Biden’s Dumbest-Ever Tweet?

I’ve been wondering about Biden’s stupidest-ever tweet. Was it the one about corporate taxes, the one about class warfare, or the one about the deficit?

The answer may be “none of the above.”

That’s because this tweet about gas prices now may be in first place. I’ve highlighted the most absurd parts.

What’s sad is that Biden may not even know his tweet was laughably wrong.

If we had some decent reporters at the White House, they would ask if he really thinks gas station have the power to set prices. And if Biden said yes, I can only imagine how amusing it would be to ask a follow-up question about why they didn’t use that magical power to raise prices before Biden got elected.

The Wall Street Journal editorialized about Biden’s clueless tweet.

President Biden’s…tweet over the weekend ordering gas stations to lower prices betrayed a willful ignorance about the private economy. …It’s embarrassing for the leader of the free world to sound like he’s channeling Hugo Chávez. A Chinese state media flack praised Mr. Biden’s tweet: “Now US President finally realized that capitalism is all about exploitation. He didn’t believe this before.” Or maybe he did, and nobody wanted to believe it. …The President’s economic ignorance isn’t a one-off. In recent months he has accused oil and gas companies of price gouging and demanded that they increase production even while his Administration threatens to put them out of business.

Kevin Williamson of National Review was similarly dumbfounded by Biden’s statement.

President Biden has been dunning U.S. gas stations to lower their prices in order to help him solve his main immediate political problem. His misunderstanding of how the gasoline business works…paints a portrait of a man out of touch. …contrary to what the Biden brain trust seems to think, wholesale gasoline prices do not move in lockstep with crude oil prices. And retail gasoline prices do not move in lockstep with wholesale gasoline prices. …As anybody who has ever sold anything for a living can tell you, you don’t get to set your own margin. The market does that for you. …The urge to blame retailers for the results of inflationary fiscal policies — and destructive energy policies — in Washington is ugly, demagogic, and, given Biden’s creepy history, maybe even a little bit racist.

I don’t know if Biden is clueless or a demagogue.

But the net result is the same. We are governed by idiots.

P.S. My attack on Biden is not partisan. On the issue of trade, some of Trump’s tweets displayed jaw-dropping stupidity and ignorance.

Read Full Post »

Should We Celebrate Joe Biden’s Economic “Achievements”?

I’m not a fan of Joe Biden’s economic policy, particularly his tax-and-spend agenda.

I also don’t approve when the Biden Administration uses phony numbers and phony arguments.

But what’s really baffling is the use of accurate numbers to make dumb arguments.

What do I mean by that? Well, here’s a tweet from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee celebrating a 2¢-per-gallon reduction in gas prices over a two-week period.

There’s only one problem with this tidbit of data.

If you look at what’s happened to gas prices during Biden’s time in office, the recent 2¢ reduction is swamped by $1 increase over the past year.

https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/1466514175698644994

So how and why did the White House screw up?

Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner wrote about this strange episode.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has just produced and tweeted the worst chart of 2021. It is a line graph of gas prices with three data points covering a two-week time span. The absurd dishonesty comes when you look at the y-axis. Each horizontal line represents half of a cent. …Gas prices have nearly doubled over the past 18 months, and Biden’s allies are holding a parade for a less-than-1% drop over two weeks. Thanks, Joe Biden! …So, how did this horrible chart happen? It seems someone at the DCCC took seriously a joke made by liberal blogger Matt Yglesias. …Ron Klain, White House chief of staff (presumably not understanding the tweet was a joke), liked the tweet before the DCCC put it out sincerely.

This is the political equivalent of leading with your chin.

And it’s not the only example.

Here’s a retweet from the White House Chief of Staff, Ronald Klain, celebrating a very tiny improvement in the labor force participation rate.

In this case, there’s nothing disingenuous about the chart. We actually get to see several years of data.

But does this small uptick in the labor force participation rate actually mean that “America is back at work”?

Call me crazy, but it seems that the main takeaway from the chart is that the country is still way short of getting back to pre-pandemic levels of employment.

Which raises the obvious question of whether Biden’s redistribution agenda is making it easier for people to live off the government rather than be part of the workforce.

P.S. My criticisms of Biden are not driven by partisanship. I’m also not a fan when Republicans enact bad policy.

Read Full Post »

Trump Slams the Brakes on Obama’s CAFE Mandate

I don’t like the tribal nature of American politics, in part because I get criticized for not playing the game.

