American Politics

[PVMonger]

Nice try buckaroo, and definitely a better effort than "Houston has a Democratic mayor and gasoline prices there are lower than California. " But the price has been higher in California for a long time. Here's a comparison between two series for "the DOE Retail Automotive Gasoline All Grades Average Price" for California and Texas. I downloaded the data from Bloomberg to Excel, but if you're energetic you can probably do the same thing by going to the DOE web site.

How much more gasoline cost in California than Texas:

2015:43%.

2016:38%.

2017:34%.

2018:41%.

2019:56%.

2020:65%.

2021:50%.

2022 YTD: 48%.

By the way, the premium from 2006 to 2014 was in the range of 12% to 20%. I'm not sure what happened in 2015 to cause it to shoot up.

Firstly, I said nothing of the kind re: "Houston has a Democratic mayor and gasoline prices there are lower than California. " What I said was in response to Canada saying, in essence, "Why are gasoline prices higher in Dem run cities". He, not I, used Houston and Tucson as examples. It is absolutely not my fault that his analysis was incorrect and it is not my fault that you willfully misunderstood.

Secondly, your analysis above fails to account for several issues. One issue is the number of refineries in the state. I'll bet that Texas has more than double the number of refineries as does California and has for a long time. Another issue is the fact that Texas has many more pipelines than does California. The third issue that you "forgot to mention" is that California requires special gasoline formulation that makes gasoline sold there more expensive.

As a reminder, I did not say that California gasoline was cheaper than Texas gasoline. You obviously interpreted it that way but, hey, show me where I said it.

[Travv]

FT MYERS, FL — In a desperate attempt to get help for its citizens and deal with the growing humanitarian crisis in the area, a Florida town devastated by Hurricane Ian has taken the unusual step of raising the Ukrainian flag, hoping to convince Congress to send aid.

"The Ukrainian government flies this flag, and they're just swimming in billions and billions of dollars in support from the United States. We're just swimming in sewage," said Ray Valdivia, the Response Coordinator working to assess the damage in the town. "We tried going through the normal channels to get help from the government, but Biden just sent us a letter of "best wishes" that looks like it may have been written in crayon."

Though the situation across the Sunshine State has been critical since the hurricane blew through last week, Congress has maintained a keen focus on funneling astronomical amounts of taxpayer money overseas to pay the salaries of Ukrainian government officials and support American defense contractors' war efforts against Russia.

"These requests coming in from Florida are small potatoes," Nancy Pelosi slurred at her meeting with the press when asked about providing hurricane relief. "Sending money to Florida would not save the world from Russia or effectively launder the taxpayer money in any way."

At publishing time, citizens of Ft. Myers were working on using fake Ukrainian accents and inviting Hollywood celebrities to visit their devastated towns, hoping to convince the ignorant actors that they were visiting war-torn Kyiv instead. . .

Disaster relief is a sensible function of the federal government. It makes sense for us to have stockpiles of water, food, blankets, N95 masks, and other materials, and the manpower to respond to disasters in the states and Puerto Rico, instead of having each state prepare on its own. I've said as much when I praised George Bush for building up our stockpiles of PPE after SARS, and criticized the Trump and Obama administrations for letting them run down.

On the other hand, when it comes to rebuilding, Federal money after disasters has encouraged bad behavior. If people and their insurance companies had to shoulder most of the cost of rebuilding their beach homes, instead of government, then they wouldn't rebuild in some instances. And construct to higher standards in others. My opinion, if states and cities, other than where I live, want to pay for foolish behavior, let them have at it. It's none of my business and no skin off my back. But the federal government shouldn't take our tax dollars and spend them on foolishness. And unfortunately it does a lot of that.

[Tiny 12]

I hear Biden has already assured doughy, infantile Ron "no Federal aid for Hurricane Sandy" DeSantis that real tax payers in responsible states like New York and California will pick up the tab for his massive shortfall on this.

Hurricane Ian could be Floridas costliest storm ever

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/30/b...icane-ian-cost

Considering Repub pols in states like Florida have for decades ignored the fact that their locations are ripe for the worst of ongoing Climate Change disasters, this might be a good time to start denying Federal assistance beyond immediate life-saving measures to states and districts whose Senators and Representatives did not vote for Biden's American Rescue Plan, Infrastructure Bill and especially the Inflation Reduction Act.

We'll see how inflation goes for those Repub areas when they get their wish to have all these issues taken care of and paid for from "smaller government" city, state and local tills and pay full boat to their ever popular private sector businesses from now on.

Darn it!

I was just about to report on this very same topic, w/r to PVMongers post on "red states" and you beat me to punch...WELL DONE!

