A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him: “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”
The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.”
She rolled her eyes and said, “You must be some conservative CEO.”
“I am,” replied the man. “How did you know?”
“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help to me.”
The man smiled and responded, “You must be a leftist government functionary”
“I am,” replied the balloonist. “I even voted for Joe Biden. How did you know?”
“Well,” said the man, “you don’t know where you are — or where you are going. You’ve risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve the problem your actions caused. You’re in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it’s my fault.”
They say that all good humor has some basis in life experiences. This is especially true for the story above. From recent headlines:
President Biden on Thursday announced that he will release 1 million barrels a day from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to offset the loss of Russian crude oil from world markets, starve Russia of revenue and cut the cost American consumers are paying at the pump.
Gas availability and prices have been an issue since the beginning of the Biden regime. Now his ineptness and that of his own regulatory agencies is bringing real harm to American infants. Over at Red State, my good friend and fellow Infantryman, Bill Crews, aka “Streiff,” writes that the current shortage of baby formula is yet another self-inflicted wound. He also notes that Biden’s “fix” for this problem is merely an attempt to grandstand and deflect from his own inability to actually be a chief executive. From the article:
Wednesday, Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to alleviate a critical national shortage of, of all things, baby formula. Under the Defense Production Act, suppliers to baby formula manufacturers must fill orders from those companies before those of other customers. A second part of the order establishes a ridiculous program called “Operation Fly Formula,” which sounds like a 1970s sci-fi thriller movie title, that allows government agencies to apply to use commercial aircraft owned by the Department of Defense to pick up loads of formula and fly them to the US where something happens to get them on grocery shelves.
Both articles above are spot on. Both blame the Biden administration for where we stand on both gasoline and baby formula. They are correct in doing so, but only to a point. What is more important to understand, is that the inept, doddering man now residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, is merely the latest leftist attempting to shove America towards an economic, legal and moral oblivion. But there is more to it.
The broken supply chains for both gasoline and baby formula have their roots in decades…decades of constant and growing governmental overreach. For example
[Th]e newest refinery with significant downstream unit capacity is Marathon’s facility in Garyville, Louisiana. That facility came online in 1977 with an initial atmospheric distillation unit capacity of 200,000 b/cd, and as of January 1, 2021, it had a capacity of 578,000 b/cd.
That’s 45 YEARS! It gets worse. Not content with stonewalling new construction via the regulatory process, the leftists in the Biden EPA also go after already approved and built facilities.
While regulators are still gathering information, there are “strong indicators to suggest” that the Limetree Bay refinery must get a Prevention of Significant Deterioration pre-construction permit before restarting operations, Liliana Villatora, an air branch chief in EPA’s New York City-based regional office, wrote in a letter today to lawyers for West Indies Petroleum Ltd. and Port Hamilton Refining and Transportation LLLP, which jointly bought the facility at a bankruptcy auction late last year (Greenwire, Dec. 22, 2021).
This has been going on for decades. The Department of Energy, created for the ostensible reason to help the United States become energy independent post Gulf Oil Embargo, is now playing for the other team. In that light, the Biden gas price spike is a symptom of a much larger issue. The baby formula shortage is much the same.
It’s easy…and accurate to blame the ineptness of Food and Drug Administration for the current shortage. Bill Crews points that out in his piece. He also points out a major and enduring reason that has also been decades in the making. He notes that because of yet another bureaucratic agency, the Department of Agriculture and its Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) government regulations at both state and federal levels have combined to create market pressures that ensure near monopolies by a very few formula manufacturers, thus making the entire system vulnerable should one factory be shut down due to federal interference, justified or not.
It’s easy and absolutely correct to hold Joe Biden accountable for the crises he has been causing since day one of his train wreck of an administration. However, remember this; neither a President nor his Executive Branch would be able to get away with any of this were not they enabled by continuing growth of the federal leviathan over decades. Once we retake congress and the White House, we need to hold Republicans accountable for acting to dismantle this mess.
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5 thoughts on “Biden: Fixing Problems He Created…With Some Help”
I saw last night that the baby food shipment that is or has arrived in that C-17 is actually a part of a shipment that was already scheduled for three weeks from now. If that is true, by claiming he is using the Defense Production Act, Biden lied again. That seems like not much of a benefit, if it is not appropriate at all, to have used, or claimed to have used the DPA.
As far as that gas is concerned, using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to supplement a perceived shortage was just another way to reduce the reserve, as it has or will have no effect on lowering the cost, and will have to be replaced by higher cost gas when or if it ever gets replaced back in the reserve. The net effect of using the SPR will be to increase inflation which is just more increases in costs for everyone. Trump filled up that tank, and Biden is emptying it. Biden has lied consistently every time he claims he is doing something to slow inflation, or to increase capacity that his administration caused.
The Abbot facility that makes the baby formula was supposedly in violation of protocols(paperwork, not safety issues) and was shut down. I’m not sure who else makes baby formula, but am sure any decrease in capacity put a dam in front of a just in time supply chain.
If these problems are left up to politicians, we are in trouble, since they appear to have more interest in holding committee hearings on UFOs, and taking junkets to foreign lands for information gathering and delivery of our tax payer money, which is a breach of duty and a violation of their oaths of office, Democrat and Republican.
I can’t say what I want to say about how to deal with Biden, and too many pols in DC, and it encompasses both parties.
Joey is just implementing the “green” ideas of Jean Marie Kerry, they want to ban oil to force us to buy electric cars.
So they are intentionally restricting the supply of gas to drive up prices.
Otherwise nobody, not even Joey, is that dumb to believe that restricting the supply of oil does not lead to higher prices.
That’s by design. It has to be. Add that to all the armament left in Afghanistan and you’re talking about real money, and a big setting up for failure for the home team.
I saw last night that the baby food shipment that is or has arrived in that C-17 is actually a part of a shipment that was already scheduled for three weeks from now. If that is true, by claiming he is using the Defense Production Act, Biden lied again. That seems like not much of a benefit, if it is not appropriate at all, to have used, or claimed to have used the DPA.
As far as that gas is concerned, using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to supplement a perceived shortage was just another way to reduce the reserve, as it has or will have no effect on lowering the cost, and will have to be replaced by higher cost gas when or if it ever gets replaced back in the reserve. The net effect of using the SPR will be to increase inflation which is just more increases in costs for everyone. Trump filled up that tank, and Biden is emptying it. Biden has lied consistently every time he claims he is doing something to slow inflation, or to increase capacity that his administration caused.
The Abbot facility that makes the baby formula was supposedly in violation of protocols(paperwork, not safety issues) and was shut down. I’m not sure who else makes baby formula, but am sure any decrease in capacity put a dam in front of a just in time supply chain.
If these problems are left up to politicians, we are in trouble, since they appear to have more interest in holding committee hearings on UFOs, and taking junkets to foreign lands for information gathering and delivery of our tax payer money, which is a breach of duty and a violation of their oaths of office, Democrat and Republican.
I can’t say what I want to say about how to deal with Biden, and too many pols in DC, and it encompasses both parties.
Joey is just implementing the “green” ideas of Jean Marie Kerry, they want to ban oil to force us to buy electric cars.
So they are intentionally restricting the supply of gas to drive up prices.
Otherwise nobody, not even Joey, is that dumb to believe that restricting the supply of oil does not lead to higher prices.
Between the depletion of SPR and the staggering amount of munitions we’re sending to eastern Europe, our warfighting capability is taking a hit.
Almost as if the puppetmasters WANTED another Pearl Harbor…
That’s by design. It has to be. Add that to all the armament left in Afghanistan and you’re talking about real money, and a big setting up for failure for the home team.