwhile, the price of propane (used by rural dwellers like me) at the hub in Mont Belvieu, Texas has risen from around $0.50/gallon last summer to $1.32/gallon now. Chart:
https://ycharts.com/indicators/mont_belvieu_propane_spot_price
They can try to freeze us out. But it ain’t workin’ …
“I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. when they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.”
Thomas Jefferson, 1787
Excellent piece, Eric.
Thanks, Brandon!
Also: The updates to the site will hopefully be that as well!