Tucker Carlson: Elizabeth Warren wants control over gasoline
Fox News host provides insight on price controls, inflation, the rising cost of gas, and Democrats' power play on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'
When was the last time you heard a Democratic politician propose a solution to a problem — no matter what the problem is —that didn't make the Democratic Party more powerful? Ponder that for a moment. Let's say, for example, that you really believe global warming was an existential threat to humanity and that rising carbon dioxide levels were causing global warming. What would you do to fix it?
Well, you might think back to 10th grade biology class CO2. CO2, hmm. Don't trees consume huge amounts of CO2 for photosynthesis? Quick Google check. Why, yes, they do. So, how about we plant a whole lot more trees all across the country and across the world? That seems like a natural solution with lots of upsides. Trees are beautiful. It might help fight global warming. Oh, but no. There's a problem with that idea. Planting more trees might help solve climate change, but it definitely will not enrich your donors. Trees are cheap. It's hard to make money from trees. And worse than that, trees are impossible to regulate. Once you plant trees, they grow by themselves. They do not need federal help.
Trees definitely will not make you more powerful. So instead, here's an idea. Let's invest trillions of dollars of other people's money in batteries and wind farms and electric school buses. That way, Democratic politicians get fingertip control over the entire U.S. economy and all of their friends get rich. Sounds perfect. Let's go with that idea.
That's how Democratic politicians think, every one of them. So, it probably should not surprise you that Elizabeth Warren has a brand-new plan for rising gas prices and naturally, it goes without saying, that plan would give Elizabeth Warren a lot more control over you and over the United States.
BIDEN'S HIGH GAS PRICES AND WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS PROVES PRESIDENT IS COLD, CRUEL AND CALLOUS
Then-Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks during a town hall meeting at Grinnell College, Monday, Nov. 4, 2019, in Grinnell, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Well, hold on a minute, you may be wondering, why should Elizabeth Warren have control over anything? Elizabeth Warren isn't very bright. She's never created anything. In fact, she's a proven liar. This is a person who exploited the suffering of American Indians to get a job promotion. "The Trail of Tears means I need tenure." Ok, so in every possible way, Elizabeth Warren is mediocre. Yet—and here's the catch—she's also a U.S. senator and that means she has power.
Warren's latest plan to make herself more powerful is called the Price Gouging Prevention Act of 2022. This bill would allow Elizabeth Warren to decide what things cost in the United States. So, let's say you're paying $6 a gallon for gas (and you may be) the obvious solution to that, in fact, the only solution to that is to make more gasoline because if there is more of something, it will cost less. That's not just basic economics, though it is. It's also a law of nature. It never changes, but Elizabeth Warren wants the opposite. She does not want more gas. In fact, she's worked hard to prevent the United States from producing more gasoline and that's the main reason it's so expensive.
What Elizabeth Warren wants instead is control over gasoline and over everything else, and this bill will give it to her. See how this works? And this is why the Biden administration has shut down oil and gas leases in the middle of an energy crisis and not just that, they're crushing refineries. According to one analysis by Hot Air, "Seven American refineries, which formerly processed 806,000 barrels of oil per day, have gone offline. Some simply shut down, while others were being converted to biofuels like ethanol, to meet the demands of the environmental lobby. These losses have left the United States with 124 operating oil refineries. That is 10% fewer refineries for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel than we had in 2016, even as demand has continued to increase."
So, you see this is going. No more oil or gas for you and that's why you can't afford to fill your tank. Instead, the Biden administration is demanding that states build wind turbines that sound good, but unfortunately don't actually work. Last year, we went to Texas to see this firsthand. Here's a clip from our documentary on the tragic buffoonery of wind power.
TUCKER: With no chance of being approved near Malibu or Greenwich or in the mountains of Aspen, the development invariably happens in poorer parts of the country. The number one place for wind farms is Texas, but the question is, "What happens when the turbines stop spinning?"
KYLE ROTHENBERG: We're in the middle of nowhere in Texas. We're trying to find a place just to sleep tonight. Everything is sold out. There's nothing available.
MEDIA: It's now expected to be the largest insurance claim event in Texas history. This winter storm totally overwhelmed the power system in Texas.
MEDIA: But I can tell you this morning, nearly 4.2 million Texans still have no electricity.