Great post!

Disaster relief is a sensible function of the federal government. It makes sense for us to have stockpiles of water, food, blankets, N95 masks, and other materials, and the manpower to respond to disasters in the states and Puerto Rico, instead of having each state prepare on its own. I've said as much when I praised George Bush for building up our stockpiles of PPE after SARS, and criticized the Trump and Obama administrations for letting them run down.

On the other hand, when it comes to rebuilding, Federal money after disasters has encouraged bad behavior. If people and their insurance companies had to shoulder most of the cost of rebuilding their beach homes, instead of government, then they wouldn't rebuild in some instances. And construct to higher standards in others. My opinion, if states and cities, other than where I live, want to pay for foolish behavior, let them have at it. It's none of my business and no skin off my back. But the federal government shouldn't take our tax dollars and spend them on foolishness. And unfortunately it does a lot of that.

Here's a link to an article in one of Toom's favorite newspapers, which I recently subscribed to, written by a professor at Western Carolina University, who directs their program for the study of developed shorelines.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/o...ebuilding.html

Some excerpts,

Hurricane Ian is the latest devastating hurricane to confirm that coastal areas are failing to keep rebuilt or new development out of highly vulnerable areas.

Local emergency managers know all too well which places in their communities should not be built back after a storm. But they are rebuilt, because the federal government and states provide multiple incentives to rebuild rather than to relocate. The assumption is that taxpayers will always be there to back up private investment after even predictable natural hazards.

Mantoloking, N.J. , was a poster child in 2012 for Superstorm Sandy's destructiveness. The barrier island that the borough sits on was ripped in half. Homes were destroyed. Even the areas of greatest destruction were rebuilt. We know it will happen again.

The money for such rebuilding comes largely through the public assistance sections of the 1988 Stafford Act. This legislation created the federal system of emergency response. When the president makes a federal disaster declaration for a county, aid dollars flow in with few strings attached.

Federal and state taxpayers have spent billions of dollars over the past four decades pumping up beaches in front of coastal properties in what are known as beach nourishment projects. In Florida alone, almost $3 billion in public funds has been spent just to keep beaches in front of investment homes and oceanfront infrastructure. Studies in Florida have shown that these beach projects increase oceanfront development. Government spending is incentivizing this expansion into danger zones a classic example of moral hazard, in which there is no reason to protect against risk when the government or federally subsidized flood insurance is there to pick up the tab.

I am not callous about storm relief. There are many people who need help in Ian's aftermath, and the first order of business must be ensuring they get that assistance. But a national conversation is long overdue about the dollars we invest in rebuilding coastal resort communities and what we should expect in return. At the moment, taxpayers are getting little back from these investments.

Taxpayers should not be subsidizing the risk of irresponsible development, and we clearly shouldn't be rebuilding areas of known hazard multiple times.

Tiny's question: Do you think the NYT would have published something similar if the storm had hit New Jersey instead of Florida? My guess is no. They'd much prefer, like Tooms above, to take money from Republicans and only redistribute it to Democrats, whose representatives voted for the "American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure Bill and especially the Inflation Reduction Act."

[Tiny 12]

And if you didn't reprimand and punish your six year old for a blatant bit of lying by omission like yours in that post you might be guilty of negligent parent.

I said any suggestion that it was "down" under Obama or because of something Obama did is BS. You omitted that last part trying to pull a little porkie pie, didn't you?

The downward plunge trajectory all through Reagan wannabe Repub GW Bush's presidency unavoidably bled into Obama's presidency in the wake of GW Bush's Great Repub Recession and Massive Jobs Destruction. It was "down" under Obama for that reason and that reason alone until Obama's economy halted the plunge and reversed the trajectory. Which is what Trump inherited.

Look at that Max chart and anyone can see that dramatic and steady downward trajectory for Labor Force Participation all through Reagan wannabe GW Bush's economy had no more to do with anything Obama did to put it there before his economy dramatically reversed course on it than the dramatic and steady downward trajectory for the unemployment rate through Obama's presidency that bled into Trump's presidency had anything to do with it continuing to decline from 3. 9% to 3. 5% after his typical Repub waste of Trillions TCJA took effect.

Seriously, show your six year old that chart and this one below and find out what he can teach you about easily observable reality:

https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000

Oh, be sure to set the above chart coverage range back to at least 2008. Your six year old can help you with that.

Do you not understand the definition of the word "or"? Or do you not believe that the labor force participation rate went down between January, 2009 and December, 2016 because a Democrat was president? Or both?

