Heartland Institute Shows Confusion About How Time Works Trying To Smear Biden On Energy Prices

[hatrack]

Links at original.

EDIT

Last week, Haris Alic at the Washington Times demonstrated conservative media’s willingness to turn thin press releases with no substance into “news” and covered a “report” by the Heartland Institute that, according to the headline “finds Biden’s climate policies added $1,000 to Americans’ energy bills in 2021.” Which is certainly an interesting take, because… what climate policies? There has been this lil’ ol’ global pandemic that caused energy prices and production to crater in 2020, triggering the current rise in prices as the world comes back online and the fossil fuel industry profits mightily when taking its price volatility out on consumers, but that seems to have escaped the attention of the keen thinkers at Heartland.

EDIT

As it turns out the “report” or “study,” as Alic and Heartland call it, is by no measure a piece of scholarship published in a journal, as “study” suggests, or an in-depth examination of an issue otherwise published, as “report” would suggest. Instead, it’s described by Heartland’s own URL as a “one pager”, and is nothing more than a list of energy price increase stats, followed by a list of “notable policies” the “Biden administration has taken that have increased energy costs.” The one-pager says there are “dozens of actions,” but apparently they could only think of eight, and even those would mostly require time travel to have any impact on 2021’s energy prices.

The list starts with “canceling the Keystone XL pipeline,” which would of course have done nothing to help American energy consumers now, as it would have simply connected Canadian oil to the global export market, and not served US customers specifically. Meaning its oil would be prey to all the same global forces driving up prices now. (And no, they don’t try to crunch the numbers to determine what infinitesimal influence the added supply from KXL, which is still reaching markets through other means of transport, would have had on prices. That’s what a study or report would do!)

EDIT

How do proposed rules in the 11th month of the year and plans to not allow for future development and considerations of future royalty payment increases cause an increase in 2021’s energy prices? Heartland can’t explain Biden’s apparent power to warp the space-time continuum, but surely that’s only because that’s when their one-pager ran out. If only they had more space, no doubt they could explain how the price volatility of fossil fuels is somehow Biden’s fault for thinking about doing something about climate change.

EDIT/END

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/2/15/2080439/-Heartland-Institute-Confused-About-How-Time-Works-In-Attempt-To-Attack-Biden-For-Oil-Gas-Price-Spike

[WHITT]

1. More And More Of The RightWing

propaganda requires a time machine.

[riversedge]

2. Heartland Institue has been an avid long time climate denyer. Kos did good job of riping their one

pager apart

[eppur_se_muova]

3. "I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too small to contain."

Learn from the masters, dolts.