Contrary to your claim that the AP doesn’t explain why gas prices have gone up…
“ THE FACTS: Biden’s policies aren’t behind the price increases. Gas prices are up because of a rapid and unexpected bounce-back in demand, and because of lingering problems from the forced shutdown early this month of the Colonial Pipeline, which provides 45% of the fuel consumed on the East Coast.
McCarthy’s comparison to a year ago is also misleading. Gasoline prices didn’t fall at the time because of the Trump administration, as Trump often claims; they plunged because of the coronavirus forcing people to abandon their offices, schools, business trips and vacations. Underscoring the connection to the pandemic shutdown, U.S. gas prices were at their lowest in April 2020 when people were staying home most but have mostly risen since then, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration, even when Trump was still in office.
In recent weeks, the biggest factor has been the cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline. Even though it has been back in operation for nearly two weeks, many states, mostly in the South, still haven’t fully recovered.
Roughly one-quarter of gas stations in North and South Carolina and Georgia are without gas, according to GasBuddy.com, which tracks gas prices nationwide. In Florida, 9% of stations have run out and in Tennessee, it’s 14%. Overall, more than 6,000 stations have run out, Gas Buddy’s Patrick DeHaan says.
Prices have also increased because the economy has reopened much more quickly than most analysts expected. Stimulus payments to American households, including $1,400 checks that were distributed in March, have helped Americans ramp up spending.”
This is a case of you rejecting facts that don’t suit your bias WB. It’s not rocket science what the AP is breaking down in this fact check but simply information that doesn’t fit the narrative you want.
AS I SAID, that is a Democrat Newspeak rationalization that doesn't hold up to the facts. The Colonial pipeline hacking was a two-week event. If that were the cause of a spike in gas prices, why did the spike begin months before the hack, and why did the prices not go back down after the hack ended? It's been a month now, and prices have not gone back down.
While I can acknowledge that the lower demand for oil could have a partial role in the price spike (Saudi Arabia went from about 12 million barrels a day of production a year ago, down to a current level just under 7 million a day for the last 10 months or so) why did gas not similarly spike all of last year under Trump? Why did supply/demand not spike prices during economic re-opening in August, Sept ,October? Or especially once the vaccine was announced 7 days after the election in Nov 2020, why did gas not spike in Nov-Dec?
Because it's more about Biden shutting down availability of oil DOMESTICALLY, creating an unnecessary scarcity. And that scarcity will only increase over the next 2 years of incompetent Biden policy. There are oil futures investments rising, gambling on gas skyrocketing on that certainty, exploiting Biden incompetence as a way to invest on that inevitable "skyrocket" in gas prices, ARTIFICIALLY CREATED by Biden policy.
AP's narrative rationalization, that is flying cover for Biden, will be disproven over the next year. Gas prices will continue to rise. Biden is neither enabling oil/gas production domestically, nor is he asking Saudi Arabia or other nations to increase production. No increase in supply attempted, means a further price rise into the future as far as can be seen.
The media narrative of this lunacy is identical to when George W. Bush was president in 2007-2008, when the liberal media was saying
Ohh, this is terrible, the sky is falling, the worst recession since the Great Depression!But as soon as Barack Obama won the election in 2008 and was inaugurated in Jan 2009, all of a sudden that same media was saying, with no improvement in the numbers, and job layoffs actually increasing:
Hey, we're already in a recovery and we just don't know it yet, unemployment is just a lagging indicator! An instant 180-degree flip in narrative by the liberal media, to prop up a president they like and fly cover for.
Meanwhile, in reality, that 2009-2010 unemployment (as a DIRECT result of Obama's business-punishing tax and spend policies and Obamacare) continued in huge layoffs for another 2 years, and not until Obama's second term did it begin to re-create the jobs lost. An anemic economic growth of less than 2% a year over Obama's entire 8 years, the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression.
Then incredibly, when Trump became president and created almost 4% growth his first year, TWICE what Obama's growth had been, Democrats claimed that Trump had "inherited" a good economy and continued growth from Obama's presidency.
Really?!? TWICE what Obama's growth had been in any of his 8 years?
Where Obama economic advisors said that less than 2% a year was "the new normal" and the best that could be hoped for? Trump's unprecedented growth, a level of economic growth that Obama and his economic advisors COULD NOT EVEN IMAGINE, was completely due to Trump's pro-growth policies, that even drew factories and jobs from overseas and back to the United States, another thing that Obama had mocked in 2016, that Obama and his advisors COULD NOT EVEN IMAGINE. But Trump made it happen.
And now Biden is crushing businesses with new taxes, and driving those factories and jobs back overseas. I'm sure AP will find a way to spin that in a future "factcheck". You can call something a "factcheck", but it still remains Orwellian liberal propaganda.