I said that I had no idea whether Obama had anything to do with weak employment and GDP growth after the 2008/2009 recession. So you interpret that, and my link to and description of a St. Louis Fed data series, as a "vague suggestion" that Obama was responsible for a decline in labor force participation rate. And any vague criticism of a Democrat is a blatant lie.

I said that the anomalous increase in real median household income and wages and 50 year lows in the unemployment rate before COVID were partly attributable to the changes in corporate taxation in the TCJA and deregulation. I didn't relate that to the Republicans' big tax cuts for the middle class in 2018 (and in fact said there were valid arguments for and against them) or to the Bush tax cuts. You're really having to jump through hoops to try to show that Bush is responsible for the decline in the labor force participation rate when Obama was president. And I don't understand why you're doing that since you also said any suggestion that the labor force participation rate was down under Obama is B.S.

The unemployment rate declined from 4.7% at the start of Trump's term in office to 3.5% in February, 2020, and didn't fall below 4% until May of 2018. I'm not sure where you're coming up with 3.9%.

As to your unemployment chart, I give the Democrats, and Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin in particular, credit for not jacking the corporate tax rate (or other taxes) back up at the tail end of a recession. That was certainly helpful. And will point out that while we're at 3.7% unemployment again, the labor force participation rate is about one percentage point lower than it was in February, 2020. And while only 3.7 million people are looking for full time work, there are 10 million nonfarm job openings. Something's out of whack there. I won't attribute that to Democratic Party policies or the Biden administration, although you're free to take that as a vague criticism of Democrats and therefore a blatant lie.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS13100000
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSJOL

[Cali Guy]

While I don't think EVs are a panacea to all our immediate transportation / environment problems, they will play a large role in the US becoming more energy independent. Not too mention, battery tech is advancing at an enormous pace, that should give EVs the advantage over ICE, in most vehicle type applications. Not all, but most.

Also, EVs and our foray into larger cleaner forms of energy, is definitely much to the chagrin of the oil and gas companies (domestic and foreign) and will most assuredly, help to loosen their soci-eco grip on us, addressing your question "Who Controls the Price? Will at least going forward.

Granted we'll have to deal with the "controllers of the electricity prices", but at least that's more of domestic ONLY problem.

So my question is, why do you say, "Electric cars are the latest joke?

P.S.: Florida, could have used a few F150 Lightning EVs to help supplement power. Yes?

Electric F-150 Lightnings save the day with power in Kentucky flood...

https://electrek.co/2022/08/06/elect...lood-response/

That is a joke in itself. 2 trucks can save the day when there is no power in the area? What happens after 4 hours and the 2 trucks go dead? Propaganda at its best.

[Cali Guy]

OPEC is cutting production again tomorrow and gas prices will rise again. Not much in Republican states but California will see $8 a gallon gas. I love it. I think it is great. Those dumb ass democrats can keep praising Biden and Newsome. I really feel bad that I am in the oil business and reaping the benefits of the dumbest president in USA history.

Not great if you live on California but I have been advising all my clients to be buying oil and gas stocks the last few months and it is working for them. Oil stocks are the only stocks going up today. Biden is begging OPEC countries today to not make the cuts in oil production but they just laugh at him. OPEC knows Biden is a fool for devastating his energy program in USA and begging other countries to produce more. But the dumbest people in the USA will continue to support Biden stupidity and incompetence and just blame Trump or Putin.

[PVMonger]

While I don't think EVs are a panacea to all our immediate transportation / environment problems, they will play a large role in the US becoming more energy independent. Not too mention, battery tech is advancing at an enormous pace, that should give EVs the advantage over ICE, in most vehicle type applications. Not all, but most.

Also, EVs and our foray into larger cleaner forms of energy, is definitely much to the chagrin of the oil and gas companies (domestic and foreign) and will most assuredly, help to loosen their soci-eco grip on us, addressing your question "Who Controls the Price? Will at least going forward.

Granted we'll have to deal with the "controllers of the electricity prices", but at least that's more of domestic ONLY problem.

So my question is, why do you say, "Electric cars are the latest joke?

P.S.: Florida, could have used a few F150 Lightning EVs to help supplement power. Yes?

Electric F-150 Lightnings save the day with power in Kentucky flood...

https://electrek.co/2022/08/06/elect...lood-response/

Most of the knocks on EV's, at least from the articles I've read, has been "The electric grid can't handle the load" and, to prove the point, the article uses logic like "what if everybody with an EV decided to charge them at the same time". What the article never mentions is "what if everybody with a gasoline powered car decided to fill up at the same time"? See, if that happened, gas stations would run out of gas. A typical gas station has 30 K gallons of gasoline in their underground tanks after a delivery. So that's about 1,500 cars and the station is dry.