• The pro-Trump crowd goes after me when I condemn the President’s protectionism and wasteful spending.
• And the anti-Trump crowd goes after me when I applaud the President’s tax cut and regulatory reform.

I tell both groups that I care about public policy rather than personal or partisan loyalty. Not that this explanation makes either group happy.

Today, I’m going to give a “thumbs up” to the President for what he’s doing about car mileage regulations. Which means the first group will be happy and the second group will be irritated.

To be more specific, the Trump Administration is proposing to ease up on the CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) rules. The Obama Administration, working with California environmentalists, proposed to make these regulations far more costly. Trump’s people basically want to freeze the car mileage mandate at the current 37-miles-per-gallon level.

Here’s a look at the history of the CAFE standards.

Sam Kazman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute explained earlier this year why these regulation impose high costs. And deadly costs.

The federal government’s auto fuel economy standards have for decades posed a simple problem: They kill people. Worse, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has covered this up. …To call it a coverup isn’t hyperbole. CAFE kills people by causing cars to be made smaller and lighter. While these downsized cars are more fuel-efficient, they are also less crashworthy. …A 1989 Harvard-Brookings study estimated the death toll at between 2,200 and 3,900 a year. Similarly, a 2002 National Academy of Sciences study estimated that CAFE had contributed to up to 2,600 fatalities in 1993. …The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which closely monitors crashworthiness, still provides the same advice it has been giving for years: “Bigger, heavier vehicles are safer.”

The Trump Administration apparently was listening to Sam, and has decided to block future increases in the CAFE mandate.

Environmentalists are predictably upset, but the Wall Street Journal opined on this topic a couple of days ago and explained why it is good news.

The Trump Administration’s deregulation is improving consumer choice and reducing costs… Its proposed revisions Thursday to fuel economy rules continue this trend to the benefit of car buyers… Obama bureaucrats were acutely blind—perhaps willfully so—to economic and technological trends in 2012 when they set a fleetwide average benchmark of 54.5 miles a gallon by 2025. …Americans prefer bigger cars, which makes it harder for automakers to meet the escalating Cafe targets. …As prices rise to meet the new standards, consumers would also wait longer to replace their cars. The average age of a car is approaching 12 years, up from about 8.5 in 1995. Newer cars are more efficient and safer, so longer vehicle turnover could result in more traffic fatalities… Thursday’s Trump Administration proposal to freeze—not roll back—fuel economy standards at the current 2020 target of 37 miles a gallon. …Automakers also want to duck a prolonged legal tussle with California, which received a waiver from the Obama Administration under the Clean Air Act in 2013 to establish its own emissions standards and electric-car mandate. The proposed Trump standards would apply nationally.

Holman Jenkins of the WSJ also weighed in on the issue, pointing out that undoing Obama’s expansion of CAFE mandates will have no impact on the earth’s climate.

…the effect on climate change would be zero. The Obama White House at the time exaggerated by a factor of two the Environmental Protection Agency’s estimate of the effect on total emissions over the lifetime of the cars involved. It doesn’t matter. Two times nothing is still nothing. …Let’s remember the truth of Mr. Obama’s fuel-economy rules. He did not wander the balconies of the White House gazing far into the future when he drafted the 2021-25 fuel economy target of 54.5 miles a gallon. His flunkies, as documented in a House investigation, simply were looking for a impressive-sounding number to serve the administration’s political interests at the time. …in undoing Mr. Obama’s policies, Mr. Trump is doing nothing to hurt the climate.

Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute also wrote on the topic and noted that Trump’s policy will save about 1,000 lives each year.

…the administration has struck a blow for consumer choice that will be good news for drivers planning or hoping to buy a new car in the next decade. That’s because the mileage mandate is one of the main causes of rapidly rising vehicle prices. …Meeting ever more stringent fuel economy standards is driving up new vehicle prices. Sticker shock is thereby causing a lot of people to hang on to their current cars. The average age of all cars on the road is now at an all-time high of over 11-1/2 years. …Freezing CAFE standards will make new cars more affordable for millions of Americans and also allow many of them to buy bigger and hence even safer new models. How much safer will be hotly debated. The Transportation Department concludes that the proposed changes will prevent about 1,000 traffic fatalities a year. …For many people, fuel economy will still be the most important factor in choosing a new car. The good news for them is that the Trump administration’s action will in no way prevent them from buying a model that gets great gas mileage. The good news for everyone else is that the choice of models will be much wider than if the CAFE standard remained 54.5 mpg.