TUCKER: Texas has the most wind power capacity in the United States, but the Texas turbines, which are not winterized, iced up during a cold weather event in February of 2021. Electricity output collapsed.
MEDIA: Texas regulators ordered rolling blackouts Monday as an arctic blast has frozen wind turbines.
CHARLES COUGER: There is no water in the hotel.
"TUCKER CARLSON ORIGINALS" INTERVIEW 1: The Texas grid, like the California grid, is becoming increasingly unreliable and difficult to maintain, difficult to keep that power in a steady basis.
"TUCKER CARLSON ORIGINALS" INTERVIEW 2: This 20-year-old turbine is leaking oil. It doesn't look too green to me.
BIDEN SLAMMED FOR GAS PRICES, INFLATION COMMENT: 'SAYING QUIET PART OUT LOUD'
So, the point of an energy grid is to produce and transmit energy. It has only one purpose and that purpose is being sabotaged on purpose by the Biden administration and by Wall Street, in favor of green energy, in favor of windmills that don't actually work. And as a result of that, we're facing the prospect of more blackouts this summer. We don't have electricity anymore. It's a first-world country. But Elizabeth Warren has a fix for that: "It shall be unlawful for a person to sell or offer for sale a good or services at an unconscionably excessive price during an exceptional market shock, regardless of the person's position in the supply chain or distribution network."
So, the argument here, this is Elizabeth Warren's argument, the economy has been in a period of exceptional market shock since the pandemic began. Therefore, prices set by every industry across the country would fall under the regulatory authority of who? Elizabeth Warren. Most of the price gouging bills are limited to specific areas during natural disasters, but this one is not. It's economy wide and it's forever.
Now, the question is, how exactly does Elizabeth Warren define "unconscionably excessive prices" because they're not defined in the legislation? So, it turns out the definition is up to...can you guess? Elizabeth Warren.
Any business with gross annual revenues over 100 grand a year, that means pretty much everybody in the country, must now obey Elizabeth Warren. That means Elizabeth Warren read the power to say set the price of diesel fuel. That's what we use to fuel trucks that transport virtually everything that you buy or consume. The entire U.S. economy depends on diesel. As CBS reported recently, diesel prices are getting close to the point where truckers can't work anymore. Watch.
TRUCK DRIVERS EXPRESS CONCERN OVER RISING DIESEL COSTS
TRUCKER: This is a disaster. I've seen fuel prices like $6.39 a gallon.
CARTER EVANS, CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Imagine paying that for a fill up of more than 100 gallons.
OTHER TRUCKER: A regular fill-up would have been just say six months ago, about $700. Now, it's about $1,000.
CARTER EVANS, CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT: It's what truckers are facing across the country for diesel, and you're paying the price, according to oil analyst Tom Kloza.
TOM KLOZA, OIL ANALYST: If you're ordering anything that moves by freight across the country, it comes via fuel surcharges. Probably not the worst of the diesel surcharges. That will come next month. I just don't think there's any magic bullet at the moment. It's going to be tough. It's going to be a tough summer.
CITADEL CEO SAYS ENERGY POLICY IN THE US AND EUROPE IS A 'TRAIN WRECK'
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) talks on the phone before the start of the Senate Democrats weekly policy lunch at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, U.S., December 14, 2021. (REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz)
So, most projections suggest that this (and by "this," we mean the price of energy) is going to get worse) and that's exactly, of course, what Elizabeth Warren is counting on—your suffering. She hopes Americans get so desperate that they go to her to set the price of diesel along with everything else that's bought or sold in the United States economy and when that happens, what happens? Interesting question. So, at this point, a lot of money is floating around the U.S. economy and that's because of government spending. Federal Reserve prints money, it goes to the banks and then it filters down to Wall Street and they buy bigger houses and yet the same time, supplies of essential goods are very limited.
So, when you impose price controls in that kind of environment – Anyone? Anyone?-- bidding wars start and prices go up even higher. As the economist Alan Cole put it recently, you'll inevitably get a "scalper’s paradise." Government imposed prices will be low, so they'll sell out fast, of course. Then you get a black market. We don't have to guess because this has happened in every controlled economy in history. The Bolsheviks learned this early when they imposed price controls.