The other knock is the range of the vehicle and that is where your battery technology comes into play.

[ChuchoLoco]

While I don't think EVs are a panacea to all our immediate transportation / environment problems, they will play a large role in the US becoming more energy independent. Not too mention, battery tech is advancing at an enormous pace, that should give EVs the advantage over ICE, in most vehicle type applications. Not all, but most.

Also, EVs and our foray into larger cleaner forms of energy, is definitely much to the chagrin of the oil and gas companies (domestic and foreign) and will most assuredly, help to loosen their soci-eco grip on us, addressing your question "Who Controls the Price? Will at least going forward.

Granted we'll have to deal with the "controllers of the electricity prices", but at least that's more of domestic ONLY problem.

The electricity that will be needed to charge the batteries will come from power plants, many of which are coal fired and a major contributor to air pollution as well as what the mining does to the earth. Maybe nuclear plants most of which have exceeded their 20 year design life and what are they doing with the spent fuel that lasts longer than civilized man and also risks of Chernobyl or Tree Mile Island. Now the batteries are most likely lithium and mining lithium is destructive and the batteries don't last forever and are a destructive pollutant. Where will we get all the additional electricity to fuel all these cars when we are at near capacity and many times there are brownouts. Texas a couple years ago. I'm sure with all the technology a very high mileage and les polluting gas engine can be designed and built. How about reducing the size of vehicles too? Do we really need all these huge pickups and SUV's? I'm always seeing women driving a huge SUV at the grocery store and no passengers. I'm just not as optimistic or a believer in EV's. I don't know the answer to this but how much does it cost to totally charge an EV? Also how long does it take to charge and if you only get 200 miles between charges it seems to me a trip over 200 miles is out of the question among other transits. Ethanol is another false savior. It takes more than a gallon of gas to make a gallon of pure ethanol and mileage is much less than pure gas. So it really pollutes more and uses more fuel. EV's to me are the Latest joke but I'm not laughing.

[PVMonger]

Nice try buckaroo, and definitely a better effort than "Houston has a Democratic mayor and gasoline prices there are lower than California. " But the price has been higher in California for a long time. Here's a comparison between two series for "the DOE Retail Automotive Gasoline All Grades Average Price" for California and Texas. I downloaded the data from Bloomberg to Excel, but if you're energetic you can probably do the same thing by going to the DOE web site.

How much more gasoline cost in California than Texas:.

Gee, why not count the number of refineries in California and the number of refineries in Texas? I'll bet dollars to donuts that Texas has more than double the number of refineries than California. And I would also bet that the disparity has existed for a long time. Sure, let's not mention that, right?

Let's also not mention that California has unique fuel blends that help control smog. After all, that wouldn't have anything to do with price either, would it? Sheesh, the lengths you guys go to dig yourselves into a hole is astounding.

And, since you can't read, Canada said in his post "Why is gas 80 to 100 percent higher in dem run cities? I pointed out that Houston and Tucson (both cities that he used in his rant to prove that gas was cheaper in Republican cities) both had Democratic mayors. I can't help it if his analysis was faulty and I can't help it if you can't read.

[Spidy]

... Electric cars are the latest joke. Remember when diesel cars were the future and EPA said they were less polluting? ...

While I don't think EVs are a panacea to all our immediate transportation / environment problems, they will play a large role in the US becoming more energy independent. Not too mention, battery tech is advancing at an enormous pace, that should give EVs the advantage over ICE, in most vehicle type applications. Not all, but most.

Also, EVs and our foray into larger cleaner forms of energy, is definitely much to the chagrin of the oil and gas companies (domestic and foreign) and will most assuredly, help to loosen their soci-eco grip on us, addressing your question "Who Controls the Price? Will at least going forward.

Granted we'll have to deal with the "controllers of the electricity prices", but at least that's more of domestic ONLY problem.

So my question is, why do you say, "Electric cars are the latest joke?

P.S.: Florida, could have used a few F150 Lightning EVs to help supplement power. Yes?

Electric F-150 Lightnings save the day with power in Kentucky flood...

https://electrek.co/2022/08/06/elect...lood-response/

[EihTooms]

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainm...ular-anywhere/

https://stormer-daily.rw/satanic-hin...ricane-relief/

https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2022/...-visit-to-dmz/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5OkECyvCY8

Bill Maher is funny. But his political instincts suck and his ill-informed Bothsiderism is idiotic.