By the way, this isn’t simply a matter of saving lives.

After all, we theoretically could save thousands of lives by simply banning automobiles. In the world of sensible public policy, we make trade-offs, deciding if achieving a certain goal is worthwhile when looking at all the costs and all the benefits.

So it’s theoretically possible that a policy that leads to more premature deaths might be acceptable.

But CAFE fails even on that basis. As Marlo Lewis explained a few years ago, the policy both kills people and imposes net financial costs.

The bottom line is that Donald Trump just improved his grade on regulation.

Back in April, I gave him a B+ on regulation. But then he did something foolish in June that (if I recalculated) would have dropped him to a B. Now he’s probably back at a B+ because of the change to the CAFE rules.

Given what he’s doing on trade, he needs to boost his other grades as much as possible!

Read Full Post »

Trump’s Energy Socialism

During the Obama years, I criticized the President for various green-energy scams that squandered money and produced scandals such as Solyndra.

And I also noted that many Republicans were happy to support corrupt subsidies to inefficient sources of energy so long as their voters got a slice of the loot.

Sadly, the same thing is happening with Trump in the White House. All that’s changed is that there are different groups sucking at the federal teat.

Catherine Rampell’s column points out how Trump wants the government to pick winners and losers in energy markets.

The GOP…definition of free markets turns out to be pretty confusing… It apparently includes allowing the president to personally dictate what companies must buy, from whom, and at what price; what products they should sell; which employees they should hire and fire; where they should locate… The Trump administration has taken action or raised questions in all these areas… And President Trump’s supposedly laissez-faire co-partisans in Congress have barely said boo. …If that doesn’t count as “picking winners and losers,” it’s hard to say what would. Efforts to prop up inefficient coal-fired plants are…a terrible idea from an economic perspective. The reason these plants are struggling, after all, is that they can’t compete with cheaper natural gas and renewables. Trump is wielding the power of the state to keep uncompetitive companies in business, and costing taxpayers and consumers lots of money in the process.

And remember that this intervention will destroy more jobs than it saves, just as was the case with Obama’s interventions.

This sordid story also is a perfect example of why politicians should never be granted open-ended power.

Trump is now defiantly claiming that “national security” requires bailing out his political allies in the coal industry. It’s the same absurd rationale he has lately invoked for other unfree-market interventions — including, ironically, our military-alliance-straining steel and aluminum tariffs and, perhaps soon, automobile tariffs. …Leave it to Trump to try to strong-arm the invisible hand.

The Wall Street Journal has a hard-hitting editorial castigating the Trump Administration for considering back-door bailouts and special subsidies.

…all of a sudden the Administration wants to do a Barack Obama imitation and play energy favorites. …The supposed problem is that the U.S. is producing an abundance of cheap natural gas thanks to the shale fracking revolution. As a result, national electric wholesale prices for natural gas have plunged by half since 2008… Meanwhile, government subsidies such as the 30% federal investment tax credit have boosted solar and wind production while driving down the wholesale cost. Many nuclear and coal plants unable to compete with renewables and natural gas may have to shut down over the next few years. …Thus, the rescue plan—er, regulatory bailout. According to the Trump memo, Section 202 of the 1920 Federal Power Act lets the Energy Secretary mandate the delivery or generation of electricity during an emergency. It also suggests that the President could use his authority under the 1950 Defense Production Act to “construct or maintain energy facilities” to protect national defense. …Mandating that grid operators buy more expensive coal and nuclear power would raise consumer prices and could reduce natural gas production that has been a boon to many states. And note to Mr. Trump: Energy is one of the biggest costs for steel and aluminum manufacturers. The government rescue for coal and nuclear is as politically abusive as Mr. Obama’s lawless policy to punish fossil fuels. A better way to make coal and nuclear more competitive is to keep chipping away at renewable subsidies and cutting regulation.

The editorial concludes with a very appropriate observation.

As Governor of Texas, Mr. Perry often visited our offices to explain why the U.S. government shouldn’t pick energy winners and losers. He’s still right even if he has moved to Washington.

Amen. Intervention in energy markets is bad when “green” groups get the handouts, and intervention also is bad when coal gets the goodies. That’s true in America and it’s true in other nations.

The Washington Post also correctly opined against this heavy-handed government intervention.