So, what do you do next if you're the government imposing these controls? Well, you crack down on scalpers and that's what Elizabeth Warren's bill would do.
So, you get a lot more law enforcement activity, a lot of people going to jail, but you also get what the economist Gregory Grossman calls "the second economy." People do anything they can to get the government-approved lower price. The Soviets traded favors and established protection rackets. They called the system "blat", which translated from the Polish, meant someone who provides cover.
HOW COSTCO IS MANAGING INFLATION
What you get is corruption. Corruption is the inevitable result of price controls. Even the Soviets learned this after almost 70 years. It's why Gorbachev abandoned price controls in the 1990s. Nicolas Maduro, though a pretty rigorous Marxist, also abandoned price controls in Venezuela. He did that three years ago. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon also realized – Can you imagine – price controls don't work, but only after he froze all prices and wages in the United States and that eventually led to a massive spike in demand and double-digit inflation.
So, people who don't understand basic economic principles probably shouldn't fool around with the economy, but they can never control themselves and that's why some of the biggest figures in the Democratic Party right now want to repeat mistakes we have seen countless times, not just Elizabeth Warren.
It's the supposedly moderate Bob Casey here; Sheldon Whitehouse, who is not very bright; and Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley, Tammy Duckworth and Dianne Feinstein. They're all on board with this bill.
Then in the House you've got Jerry Nadler, David Cicilline of Rhode Island (the former mob lawyer), Katie Porter of California, Ro Khanna of Silicon Valley, Bobby Rush of Chicago. They've all co-sponsored the legislation.
So they're hoping, as they do, that you won't open Wikipedia to find out what happened when every other country in history tried this. They definitely don't want you looking into the history of the Soviet Union. That's why that history is no longer taught in schools. Instead, they want you to watch reports like this and in fear, give them total control over your economy.
SCOTT MACFARLANE, CBS NEWS CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The shifting and shrinking school lunch menu. Supply chain disruptions and the spiraling cost of key ingredients has forced school districts to pull back or make substitutions. At some schools, no more hamburgers or chicken patty sandwiches due to problems and the price of buying buns and ketchup. A new survey of school districts nationwide reveals 97% of meal programs reported challenges with higher costs, while 98% acknowledged problems getting some menu items, the supplies and the ingredients. Costs are poised to rise again for U.S. schools July 1st, when an emergency measure enacted at the start of the pandemic expires.
So, we're not shilling for big business here. We don't work for Joe Biden. We don't have to. In fact, we're often nightly critical of big business, but let's be honest for a second. Does any serious person actually believe that hamburger and chicken patty manufacturers are holding back supplies of their products because they're greedy?
That's not what's happening. We wish it were what's happening because you could probably fix that, but that's what they’re telling you is happening and they're telling you that, so you'll believe it. They want you to believe that the baby formula shortage isn't about supply, it''s about pricing. Unfortunately, that's just not true. Here's NBC with the latest figures on the shortage.
JO LING KENT, NBC NEWS BUSINESS AND TECH CORRESPONDENT: The FDA telling NBC News it is concerned not having certain formulas available on shelves could pose life threatening risks for infants. Mom Sydney Gallivan says she's been grappling with the shortage for two months after their formula was recalled.
KENT: How are you dealing?
SYDNEY GALLIVAN, STRUGGLING MOM: I'm just really taking it day by day, to be honest.
KENT: Unable to find her formula on shelves, she had no choice but to suddenly switch brands. Texas has been hit particularly hard. The formula out of stock right here is now 50%.
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Oh. So, the key line was the last line. The out-of-stock rate is now 50%. So they just don't have the product because companies generally, if they have the product, are eager to sell the product because they're in the business of selling products to make money. But unfortunately, if you have no grounding in economics at all, not even theoretical but practical, like if your whole life has consisted of lying to large crowds to get elected, to print more money, to pay yourself, give yourself the most generous retirement in the United States, you probably don't know how anything works, and that would describe most leaders in the Democratic Party.
So their solution, not surprisingly, is the Soviets' solution. It will make the problem worse, but it will make them more powerful. Oh, do you not like that? Oh, we're sorry. We'd love to hear your complaints, but we're not available at the moment. We've flown private to a global warming conference.
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