Here is the latest highly regarded poll I've seen for Kamala Harris in a hypothetical head-to-head contest with the two top likely GOP candidates. This was just two months ago. She beat both of them, as did Biden:

Biden and Harris Would Both Beat Either Trump or DeSantis in 2024: Poll.
7/21/22

https://www.newsweek.com/2024-odds-b...santis-1726687

So which of the other Repub Party Superstars do you, Maher and the geniuses at breitbart think will be the greatest threat to another landslide victorious Biden-Harris ticket on your lord and savior's Repub Party ticket in 2024?

Pence?

Cruz?

Gohmert?

Greene?

[EihTooms]

Obama had at least two shots at defund, dismantle, mock, deride and lie about the international health and disease monitoring agencies and the intel they provide to prevent and, failing that, intelligently respond to emerging potential economy-crippling Pandemics.

But he didn't:

The 2009 influenza pandemic and the Ebola crisis: what are the lessons learnt?
April 27, 2015

https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/10.2217/fvl.15.9

Instead, this is what he did a decade before Trump was forced to apply Obama's fast-track vaccination program when his lies could no longer prevent his stock market from crashing into a Mega Bear despite his defunding, dismantling, mockery, denigration, lies, etc on the World Stage trying so hard to prevent it:

Obama's science advisors outline plan for faster pandemic vaccine.
August 19, 2010

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-pers...ndemic-vaccine

[EihTooms]

Did Anybody here bitching about gasoline formulations and "pesky regulations" live in So Cal in the 60's-70's?

I loved the much cleaner air in the 2000's than we had in the 60's-70's. And California managed to responsibly deal with it, fix their LOS Angeles Basin "weather" problem in that regard and pay for it without draining America's coffers with constant emergency Federal Assistance. Imagine that.

I thank god every day that California knows how to apply sensible and responsible regulations and tax policy in order to make living and working there more attractive and profitable than most anywhere else in the country if not on Earth.

My beautifully increasing rental property values and rent rolls are evidence of that every year. Beats the hell out of scrambling around every hour of the day checking on yield curves and trends to guess what to buy and sell with some insignificant percentage of ones stock market holdings just to stay afloat and hopefully break even someday from when prior guesses and bets went south as others do.

[EihTooms]

That's quite a piece of creative trend analysis and partisan distortion. You could be Biden's press secretary. Don't take that the wrong way, it's a compliment. My favorite part is, "So any vague suggestion that (labor force participation rate) was 'down' under Obama...is total BS. " Classic double think. My six year old could look at your graphs and tell you the labor force participation rate was down under Obama. Another zinger was "Trump's Pandemic...derailed the entire USA economy as well as others around the world. " Hell, I don't much like Trump either, but blaming the pandemic and the 2020 recession in the USA and foreign countries on him is another departure from reality.

All other things being equal, an increase in the minimum wage will cause lower employment. And the the phased increases in minimum wage in the few states that you mentioned didn't do diddly squat in 2019. That said, I agree that many cities and states should increase their minimum wages. The poorest Americans have been left behind, and higher but reasonable minimum wages would help, even though it would reduce employment a bit.

And if you didn't reprimand and punish your six year old for a blatant bit of lying by omission like yours in that post you might be guilty of negligent parent.

I said any suggestion that it was "down" under Obama or because of something Obama did is BS. You omitted that last part trying to pull a little porkie pie, didn't you?

The downward plunge trajectory all through Reagan wannabe Repub GW Bush's presidency unavoidably bled into Obama's presidency in the wake of GW Bush's Great Repub Recession and Massive Jobs Destruction. It was "down" under Obama for that reason and that reason alone until Obama's economy halted the plunge and reversed the trajectory. Which is what Trump inherited.

Look at that Max chart and anyone can see that dramatic and steady downward trajectory for Labor Force Participation all through Reagan wannabe GW Bush's economy had no more to do with anything Obama did to put it there before his economy dramatically reversed course on it than the dramatic and steady downward trajectory for the unemployment rate through Obama's presidency that bled into Trump's presidency had anything to do with it continuing to decline from 3. 9% to 3. 5% after his typical Repub waste of Trillions TCJA took effect.

Seriously, show your six year old that chart and this one below and find out what he can teach you about easily observable reality:

https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000

Oh, be sure to set the above chart coverage range back to at least 2008. Your six year old can help you with that.

[Tiny 12]

OPEC is cutting production again tomorrow and gas prices will rise again. Not much in Republican states but California will see $8 a gallon gas. I love it. I think it is great. Those dumb ass democrats can keep praising Biden and Newsome. I really feel bad that I am in the oil business and reaping the benefits of the dumbest president in USA history.

Californians should be free to do what Californians want to do. I just don't like it when their progressive politicians go to Washington and then try to impose their high tax, big government, anti-energy agenda on my community and state.