President Trump is preparing what could be the most astonishing and counterproductive instance of central planning the nation has seen in decades.

Mr. Trump last Friday ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry to recommend ways to prop up struggling coal and nuclear power plants. …One option would require the purchase of electricity from coal and nuclear plants under a law meant to keep power flowing during emergencies, such as hurricanes. Another scheme would hijack the 1950 Defense Production Act, which allows presidential intervention to secure critical goods when national security is at stake. …Americans could pay hundreds of millions, and perhaps billions, more every year for energy. Wholesale electricity markets could collapse as efficient power plants failed to compete with subsidized dinosaurs.

The editorial wisely notes that Trump’s intervention will create a bad precedent that will be abused by a future Democrat president (actually, he’s building on Obama’s bad precedent, but it doesn’t help that Trump is making intervention a pattern).

If Mr. Trump proceeds and the courts somehow allow such a perversion of the law, it would be hard to stop the next Democratic president from, say, using emergency powers to force the purchase of renewables at the expense of coal, oil and natural gas. The president’s latest turn toward economic statism should be no surprise; it has been an animating principle of his presidency. …Mr. Trump is in the midst of picking unnecessary and increasingly costly trade fights with once-close allies, while assuring U.S. farmers that he will use state power — and, presumably, everyone else’s tax dollars — to preserve their margins. Now he is on the verge of asserting dictatorial control over energy markets, using powers meant to be reserved for real emergencies.

Call me crazy, but I want consumers to have the power. And that means allowing competitive markets to allocate resources and determine profitability.

Trump, by contrast, doesn’t seem to have any guiding principles. Yes, he sometimes supports good policy, but he’s also just as likely to favor intervention.

By the way, the Washington Post picked the wrong word in the title of its editorial. At least in theory, socialism means government ownership of the “means of production.” Trump doesn’t want the government to own energy companies. Instead, he wants to control them.

As Thomas Sowell observed when writing about Obama-era intervention, that’s technically fascism.

But since that term is now associated with other nasty attributes, let’s call Trump’s policy statism, corporatism, or cronyism. Or, if you like oxymorons, call it state-led capitalism.

Read Full Post »

The Regulatory State’s War against Modern Life

When writing about the burden of regulation, I often share big numbers about aggregate cost, job losses, time wasted, and foregone growth.

But I sometimes wonder if such data is effective in the battle for good policy.

Maybe it’s better, at least in some cases, to focus on regulations that affect quality of life for regular people. Lots of ordinary citizens, for instance, are irked that they’re now forced to use inferior light bulbs, substandard toilets, and inadequate washing machines because of regulatory silliness from Washington.

And it looks like we’ll now be forced to use dishwashers that don’t clean dishes thanks to proposed regulations that will reduce water use (which is in addition to a 2012 regulation that already restricted water use).

The Hill reports on the Nanny State’s latest salvo in the war against modern civilization.

The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers is accusing the Department of Energy (DOE) of a politically motivated drive to increase dishwasher efficiency standards, which are so bad that they would cause consumers to re-wash dishes, erasing any efficiency gains. Rob McAver, the group’s head lobbyist, said regulators are going too far and the new rules will allow only 3.1 gallons to be used to wash each load of dishes. …They then ran standard tests with food stuck to dishes. “They found some stuff that was pretty disgusting,” McAver said. …“The poor performance that would result would totally undercut and go backwards in terms of energy and water use, because of the need for running the dishwasher again, or pre-rinsing or hand-washing, which uses a lot of water,” he said.

Great, another bone-headed step by the government that will make life less enjoyable.

I’m already one of those people who rinse my dishes before putting them in the dishwasher because I hate the idea that they won’t be fully clean afterwards.

So I can only imagine how bad it will be if this absurd example of red tape is imposed and I have to buy a new dishwasher.

I guess I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that my current dishwasher doesn’t break down.

Especially since the rules make new dishwashers more expensive.

Ernest Istook, former Republican congressman from Oklahoma, wrote in a Washington Times piece that complying with the 2012 rule, based on DOE estimates, added roughly $44 to the cost of each machine. “Now their 2015 proposal will add another $99 to the price tag, even by DOE’s own admission,” he wrote.

Julie Borowski has the right assessment. Her column for Freedom Works is from 2012, but it’s very appropriate still today.

Are you disappointed in every shower head that you purchase? Does your toilet have trouble flushing? Have you noticed that your dishes are still dirty after the dishwasher cycle is completed? …Some of us may be quick to blame the manufacturer of these home appliances. But the manufacturers are just abiding by the costly regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy.

What’s really frustrating is that these regulations reduce the quality of life without even reducing water usage.

…it has only led to people hacking their shower heads to remove the intrusion that is blocking water flow in order to have a more relaxing shower that actually gets them clean. There is no proof that the water restrictions have actually saved water because many people just end up taking longer showers than they otherwise would.

Amen. Every so often I wind up at a hotel with restricted-flow showerheads and it’s a hassle because I probably spend twice as long in the shower.

Not to mention problems government has created elsewhere in bathrooms.

…water restrictions are also the reason that our toilets have trouble flushing. Many of us have become accustomed to flushing the toilet multiple times before the toilet bowl is clear. The 1992 Energy Policy Act states that all toilets sold in the United States use no more than 1.6 gallons of water per flush. These water restrictions are the reason why we have to use plungers far more often than we used to.

I won’t torment readers with a TMI moment, but I will say that I now routinely flush at the halfway point when seated on a toilet. And even that doesn’t necessarily preclude a third flush at the end of the process.

The only good news is that this gives me a daily reminder that government has far too much power to micro-manage our lives.

Speaking of excessive government, here’s another example of the regulatory state run amok.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the federal milk police? Well, now we’ll have the federal pizza police, as explained by The Manhattan Institute.

Pizza makers could face fines and prison time under a new Food and Drug Administration rule for failing to provide calorie counts for their billions of combinations of pizza orders. …FDA’s menu labeling rule will go into effect on December 1st, 2016… If a company does not perfectly comply with the mandate, food may be rendered “misbranded” under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, a violation that carries criminal penalties. Failure to comply with the regulation could lead to government seizure of food, a maximum $1,000 fine, and a one-year prison sentence. …Revising systems under strict compliance with the regulation’s guidelines is expected to cost Domino’s $1,600 to $4,700 per restaurant annually. In general, the rule is expected to cost businesses $537 million, losses that necessarily must be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

And I doubt anyone will be surprised to learn that all this coercion and red tape will have no positive effect.

Several studies on the effectiveness of calorie displays suggest the mandate will have little to no effect on the public’s choices. In one study on menu-labeling in New York City, Brian Elbel, a professor at New York University, found that only 28 percent of people who saw calorie labels said that the information influenced their choices. There was no statistically significant change in calories purchased. In another study, Lisa Harnack of the University of Minnesota examined whether knowledge about calorie counts of menu items would influence how much a person ate, even if the information did not change ordering habits. A lab study revealed that, overall, consumers did not change how much they ate after receiving information about their food’s caloric content.

Which is why, when writing about this topic last year, I predicted “If this regulation is implemented, it will have zero measurable impact on American waistlines.”

P.S. Keep in mind we already have the federal bagpipe police, the federal pond police, and the federal don’t-whistle-at-whales police.

P.P.S. As I repeatedly warn, if the answer is more government, someone’s asked a very silly question.

Read Full Post »

A Humorous Look at Obama’s Green-Energy Boondoggle

Actually, I’m not sure this is humorous. Whether we’re looking at ethanol, Solyndra, or other green-energy scams that promote corruption and undermine the economy, this is not a laughing matter.

After all, we’re the taxpayers and consumers who are pushing this turkey up the hill.

I’m adding Lisa Benson to my list of good cartoonists. Her monopoly cartoon at this link (the second of the two cartoons) is also disturbingly accurate.

And if you like humor about energy policy, check out these three cartoons.

Read Full Post »

The Solyndra Scandal Reeks, but the Entire Green-Energy Program Is a Scam

I’ve commented on the corruption of the Solyndra scandal, but it’s important to understand this is not just a story of sleaze.

From an economic perspective, the real problem is that green-energy programs cause a misallocation of capital. Simply stated, government intervention diverts resources from more productive uses.

Here are a couple of examples, explained in videos put together by Senator Jim DeMint’s office.

The first video shows how a subsidiary of Coca-Cola used White House favoritism to subsidize its energy costs.

And the second video explains how a Spanish company, thanks to the Obama White House, benefited from industrial policy.

And what’s the economic impact of these forms of crony capitalism? I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation, estimating that there’s about $160,000 of investment for every real job in the private sector.

Click here to listen to the list of green-energy programs that create jobs more efficiently.

Read Full Post »